Page 1 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Chloe
The first time Chloe Hanako Quinn whispered into a piece of paper, she was just shy of seven years old.
She had already drawn a picture—Mrs. Williams’s first-grade class was “writing” their introductory letters to their new pen pals—but Chloe wanted to tell her soon-to-be friend so much more than could be conveyed in a crayon self-portrait, which, to be honest, looked nothing like her.
For example, she wanted to tell her pen pal that on summer nights, she liked to crawl out her bedroom window on the second story and lie down on the little roof above the porch so that the crickets could sing to her until she was drowsy.
That her favorite day of the year was when the college students returned to the University of Kansas campus in the autumn and, after they dropped off their suitcases, how they’d stream into her parents’ ice cream shop in the historic downtown and she could greet each one of their smiling faces as they walked in for their first cones of the school year.
Chloe wanted to know what holidays her pen pal celebrated, and she wanted to tell him how, every December, her relatives from Missouri and Iowa would all come and gather at her grandma’s house for “Kansas Gingerbread Christmas,” where the kids built sugar-gemmed villages, and then on New Year’s, they’d all wake up to mochi and “good luck” ozoni soup, celebrating the Japanese side of the family.
She wanted to ask if her pen pal had a lot of relatives, too, and if, like her, he loved them so much, he didn’t even mind when aunts and uncles and older cousins patted him on the head and said, “My, haven’t you grown tall in the past year? ”
But since Chloe couldn’t draw or write very well yet, she leaned over and whispered everything into her paper instead.
She told her pen pal about the black cat down the street who’d had orange kittens.
About the time she was walking home from the park in the rain, and a bolt of lightning came straight down toward her, but then suddenly veered off and hit the lightning rod at the top of the church across the street instead.
And even about the dam of twigs she’d built last weekend in the little creek next to her garage, which ended up flooding it.
But Chloe’s biggest secret was that she was lonely, and she wished she could have had someone with her when all those interesting things had happened to her.
“I hope we’ll be friends forever,” Chloe murmured into the paper. “ Best friends.”
When she was done, she folded the paper, slid it into an envelope, and sealed it with a kiss, just like she’d seen in a movie.
Mrs. Williams sent the letters off the next day, and they traveled to another elementary school on the other side of Lawrence, Kansas.
A boy named Oliver picked Chloe’s envelope, and when he opened it, he grinned before he even unfolded the paper, before he even saw her self-portrait. He didn’t need to.
Because Oliver could already hear everything Chloe wanted him to know.