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━━ chapter twenty-six paper planes ( piper )
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━━Piper dreamed she was there, back on the Wilderness School dorm roof.
She felt the gentle breeze of a freezing cold desert night, but she remembered that being perfectly fine. She had brought plenty of blankets, worn her warmest jumper, and with Jason beside her, she didn't need any more warmth. Now, she wondered whether she had imagined it all.
But the air, it had smelt so real━the sage and burning mesquite tickled her nose. She could count the Spring Mountains that loomed like black jagged teeth━not even brightened by the dim glow of Las Vegas behind them. And the stars ... she remembered the stars, brighter than any stars she's ever seen, like the world had lit a million fairy lights just for them, and she had believed it. She believed that this was the perfect night.
And when the meteor shower showed, streaking across the sky almost every minute━a line of white, yellow or blue fire, Piper felt like she was sitting on the rooftop of dreams, instead of the dreary school she had been forced to attend. She was sure that her Grandpa Tom would have some Cherokee myth to explain the meteor shower, but right now, she was busy creating her own story. And now, Piper relived it, and back then, she had thought it was a fairytale, now, she understood it to be a tragedy.
Savreen told her once that if she wrote her wishes on a piece of paper, and folded it into a plane, she could send it off to the winds and that wish would come true. They had been out on a field trip at the time, and instead of making daisy crowns, they had brought pieces of paper with their wishes and dreams written down on them. They had then folded them up and sent them on their way towards the heavens in the breeze. They had made it surprisingly far. Piper remembered wanting to ask Sav what her wish had been. She never learnt it, but she did know what her own had been, and amongst her wishes that her father would pay more attention to her━that he'd tell her stories again on the beach about their Cherokee history━she also wrote: can Jason please notice me, too?
It had been silly and childish. She felt like a twelve-year-old writing it. But Piper has come to realise, that while she rolled her eyes at girls who betted on relationships, and gushed about boys (or girls) amongst each other. She scoffed at her siblings back at Camp, and the likes of Drew, but mainly because deep down, she was no different. She had a heart full of love that she wanted to give. She wanted to be loved in return. She wanted Jason to hold her hand, and call her pretty in her mismatched clothes and messy hair, and promise to find her if she ever went missing, promise to always come back and kiss her like she was the only thing that kept him breathing.
And it embarrassed her, because she spent so long wanting to be loved and wanting attention from her father, that she had been determined to never need it. That she would be fine on her own. She promised herself she wouldn't need anyone but the girl she was, because for so long, it felt like she was all she had. She had no mom, her father was barely around, and Piper was so alone, that in a way, perhaps she was envious of those who weren't. Those like Drew who had the entire Aphrodite cabin around her to laugh at her jokes. Those like any in her cabin, who weren't afraid of love, who weren't afraid of accepting the way they were, despite the jabs others (like her) sent to them for being a boy who kept his side of the room neat and tidy, for being a girl who wished for another to notice her.
