“Because this is a make-believe story and I say so,” I answer.
Andy laughs. “Well, in your fictional story, why is he comforting her?”
I look at the couple again. His arm is around her shoulder.
“He wants her to know it’s okay. She didn’t mean to lose the ring. He still loves her, and that’s more important than what she lost. The ring isn’t as important as the memories,” I finish.
“Why?” Andy asks again.
“Because memories are the most important thing there is,” I say with a shakier voice than I intend to. I’m not sad, exactly; I think more than anything I’m surprised that I’m finally able to put into words why my memory loss has been affecting me as much as it has.
He looks at me and then focuses on my lips, and for a second I could swear he wants to kiss me. But then his eyes dart back to mine.
“What?” I ask, because he has been staring at me for a second too long.
He grins at me. “I think they’re just a family playing in the snow,” he finally says.
“You’re impossible.” I laugh. “Why did you want me to make up that whole story?”
“It’s fun to watch you squirm. Plus, it was a good story. I’d recommend it at the library.”
I punch him in the arm. “Quit distracting me and help me find this paper heart!”
He grabs his arm where I hit him like it hurt even though it wasn’t even that hard. “My idea was a bad one. Why don’t you come up with something now?”
“I’m trying!” I huff, growing frustrated. “It just doesn’t make sense. Nothing is labeled six.”
“Well, maybe this clue is supposed to be different,” Andy says.
“Maybe you’re a know-it-all,” I say.
“Why, thanks for admitting I know it all,” he teases, but I’m already walking away.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
I shrug. “I’m going to go all the way back out to the entrance and retrace our steps. Maybe we missed something. Why don’t you keep looking up here?”
“You want to split up?” he asks. He sounds hurt.
“Just really quickly,” I say. “I’ll meet you back up here.”
I turn and walk down the winding staircase toward the front, where the lampposts stand. Before I left home this morning, I stashed the Polaroid in my coat pocket. I pull it out now and look at it. In the picture, I’m leaning on a lamppost in front of a stone ledge, with trees in the background. Scanning the different lampposts around me, I find one that looks like it could be the one in the picture.
I make my way over. For some reason I have the urge to reach out and touch the lamppost, like I’m doing in the Polaroid. Maybe in the back of my mind I hope that touching it will zap my memory back like a lightning bolt. Maybe that’s the real reason I wanted to leave Andy.
But nothing happens when I finally touch the pole. All I can feel is the cold metal underneath my gloves.
I have the urge to kick the snow against the stone wall. I came all this way for nothing. I feel a sob about to escape, so I quickly start moving again toward the side tower. Then I look around the sixth wooden arch. Nothing.
What if there was supposed to be a paper heart here, though? What if my admirer put it here and someone found it before me or it blew away in the snow? Or maybe I’m just flat-out wrong again. Maybe this is all just a waste of time. What if I never get my memories back?
I shake my head. I can’t think about those possibilities yet. I make my way back to the castle’s entrance. There’s a couple in front of me walking slowly and holding hands, so there’s no way to pass them. I can tell from their first few steps that they’re in no hurry. By the time the stairwell starts to wind, I try to block out how many steps we have left to go.
And that’s when I have an idea.
I rush back to the bottom of the steps and begin to walk back up the stairs, counting as I go. One, two, three…
When I make it to the sixth step, I crouch down and feel underneath the metal stair. Then finally I feel it—paper.
I tug gently, and suddenly there’s a paper heart in my hand.
“Check Yes Juliet” We the Kings
“Unwritten” Natasha Bedingfield
“Head over Feet” Alanis Morissette
“Listen to Your Heart” Roxette
“Higher Love” Whitney Houston
“A Thousand Years” Christina Perri
“P.S. I Love You” The Beatles
“The Letter” Joe Cocker
“Paper Rings” Taylor Swift
“Strawberry Letter Number 23” The Brothers Johnson
“Kiss Me” Sixpence None the Richer
“Valentine Girl” New Kids on the Block
“Signed, Sealed, Delivered” Stevie Wonder
“Classic” The Knocks
“A Thousand Miles” Vanessa Carlton
“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” Carole King
“Paper Hearts” The Vamps
“Falling for You” Colbie Caillat
“Wonderwall” Oasis
“Love Letters” Aretha Franklin
“I’m Yours” Jason Mraz
“A World Alone” Lorde
“Love Song” Sara Bareilles
“God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You” *NSYNC
“Then” Brad Paisley
“Yellow Lights” Harry Hudson
“Love Me Like You Do” Ellie Goulding
“Red Roses” Laundry Day
“Love Letters” Elvis Presley
“Photograph” Ed Sheeran
“My Paper Heart” The All-American Rejects
“Ocean Eyes” Billie Eilish
Chapter 15
“We’re here anyway. I just want to see this one thing before we leave,” Andy says for the third time on the subway back to Grand Central to catch our train.
“I need to go home to listen to these songs,” I say, also for the third time.
Suddenly, Andy pulls AirPods out of his pocket. I raise an eyebrow at him.
“You’ve had those with you this whole time?”
He nods. “And I’ll download those songs for you too, so you can listen on the train ride back…under one condition.”
“What?” I ask impatiently.
“You’ll go to the Whispering Gallery with me. I’ve always wanted to check it out.”
I shake my head. “One, I have no idea what that is. And two, we’re practically at Grand Central. We’ll miss the train if we go anywhere.”
He grins. “The Whispering Gallery is inside Grand Central,” he says, shaking the AirPods in my face. “Do we have a deal?”
I pause. I really want to listen to these songs. I grab the earbuds out of his hand before responding. “Deal.”
“Good. Maybe I’ll forgive you for finding that last clue without me.”
“I said I was sorry,” I say. “I just needed to think on my own for a second.”
He nods. “Got it. For the record, I’m only teasing. Besides, I witnessed a proposal, which was pretty cool. Turns out it was a good thing I was alone.”
“A marriage proposal?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, whipping out his phone. “I took a couple pics that I sent to them afterward. They were so grateful someone was there to capture the moment.”
I look down at the phone in his hands. There’s a guy on his knees and a young woman with her hands covering her mouth in pure shock. But it’s not the proposal that’s shocking to me—it’s that I recognize them. I’m staring at the couple I almost bulldozed on the winding staircase. Suddenly, I’m relieved I didn’t do anything to put a damper on their seemingly perfect day. I guess you really never know when a moment is going to be significant.
&nbs
p; For some reason, it makes me think of the moments leading up to my accident. I wonder if I would have done anything differently if I had known the accident was coming. I immediately think yes. I definitely would’ve fixed whatever was going on with Carmen. I wouldn’t have rudely texted during my nail appointment with Sydney. I would have told Ashley and my parents I love them. Sometimes I think about asking each of them what the last thing I said to them was, but part of me doesn’t want to know in case it was bad.
Still, for all the bad moments in life, I know there are so many good ones I can have. I look down at the photo of the woman getting proposed to and I can’t help but smile. I wonder about all the moments they had leading up to this one: the moment they met, their first date, the first time they said I love you to each other. All the moments I’m looking forward to for myself.
“I saw that couple walking in,” I say to Andy. “That’s amazing.”
“There’s a few more,” he says. He scrolls through his phone. He shows me a few photos of the young man and woman posed in front of the rail. As he continues to scroll, I see a picture of me for a split second before he scrolls back in the opposite direction.
“Wait a second, what was that?” I ask.
His cheeks turn red. “It was nothing. I took a picture of you when you were gazing over the rail. It almost looks like you’re a model.”
I’m definitely not a model, but even I can see what he means. He took the photo when I wasn’t looking. The backdrop—the Manhattan skyline combined with the perfect snow on the ground—makes my pose and my pensive expression look staged. But I didn’t even know he was taking the picture. I wonder why he did.
Suddenly, the subway stops. “This is us,” Andy says. “Now off to the Whispering Gallery so you can whisper sweet nothings to me for taking that photo.”
Andy leads me to the lower level of the terminal.
“Are we getting oysters?” I ask, seeing the Oyster Bar restaurant next to us.
Andy smiles at me. “No. This is the Whispering Gallery.”
I look around. There’s nothing around us, aside from the intricately tiled walls and ceiling.
Andy keeps walking, though, so I follow him. He stops in front of an arch.
“Stay here,” he instructs me. “I’m going to go diagonally from you.”
“What…,” I start, but he’s already walking away. I stand awkwardly as people pass me by.
But if I’m at all self-conscious about people looking at me, it stops immediately. This is nothing like high school. People here are too focused on getting to their destinations to stop and stare at me, even if I’m standing alone in a corner.
“Ella, can you hear me?”
The voice comes from the walls, but I know it’s Andy’s. I spin around and see that he’s standing at a matching arch on the other end of the passageway. He waves at me and then turns back to the wall.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he says. My jaw drops. I can hear him like he’s inches away. Talking to him now across a space like this reminds me of when Ashley and I were younger, before the days of cell phones, and we’d communicate from our separate rooms with walkie-talkies. At the time, it felt like magic. This feels pretty close to it.
“How is this possible?” I ask in amazement. I realize it looks like I’m talking to a wall, but I don’t care. For a moment I wonder if he’ll be able to hear me, but then he responds.
“The architecture. The curved walls bend the reflection of your voice. It’s an acoustic phenomenon.”
“How did you learn about this place? I’ve been to Grand Central a bunch of times and I never knew this existed.”
“I read about it. I’m glad you like it, but can I hear my sweet nothings now?”
I give him an eye roll, but I realize of course he’s not going to see it. “I’m not sure you deserve sweet nothings. It’s not that great a photo,” I say.
“I think the Whispering Gallery is broken,” Andy says.
“Why, you can’t hear me?” I ask before spinning around to see him.
“I thought I heard you say ‘it’s not that great a photo.’ But you look beautiful.”
At that moment, I’m glad Andy is so far away from me that he can’t see me blush. There’s a long pause before I hear him speak again.
“Are you always this bad with compliments?” he asks.
“Maybe,” I say.
“Okay, we can save all the compliments for me, then,” he says, making me laugh. “But if you’re not going to whisper sweet nothings to me, how about you share one secret?”
I pause. “What kind of secret?”
“I don’t know. Something you want to whisper into these walls that we’ll never talk about.”
I can tell by his tone that he’s grinning. His dimple is showing. It’s amazing that I can know this from across such a vast space.
What does Andy not know about me that I can share now?
Obviously, the big thing comes to mind. The reason we’re here.
I stare at the arch in front of me. It looks like nothing special—just a wall. But I realize that’s what the paper hearts must seem like to Andy: Nothing important. Pieces of paper directing me to new places. What he doesn’t realize is that the hearts mean so much more than they say.
Maybe that’s a secret worth sharing.
“Okay,” I begin. “I haven’t told you this yet….” I trail off.
“That is what a secret is,” Andy says when I don’t finish.
I smile. “I know. It’s hard for me to say.”
“Sorry, I won’t interrupt you again. I promise.”
He sounds sincere. The sincerest I’ve ever heard him. After a long pause, the words roll out.
“I was in a car accident about a year ago,” I say easily. Maybe it’s because I’m talking to a wall, not to Andy directly. Thinking about him hearing me makes my heart speed up. “And I have retrograde amnesia. I can’t remember eleven weeks of my life, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get them back. I know in the grand scheme of things I’m lucky and it’s not a big deal…” I trail off again.
“It is a big deal,” I hear Andy say. “Sorry, I promised I wasn’t going to interrupt you.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “It’s also okay that you’ve been making fun of these paper hearts. If I were you, I probably would too. But I guess my secret is the real reason I’m following these paper hearts—I hope I can get my memory back. That’s what the first one alluded to, anyway.”
As soon as I say it out loud, a weight lifts from my chest. Almost as if I just went to Confession. I let out a large breath that I hope Andy can’t hear.
“Okay, that was my secret. You can say something now,” I say. I expect him to start rambling right away, but there’s nothing. For a moment, I think maybe the wall has actually stopped working this time. What if Andy didn’t even hear me? But then I feel a tap on my shoulder.
I turn, and standing right behind me is Andy. “I thought you couldn’t hear me for a sec—” I say, spinning around, but before I can finish, his arms are around me. He’s hugging me right in the middle of Grand Central Terminal. I don’t care about people watching or about anything else around us. All I can sense are his hands gripping my back. He’s squeezing tightly, like he’s trying to press out any worry I have, and all I can do is hug him too. When I do, my face presses into his chest and I can smell his cologne through his parka. It’s soothing, just like his sturdy palms on my back.
Eventually he breaks the silence. “Don’t be so concerned with your past and your future that you forget how utterly incredible you are right now,” he whispers.
When he releases me, I feel a little dazed but mostly grateful.
It’s a hug I didn’t know I needed.
* * *
On the train, I hand Andy my paper heart a
nd watch him download the songs to his phone. He puts them in an album he creates, called Paper Hearts Playlist.
Once he’s done, he gives me one of his AirPods and puts the other in his own ear. We sit listening to the love songs. Some are upbeat and lively; others are slower, with a hint of heartbreak. Andy has a corny way of bopping to the music that makes me laugh. He knows way more of the songs than I do.
“Can I ask a question?” I say, and Andy nods, removing his AirPod. “How do you know all these?” I ask.
“My dad was a big music guy,” he answers. “I mean, is. But now that we don’t live together, I don’t hear him blasting music in the shower anymore. I used to get so annoyed because it would wake me up in the morning, but now I kind of miss it.”
I nod. There are plenty of annoying things about my family that I’d probably miss if they were suddenly gone.
“You should tell him you miss that. I bet he’d appreciate it.”
He studies my face before saying, “Yeah, I should.”
Then he takes the AirPod out of my ear. “I know I said I wouldn’t talk about it…but what you said at the Whispering Gallery…Well, I really appreciate you telling me what you did back there.”
He smiles and puts the AirPod back in my ear, brushing my cheek as he does. My chest tightens. With the buds back in our ears, the music starts playing again.
When we’re about halfway through our journey, we start the playlist over again. It’s an unspoken agreement.
Soon I feel my eyes grow heavy. Before I know it, I feel Andy tapping my shoulder. I open my eyes to see him staring down at me. My face is completely plastered to his shoulder. I must have passed out and used him as a pillow. Thank God there’s no drool on his shirt. Or maybe there is, since he’s smiling at me like he’s about to tease me.
“We’re home,” Andy says.
I jump up in my seat. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m impressed by your ability to sleep like that.”
I am too. Looking at him now, all the memories of the day come flashing back to me, including telling him about my accident, and the way he brought my body to his when he hugged me.
11 Paper Hearts (Underlined Paperbacks) Page 14