The Fold Between Pages

I printed ninety-nine copies.

Not because of some deep symbolism or numerology, my printer jammed on the hundredth, and I didn’t have the energy to argue with it.

It was a dumb little zine. Saddle-stitched. Off-white paper that smelled like an old hymnal. Stories. All fiction, technically. Which is to say: everything I couldn’t say out loud.

People asked why I didn’t publish it online. Why I dropped them off in coffee shops, bus stops, laundromats. Why I wouldn’t put my name on it. I told them I was going for “mysterious author energy,” but the truth was simpler:

I didn’t want it read.

I wanted it left somewhere. Like a coat. Or a body.

The stories were about her.

Not about her. But about the spaces she left.

I called it Interiors.

She would’ve rolled her eyes and said it sounded like a therapy podcast.

Anyway.

The point is, none of this was supposed to come back.

And then, two weeks later, I found a copy on my porch.

Same cover. Same imperfect spine where the staples bowed slightly. But inside, tucked between pages twenty and twenty-one, was a folded piece of paper.

My name was written on the outside. In her handwriting.

I didn’t open it.

Not right away.

I stood there for twenty minutes, holding it like a newborn mouse. Too fragile to touch. Too alive to ignore.

Then I sat down on the porch steps and unfolded the note.

There were only eight words.

You left the porch light on again. Idiot.

I laughed.

Out loud.

And then cried so hard I nearly threw up.

I didn’t tell anyone.

Not because I was scared.

But because I knew exactly what they’d say.

“You probably wrote it yourself and forgot.”

“Memory’s a liar.”

“Maybe someone’s messing with you.”

“You really need to talk to someone about this.”

I was talking to someone.

Kind of.

If writing counts.

That night I burned the letter in my sink. I said something dramatic while it curled into ash, like, “You’re not real,” but my voice cracked halfway through, so it came out sounding like a cartoon ghost being exorcised. Then I ate an entire bag of off-brand Doritos and fell asleep on the floor watching a video essay about moths.

That should’ve been it.

But four days later, I got another one.

Not left on the porch.

It came in the mail.

Addressed by hand. No return address. Postmarked from the next city over.

I stared at it for twenty minutes before opening it.

This one wasn’t just a note. It was a letter. One page, front and back, written in the same voice I’d spent a year trying to forget.

You always talk too loud in libraries. It’s why we got kicked out that time with the storm. You said it was fine, that they’d forgive us because we were “aesthetic,” and I said “You’re not that aesthetic” and you said “No, but you are.” And then I hated you a little less for the rest of the day.

I forgot I even remembered that.

You’re doing that thing again, where you pretend you don’t miss anyone. You’re really bad at it. Also, you eat like someone who’s trying to punish a ghost. Maybe try salad? Or joy?

I laughed. Then I read it again and didn’t.

At the bottom, in smaller print, just three more words.

Still folding back.

I didn’t write back.

Not because I didn’t want to.

Because I didn’t know how.

How do you write to someone who isn’t supposed to exist anymore?

And worse, what if she did exist, somehow? Not alive exactly, not dead either. Just... folded. Like the edge of a page turned inward. Not gone. Just waiting.

I told myself I’d imagined it.

Twice.

Then the third letter came.

It was left in my backpack.

Not mailed. Not delivered.

I hadn’t taken that bag out in a week. It still had crumbs in the front pocket from when she dared me to eat a Pop-Tart that fell frosting-first on a subway seat.

This one was shorter. No date. No greeting.

You remember the tree, don’t you? The one you carved half a star into because you were afraid someone would think it was cheesy if you finished it.

I thought it was brave. You never did.

I dropped the letter. I mean, actually dropped it.

No one knew about that tree.

I never even told her I’d carved it. She found it a year later and made fun of it, called it my “tragic hipster flag,” and I told her it was a coincidence.

She looked at me for a long time and said,

“You should finish the star. Even if no one sees it.”

I never did.

That was five years ago.

Three since she died.

I didn’t sleep that night.

I reread every story in Interiors. Line by line. Looking for things I might’ve said without meaning to. Secrets I might’ve left cracked open. I found a lot of bad metaphors and at least three characters who were just me with a better haircut, but nothing like the tree.

Nothing that explained this.

She wasn’t haunting me.

That would’ve been easier.

She was...

remembering me.

And for the first time, I let myself want to be remembered.

I didn’t plan to write back.

I told myself it would ruin it.

That whatever magic or madness was happening would vanish the second I tried to meet it halfway.

But then I went three weeks without a letter.

Nothing in the mail.

Nothing in the backpack.

Nothing tucked into the spine of a used book at the thrift store I hadn’t gone to since

Well. Since her.

So I cracked open a fresh notebook. The kind she liked. Cheap and spiral-bound and always slightly too narrow for my handwriting.

And I wrote:

I found the tree again.

The star’s still unfinished. The bark’s cracked, like it aged without us. Or maybe it waited. You were right. It was cowardly. But I didn’t want someone else to finish it before I did.

I paused.

Then kept going.

I don’t know what this is. I don’t believe in ghosts. But I believe in you. I believe in how you remembered things no one else could, how you forgave before I asked, how you kept showing up even when I made it hard. So if this is you...

If this is still you...

Thank you for folding back.

I didn’t sign it.

Didn’t seal it.

I tucked it into the inside cover of one of the last remaining copies of Interiors and left it on a park bench near the college library where we used to waste time pretending to be smarter than we were.

I didn’t expect anything.

That’s not reverse psychology. I genuinely thought it would end there.

I just wanted to say something honest, one last time, and leave it somewhere that mattered.

It showed up a week later.

In my mailbox. No stamp. No return address. Just a copy of Interiors. Dog-eared. A coffee stain across the back. My handwriting on the inside flap, except I hadn’t written anything there.

Someone had.

The letter was tucked between pages thirty and thirty-one.

My worst story, by the way. The one with too much weather and not enough verbs.

This time, the handwriting wasn’t careful.

It was fast. Familiar. Like she’d written it while laughing at me.

Which, to be fair, she probably was.

It started like this:

I knew you’d leave it near the library. You always do that thing where you pretend to be random, but your randomness has a pattern. Like a cat that knocks things off shelves “by accident.”

I laughed. Loud. Alone.

You talk like you never said goodbye, but you did. Every time you told me to stay safe. Every time you made breakfast too sweet on the days I couldn’t smile. Every terrible poem you left in my shoes. You said it. You just didn’t know how to hear yourself.

And I didn’t fold back to fix you. Or to haunt you. I folded back so you wouldn’t forget the sound of being loved on purpose.

I had to stop reading for a minute.

She continued.

There’s a story you haven’t written yet. You think you’re done because the grief part is on paper, but that’s just the preface.

Write the one that lets people in. The one where you live. The one where someone else finds their letter because of you.

You were never supposed to follow me.

You’re supposed to finish the book.

Yours. Not mine.

Fold forward.

You owe me that.

At the bottom, in small, almost illegible writing, she added:

I’m folding again. I think I’ll see you soon.

I cried in my hallway for a long time.

Not the sharp kind. The kind that leaks from somewhere deeper. The kind that feels like a hand on your back, steady and quiet.

Then I opened a blank document.

And I started something new.

The new book wasn’t elegant.

No table of contents. No title page. Just story after story. Half memoir, half prayer. Some pieces were one paragraph. Others rambled for ten pages and ended on questions.

I didn’t try to impress anyone.

I wrote the kind of book I wish someone had handed me when she died.

The kind that didn’t fix you.

The kind that just... sat with you.

I called it The Fold Between Pages.

Because that’s where she lived.

And maybe, where I did too.

I printed ninety-nine copies. This time on purpose.

The hundredth? I kept that one.

I left them wherever I used to find her:

The bookstore by the train stop.

The bench with the crooked plaque.

A coffee shop that still burned their muffins the way she liked.

And I didn’t wait for anything.

I didn’t need another letter.

She’d already told me what I had to do.

I wrote forward.

I lived forward.

And last week, in a used bookstore I hadn’t been to in years, I found a copy of The Fold Between Pages.

Dog-eared.

Worn.

Underlined to hell.

Inside, on page thirty-one, someone had written:

Thank you.

I turned the page.

And found a letter.

Not in her handwriting.

Not in mine either.

But I knew what it meant.

The Fold was still open.

And maybe, somehow, so was I.