Kyra at work

“‘Red Paper’ is a story I wrote during an in-class exercise. The story could only be eight sentences long, and I had about fifteen minutes to write it.”

The day of my high school graduation–I flipped through my yearbook and there I was–Nathaniel Hastings, “most likely to succeed.” I snapped the dusty yearbook closed, placed it back in its cardboard box, and switched off my flashlight. Somehow the dim light of the flashlight bulb shining on my baby faced high school photo had given it a luminous and haunting quality. The smooth face radiated pride and self-confidence even from the yellowing page, and the eyes seemed to stare at me, bright and flashing with ambition.

The image remained branded on the back of my mind, and when I walked down the steep attic stairs it continued to follow me–like a ghost. What would that boy think if he learned I worked at an amusement park, collecting the small red tickets that gave customers passage onto the roller coaster. I sat down at my kitchen table where a pile of used red tickets formed the centerpiece, and I thought about all the children for whom the roller coaster was without fail the high point of their day, week, even year. That ghost I realized, for all his perfect skin and blazing confidence, did not know one could find solace in a pile of dyed red paper.