Threads in the Wind

I unpacked my backpack, then repacked it. Twice. I paced in tortured lines around my apartment, feeling all the while like I was walking a gauntlet. As I wore down the carpet, I imagined years from now, my tracks having worn the thin pile down straight to the damp wood and cracked plaster.

Something was missing, and the void it was supposed to fill had grown to such an alarming size I feared it would swallow me before long - simply wrap around me like an impossibly thick scarf and I'd disappear without a sound. Maybe that was why I walked in such unerringly straight lines - I wanted to keep as much as I could from just falling straight into that void. In bed at night, I lay on my side, watching the pale moonlight play over my closet door; afraid to turn over to my other side. I hugged the monkey to my chest and clamped my eyes shut. The girl in my head asked the same questions on an endless loop, her voice cracked and jeering. Where is it you're going? Where'd you say you were going? Where are you going, Peter? Really, you must tell me. My own voice echoed back to me - To a star - and seemed to mock me. I realized that I couldn't die anymore, not before I'd found what I was so flagrantly missing, and carried out my mission. And that knowledge, that I couldn't die, was even more frightening in ways than the knowledge that I could leave this world any day.

One day, not quite a week after Hannah and I had met in the plaza, someone knocked at my door. I jumped. Nobody ever knocked on my door; solicitors skipped my floor entirely for some reason, and I had no friends. The sudden rapping noise startled me so much that I acted completely on instinct and immediately opened the door.

She burst into tears and fell into my arms.

I was surprised at the sudden weight of her body against mine and staggered backward, not sure how to support her. Eventually I got an arm around her under her shoulderblades, and closed the door with my other hand. Meanwhile she sobbed into my neck, hot tears working free of her eyes to soak into my collar or slide down my spine. "Hannah, I said, overwhelmed beyond every sense. I could not handle crying people - I could barely handle anyone's emotions outside of mine, I was terrible like that - but I just could not handle crying people. Not anymore than I could leap from my window and fly like a kite above every building.

I could only stand paralyzed, repeating her name, over and over, as she clasped her arms around my neck and sank her body into mine as if the whole world had drowned and I was the only thing left anywhere. "Hannah," I said. "Hannah, what - what is it? How did you find this address?" I don't know what possessed me to say such a stupid thing, but she didn't seem to mind my asking. "You're not the only one who's been following people around," she said, her lips moving in the hollow of my collarbone. "Oh," I said. My face grew hot and I felt like a creepy stalker all over again.

And yet - and yet, she'd chosen me to cry to. She'd chosen my shoulder to dampen, my bones to absorb the shock of every sob that wracked her body. And after I thought I'd never see her again! - I was secretly so happy she'd come back to me. It was a selfish, selfish thing to think, but I couldn't help but feel I'd done something right after all.

"What is it? What's wrong?" I asked her.

"I'm useless," she said, her voice breathless and choked.

"What?" I said.

She disengaged her body from mine, took a breath, and said, "My life has no direction. I'm useless. All I'm doing is taking up space." "That's not true," I said in an instant. "You do beautiful things for people. You put beautiful things into the world. What could be better than that?" "But my life has no direction," she said again. "I don't know what I want to be. I've never known what I wanted to be. Even if I did know, there's almost no way I could see it through."

"But look, you're still a lot better off than most people your age - they're working at McDonald's or still living with their parents; and besides, look at people like - like Holden Caulfield, his life had no direction either, and - " "But that's exactly it," she said. "I can't read."

"What?" I said.

"I can't read. I've been dyslexic for - for as long as I can remember. No one ever suspected though, because I learned to hide it. But it's such a stupid thing! My bus has a stop in front of a Borders, and I hate looking at it, but sometimes I'll go inside and look at all the books with their shiny covers, and I'll think maybe it's magically gone away somehow, maybe I can read now as well as anyone - I just need to find the right book, the book where all the words make sense. Because if I can find that one, it'll be like the curse is broken, and I'll be able to read anything I want after that. But I never can. The words never make sense, sometimes they don't even look like English, sometimes the sentences will say things that can't possibly be right."

"Oh my - Oh, my," was all I was able to say. I took off my glasses and rubbed the lenses with the edge of my shirt, thinking of the cardboard boxes of books I had stacked in my closet because every shelf I had was crowded up with lost things. It was funny, I used to be unable to sleep unless I held a book in my hands, and now I couldn't remember the last book I'd read.

"Yeah, I know," Hannah said, and started crying again. "Don't cry," I said lamely, and led her to my patched-up, secondhand sofa. I wanted to get her a glass of water or something, but felt too self-conscious. In front of the sofa was a low table bearing a scattering of lost objects. A Pez dispenser. A matchbook. A shoelace. A friendship bracelet. She suddenly noticed all these with a keenness in her eyes. "Are these all lost?" she asked. "Yes," I said. "It's funny," she said, "because sometimes I'll wander the streets, just wander everywhere, all day, because I know I lost something but I never know what. And I never know if I can still find it or if I lost it forever. I just know it was something that I should have had, that I had a right to."

I knew what she was hinting at, that if she'd lost something and I collected lost things, I just might have taken home whatever it was that she'd lost. And who knew, I might have. "I think I lost something too," I told her. "Or, at any rate, I'm missing something. I keep taking all these things home that got lost. Maybe I'm trying to find it. Maybe I'm just trying to fill the hole. Maybe I'm glad to know other people are missing things too. I don't know...but...if you want to look, you can." She thanked me and started inspecting various displays on mismatched side tables that I'd salvaged from back alleys and beside Dumpsters. CD cases. Buttons. Highlighters. She moved to the kitchen table, then the floating shelves in the hallway. Cracked plates. Bicycle baskets. Math homework.

Hannah shook her head. "None of this feels right. It's not something tangible. I know this now." She turned back to me. "It's hopeless. How can I look for something I can't even see? It could be anywhere - if it even still exists." A single tear slipped from the corner of her eye. She brushed it away quickly, but more followed. She sniffed, and said, "I normally don't cry this much...Really...I don't. It's just...I don't even know." "I'm sorry," I murmured, not knowing what to say. She ran the heels of her hands over her eyes, and suddenly I found myself telling her about Aislinn and the dreams I'd had, and what I'd seen that afternoon eleven years ago, and what I had to do now. I didn't know why I felt so compelled to tell her everything just then, didn't even realize I was doing it until I heard what I saying. Maybe I just didn't want her to cry again.

"And I need to find them and let them know once and for all, because they deserve to know; but I'm scared they might not believe me, because the only proof I've got is my memory and I was only seven years old," I rambled, "But if it makes you feel better, you can come with me." That came completely out of nowhere. "Really?" she asked. "I - I - I mean, like, if you want to...you don't have to!" I sputtered, half-wishing I'd never said that.

"Yes," she said solidly. "Please. Please take me with you. I need...I just need to feel like I have a purpose." And with that, Hannah was in.

"When are you planning to leave?" she asked.

"I don't know," I admitted. "There's something - there's something I might still need." I thought again of that gaping void that haunted me. "But I'll call you the minute I'm ready."

Hannah looked disappointed for a second, then brightened at my mention of calling her. "You'll need my number, then."

"I, uh, I don't have a cell phone," I said.

"Oh," she said. "Do you have a pen?"

I leaned over and picked up a lost pen from a side table. "It still works. I tried it."

She took the pen in one hand, my hand in her other, and wrote her phone number across my palm. Having my hand in the hand of an almost-stranger's would have been more than enough to make my palms sweat, but it was more than that - it was Hannah, it was the one person in the entire world I was certain I could love.

She didn't seem to mind, though.

After she left, I stood by the door, replaying everything in my mind. It was all so surreal. So surreal and so wonderful. I walked slowly to my room, and noticed that my path hadn't been perfectly straight. But that was exactly it. The void was gone; it'd been filled. I realized suddenly that I'd found what I needed - I'd needed someone to go with me, and I'd needed her, and I had both of those now. Joyfully, I ran to the kitchen, picked up my phone in my arms, and dialed her number. I took the phone into the hall as far as the cord would go, set it down, and stretched the curly cord as far as that would go. It just barely reached my closet door. That was how cramped and tiny my apartment was. Well, I guess that plus the fact that super-long phone cords had been on sale the day I needed a new one.

Hannah picked up almost immediately. "Peter?" she said. She knew it was me.

"Yeah," I said, pulling cardboard boxes of every book I'd ever owned since I was a child out of my closet. "I found what I needed. I'm ready to go when you're ready."

"I'm packing right now," she told me. "And I'm not one of those girls that needs to bring like, her hair straightener and eight pairs of jeans with her when she travels. I just have a backpack of stuff. That's good, right? How long are we gonna be gone?"

"Yeah, that's fine. And...I'm not sure. We have like 2,000 miles between here and where we need to get to, though."

"2,000 miles sounds amazing. Can we leave today?"

"I guess so. I mean, we might as well. Sure."

"Great. I'll come to your place again?"

"Sure."

"Okay. I'll see you, Peter."

"See you."

I hung up. All the while, I'd been pulling books out of those cardboard boxes, books I'd adored as a child, books I wished I could be in as an adolescent, books I remembered reading and loving now. I took out the majority of everything I'd packed in my backpack and filled that space with books. The moment she'd told me she couldn't read, I'd made a promise to her in my mind. I would teach her to read along the road. And when she got tired of learning, I'd read to her. I'd teach her so well, she'd be able to open any book in the world (well, written in English, anyway) and understand it. I'd help her find her purpose, her direction, too. I would become her hero.