Ekin and Yicheng
The Lost Red Backpack
A Rego Park adventure with two best friends.
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The Lost Red Backpack
A Rego Park adventure with two best friends.
Tap Next to start the story →
Every day after school at PS 139, Ekin walked home with his best friend Yicheng, because the two boys lived on the same street in Rego Park and they liked to talk all the way home. Yicheng spoke Chinese with his family, and he was teaching Ekin new Chinese words, one at a time. “Nǐ hǎo,” Yicheng said, which means hello. “Merhaba,” Ekin answered, because that is how you say hello in Turkish, and Yicheng repeated it until it sounded just right.
On a crisp autumn afternoon, when orange leaves covered the sidewalk like a carpet, the boys stopped outside the public library across from Key Food. A small red backpack sat all alone on the wooden bench, and nobody was near it. Ekin did not open it, because a bag that is not yours is private, even when it is lost. Instead, the two boys picked it up together and carried it inside to the librarian.
The librarian opened the backpack with them, because only a grown-up should look inside a lost bag. Together they found a picture book about trains and a crayon drawing of a playground with a big twisty slide. “This book is for a first grader,” the librarian said, “and that drawing shows the playground behind our library, where the little kids play after school.” At the next table, their friend Arlo looked up from his chess game and said, “The first graders were just there an hour ago.”
The two boys thanked Arlo and hurried to the playground, where they saw a little girl with a red ribbon in her hair, looking under all the benches while her mother stood close by. “Are you looking for a red backpack?” Ekin called out in his loudest friendly voice, because it is always better to call out than to run up to a stranger. The little girl turned around with wide eyes. “Lily!” her mother said. “That is your backpack!”
Lily hugged her backpack tight, and she thanked the boys three times, once for the bag, once for the train book, and once for the drawing. Back at the library, the librarian let Ekin and Yicheng stamp their own library cards with the big wooden date stamp, because helping someone is the best kind of library day. “Xièxie,” Yicheng said, which means thank you. “Teşekkürler,” Ekin answered, because that is how you say it in Turkish, and the librarian clapped her hands.
As the sun went down over Queens Boulevard, the two boys walked home together, and they made a plan for tomorrow. Yicheng would teach Ekin a new word, péngyou, which means friend. Ekin would teach Yicheng the Turkish word, arkadaş, which means friend too. “Best friends,” Ekin said, “in two languages.” And Yicheng laughed, because that was the truest thing anyone had said all day.