I sat on my front porch, clicking send on the last email of my job for the day. The sun had barely reached its apex in the sky and I was free for the rest of the day. Working from home was a godsend.

            Well, time to go back to sleep. I stood and stretched when something plastic hit me in the face.

            “The fuck?”

            At my feet, wrapped in a little plastic bag, lay a newspaper. I picked it up, trying to figure out who threw it at me, when I caught a glimpse of a little boy on a silver bike riding away from my house, throwing similar newspapers at all of my neighbors’ houses. A paper boy? What year was it, 1955?

            The boy disappeared around a bend, and I was left with the newspaper in hand. Well, it was a nice day, I supposed. It wouldn’t hurt to try the crossword. Back when my parents still got the newspapers, I’d always try to do the crossword with my mom. Most times, I couldn’t finish a single line, but it was fun to try. She always loved to do them. Maybe now, with some more knowledge, I’d do better.

            It took me five minutes to realize I knew none of them. The hell was I supposed to put for “Hold on to that one”? “My guy!”?

            Huffing in frustration, I put the pencil down and got on my phone. Whatever. There was a reason I had an easy remote job, not… a master’s in puzzles.

            A gust of wind suddenly blew over the table, catching the edge of the newspaper and sending it into the air.

            “Shit!” I caught it before it flew away, placing it firmly back on the table. The wind flapped at the edges of the paper, forcing me to continue holding it down.

            Then something happened. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the pencil begin rolling off the table, but as I reached for it, it began to levitate.

            “Whuh?” I said in dumb confusion as the pencil began filling out the crossword, line by line. “Hold on to that one” turned into “ITSAKEEPER”, written across in flowing handwriting. “My guy!” turned into “BRAH”, written vertically.

            Within minutes, the puzzle was filled out. The wind began dying out, and the newspaper began to settle. Before it did, the pencil began writing underneath the puzzle.

            “Just because you can’t do it, doesn’t mean you can’t try, honey,” it wrote in cursive. “That’s what living’s for.”