When I was six years old, my dad taught me how to turn a sheet of paper into a plane.
I thought it was the coolest thing in the world! I’m sure he regretted it, because for a year or so every floor in the house was covered in the things. I’d peak around corners and throw them at my unsuspecting parents, making plane noises and crash sounds as they hit their marks.
When I grew bored of their reactions, I’d turn to tormenting my older sister. She had a lot less patience for it than Mom and Dad, and would try to hurl them back at me with the force of a thousand suns. That always left me breathless from giggling, I’d already learned from experience that they just spun uselessly in the air if you threw them too hard.
One day, not long after my 7th birthday, I was alone in my room, kneeling on Buzz Lightyear-themed bedsheets with my tongue between my teeth. I was just finishing an absolute masterpiece of a jet plane, using my crayons to adorn it with racing lines before scrawling a name along its wing that I thought sounded cool.
‘Jet Stream!’
When I declared it finished, I held it aloft and admired my good work. Then jumped to my feet, braced that sucker for take off and let it fly.
It soared through the air, tilting this way and that as it skimmed all four walls before crashing somewhere out of sight. I didn’t hear any impact. I lunged forward for a better view of the landing site and felt my heart sink. It had sailed straight through the open closet door.
That cramped space had always terrified me as a boy, it’s opening just seemed darker than it had any right to be. I couldn’t see where my plane had come to rest beyond the blackened threshold.
I was still as a statue, trying to gather up the courage to retrieve it, when the tip of a white paper plane came whooshing out of the void. It flew through a gap in my bed frame and came to rest at my knees.
I looked down at it, heart beating furiously. It wasn’t my masterpiece.
It was a plain amateurish one with a small sad face inked on it’s wing. A few letters were visible near the center of the plane as well, trailing down into the crease. I gulped and flattened it out.
It read simply: Pasta.
Oddly enough, I was more confused than I was scared, and brought the plane to my father to see what he made of it. Of course, he didn’t believe much of what I was saying, dismissing it after hardly a glance. He must have thought I was just trying to get out of pasta night since I’d developed an acute distaste for it.
Multitudes of planes followed that first in the years following, though I personally never made another. Sometimes I’d hear them sliding to a halt on my dark bedroom floor at night, other times I would flinch as one knocked gently into the side of my head in the middle of the day. They were all branded with either a happy or sad face, and inside each was a prediction of either the immediate future or something that had already occurred.
Happy: Playing catch with Dad.
Happy: Takeout tonight.
Sad: Grandparents visiting.
They ranged from being fairly obvious in their meaning to completely nonsensical, and they almost always included spelling errors. The predictions never extended beyond the scope of my life and the messages were rarely anything of substance.
No one ever seemed to notice the paper planes materialising out of thin air right in front of them. I learned early on that trying to convince people of the phenomenon was a fruitless effort. They dismissed it entirely, and didn’t seem at all interested in the pile of discarded planes I was able to show them. Even the most laid back of people would grow visibly upset if I tried pressing the issue.
And so, whenever one appeared, I would pick it up, read the message inside, and tuck it out of sight.
Over time, it didn’t even stand out as being odd anymore. It was just a part of life. Some days passed without a single plane showing up, others I could get half a dozen.
Happy: Vacation.
That one had led to a family trip to Disneyland.
Sad: Broken nose.
I remember being twelve years old and frowning at the message in the middle of a football field, before the ball struck me square in the face.
Happy: Jessica leaving.
My sister moved out and I took up residence in her empty room.
Happy: She likes you.
The plane skidded across the table in front of me as the teacher droned on about covalent bonds. I glanced across the room at a beautiful girl named Emily, meeting her eyes. I asked her out later that day.
Sad: Food poisoning.
“Thanks for letting me know.” I complained, stuffing the plane into a bin we kept next to the toilet before lurching forward to hurl for the umpteenth time.
“You okay?” Emily called through the door.
I let my wailing speak for itself.
Happy: It’s a yes.
I grinned and reached a hand into my coat pocket, fingers closing around a small velvet cube.
As time went on, the planes seemed to be evolving in complexity. They were growing more aerodynamic and the colour and quality of paper would occasionally change. As if whatever deity sending them to me was learning.
One day before heading out to work, I stumbled downstairs, dizzy from lack of sleep. I found a small blue jet-shaped plane sitting on the kitchen table. It was stamped with a sad face much larger than I’d ever seen on them before. My hands trembled as I gripped the wings and pulled them apart.
He’s gone.
Dad’s funeral was the first I ever attended. I did my best to stay strong for my mom and sister, but it was a feeble front. It hit me hard.
Emily was an angel through it all. When I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed, she brought me hot meals and forced me to eat. When I lost my job, she took on more hours to pick up my slack.
As horrible as I felt, seeing the burden I was putting on her only made it worse. For her sake, I managed to pick myself up and turn things around. Then, when the world finally seemed brighter again, I felt a tap on my arm and looked down to see a face smiling up from the ground.
Pregnant.
Emily gave birth to our son Ryan in January of 2020. He was a bubbly little guy and I loved him with all my heart. People often stopped Emily and I in the street just to comment on how cute he was.
Some time after Ryan was born, the planes suddenly stopped showing up. For the first few days, I hardly noticed their absence. But as the days turned to weeks, I started to feel uneasy. My wife eventually picked up on it and asked what was bothering me.
At the risk of sounding insane, I couldn’t help but divulge it all. From my dad teaching me to make paper planes as a child, through to the bizarre phenomena I couldn’t explain. Skepticism was written all over her, so I fell to my knees and pulled a shoe box out from under the bed before dumping a hundred creased sheets of paper over it.
By the way she reacted, you would have thought they were spiders.
I didn’t save all the paper planes I had received, only the important ones. I held up the plane from chemistry class. Then the outcome of my proposal. I even found the prediction of my broken nose and showed it to her, pointing to my crooked bridge.
I could tell she was resisting a strong urge to divert her gaze from the messages. Emily knew me to be a rational man; I was never the type to make up something like this, and it certainly wouldn’t have made for a very good joke. She tried her best to believe me, but it was as if it was painful for her to think about.
Eventually, she grew angry with me, the same as everyone else I tried showing them to, and cussed me from the room.
She hugged me gently from behind while I was doing the dishes a little later that evening, apologizing profusely and telling me she hadn’t a clue what came over her. She didn’t say a word about the paper planes though.
Emily fell violently ill that night. She ended up being wheeled into an emergency room, leaving me cradling an upset Ryan in my arms. The doctors couldn’t tell me what was wrong with her.
It felt like a knot was growing in the pit of my stomach as I put together a sickening theory.
A large paper plane rounded the corner at the end of the hall, soaring serenely toward us and coming to rest at my feet.
My mouth was dry as I pressed it open with my foot.
She’s gone.
After Emily’s passing, I sent Ryan off to live with my mom for a while. She was afraid I was going to do something stupid, but I promised it wasn’t anything like that. I didn’t have the capacity to care for myself at the time, much less a child.
I took the opportunity to rid my house of its furnishings, burning it all in a colossal pile in the backyard with a shoebox full of paper planes sitting snug at it’s center.
Only when I was absolutely certain that not a single shred of paper remained in the place did I finally begin redecorating. My phone was constantly alight with calls from concerned family members in the time following. It was impossible to convince them that I genuinely was doing pretty well, all things considered.
Ridding myself of the planes had been a cathartic experience, and I still had Ryan to think about. All that mattered was keeping him happy and safe.
On the 3 month anniversary of Emily’s death, I finally felt ready to visit him. Mom opened the door with a warm smile, holding my son in one arm and pulling me into a tight embrace with the other. Jessica was in the living room, lying on her side and surrounded by an assortment of toys.
“Looks like Ryan’s been keeping you busy,” I said.
“Just a bit.” She climbed to her feet to give me a hug. “We’re lucky Mom kept all of our old toys.”
“Speaking of.” Mom said from the entranceway. “Where did he find that?” She gestured to Ryan who was now scurrying around the floor on all fours. I followed her outstretched finger and felt my breath catch in my throat.
I recognized exactly what it was that he clutched in his tiny fist.
Those racing lines, colours as vivid as the day I made them and the wonky text scrawled across the side that read Jet Stream!
It was, without a shadow of a doubt, my old masterpiece.
Screams filled the room when Ryan collapsed limp on the carpet, red tears running down his chubby cheeks.
As Jessica and my mom raced to his side, I had eyes only for the discarded plane that rolled from his loosened grip. I stared at the giant face spanning both its wings. The face I hadn’t given it.
The mouth was curled up into a smile.