The Rest of Us

I started leaving Savannah paper cranes when she asked what hope was for the first time. That morning, on her sixth birthday, I placed a paper crane on her windowsill. From then on, every time she asked, I would leave her one, even when she did not know she was asking. I heard her when she failed her first middle school math exam, and again when her grandmother passed away. I heard her when she did not get into her first choice college, and when she graduated from her second choice. I heard her when she laughed in love and when she cried because she thought heartbreak was the worst pain. And, when she spent three days in a hospital bed, when she just needed to find the end, I heard her. Then, I heard her recover. Find a job, and for a while, she was quiet. But, still, I was there. Like a human choking, coughing is a sign they are alright, but silence. Her silence worried me, and love, my love for her captured me. And so, even when she is silent, I am there.

Time goes by. The universe shifts from Earth to Air and the humans are struck with disease. When Savannah loses her job, but still wakes, showers, and gets dressed, I am there. When she checks her bank account, too proud to file for unemployment, I am there. When she stops buying produce, and, in the new year, when she decides to move back in with her parents, I am there. Venturing outdoors becomes a rare occurrence, and she swipes endlessly on dating apps, eventually being ghosted by anyone who talks to her. Yet, I do not hear her.

So, I leave her something even selfless humans crave. Although she does not ask, I place a paper crane, with a $200 bill beneath its feet, on her windowsill. In the morning, she puts the crane with the others, but takes the money to the kitchen table, drinks coffee, and stares at it, finally putting it away and returning to her phone.

Every morning, I now leave her a paper crane with a bill beneath its feet. After a few days, she looks for work, and I begin to hear her ask about hope again.

When I was a young girl, I asked my friends only once where they kept their paper cranes. Being met with confusion, I never brought it up again, and it was something my family never spoke of. Superstitious as they were, my parents didn’t dare throw the paper cranes away, but gave them to me in a box when I moved out. No one, except me, knows the occasional paper crane still appears on my windowsill.

When the money begins to appear with them, I don’t know what to do. I am stuck thinking on the matter at a NYE party, with fewer than ten people, when my chest suddenly tightens and the room feels too hot and the walls are closing in and I just need to get some air.

Outside, I close my eyes and exhale.

“Cigarette?” someone asks.

I look at the man, and I feel, somehow, we have met before.

“I don’t smoke,” I say, while taking the cigarette from his hand. He leans close to light it.

“Happy New Year,” he says, “What are your plans for it?”

“I’m moving back home, you?”

He looks into the light coming from a lamppost and smiles, “I think I’ll take a trip.”

“In this time? I wish I could do that.”

“Why can’t you?”

My eyes lower.

I let the man move close and lift my chin with his hand. Although a stranger, there’s something familiar in the way I meet his gaze.

“Would you like to get out of here?” I ask.

“What about social distancing?” he replies, although he is already closer than six feet apart.

Less than three minutes, I am taking a man home who I have spoken to for less than three minutes. But it feels like he is made for me, that he can see me, that we are old friends, and I know I am safe before we become enveloped in each other. There’s a memory in his skin, something familiar I cannot place, and the longing, the aching, I constantly feel, it fades. I cannot rip apart my fear from joy and the wish of love, but logically, I know there is nothing there, and I am alone.

In the darkness, I whisper, “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

“None of us do,” he answers, and he holds me like we are saying good-bye.

My kind are not supposed to manifest our presence to humans in any way, as they will all outgrow our magic. They are brought up to do so, but they all still need us, to wonder to hope, to imagine. Their need then dissipates as responsibility, what they call rationality and productivity, becomes necessary to fit in with their human way of things. What began as an act of kindness turned into something I could not control. She was so distraught that first time, trying to understand hope, that I thought one act of pure magic, maybe, could help her believe in the beauty of the world. Just a little extra push, and I would be gone when the time came. I thought it never did, nor would it, and that she would need me forever to tame her longing. I could not see the signs when she stopped asking, or maybe I chose not to.

There would be no harm in my staying, at least to her. I do not know of the consequences to my own being, but I have confirmed the decision I already knew. This night, she did not see me for what I am. Although I can tell she does not understand why she is drawn to me, feels connected to me, to her, I am just another man, and this breaks my heart.

I will be gone before she wakes, but the beauty of being next to her… I stay, suspended in time like the dust particles caught in the morning light.

That night, I dream of when I was a little girl, growing strawberries and making jam; I dream of when I was seventeen and backpacked in Alaska; I dream of how I had planned to drive across the country and sell grilled cheese sandwiches in a food truck to make ends meet. Whatever happened to that dream? When I wake, I am at peace with the fact that I never pursued it, and the man is gone. I am neither surprised, nor hurt. He feels like the closing of a book when I know which one I am going to read next.

There is a paper crane on my windowsill, which I take and add to the boxes in the basement, but there is also a shoebox beneath the window. At the kitchen table, I discover it is filled with money, and a black notebook, which I recognize as my diary. How did so much money and my diary come to be in this box? I will never know, just as I will never know why me and why now. I tell no one close to me about this, and I take the money to the bank.

She uses the $20,000 to go back to school to ensure she will never be obsolete again. She tells herself that this means nothing about her, that she kept the money, but as a Software Engineer, she donates a portion of her salary to a good cause. There is never another paper crane on her windowsill, and she does not expect one to ever appear again. That man was just a man, but he came at a time when she needed hope one last time. She no longer feels like she is searching for an answer, and so, like the rest of us, she continues. She finds a good job, what she believes to be love, and starts a family. The paper cranes gather dust in the basement, and the day will come when she re-reads her diary. A piece of paper will fall from the black covers, displaying the words:

Do not forget.

And she will cry because she does not know what she has forgotten.