I chose to believe in miracles.
I’m eighteen now, and soon I’ll be able to see that magician’s trick, the sudden appearance of the Golden Gate Bridge on any day I choose. The University of California at Berkeley is across a different bridge, but San Francisco is close enough that I can go into the city whenever I like, and I can take that walk, and find that bench, and tear into a piece of bread. Something tells me I’ll do that often.
My mother still owns her shop on Euclid Avenue. She was ahead of her time, and the rest of the world finally caught up with her. The Cheese Shop is now one of several gourmet stores in town doing a thriving business, but you can ask anybody. They’ll tell you hers is the best by far.
She lives in the same small house by the beach, but she’s threatening to turn my room into her yoga studio where nobody will be allowed, not even her husband, Fletch, to whom I must officially apologize for the way I thought the worst of him when I didn’t know him at all. He has been nothing short of wonderful to her, as he was to me, during the not-always-easy years of my adolescence.
Nick finally made it to college, but it took another year to fill out those applications. He returned to work and Mom rode him until I think he did it just to shut her up, and when he went, he put an ocean between them. He and Becca will graduate from the University of Hawaii next May, and they plan to stay in Honolulu, where they hope to open up a surf shop one day. Nick has yet to perfect his one-legged surfboard, though not for lack of trying. Occasionally he’ll send me a package with a box of Good News bars, since Hawaii is the only place left where you can get them.
I can’t believe I’ve never been to visit. I still dream of going to Hawaii, and I know I will, someday.
Miracles happen slowly. Not overnight. Not with a leap from a boulder, or a plunge into hot water.
There are the days when I think I don’t believe anymore. When I think I’ve grown too old for miracles. And that’s right when another one seems to happen.
Like today, when I looked into the mailbox and found his letter.
It had no return address, though as soon as I opened it, I knew it was from Emmett. I reached inside the envelope and pulled out a perfectly folded paper crane.
It took a while, but I want you to know
that because of you, things are better.
So, thank you.
For feeding me.
For helping me find where I was going.
For letting go of something you loved so dearly so you could come along with me.
For holding my hand and saving me from drowning.
If I could make my own paper bird and send it out into the world so that it might find its way to him, or if those numbers hadn’t washed from my palm all those years ago, I would pick up the phone and call him.
Can you hear me, Emmett Crane?
You were my first real friend, the first person I really knew, who knew me too, so it doesn’t surprise me that I want to say to you the very same things you said to me.
Thank you.
You saved me from drowning.
Because of you, things are better.
Dana Reinhardt lives in San Francisco with her husband and their two daughters. She is the author of The Things a Brother Knows, How to Build a House, Harmless, and A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life. Visit her on the Web at danareinhardt.net.
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The Grand Opening
A Note About Names
The Book of Lists
Throwing Caution to the Wind
Swoozie
Friends: A History
Mom, A Vanishing Act
Sunday
On the Loose
Emmett Crane
The Tin Man
Word Games
A Day Off
Garfield Park
Absolutely, Positively Fine
A Face to Unlock Doors
The Stolen Child
The In-Between
Indigo Night
Done
The Jingle of the Bell
Looking for Somebody
What It Said Inside the Paper Crane
Someone Like Me
So Vital
Have You Seen Me?
Grounded
This Is Not a Dream
The Onion Fields
The Legend
Taking a Leap
The Runaway Type
The Silver Car
One Last Stop
Let Me Go
Awake and Alive
The Magician’s Party Trick
You Are Here
Hold on Tight
Epilogue
About the Author
The Summer I Learned to Fly Page 14
