Short story to practice new vocabulary (part II). Matthew, her staunchest ally. She always said she liked him, that he was not like the others. He had eyes that could see beyond the ordinary, dreary life she was locked in. That town was lifeless, dull, uninspiring. Only the world that those pages let herself immerse into was worth the while. The journey through those books was the best thing she had ever had, and it seemed to her like the most watertight alibi to abhor the real world. The unblemished scenarios she would recreate in her overactive mind were free from the atrocious beings of the ordinary and lousy reality of that forgotten town.