Page 42 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Chloe felt the heaviness behind the words.
Whoever had written this, they weren’t just skeptical. There was also the weight of sadness, like something had broken them in the past to make them this way.
Maybe there was a reason this was happening now, with this flower, and whoever was writing to her.
“However it’s happening, this person needs me,” Chloe said, not egotistically, but in the sense that the entire point of her paper flowers was to lift the spirits of those who felt lonely or despondent.
So she picked up a pen, but there wasn’t much space left in the original rose. Could she make a new one? Would it be able to make its way back to her correspondent?
Then again, there was no guarantee that even the original rose would return again if Chloe wrote on it.
She went out to the kitchen table and chose a new square of paper, but with the same gold-foil-striped pattern as the first.
Back in her bedroom, she laid the first note next to the clean piece of paper.
Name your wager. Because the odds are against you,he had written. (Chloe didn’t know why, but she had a gut feeling that it was aheon the other side of this note. Maybe it was the force with which the pen had been pressed to the paper, or maybe it was the choice of words. But it didn’t really matter, because her only goal was to help people be a little more hopeful, a tiny bit happier.)
Still, she couldn’t write an essay, because she wanted to make sure he had room to write back. So she said:
I can’t promise that wishes always come true. But I believe they can, and I would be willing to bet my heart on that—because if there is anything worth wishing for, it’s a happily ever after.
She signed it with her heart-shaped rosebud, then folded it into a new origami flower.
Then she stared at it sitting on her desk, not sure what to do next.
She still wasn’t sure how this worked, so she tried to project her well-wishes into the paper and then she said, “Go out and find him, I guess?”
When she returned to her room after breakfast, the first gold-striped flower was still on her desk, but the second, new one had vanished.
Chloe
You didn’t need to come so far out of your way from work,” Chloe said, as she and Zac walked through Central Park later that morning.
“I wanted to see the little production line you’ve assembled for your paper roses,” Zac said. “People all over the city are talking about them, Chloe. I’m proud of you.”
She blushed. There was still a part of her that remembered how he’d called it a “cute project” and only took her origami seriously once others started paying attention to her. But Chloe had mostly let that go. She tried to put herself in the shoes of others when possible, and she could see how—from Zac’s perspective—it might have just seemed like something she did to occupy her time while she pondered her next job. After all, folding paper flowers had been a small element of what she used to do for the kids at school. There had been no reason for Zac to think it was important, until it was.
They strolled down the wide path of the Mall. Soon, a cluster of card tables came into view.
Zac started to smile. “Is that—?”
“It is.” Chloe actually skipped in place upon seeing Bonnie and Mary already set up with their sign—“Start Your Day with a Smile!”
There were a couple other tables, too. Ricky the driver/aspiring pharmacist was there, and Felix from the Central Park Conservancy because today was his day off. Each had their own stack of yellow origami paper and their own style of happy or motivational messages they liked to write. They had become Chloe’s morning regulars.
“Good morning, sunshine!” Mary got up to hug Chloe as soon as she saw her. Bonnie, Felix, and Ricky joined in.
“Everyone, this is Zac,” Chloe said.
“Oooh, you’re handsome,” Bonnie said, waggling her eyebrows.
“A lovely compliment from an even lovelier woman,” Zac said, kissing her hand.
Bonnie put her hand to her heart and looked at Chloe conspiratorially. “And he has an accent!”
Chloe laughed. Apparently it wasn’t only the young who were susceptible to the charms of the King’s English.
A few minutes later, a man carrying a big bakery box arrived. “Hey! I found you!”
