I stood on the edge of the Boston Harbor, shivering as the cold breeze scuttled through my hoodie, in stark disagreement with me about it being the middle of summer. I pulled my hood up. Zipped my jacket shut, even though the forest-green fabric was insulating me about as much as an oversized leaf. I shoved my popsicle fingers into my pockets and stared out at the water sloshing on my right. Still no sign of the ferry.

I looked to my left, the world tinted sepia from my John-Lennon sunglasses. Though the world was dim and ruddy, I could still make out the odd stretches of bright cyan that graced some of the building roofs. I decided there was nothing like the Boston skyline. Old brick and old copper, crammed into narrow alleyways with old wooden signs—the odd Irish pub, the smell of seafood drifting along the cobblestoned lanes—that’s my kind of city. I was almost surprised I hadn’t visited before, but then I reminded myself that I was broke, twenty-one, and not in the habit of traveling alone.

I turned behind me, where my family waited.

I joined my brother. His rainbow tie-dye, sherpa, pullover hoodie looked so much warmer than my zip-up leaf. I’d gotten it for him for his birthday—years ago, at this point. Wow, how time flies…

We stared down the ferry dock. There were some people congregating down by the ticket booth, coagulating into a blob of persons like cold syrup. Some were buying tickets. Some were shivering, facing the slow-rolling, blackberry-dark harbor water. Their dark coats and white dress shirts and grey scarves blended them all together like a cotton-swab cloud. Their faces stared without intrigue, without invitation, without inspiration.

They were pamphlet people, not storybook people. Pamphlet people are like storybook people, in the sense that they are both people. They have places to be, things to say, lives to live, hopes to dream. They have personalities and opinions and purposes. As all people do.

But pamphlet people don’t show you anything until you unfold the pages. They are plain next on a simple backdrop until you get to read them. So, as you watch them from afar, there’s nothing to keep you watching, and you forget them the second you look away, like the Silence.

But then a storybook person appeared.

She emerged from the midst of the gray cotton-cloud, neon orange hair cut short above her shoulders. My brother and I watched her stand down by the ticket booth, her earbuds in, her eyes fixed on the phone she held in one hand. She wore black leggings and Chucks. Her sweater was large and hung loosely off her, striped in wide swatches of black and red with a crimson cat face staring out from the middle. Her tan corduroy bag was slung over one shoulder, the front smattered with an assortment of pins—some round with symbols I couldn’t make out, others formed into shapes of creatures and pop culture characters.

And, as storybook people often are, she seemed in her own little world. And, as storybook people do, she immediately struck me as a curious kind of character. I wondered where she was coming from, why she was riding the ferry. What music was she listening to? What was her name?

Soon, the ferry came.

We all got on—the great gray-cotton cloud with the orange-haired, cat-striped exception.

We pulled away from the slanting dock.

We crossed the harbor.

And I never saw that girl again.

I saw 200-year-old buildings, I climbed a 294-step monument, I explored old crypts and wove through green-grassed graveyards—and yet, six months later, when I think of Boston, the first thing I think of is that orange-haired girl. I think of her cat sweater, her pin-covered bag, her Chucks, her Leeloo-Dallas locks. I see her standing at the dock, alone, unbothered, content.

And maybe that’s silly, especially coming from someone who’s wanted to walk the Freedom Trail since she was eight.

But that’s the beauty of storybook people—they remind you that everyone has a story.

Yes, when it comes to the pamphlet people, the gray cotton cloud, you have to look harder. You have to get closer. But as I said before, they’re people all the same.

Sometimes, all it takes is one curious stranger to remind a twenty-one-year-old girl that people are people in every place. Even when they’re strangers. Even when you forget them.

Even when you’re 2,000 miles from home.

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