Confidence & Being Myself
The Hard Part
The book of paper animals wouldn’t stay open by itself, so it was propped against the fruit bowl, open at the stag. Dad had the radio on low and his back to the room. At the back of the book there were two sheets of thick gray-green paper. Nate had taken one. He wanted the stag.
Folds one to six worked. Nate knew them without the book now. Crease. Turn. Crease. Press along the edge with your thumbnail. The paper went creak, like a very small door. By fold six, the stag had a back, four legs folded flat, and one blunt end that would be the head.
Fold seven was the one where the paper had to tuck inside itself so the neck could come up. In the book, it was one little picture with a curvy arrow and the word INSIDE. Easy-peasy, in the book. The stag in the photo had a neck like it had always had one.
Nate opened it out. For the third time. The seventh crease wasn’t a crease anymore. It had gone soft and gray and a bit furry down the middle, the way paper goes when you fold it and unfold it and fold it again. It didn’t look like the picture. It didn’t look like anything.
“Is that rain or is that the faucet?” said Dad, at the sink, to nobody. He turned the faucet off to check. Pitter-patter. Rain. He turned it back on and went back to the plates. He didn’t look around.
Nate put both hands flat on the table, one each side of the paper. Folds one to six were still crisp. He could put his thumb on the exact spot where the neck was meant to come up. That isn’t the same as doing it. One gray-green sheet left in the book. One.
Try number three lay open in front of him, soft gray line across the middle. Dad’s back was turned. The radio was on. Nobody was watching, and nothing was hurrying him. Maybe twelve seconds before Nate’s hands did something.
What does Nate do?
Every choice costs something. Let’s see what.
Make the seventh fold again on the same sheet
This time he didn’t look at the book. He looked at his own hands, up close, the way you’d look at somebody else’s. And that’s when he saw it. The sheet had to go over first. Wrong way up, all three times! He flipped it, and the paper tucked in, and the neck came up out of the middle.
It came up crooked. And it came up with a sound. Rrrip. Along the soft gray line, where the paper had been folded and unfolded three times, it split. A short, clean tear, right where the neck met the back. The neck was up. With a tear in it. Nate put his finger over the tear. Then took it off.
He finished it. Folds eight, nine and ten were little ones, ears and a tail, and they went fine. The stag stood on the table by the fruit bowl. From the left, it was the stag in the book. From the right, a white line ran through its neck where the gray-green had split.
The last sheet stayed in the back of the book. Nate didn’t take it out. He looked at the crooked neck and the white line for a while. Then he said it to the table, in the voice you use for a phone number you want to keep. “It goes over first.”
Put it down and go do something else
Nate slid the paper to the far end of the table, past the fruit bowl, where the mail lives. He didn’t fold it. He didn’t throw it out. It just wasn’t in front of him anymore. Then he opened the drawer with the string and the batteries.
In there was the rubber-band ball, about the size of a plum. Nate took it to the other end of the table and started adding bands. Snap. Snap. That he could do without thinking. Dad kept doing the dishes. The radio kept talking about the weather. Nobody mentioned the stag.
By the time the rain stopped, the ball was the size of a small orange, and it bounced off at angles you could never guess. Boing! Nate bounced it down the hall until it shot under the stairs, then went under the stairs after it. Dad finished the plates and went out to look at the gutter.
In the evening the paper was still over by the mail. Folds one to six, still crisp. Nate put it in the drawer with the string and the batteries, flat, so nothing would crease. The book was still against the fruit bowl. When he shut it and opened it again, it fell open at the stag.
Take the last sheet and start at fold one
Nate took the last sheet out of the back of the book. Flat. Cold. Never been anything yet. He put the soft gray one face down on the chair beside him, and lined the new one up against the edge of the table, corner to corner, before he made a single fold.
Folds one to six went faster than the first time. And cleaner. He didn’t look at the book once. Crease, turn, crease, thumbnail, creak. None of it was hard. The kitchen smelled of dish soap, and the radio played a song Dad sang all the wrong words to.
By fold six, the stag had a back, four legs folded flat, and a blunt end where a head goes. Every crease was sharp. Nothing had been unfolded and folded again. It sat in his hands looking like a thing about to be finished. And next came fold seven.
Nate looked in the back of the book. Just cardboard. No more gray-green paper. He put his stag down next to the picture. Back. Four legs. A blunt end where a head goes. Then he closed the book and pushed his chair back. The stag waited on the table, one fold away from having a neck.