Paper Flyers

Chapter 15- Quinn

When you’ve known someone for a really long time, it’s weird. You know how they like their coffee, two creams and a sugar, the complete opposite of your black. You know that they don’t like it when you tap your foot, because the vibrations make them feel anxious, or you know what they’ve pointed out when you’re walking through the city with them from the moment they say “Look!” because you know exactly what inspires them amd you've seen it too. For some people it takes a few weeks to get to this point, others months and still others take years of tentative hand-holding before one learns that the other likes to fit their hand around the fingers instead of between them. Or that he only takes cold showers, or that she absolutely won’t go to bed until she’s brushed her teeth. For Winnie and me, it took exactly one year and twenty-six days. Ok, so I’m sort of a dork for still knowing exactly how many days, but because I know Winnie, I know that that’s one of the things she loves about me.

It was a rainy (of course) Friday in April, just a few months after my birthday and a few days before Winnie’s. She had planned to picnic right next to the Puget Sound, on that little pier right near the dock the where ferry picks up a sea of worn-out commuters every day.  Winnie’s little plaid blanket that she’d gotten for less than a dollar at some old salvage shop and my picnic basket that I’d bought with some of my money from working at the Museum of Communications made us look like we were a couple from some old black and white movie.

I loved my new job- with the exception of Winnie, there was nothing I loved more. Each day little kids would file in, poking and prodding at each other, asking their parents or teachers when they could use the bathroom or eat lunch. Then I would pretend I was getting an important phone call. I would stand right next to the kid at the front of the line, and pretend I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. I would open my eyes as wide as I could and look the kid straight in the face. “Hold on a minute, I gotta take this,” I’d whisper. Then I would talk really loudly so the whole line could hear me, pretending I was having a very important conversation.

“What?!?” I’d yell. “You mean now?”

A bunch of kids and even a few parents would look up, and that’s how I knew I’d started my show.

“I can’t right now,” I’d shout to be heard over the crowd, “I’m at-“

“Wait,” I’d whisper, but by that point the room would always fall silent, and my whisper was the equivalent of dropping your car keys in an echoing bathroom.

“I’ll be right there.” Then I would hang up with as much force as I could muster, shove the phone into my back pocket and stare at all the kids.

“I need your help” I’d say, strolling up and down the line and making eye contact with each and every little kid. “Mr. Davies, the last known telephone connector just died. Do you know what this means?” They didn’t, of course, and I let them whisper among themselves before taking the stage again. “It means,” I shouted, letting panic flush my face and drum my fingers, “That no one but me knows anything about telephones. If they start to break, or we need to build new ones, I’m the only one who knows how they work.”

At this point the kids looked to their parents with worried expressions for confirmation of this terrible truth. Some of the parents groaned or rolled their eyes, but most nodded along, trying their hardest to keep the smiles from spreading across their faces.

“There’s only one of me,” I’d say, “But I have an idea. If you follow me, I can show all of you how the phones work. And then, if any of you ever need to fix or build a phone, you’ll know how. And Mr. Davies will not have died in vain!”

At this point, I’d shove my fist into the air Breakfast Club style and take off running, and for whatever reason, that horde of kids and grown-ups that seemed to be growing each day would take off down the hall after me, and I would show them the models and diagrams that had been my childhood.