The Book They Called Priceless

The radio proclaimed it a day of love, but it was a day of mourning for me. My younger brother, Owen, had purportedly drowned six years ago, at fifteen, though his body had yet to be found.

I strode towards his favorite park with my attention on my phone. Owen had loved Valentine’s Day. At the age of thirteen he had started a scrapbook of all the ways he would propose that day. He had never even kissed someone. He had been saving his first kiss.

I sighed and shook my head. I did not want to suddenly break into sobs in public. So not cool.

I bumped into someone and lost my grip on my phone. Bending down to catch it, a little black book caught my attention. I picked it up and looked around, but whoever it belonged to was lost to a sea of people.

Everyone knew what a little black book meant—an inventory of conquests or secrets. It might be important to someone. I put it in my backpack.

I made my way to Owen’s tree, a beautiful West Coast Live Oak that overlooked our lake. “I’m back,” I took out his favorite chocolates and shortbread cookies from my backpack and laid them at his spot. I flicked open the penknife on my keychain and cut a sixth notch into the trunk.

I closed the knife and sat at my spot. I pulled out the book and opened the first page to neat, round handwriting:

Please Return to Owner: Jamie: (555) 672-2276. Reward: Name Your Price.

I checked the book carefully but it was blank. What was so valuable about this?

Shaking my head, I put the book aside. It was probably a scam, like they would ask for my bank account to transfer the money and clean me out instead.

I brought out Owen’s scrapbook—I had made sure that I recorded everything about him I could remember. If money ever fell from the sky, I was going to make all of his dreams come true. I hadn’t even entered the lotto, though, because I had long stopped believing in anything childlike, such as magic and miracles.

I opened the little black book and brought it close to my face. “Please, give me a miracle. Today, just today, I’ll believe in one.”

I sighed, closed the book and kissed the cover, though I had never kissed anything inanimate in my life. “Well, do I call Jamie? I suppose if I’ve asked for a miracle, I should at least buy the lotto ticket, right?”

I got my phone and opened the book to the number. I called.

We connected. “Hello, Jamie? I have your little black book.”

“You do?” A voice of indeterminate gender asked. “Where was it? Is it damaged?”

“It’s fine—”

“Oh,” Jamie broke into sobs. “I really thought I had lost it.”

“It’s blank, though, you can just buy another one from bookstores or online.”

“No,” Jamie got out, “it’s irreplaceable.”

It reminded me of the old MasterCard commercials. Priceless. A word I couldn’t assign to anything in this world anymore. Except maybe Owen’s scrapbook.

“Why?” I asked.

Jamie calmed enough to speak normally. “It’s the only thing that’s really mine.”

I groaned. “Look, if this is a scam, I’m going to save us both the time. I’m not giving you my bank account number or any personal identifying information.”

“It isn’t like that. I figured I could give you cash when we met to exchange the book.”

“I don’t trust big envelopes of cash, either. What if it’s some kind of laundering scheme?”

“What can I do, then?”

“Make all of my brother’s dreams come true,” I blurted out, “Give me something of him back.”

“I’m sorry?” Jamie sighed. “How much would it cost?”

“I needed twenty thousand for the initial project. But for all of them, I would need something equivalent to a lotto. I’ve got all the details in a scrapbook.”

“I can’t promise the equivalent of a lotto, but I do have twenty thousand. I had been saving it.”

Was this legit? Could money actually fall from the sky? “Let’s meet at a coffee shop downtown in two hours. Are you familiar with Carmen’s Café?”

***

Jamie remained of indeterminate gender even upon meeting. It didn’t matter.

We ordered—Earl Grey and a chocolate croissant for Jamie, hot chocolate with marshmallow topping and a shortbread cookie for me.

We settled at a wooden table with whimsical paper menus and cushioned benches.

“Here’s the book,” I handed it over.

“Thank you,” Jamie smoothed the cover and kissed it, then set an envelope on the table. “Postal money orders for twenty thousand dollars. I left the name blank. Will this be sufficient?”

I pinched myself and it hurt. I picked up the envelope. Twenty thin sheets. I looked at them one by one. It was actually twenty thousand dollars. I had never had this much money in my life and swiftly put it away in the secret pocket of my backpack.

“I-thank you?” I gesticulated but no further words came.

Jamie nodded once and put the book in a briefcase. “My mother gave this to me for my ninth birthday. It was the last present she gave me and the only thing I ever really owned since. There was a fire—I lost both my parents, the sibling I had yet to meet, and everything we owned.” Jamie gestured to the briefcase. “I was protecting the book. Bullies often threw my schoolbag in the loo and I didn’t want it to be ruined. To avoid them, I was late coming home.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m sorry” seemed too shallow, “my condolences” not enough.

Jamie continued. “There was some back and forth about who would take me. One family had elderly to look after, another had children already. I ended up at an orphanage. A year later I was adopted but the couple conceived shortly after. I returned to the orphanage, got adopted again, until I hit puberty. In and out, here and there. In the end, the only thing left of home was my book.”

I leaned forward and drank my chocolate with a spoon.

“My brother, Owen, used to hoard things. He kept everything from ketchup packets to those little toys from children’s meals.” I had everything boxed up in my bedroom closet.

“What happened to him, if I may ask?”

I looked away. “He’s somewhere, out of reach. Dead or alive, with amnesia or in a coma, I don’t know. People said he drowned six years ago but we haven’t found him yet.” I hesitated to say more. “It isn’t a real death, until we can properly say goodbye.”

“I see.”

We ate in silence.

“I never got to say goodbye, either,” Jamie said. “Not to my family, my home. I just waved at the people who took me in for a little while. There was something—borrowed—about that life, after the fire. Going here and there with a suitcase, with things supposed to be mine… I grew out of some, lost others, had other children take them away. I managed to keep my book because I slept on top of it, wrapped in a pillowcase. When I was awake I tucked it into my clothes. I never even went swimming. Nothing that seems to be mine is really mine, except my book.”

“But, if it’s so special, why is it blank?” I asked. “Why not use it as a journal or something?”

“My mother said it was magic. You whisper wishes into it and write down your dreams.”

I laughed. “No, you actually believed it was magic?”

Jamie gave a half-shrug. “It was the last thing she said to me of any importance that I can remember. I can’t even recall what they looked like, most days. At the time, I was sure it was magic. It saved my life, didn’t it?”

I finished my cookie. “My last words with Owen, I got annoyed at him. We were ten years apart and I teased him with “baby bro” because he just wouldn’t grow up. He still believed in Santa, loved to play with glitter and make up his scrapbooks. I worried that he’d be bullied if he didn’t wise up, you know?” I shook my head. I would not cry.

“He said,” I scoffed, “that he would have time enough to grow up. That when he did, I couldn’t—I couldn’t call him a baby anymore.”

I put my fist to my mouth but a sound—definitely not a whimper—escaped me anyway. “Why him? Why was he so certain of a future? Why would someone like that be denied one?”

I dug out Owen’s scrapbook and handed it over. “These are his dreams.”

Jamie lay the book down and opened it gently to magazine cutouts and cramped handwriting in multicolored pens. Some pages I had taken from his incomplete scrapbooks and some I had added, memories of our conversations and details not in his books. “I envy him this,” Jamie fingered a page. “Such an unfailing belief, trust. I was denied my future at nine, but I can’t remember what made me so certain of its loss.”

“I stopped bothering with mine,” I confessed. “What right did I have to it, if Owen was gone?”

Jamie paused mid-turn of a page and looked up. “What if we could get our futures back?”

“Reclaim ours, and his,” I stood up and sat by Jamie on the other bench. “Could we? How?”

“I’m not sure but, for the first time, I truly want to write something in my book. It might come true, if we write it together.”

I nodded and flipped the paper menu over. There were some stunted crayons in a wooden cup on the table. I took Owen’s favorite color, blue, and drew as I spoke. “His original dream was to own a vet clinic. I added the cat café adjacent.” I glanced over. “I want him to find his way back home, by learning of these places. Or, if he really—if he really did—then I want him to see it. If he can. I have to believe that he’ll know, somehow. That even if his life ended up being short, he still has a legacy. He won’t have—it won’t have been in vain.”

Jamie took out the little book and a ballpoint pen. “I never had anything that was mine, and futures are strange beasts to those of us who have few things to our name. But I’ve been steadily saving up for whatever future I could write in here.”

“What if we set up a trust? We could call it—”

“—Something to Call Our Own?” Jamie offered. “It can be privately named after Owen, and we can build a mini museum in the form of a walking scrapbook,” Jamie opened the book and began to sketch, “We can share his ideas and perhaps items from other people who were—lost—early. We could find a way to let them leave a legacy, as well.” Jamie closed the book, wrapped the elegant elastic around it and put the pen down. “What if we also help other kids develop their own dreams?”

“Yes! Let’s buy a room full of magic little black books and give them to each kid who visits.”

Jamie laughed. “Deal!”

We agreed to meet with a lawyer the next day.

***

The next Valentine’s Day, Jamie and I met at Owen’s tree, to bury a time capsule with photos of our progress establishing our joint vet clinic/cat café. “I’m back, with my friend.”

“Cheers,” Jamie waved.

We followed the ritual and sat side-by-side in my spot.

“My book really is magic,” Jamie said. “I had asked for a friend.”

I laughed. “I had asked for a miracle.”

Jamie brought out the black book. “What should we ask for next?”