Brook had the whole bookshop-café drawn on paper, but no room to build it. Her folder held ten years of sketches. Shelves along one wall. A coffee bar by the window. A corner for people to read all afternoon. She'd planned it since she was fifteen. Now she was twenty, and every storefront in the neighborhood was full. She sat on the floor of her townhouse bedroom with the folder open. Her small brown palmaraion curled against her knee, tail twitching in its sleep. Brook scratched its fluffy neck and stared at the realtor listings on her phone. Three rentals. All of them already leased. She'd called each one that morning. Each person told her the same thing. Too late. The neighborhood had no empty space. She knew that. She'd walked every block twice this week, counting windows. Bakery. Barber. Dry cleaner. Nail salon. Not one dark window with a sign. Her phone buzzed. A new message from the realtor she'd bothered all week. Brook opened it fast. "One just came up. Owner retiring. Old hardware shop. Needs a lot of work. Wants to meet today if you're serious." Brook stood so fast the palmaraion rolled off her knee and chirped. An address followed. She grabbed her black Nikes and laced them without sitting down. The shop sat two streets over, between a laundromat and a closed restaurant. Dust covered the front glass. Through it she saw empty metal shelving and a floor stacked with paint cans. An older man in a gray apron unlocked the door and waved her in. He smelled like sawdust and coffee. "Forty years I ran this place," he said. "My knees are done. You want it?" Brook turned in a slow circle. The ceiling was high. The window faced the street, good for a coffee bar. She could already see her shelves on that long wall. Her chest went tight. "I want it," she said. He named a price. It was more than she'd planned, but not impossible. Then he slid a paper across the counter and pointed at a line near the bottom. "Sign today. I've got two other people coming at five. First name on the paper wins." Brook read the line. Her hand shook a little. She thought of her folder, the ten years of drawings, the empty windows she'd counted. She borrowed his pen and signed her name. The man shook her hand. "It's yours now." He handed her a heavy ring of keys. Brook stepped back onto the sidewalk and looked at the dusty glass that was now hers. She had a space at last. She also had a gutted hardware shop full of paint cans, a lease payment due in thirty days, and no money left to turn it into anything.