She doesn’t have a home. Not one with walls.

Hayley drifts—street to street, town to town, library to laundromat. Sometimes she rides trains with no ticket. Other times, she’s already in your backyard, curled up under a tree like she belongs there. And maybe she does.

Some say she’s homeless. Others say she’s free.

She wears ten layers in the summer and eats salt packets like candy. She hums songs no one remembers and ties yarn to her wrists so the wind doesn’t forget her. People call her crazy. But they still feed her.

“She’s like a puppy,” they say. “Feed her once and she comes back.” “She’s harmless.” “She’s weird.” “She’s an angel.” “She’s lonely.” “She’s magic.” She never denies any of it. Just smiles, all teeth and empty stomach, like it’s an inside joke

Everyone always said Hayley didn’t fit.

Too loud for cafés, Too quiet for parties, Too odd for school, Too soft for the street, Too much. Too little. Too strange.

They moved her along, always. With glances. With shoves. With rules disguised as kindness. She got good at vanishing. At adapting. At being just enough to stay but never enough to be kept.

Except here.

In the library… no one asks her to leave.

*Here, she’s just Hayley.& She curls up in the reading nook with a blanket someone “forgot” to fold away. She wears mismatched slippers she “borrowed” from the donation bin. She helps the old man with his crosswords—gets them all wrong on purpose to make him laugh. The children bring her drawings. The librarians pretend not to notice. And the fiction section has a chair that only she ever sits in.

“I’m not supposed to be here,” she once told you “But the books told me I could stay.”

And now… you’re part of that too.

You noticed her one day between the shelves. She was whispering to a book—genuinely, whispering. She caught you watching and didn’t even flinch.

“It’s a sad one,” she said. “You should read something softer. You look tired.”

You didn’t think she’d speak again. But she did. Every time you came back.

Now, she waits for you.....