he first package showed up on a Wednesday. She was surprised to find it on her stoop, the corner slightly dented. She didn’t remember ordering anything but thought it might have been a delayed package from before or perhaps something that came earlier than she anticipated. Maybe even an unexpected gift?
They were garden shears. With wooden handles and blue rubber grips. No tag. A small amount of rust on the blade. There was what seemed to be the standard paperwork inside the packaged but when Alex looked closer, it seemed slightly less than standard. A QR code for returns, but nothing else. She hated to think she had gotten the package by mistake and wondering if returning it would help; but it was addressed to her. It wasn’t a mistake. She texted an aunt to see if this was her doing and when the response came in (no), she scanned the QR code to initiate the return, determined to at least get the shears out of her house. She didn’t need them. She didn’t even have a planter out front, let alone a garden she could trim back.
The second package arrived four days later.
It was a bungee cord. Yellow with red and white flecks of color mixed in and two black hooks on either end. The elastic seemed worn, like it might snap at some point if stretched. A few long black hairs were tangled in one of the hooks.. Alex turned the box over to look for some kind of paperwork that might indicate who it was from. As she put out her composting bucket, she caught sight of her neighbor and asked him if maybe he had ordered it. When she tried to explain that his name wasn’t on the package, actually her name was on the package and saying it out loud made it sound even stranger. She would contact customer support tomorrow. Maybe there was someone else named Alex Farber and somehow the wrong address auto filled? She scanned the QR code to initiate the return, planning to drop the package off tomorrow on her walk to Reanimator.
But as she rounded the corner, cold brew in hand, she could see another package on her stoop.
This time it was a rock about the size of a grapefruit. One sharp point jutted out from the top. She picked it up and was surprised by the weight. It wasn’t a beautiful rock (a display rock?) or a paperweight or a crystal. It was the type of rock you find in the woods, on a hike or a camping trip.
She reached into the box for the packing slip with the QR code. Was she missing something? “Start your return here” is said across the top. Then the black and white abstract square. Then faintly, faintly along the bottom in a gray scale print that she hadn’t seen before, a few lines she had to squint to read.
If you are not satisfied with your trade, returning your trade will result in the transfer of another object to your possession. To hide you must help hide. Have a nice day!
She re-read the lines and scanned the QR code.
The next day a screwdriver with the tip snapped off arrived. Then fishing line. A small bottle of a generic drain cleaning chemical. A pencil eraser. A homemade hooked pillow with a picture of a trout and the last name EMBERTON in fuzzy red yarn. A pair of gloves. A birthday card with the inside erased.
She stopped trying to ask neighbors. She didn’t tell her friends or her dad or anyone really because there were so many missing pieces of information. It would be like trying to explain a dream. Like trying to solve a Sudoku puzzle with only three numbers filled in. There was too little information. She couldn’t get the post office involved – what would she want them to do? Every package was addressed to her. Every package was sent back, the code scanned, dropped off at UPS the next day. But she couldn’t help but think that a package does not just have a receiving end; somewhere there was a sender.
Another Wednesday came and along with it another package. Alex brought it inside and opened it, like she did every day. At one point she had tried to guess what it might be but even that wasn’t fun anymore. Today’s mistaken object was wrapped in an extra layer of bubble wrap. She unrolled it and they fell onto her table – beads. Plastic pony beads, like the ones they gave you at girl scout camp or a grade school sleepover. Loose pony beads spilled out of the bubble wrap until finally something bigger hit the table – two bracelets made of the beads, threaded through elastic, a plastic dolphin charm in the middle of each.
Alex picked one of them up and was immediately transported – she saw that bracelet on a skinny wrist. Saw a matching one on her own. She had held hands with the girl who wore that bracelet all summer, until she didn’t. She was amazed by how clearly it came back to her – the slightly older, significantly cooler girls, the dare, the lake, a betrayal. It was just a prank, they told her. It wasn’t a big deal, she agreed. If she was just brave enough, it would be fine and they would all laugh about it. But in the morning, the girl with the bracelet wasn’t there anymore. She wasn’t in the canoe they told her to paddle out in. She wasn’t on the dock where they promised they’d stay until she came back – the cabin was so far from the dock and it was dark after all. She wasn’t anywhere. She never breathed a word of what she knew, even when the girl’s parents asked, when the counselors asked, when the police asked, when her own parents, kneeling at her bedside, assuring her she wouldn’t be in any trouble, asked. She couldn’t even remember the names of the slightly older, significantly cooler girls now.
One of the bracelets on the table had been thrown away at turnpike rest stop a few days after the night on the lake. The other had disappeared with the girl.
And now they were both sitting on her coffee table.
Shaking she reached for the package and shook it out, searching for the QR code. Start your return here – that’s what she wanted. She wanted to start her return there, now, immediately. She had sent the memories of that night and her involvement into deep storage in her brain, had relegated it to the section of memory where the edges get fuzzy and you begin to wonder if maybe it was just the plot of a tv show you watched when you were falling asleep instead of a real thing that really happened to you. There was so much bubble wrap and so many small beads, spilled onto the floor, onto the table, across the couch. But where was the code? How could she send it back?
Hundreds of old return slips littered the small desk in her hall. If you are not satisfied! They taunted her. To hide you must help hide! They reminded her. Have a nice day! They commanded her, while her own fearful objects hummed from across the room.
