I carefully wiped the dust from my face before I blinked my eyes open. The sudden, strange wind was gone. The street was bustling again, and the lights of the shop all blinked on as the night moved in, casting warm yellow light all around me.
It wasn’t something I would admit out loud to anybody, but that moment felt significant. Feeling lighter somehow, I was just about to take a step when I heard the small flutter of a piece of paper. When I looked down, there, tucked under the toe of my boot, was a sheet of notebook paper with writing on it, flapping in an unfelt breeze at my feet.
I looked around to see if anybody would jump out and claim it as theirs, but nobody was even looking in my general direction. I bent and picked up the paper. In tidy, unobtrusive handwriting—the opposite of my messy and brash scrawl—was what looked at initial glance to be a grocery list. I quickly killed that idea as my eyes processed the words I was reading.
“Whoa,” I said, glancing around again. I think I found somebody’s bucket list—their list of things to do before they kick the bucket. Without being fully aware, I moved to a nearby bench and sat down as I read and reread this Life To-Do List.
I couldn’t help but smile at the author’s funny, sometimes high-strung voice that shone through. Who was the owner of this mysterious letter? Was it somebody I knew? Somebody I talked to every day? Part of me swore that if I knew this person, I would immediately be able to identify the list as theirs. It made me want to get to know them. Had they meant to throw it away? Had they meant for it to be found? Like a message in a bottle cast out to sea.
If found, please burn and pretend you never read this.
“Ha.” I laughed loudly at the thought. No. Quite the opposite would happen. This was what I’d been waiting for.
I sat back, the note gripped tightly in my hand. One thing was very clear. I had to find who this belonged to.
This had been delivered straight to me. It was a sign. This was what I was meant to be doing.
5
Sophie
I lost the list.
I lost the list, and now my life was over.
I wasn’t prone to dramatics, but if anybody, and I meananybody, found that list, I would cease to exist. My spirit would leave my body. The mortification of somebody reading the items on that list might be the thing that finally makes my fragile heart explode.
As it was, it already beat frantically like it was trying to escape from my chest. I felt sick to my stomach, and my neck burned with anxiety.
I’d been procrastinating, sure. I’d written the list the previous week and then carefully tucked it away, only bringing it out a few times an hour as a tool to berate myself with.
Just start, I would tell myself, but when my tongue would stick to my mouth, and my feet refused to move, I’d realized just how much I’d been procrastinating.
“Please, just let me find that list. I will get started on it right away. No more procrastinating,” I called out to whatever deity/entity listened to my desperate begging.
It wasn’t just the list that was missing, but the entire notepad had gotten up and walked away sometime in the last few days. It defied all reasoning and the laws of physics.
I know it was here, safely on my desk, because it had been haunting me since my call earlier in the week with Dr. Spinner. And now,poof, it was gone.
My shaking hands frantically threw papers and miscellaneous junk out of my way in my third scour of my room/office. I searched every inch of space as my pulse pounded in my ears, drowning out all sounds. I turned over every single sheet of paper, flipped through every notebook, only to come up empty-handed.
“No. No. This could not be happening.” I groaned and continued to search.
I retraced my steps after the last time I remembered checking it. Grandma had called me down to help upload a picture to her shop’s social media page, saying, “If I haven’t figured it out by now, what’s the point? Plus, I have to keep you in a job.”
Then I’d helped update the website and ... I don’t know.
If I could remember the last time I’d seen it, I wouldn’t be in this pickle!
Images of the note being copied and plastered all over town played on repeat in my head, each imaginary scenario worse than the last. Passing notes and question marks being scribbled into the margins:What sort of loser can’t go to the bank? Who is this freak?
My imagination escalated to a town hall meeting where the citizens came together to track down this sad, sad person and kick them out of town.We can’t have them here, breathing the same air and using our resources.
“Okay. Stop.” My palms were sweating as I paused my search and took a breath to collect myself.
It was clearly not in here. So now what? Maybe it had been scooped up with papers from the shop and was brought downstairs or dropped in the hallway. Methodically, I left my room and walked with my head down, scanning every square inch of floor between my bedroom/office on the second story and the shop below.
Why would I write it out instead of just putting it in a private note on my phone like any normal human being? Well, it was long ago established that nothing about me operated within the bounds of normality.
