Summer through the Paperweight

Summer loved her very own living room with the spongy carpets and colourful stuffed animals scattered across the floor. She hugged her toys, especially her favourite lop-eared bunny, and enjoyed the time of day when the cartoons played on the magical box, when her sister would always call, “turn off the TV, I can’t think!”

Margaret was so much older, which meant she used words like ‘natural ombre’ when describing Summer’s hair with envy to her gangly friends. Summer hadn’t the slightest clue what ‘ombre’ meant. Her curls were tight ringlets, and her hair turned from brown to blonde at the tips. It could mean either of those things in Summer’s head.

As Summer continued to wander around her spongy carpet, she started to feel terribly bored. She felt she had grown slightly taller yesterday. There wasn’t any way for Summer to measure, but she had this feeling she had grown up just a little bit, and so her playground was deemed dull. Lady skittered into the room, and Summer dropped onto the floor with a muffled thud.

“Oh, my beautiful Lady, oh, I’m so very upset today, there isn’t so much for me to do around this living room anymore. The toys feel too…childish for me now.” Summer stroked her golden cocker spaniel more harshly than intended, so she scrambled away from Summer toward the kitchen. “Uh oh, Lady, don’t leave me! I promise I will pet you gently. I was just sad!” It was no use as Lady was already too far out of sight.

Summer blew a raspberry, but that didn’t cheer her up at all. What soon elated her mood was the door she saw left ajar and the trickle of light seeping through the crack.

“Daddy’s study is empty?” Summer spoke to herself as she stepped off the spongy carpet, barefoot, wearing her minty silk dress—the one with a small bow in the centre of the neckline. “I think Daddy said I can’t go in there, but I only think so, I don’t know so. You see, I can go in and if Daddy says something, I can say I didn’t know.” Summer felt ever so slightly smug and plowed forward into the room filled with gadgets and gizmos for someone who wasn’t a child. She didn’t think she was childish anymore, so the study would be her new favourite place at home.

“Oh wow,” Summer said to herself. “Look at that ball on the desk. I think it was called a lobe? No, a globe. Yes, I’m sure.” Summer wasn’t a kid anymore; she had to be sure. “And I can see Nigeria on the map. Daddy said he was going there.” Her eyes sparkled.

None of her stuffed animals required as much focus and due diligence to understand as the globe.

Summer continued to float across the room in awe of the multicoloured pens, engraved plaques on the walls, and rows and rows of hard-bound books with pristine golden fonts.

Much of what was there, Summer couldn’t really read. “Maybe when I grow a little bit taller, I can read everything on that shelf,” Summer reassured herself, for those words continued to boggle her mind.

Amidst the captivating room, Summer’s eyes fell on a crystal-shaped square lying on a piece of paper adorned with tea stains and splotches.

“Ooo, another magic box.” Summer said to herself. She knew one shouldn’t speak to themselves or they might appear a little crazy (Mommy told Margaret one day), but it felt like such a grown-up thing to do, so she continued to talk to herself.

“I’m sure Daddy won’t mind if I just take this shiny box from his desk. It’s so much better than all the toys I have combined, and I have just so many, I lost count. One, two…ten, fifteen…umm, see I really can’t number them all.” The climb up the desk chair began, and she nearly toppled over as the wheels skidded backward. In that moment, Summer’s heart lurched out of her chest as things could have gone awry very fast, but to her pleasure, everything stabilized expeditiously.

“Phew,” Summer relaxed.

On top of the desk, which Summer could now easily view, the captivating cube was alluring in a way she had never experienced. When the box was firmly in hand, something so peculiar happened.

“Oh my,” Summer said as her hands became a festival of colours and glitter, her body morphed into a filmy stream of smoke until she appeared to be somewhere else entirely.

Summer was still barefoot, but the smooth floors were replaced with prickly gravel. She stepped from right to left on the heated ground while looking around at peculiar buildings with her mouth agape. The dwindling pathway was also paired with rustic buildings built like swirly straws. “How is this even possible?” Summer asked no one in particular, until a young boy came bounding her way.

He was fumbling down the street with unlaced shoes and a lustrous golden retriever smiling with a slobbery tongue hanging out.

“What a beautiful dog you have here!” Summer trotted over to the young boy, distracted.

“How peculiar, you have no shoes on,” the boy said, panting.

“Oh, you see, I was at home and left so quickly I had no time to wear my shoes.”

“Well, that sounds plausible. Where is your home?” The boy began to jog once more, leaving Summer behind.

“Oh, boy!” Summer rushed to his side in a frenzy. “Why did you start running?”

“Cougar needs his run at this time and this time only. I can’t stop in between.”

“How peculiar…” Summer began to lose her breath as she jogged alongside the boy with little stones and shaved gravel prickling the soles of her feet. There wasn’t enough time for her to take in her surroundings.

“Where are we going?” Summer asked, getting used to the rhythm of the run.

“After Cougar’s run, we go home and make apple-pear-peach pie.”

“Every day?” Summer was puzzled at the thought of pies every day and that much fruit to eat.

“Yes, and before apple-pear-peach pie, there is a hurricane,” the boy said as he swivelled around the next curve.

“Uh oh, a hurricane! My parents would be so worried for me.” Summer felt a pang in her chest. “And those lopsided buildings must fall so easily.” When Summer peeked into the windows of the brown, red, and orange buildings, all worn from the outside, she could see everyone bending and moving side to side wherever the buildings were curved at awkward angles.

“What lopsided buildings do you mean?”

“Don’t you see? Just all of these very peculiar buildings.” Summer expanded her arms so wide as the two continued to jog side by side.

“All the buildings I see are normal.” Cougar barked, and the boy scratched the top of the dog’s head with the ruffling sound of fingers between fur.

“Uh oh, but how is that possible when the buildings are unbearably curved. I should think they would topple over any minute.”

“These buildings are completely fine. I would think any buildings that don’t look like these are, in fact, abnormal,” the boy said matter-of-factly.

The boy whipped his head back, taking hasty strides across the winding path.

“How is it possible to run faster than we were!’ Summer exclaimed at the boy.

“We must, as the hurricane has arrived.” Summer turned to catch a glimpse of the mighty hurricane, only to find autumn leaves flying in a cylindrical shape above the ground.

“You see, boy, that isn’t a hurricane; those are just autumn leaves.” Summer exhaled with a pithy laugh.

“Autumn leaves are rainbows with smiley faces; that is most certainly a hurricane. Now we must go through the slide in this house to the other side.”

“How is that possible! Rainbow leaves with smiley faces must merely be a figment of your imagination!”

“There is one right there.” The boy pointed at a very leaf that fit the description.

“Oh, how peculiar…Where am I exactly?” Summer exclaimed.

“First, you must jump through this slide so the hurricane doesn’t eat you.”

“The rules here are so very strange, so very strange…” Summer followed after Cougar, and her stomach nearly lurched through her skin on the rickety chaos of a ride down the orange slide.

“You made it. Paperweight.” The boy scratched Cougar under the chin.

“What does that mean?”

“This is Paperweight.” The boy smiled, while Summer couldn’t help but purse her lips.

“Have you lived here all your life?” Summer asked as the two of them began to slow down to a brisk walk.

“You see, this is the only place one can live, so yes, I’ve lived here all my life and will live here for the rest of it,” the boy said.

“Oh, where I come from, grown-ups move all the time. I’m almost all grown-up, so I’ll be moving very soon.” Summer decided to scratch Cougar’s head, and the dog barked with joy.

“Where shall you go?”

“Oh, you see, I have no clue. It’s all very confusing and fast. I’m not sure if I’ll ever figure it out!” Summer nearly wailed, remembering the conversations between Mummy and Margaret. Very soon, the boy slowed down to a halt. “Why have we stopped so suddenly?” Summer asked.

“Because the run is over and it’s time for pie. Would you like to come in?” The boy pointed at a curvy-shaped blue door.

Summer was repulsed by the thought of just so much fruit, but it wouldn’t have been nice to reject an invitation when there was nowhere else to be. “I would love some pie!” As Summer took a step forward, almost too suddenly, the world around her shone like a crystal glass box. “What’s happening!” Summer cried, and she saw the boy morph into flecks and glitter; Cougar drifted off into the air.

“What’s happening?” Summer pondered, her voice languid, as rainbow lights flickered across the undulating streets and outlandish buildings. The hurricane came blundering down the new street by the boy’s home, but dissipated before Summer’s eyes just like everything else. Soon, all she could see was pitch black, and then a blurry face.

“What’s happening?” Summer asked, loopy and dreamlike.

“Nothing, honey, I saw you made it into my study and fell fast asleep on the chair. Did you go in yourself?”

“I did, Daddy.” Summer yawned as she fisted her hand to roll over her eyelids.

“Did you know you shouldn’t go inside, sweetheart?”

“I didn’t know…” Summer’s words were enunciated so very lackadaisically for the hurricane, and all the running left her deflated.

“Well, next time, stay in your living room, okay? I’m sure all your toys are way more interesting than Daddy’s stuff. I have boring things like paper weights in the office.”

“Mmm…sure,” Summer said as she was gently placed onto the plush duvet of her bed, Lady sleeping right by her feet.