I stared glumly. It was again time to say goodbye. My brother held his suitcase and through it into the car sadly. I remembered how a year before we where in my grandmothers’ courtyard cutting up fire works and making little trails out of the gun powder that poured out, and put fireworks at the end of the trails. My heart pounded wildly as my brother struck the match against the floor and, carefully, put it on one end of the gun powder. I remember how fast the flare moved along the tiny trails until finally BOOM!!!!! The sound of all the fireworks exploding at once made my ears hurt. A million colors flashed before my eyes and suddenly it all stopped dead the sound, the colors, everything I looked around and realized that the neighbors were all shouting out their windows. I remember how Javier swooped me into his arms and ran into the house. “Thank god we weren’t caught” I remember my brother muttered.

My brother turned to me to say good-bye, but I was still swimming in my own memories. I remembered how 2 years before, in Ixtapa, he offered to go gecko hunting with me. How he looked at the room service menu while I sat there looking confused “we’d like an order of cheese balls”, he said into the telephone, “room 145, please”, my brother continued. What in gods name does he need cheese balls for? I thought. 15 minutes later there was a knock on the door “come in!” I said. A slim man with a tray came through the door and placed the tray on the table, then a steaming plate and on it 15 cheese balls the size of a golf ball. My brother poured the contents into a plastic bag. I remember that we walked all the way to the stairs and suddenly we were surrounded by wide eyed geckos. They’ll eat us alive! I thought when suddenly I heard a SPLAT! Then a SWOOSH! And then another SPLAT! I saw cheese balls flying through the air and hitting geckos and making them stick to the walls. I soon was throwing cheese balls at geckos to .I remember putting the geckos inside a big tub. In fifteen minutes we had enough geckos to fill a sink. “How about releasing these”, my brother said getting ready to dump the crate. “No!” I shouted ,he stopped. “Let’s put it under that door,” I remember saying while pointing at a nearby door. “Good idea”, he said.

My eyes were swimming as I finally hugged Javier for the last time in six months. I saw a crumpled sheet of paper roll down the street.

Yes, crumpled paper…

I sat on my bed folding exactly the same way as my brother was, “you fold this and this”, my brother said. I just nodded, I wanted to finish the paper airplane so bad, I almost forgot the last fold. “Finally” I said “Now lets go up to the roof to test the plane”, Javier said. So we did we were on the roof in no time. We threw the airplanes with all our might. They glided through the air until a gust of wind threw it of balance it went spinning to the ground, my brother did the same. His plane flew farther, much farther than mine. Then suddenly a thought came to me “lets make a giant plane out of tag board”, I said. My brother approved with a nod. We went down to the apartment and carefully folded a giant piece of tag board. After a lot of careful folding it was ready. It had a massive wingspan of about 1 meter. We ran up the stairs to the roof. My heart was beating with anticipation. I saw my brother grab the plane and throw the buoyant thing with a massive amount of strength. It glided through the air in a majestic way and before reaching the street, 100 meters down, it crashed against an apartment buildings window, It started spinning round and round and crashed in a pile of oozy mud, “NICE!!!” both of us shouted together and I gave him a high five and then a hug.

My brother stepped into the car, as soon as he closed the door, the driver stepped on the accelerator. He waved good-bye through the window. I smiled.