Her tears soaked the hands that she held, palm up, in her lap. I wondered why she sat there, like that, out in the open. The crying she was doing seemed the kind you do all alone. Her grief made me uncomfortable. But I couldn't look away. Then my feet were treacherously carrying me forward, towards the private moment the girl seemed to be having with her thoughts and her hands. I was sitting beside her on the white, beach-wood bench. My hands were perched by my sides, ready to lift me off the bench where my untrustworthy legs could carry me away.
I cleared my throat and tried to think of something kind to say. Instead, I asked a rather intrusive question. “Why are you crying?”
Slowly, the girl's head lifted from the bent position it had been in. “Because that tends to happen when a person is sad,” she replied. Her eyes were a light shade of blue, almost too light to be pretty. Those eyes were big, and bright, and filled with tears, framed by short, thick eyelashes.
“And why are you sad?” I asked, surprising myself with how much I cared.
The girl frowned, seeming confused. “Because I'm selfish,” she whispered.
“So am I,” I said, “but I don't typical cry about it in public.”
The girl's mouth opened a bit. She seemed shocked. Then she smiled, just a bit. I noticed that she had the sort of lips that don't bow very much.
“You're honest,” the girl observed. “I think I like you.”
I shrugged. “You're not very honest,” I pointed out. “And I'm not sure I like you.”
The girl frowned a bit, making her lightly-freckled nose crinkle. “Why not?”
I leaned back a bit, no longer feeling the need to be ready to flee. “Well, for starters, you seem like the type that needs attention—crying out in public, for instance—and you've already admitted to be selfish.”
She was quiet for a moment, seeming to look me over and mull over my words in the same few instances. “I am selfish,” she eventually said, “but I'm not seeking attention.
“I'm waiting for someone,” she explained. “They asked me to meet them here, I wanted them to be here, but...”
I watched as her very light-colored eyes filled up with tears. My throat constricted in response. After taking a deep breath, and after the tears had tripped out of her eyes, she said, “But, I don't think they are coming.”
“Well, I don't know who this mysterious they is, but nobody should make a pretty girl wait.”
She looked at me oddly through her teary eyes. “You think I'm pretty?”
I looked her over once more, taking in her dull brown hair, slightly-too-thin frame, and interesting face. “Yeah,” I replied, not lying. “I do.”
She didn't smile, she didn't blush, she didn't even thank me. The girl just nodded at me, slowly, like she was trying to understand something. “You shouldn't say things like that,” she informed me, “it makes you seem fake—less personable.”
My mouth popped open a bit in shock. “I was wrong,” replied, “you are honest.”
Her light eyes looked into mine for a moment. “That person I was supposed to meet here,” she told me, “he's not coming. I was heart-broken about that fact just a couple minutes ago. But now...”
Her well-groomed eyebrows came together and I held out a hand. “My name is Xylar,” I told her as she shook my hand, “because my parents are unique people. You can call me X.”
“Sarah,” she replied with, “because my parents were painfully ordinary.”
I smiled brightly at this. “Well, Sarah, how about you and I take a walk—leave this old bench behind.”
She ran a hand over the seat, risking getting a splinter. “But what if the bench is lonely, getting left behind all the time,” she whispered with bemused eyes.
Her words made a laugh burst out of me. “Don't worry,” I told her, “someone else will come along and keep it company.”
She smiled a very small smile at my words. I stood, a hand outstretched, which Sarah took as she stood. She didn't let go as we walked down the sand-dusted road.
For a moment, neither of us said anything as we took in the sky, and the light, and the smell of the nearby sea. People chattered. Waves crashed. The world went on. Then Sarah broke the silence.
“He's dead,” she said, very quietly. I released her hand as she turned to look at me. “The person I was going to meet here,” she explained, “he's dead.”
I let her words wash over me like the water was washing over the sand in the distance. “I'm sorry, that's... That's very unfortunate.”
Sarah had turned away from me and was moving toward the stonewall separating us from the beach. “He's dead and I'm selfish because I'm mad he's not here,” she said to the wind. Her palms were placed firmly on top of the wall. “I knew he was dead and gone when I came here, but...”
I had made my way to her side by then, and could see that her eyes were closed. “But you came anyway?” I said, curiosity wiggling in my chest.
The girl's very light blue eyes came open with a start. “I had to,” she said, looking straight. She turned her face towards me, then, saying, “I promised him....”
Just then, Sarah put her hand into the pocket of her beige pants. They were a bit big on her, hanging off her sharp-seeming hips. With a sigh, she pulled out a folded white piece of paper. She unfolded and laid its creased body on the wall. Looking down at it like a mother looks at a sleeping child, Sarah smoothed the fold marks a bit. Then began folding it again—in a different way. I quickly recognized what she was doing. Within seconds, she held in her hand a folded masterpiece that the young boys in elementary school would have drooled over.
“A paper airplane?” I said gesturing to the folded thing in her palm.
“We always made these together,” she whispered, “he and I.”
With eyes on the horizon, Sarah sent the airplane sailing through the air with an expert throw that could only have come from years of practice. Together, we watched as the paper structure sailed through the air just a little farther than seemed allowed by physics. Then it lost altitude and fell towards the sea.
“That's the trouble with paper airplanes,” said Sarah, looking at me, “they're made of paper. They can't fly you away from your problems, and, eventually, they fall apart.”
“But they're really beautiful, just for a little while,” I replied, looking back at the water that had swallowed the memorial.
Then Sarah was looking at me in a terribly intense way. Her eyes said a million things that her mouth did not, told hundreds of stories that she never would. I could see her agreement with me mingling with the grief she wore like an accessory.  When she blinked, it all was gone.
The mysteriously honest girl whispered, “See you here next year, then.”
That was how Sarah left that first summer: with a whispered promise that it was not the end.