Be careful what you wish for, because someone might just HEAR it.
For some of us, this is just a fairy-tale come to life, but for the young sixteen-year-old teenage boy named Sam Garbedian, this is all a magical marvel of memory all in itself, creat...
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When Sam opened his eyes, Jean was at the foot of his bed, cross-legged and folding color papers into complex angles.
"Hey, Jean." He said sleepily.
"Hi, Sam," said Jean. She did not look up at him, her hands busy with the paper.
He looked at his window pane and was surprised to see little paper birds of different colors folded carefully and perched precariously on his windowside. On the shelved walls, paper birds and paper boats peered out of ships-in-bottles.
"What's up with all the paper birds and paper boats?" He asked.
"I just learned how to make origami today. It told me how to in the encyclopedia. Anyway I've been addicted to it ever since." said Jean, her hands busy folding and unfolding.
"Is mom home?" Sam asked.
"She's gone."
"What do you mean, she's gone?"
"She went away. I don't know where. I saw her take a taxicab by the window." said Jean. She held up a pair of scissors to cut off snips of paper. "It's a Saturday. What are you gonna do today?"
"I know what I'm gonna do today," said Sam with a soft smile. "And you're coming with me."
~♥~♥~♥~
Jean donned a beautifully-beaded jacket above a checkered halter top and a pair of hand-painted jeans and ruby flats. Her toothpick straight hair ended in perfect wings on her shoulders. "How do I look?" Jean asked with an impish grin as she preened and twirled for Sam like a ballerina princess.
"You look..." Sam tried to search for the right words. Pretty. Cute. Charming. Gorgeous. Attractive. Alluring. Enchanting. Amazing. Adorable. A hundred more superlatives ran in context in his mind. But he settled for something simpler. "Nice." He said.
Jean breathed in relief. "Good. Now let's go. Where are we going?"
Sam smiled. "You'll see." He took her hand.
And they went out of the house and into the glorious sunshine of an early morning.
~♥~♥~♥~
That day, they went to local restaurants, botanical gardens, fern grottoes, stone parks, avant-garde art museums, strip malls, beauty boutiques and bizarre bazaars. Anywhere they went, Jean would leave a colorful paper plane, a paper bird, or a paper boat to where they first went, "It's a remembrance from us," she would say. "The first time we went here. And the last." To keep their adventurous spirit going, they had promised to each other that they would only go together to places for the first and last time, no matter how breathtakingly beautiful or fun the place was. Their firsts-are-lasts pact was sealed with a pinky swear since Jean didn't want to seal the deal with- as Sam put it- the good ol' spit-on-the-palm handshake.
