Paper Airplanes

Chapter One

It became a solitary tradition. Each night, I stood on the roof of my apartment complex, staring as the sky and turning the vague thought of its majesty over in my mind. I would hold a plain piece of printer paper in my hands, folding it and flipping it until it turned into something new. Angular and crisp, each fold turned it further into the desired shape of an airplane. I never threw them over the edge of the roof. I’m not really sure why. In my mind I saw the flimsy paper floating down, pushed by the air currents swirling about the city, and created from the wind tunnel effect of the buildings. Lights spilled out of widows and stained the paper in the way we have stained the sky over time with our own light, our own air. Had I thrown it, it would have swirled down in lazy circles, in no rush to touch the crowded, dirty streets below. The paper bird was content to be aloft for as long as impartial air would support it. Eventually, as it became closer to our mortal world, it would become frantic, swerving left and right, propelled by the rush of the cars and the desire of just one more second aloft. It would be too far away for me to see then, of course, only a flutter of white against the swirl of bright city lights and dark street corners. But I could imagine.

            I sat that night’s paper on the cement ledge that wrapped itself around the building and leaned against it. The sharp edges dug against my forearms and my chest, creating a line of discomfort three-quarters the way up my body. Flashes of colorful lights dyed the page, pooling in the creases. It was loose-leaf paper that night, folded in thirds to fit in an envelope. The writing that scrawled across the first half of the page was extravagant in its loops and serifs. As I began to fold this paper I started to imagine again. I’m always careful when I let my mind roam free. If I imagine too much, it becomes my body that goes over the ledge, clad in my dark grey suit, red tie floating up behind my body in a poor imitation of a noose.

            I grew up in a rural town. Not on a farm, but in a place that was small enough that I had to ride my small rusty red bike until I was sweating and dangerously close to fainting in the summer heat to see any of my friends. Joshua Framer was one of those friends. Now the priest at a local Baptist Church like his father before him (and isn’t that how things worked in small towns, like your father before you?), Josh went to the same school house as me. As kindred troublemakers and two of the ten boys in our grade, we had been as thick as thieves back when we could still lift our shirts and count each of our ribs. When I decided to go to college and discover a life outside of the five hundred people in the town, our friendship went from his mother slathering sunscreen on the back of our necks to occasional letters written reminiscing in old times. It became that I only got news from him long after he had told the people much more readily available in his life.

As I folded the paper, carefully pressing each pleat, I imagined again. I imagined the words piling up in the creases, each line knotting around its neighbor. Linking, grasping, doing whatever it took to change the message that stared accusingly at me from beneath the folds of paper. Once I was done shaping it, I grabbed the paper sitting on the ledge, crushing it in my too-warm-hand. I didn’t bother stop myself from imaging the words weaving into a noose. I don’t think I could have if I tried. I took the stairs three at a time.

The letter was from Josh. Words shakily written between straight blue lines reminded me about how my mother had been sick for years. It also cruelly told me that she was getting worse. A month to live at best, the letter told me. I couldn’t accept that. The doctors in that town didn’t know anything and I had been trying to get her to move in with me for years.

“This is my home, Caleb. I came into this world here, and this is where I’d like to leave it,” she told me, in a tone that said I should know that.

Home? I was her only child, I should have been more of a home to her than all those backwater rednecks and their faded red barns. I was the one rushing to her when she needed me. As I flew down the stairs, I made a list of all the things I would need. I quickly changed into a pair of jeans and a dark blue knit sweater. I really just opened all my drawers and threw everything I could fit into a duffel bag, almost forgetting my car keys in the rush. I pressed the button to call the elevator, anxiously tapping my foot on the hideous tan and green carpet for a few seconds before forgoing it for the much faster stairs. I ran down eight flights of steps to get to the garage level.

My car was appalling shade of dark green. I suppose four years ago I had thought it made me seem adventurous. Now when I saw it, all I could think was how out of place it looked among the plethora of silver and dark blue cars in the parking lot of the law firm I worked at. It could seat up to four people on its plush grey seats, but it seldom held more than myself. Its front seats were stained with the evidence of to many meals eaten on my way to and from work, the back covered in a light dusting of paperwork. I had been meaning to start taking public transportation, but the thought pf starting and ending my day surrounded by surly, tired businessmen and women didn’t appeal to me. My car made an obnoxious beeping noise when I pressed the unlock button, echoing hollowly in the desolate garage. It faded amidst the exposed pipes that sprawled across the ceiling. Sliding onto the driver’s seat, I threw my duffel into the back, crushing what little productivity I had stored on the plush, grey seats. I turned the key in the ignition and listened to the hateful mechanical growl that erupted from my shitty car, the closest it would ever get to life.

Night bleed in through the glass of my windshield as I left behind the harsh fluorescent lights of the garage. The smooth dark was tarnished by the vibrant colors of the city night life spilling into my car and the weak light of the stars. I saw my face in the rearview mirror. My face was strangely stoic looking, with my jaw set and dark eyebrows furrowed over dark eyes. It was the face I wore before countless bleary days at work, each one blurring into the next. It was the face I wore when I was lying to myself, convincing myself that breaking my back in that goddamned law firm was worth it; that it would pay off in the end. I was quite good at lying to myself, I have had plenty of practice. The only thing that kept my lie, my self-created mask from being compete were the tear tracks running from the corner of each of my eyes to my jaw. They looked ugly, reflecting the city lights. Garish and bright, they stained my face, cutting two jagged lines down my cheeks. I thought, maybe slightly deliriously, that those moments create air holes in the mask I had made, the one I wore every day to protect me from the rest of the world. Without them I would suffocate, the lack of oxygen killing whatever lived inside of my pale skin, thrumming in time with my heart. I couldn’t decide if that would be a bad thing.