Paradise and Paper Planes (Open)

[Jonas Kent]

Jonas was struggling. He had been at Ashford for a few months now-- he’d lost track of how many-- but it seemed the school had already leeched the life from the once cheerful artist. Today he sat alone on the beach. The sand was cold in the early-morning haze, but the boy didn’t notice. He looked out at the waves as they rolled to shore, gray, indifferent, eternal and he noted that the sea was dead. He wondered if it had always been that way.

In his hands sat the ever-faithful sketchbook. Long unopened, the book’s presence was merely a familiar comfort and Jonas found his fingers absently brushing its cardboard cover. He stared at the scene before him with distant, expressionless blue eyes as his thoughts strayed across the water to the one place he missed most: home. Before Ashford, Jonas never would have expected to miss his home as much as he did. He had never considered himself close with his family, especially when all they ever seemed to do was argue. But now there was a pit in his chest that grew a little deeper with every passing day. It was hard to explain, but he felt like he was crumbling from the inside out.

If he thought about it, Jonas couldn’t say things were bad. At least, everyone else seemed to have it worse. A dull sense of guilt made itself known somewhere in the void of his gut and echoed all the way through. How could he feel this way? He was privileged to be a member of the gifted. Ashford provided a safe haven for people like him. They fed him, gave him a place to live, educated him, and some day would find a career for him and all he had to do was accept it. All he had to do was stay out of the way. As long as he didn’t draw attention to himself he was safe on the island, and, for the most part, there was no reason for anyone’s interests to be drawn to the useless artist.

He was a misfit among misfits. With his single, useless power he didn’t belong in the real world, but he didn’t belong at Ashford, either. His power wasn’t revolutionary, it wouldn’t change the world; hell, it was barely even impressive after you’d seen it in action a few times. The whole thing was pointless and left him spiraling deeper and deeper into questions of his own inadequacy. Maybe he was never meant to belong anywhere. It seemed like everyone else had something that he was missing. Maybe he wasn’t meant for this world. Maybe it would be better not to exist at all. Maybe there was nothing left for him to do. Maybe maybe maybe.

Rip.

He tore out the first sheet of paper and folded it hot-dog style down the middle. Using the sketchbook to press against, the artist flipped and folded the sheet until he had made a single paper airplane. The heavy sketch paper didn’t make for a very functional vessel, but Jonas stood and pinched the plane between his fingers. Taking a deep breath, he pulled his arm back before launching the plane towards the water, watching with little satisfaction as almost immediately the ocean spray soaked its paper wings and it sank through the air before being consumed by the cold and apathetic sea.

[MaKayla MyKa]

MaKayla had taken plenty of trips to the beach in her days, but never before had she felt as drawn to the waters. It had been a particularly bad week for her. It seemed class work and incident reports were impossible with her strength. Paper stood no chance against pen or pencil, not as though the pencils and pens had a longer life span.

The badge-less prefect made it to the beach and set down her stuff, prepared for a dip. The water was cooler than usual, bringing goose pimples across her skin in a full body shiver. The girl gave a shivered grin as she dove into the waters, her father's cure for cold water.

She resurfaced to find no immediate effect, but she didn't care this was fun. It was a beautiful day and nothing could prevent her from enjoying it. Nothing but a paper air plane.

The sad, sunken in, little plane had floated right into her. A bit puzzled to what the plane was doing there, Kay examined it, lifting it from the water and brushing her hair back from her eyes. She puffed her cheeks, tilting her head as if curious to find it's origin.

Her head turned to the shore finding nothing but a a sliver of a figure further down the beach, the side that was further off the beaten path, reserved for those who prayed for isolation or who enjoyed your good ole "long walk on the beach."

She pushed her hair back again, seeing as it's shortness prevented it from being brushed aside for too long.

It did not take long before she made it back ashore and had dried herself off a good bit. And there she went, walking his direction, paper airplane in hand. She cinched her towel along her waist, unsure of what was ahead.

[Jonas Kent]

Jonas’s heart sank with the paper plane. Turning his back to the water, he shuffled to where the sketchbook lay opened in the sand. He tugged out a second page, this one ripping right down the middle. The artist didn’t seem to care and crumpled the page before tossing it to the side and pulling out a third. The thick paper separated from the binding of the book with ease and he began to fold again. A few folds later and the second airplane was ready for take-off, but as Jonas stood to launch it over the water he had the sudden sensation of being watched. He stopped and turned to observe the girl as she approached. On some other day he might have faced the girl with a higher sense of caution, and somewhere in the back of his mind he noted that, maybe, he should be more concerned about his own dying sense of self-preservation.

He’d seen the girl before. Though he didn’t know her name, he was certain that he’d at least seen her face in passing once or twice. It occurred to him that she was a prefect, though today she wasn’t wearing her badge. Her wet hair clung to her face, framing it as she looked at him with inquisitive blue eyes. Jonas noticed the soggy paper plane she held in her hands and he let out a slow breath. “Sorry,” he muttered, dropping his gaze, “Um, I guess I’m in trouble now, huh? Littering. My bad. I’ll clean up.” Numbly, he bent down to pick up the crumpled sheet of paper from the sand while the second paper plane was still clasped between his fingers. He picked up the sketchbook and flipped it closed.

“So, um, what’s the damage, Corporal. Ha ha,” he laughed without emotion, offering the girl his best approximation of a smile without looking at her. His whole body felt like it was on novocain and his shoulders sagged, his arms hanging heavy at his sides. There was a hollowness about him that had been growing for months. At first the feeling scared him, but after a while it devoured the parts of him that allowed for fear. Once, he had tried to draw the feeling, but only ended up with a blank page. It looked just right.

[MaKayla MyKa]

"Is this yours?" Her voice gave a small, near apologetic, inflection, as if she the airplane was somehow treasured property. Her question was answered with an immediate apology, and a promise to pick it up on account of her prefect status. The only thing was, prefects didn't exactly have domain over the whole island, just the school itself. You didn't exactly go telling people that.

She pulled her hair back from her face once more, seeing as it had been fighting her. "No damages this time." She assured the boy who seemed nervous, well not nervous. Something else, something she couldn't put her finger on. Distant perhaps? Distant seemed to be the right word for it for now.

The boy looked unwell, perhaps grim. The artist's sketchbook was discarded to the beachside, revealing freshly torn frays at the base. "Havin' a bad day, huh?" She asked looking from the book and up to the young man.

She couldn't blame him for coming here. The beach and the cliffs were perfect places for bad days as well as good days. The waves could reflect any emotion, much like most things in nature. Perhaps that's the power of perception.

[Jonas Kent]

He hadn’t heard her first question in his hurry to clean up, but now that he’d collected his things he gave the girl his full attention. So, he wasn't in trouble after all. Why did he feel almost disappointed? Jonas followed the girl's eyes to his sketchbook and shrugged, “I’m fine.” The mantra of the depressed and the damned. Hugging the book to his chest, Jonas pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head and rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand. "Just tired. Homework's been brutal lately, huh?" he tried to sound conversational. He couldn't remember the last time he'd attended class, but the bags under his eyes revealed that the statement wasn't a total lie.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, unsure what else to say. Part of him wished she would leave, another craved human company, and then there was the overwhelming part of him that was too numb to care either way. His eyes found the limp paper plane in her hands and any pretense he’d made at smiling faded from his face. “Oh.” Jonas reached out a hand and plucked it from her as carefully as if he were handling an injured bird. He cradled the waterlogged plane with a sense of fatherly sadness. “Sorry,” he muttered, though whether he was talking to the girl or the plane was open for interpretation.

[MaKayla MyKa]

Jonas's response was unconvincing to say the least. MaKayla couldn't help but feel a need to help this young man out, but how? Jonas was rather closed off and in this moment, there was nothing MaKayla could do. "yeah," she agreed to the amount of work being troubling at times. What more could she say?

She held the paper plane in her hand, the thicker drawing paper drooping but holding together well, regardless of the moisture. "Oh, well. . ." The boy didn't have much of a reason for apologizing, "It's alright. . . " she said, in a comforting tone. She could relate to how Jonas was feeling. There had been a time where she had felt that she did not belong on the island or was better off dead. She looked out to the setting sun just peaking over the waters. "Should probably be heading back." The subject of the sentence was left open. Leaving the words as either an offer or a simple statement of the time. She didn't turn back to him yet, she just left the words to hang there, much like the minor discomfort of the situation itself.

[Jonas Kent]

The artist was still staring down at his half-drowned paper plane when MaKayla turned away. He looked up at her, and then to the side. “Um, Do-- do you have to go?” he asked in a quiet voice. The words were out before he made the conscious decision to say them, but he didn't regret it. "Do you know how to make paper planes? I can show you how. It's kind of relaxing, you know, if you're interested." Jonas rubbed his eye again as he spoke. The awkwardness in the air was infectious and he caught himself shifting back and forth with anxiety. The girl was a stranger, and she looked pretty uncomfortable with the situation.

"Sorry," he muttered again, ducking his head as if he expected her to snap at him at any moment. "I just. . . " Jonas trailed off. He knew what he wanted to say. The challenge was in finding the courage to say it. Taking a moment to collect himself, he lifted his chin to look at the girl before starting again. “I just don’t want to be alone, you know? The people here are just like, weird,” now he was starting to gain momentum. “Sometimes it kind of feels like I’m trying to talk to aliens-- and not the cool kind either. The kind that want to, like, harvest my organs or scan my brain or whatever,” he tapped his forehead and rolled his eyes, “you know what I mean? Just crazy.”

Shaking his head, the artist’s hands slid over the pulpy airplane in his hands. Even in its sodden state it seemed well-made, the creases neat and clean despite its simplicity. The hint of a smile hovered around his lips as he looked down on the plane. “It’s kind of a crappy design, you see,” muttered Jonas, “and paper planes can’t really fly over the ocean. Paper boats, though. . .” He started to unfold the plane, a task made increasingly complicated by the fact that it was soaked beyond ruin, but in the boy’s steady hands it did not tear. With eyebrows creased in concentration, Jonas tried to smooth the paper back out into a flat sheet. The original creases of the plane made it impossible to get it to lay flat, but as he worked he slowly coaxed the sheet into a crude paper boat. “Paper boats are designed for this very situation, but when you’ve been a paper plane all your life it’s hard to undo all the creases and become something else. Does that make sense? I think it kind of does.” He offered the boat to the girl along with a sad sort of smile. “And, anyway, you can’t do it yourself. You have to find someone to unfold you and put your back together the right way. Paper can’t change itself.”