He was just standing there in the parking lot when I pulled in—bright green glasses, oversized hoodie, grinning like we already knew each other.

I assumed he was waiting for a parent, maybe late getting picked up from the after-school program. I had just come to drop off the donation bins for the book drive.

“Hey, bud,” I said. “You alright?”

He nodded. “I’m Eli.”

Friendly voice. Totally calm. He even asked if I liked space books, which threw me for a second.

“I used to,” I said, kind of laughing. “Why?”

He looked up at me, squinting through the sunlight. “Because that’s the shelf I picked. The one in the back corner.”

That caught me. The donation room did have a shelf like that—old science books, tucked behind a cart of damaged dictionaries.

But I hadn’t told anyone where the bins were going yet.

“Do you go to school here?” I asked, glancing toward the building.

He just smiled again and shrugged. “Sometimes.”

That was weird enough. But when I brought it up to the office staff inside—asked if maybe a student named Eli had been let out early or was still waiting—they checked the roster.

No Eli.

Not this year. Not last year either.

And when I turned back toward the lot—he was gone.

No car, no goodbye, just the hoodie-shaped outline in my mind and that big toothy grin.

I stood there a second, sort of unsure what to do with that.

I wasn’t scared, just… unsettled.

The kind of unsettled you feel when something doesn’t quite line up.

Over the next few weeks, I went back to the school a few times.

I volunteer a lot. Sorting books, helping with reading groups, that kind of thing.

Every time I passed the donation room, I’d glance at the shelf in the back corner.

I don’t know what I was expecting.

Maybe a note. A name scribbled on a book’s inside cover. Anything.

But it was just dusty paperbacks.

Until one afternoon, when I stopped by to deliver a box of new science books from the public library.

I walked in, and there it was—a sticky note. Bright green.

It said: “Thanks for the space books. My favorite is the one about Voyager. —Eli”

I stared at that little note for way longer than I probably should have.

It looked fresh, like it hadn’t been sitting there more than a few hours.

I showed it to the librarian, Mrs. Holloway, an older woman who wore beads and always smelled faintly of mint tea.

“Did you see who left this?” I asked.

She squinted at it. “No… but that’s the kind of paper I keep in the front desk drawer. For hall passes. Funny.”

She didn’t think much of it.

But I started keeping a small journal after that.

I know how it sounds—like I was letting my imagination get the best of me.

But I swear, every few days, another note would show up.

Sometimes under a book. Sometimes just tucked in the shelf corner.

Always signed, “—Eli.”

Sometimes it was a fun fact. “Did you know there are more stars than grains of sand on Earth?”

Other times it was personal. “I used to come here when it was quieter. When people weren’t so sad.”

That one stuck with me.

What did he mean, “when people weren’t so sad”?

I started asking more questions.

Staff members. Custodians. Even some of the older teachers.

Most hadn’t heard of any Eli.

But one janitor, Mr. Conner, who’d been around nearly twenty years, said something that chilled me.

“You know,” he said, wiping down a counter. “Back in the early 2000s, there was a boy… I think his name was Elijah. Quiet kid. Liked science.”

I asked what happened.

Conner shook his head. “Got sick. Leukemia. Didn’t make it to middle school.”

That night I couldn’t sleep.

The hoodie. The glasses. The calmness.

It wasn’t fear I felt. Just this ache.

Like somehow I was meant to know him.

The next time I went to the school, I brought something different.

A framed photo of the Voyager spacecraft, with a note attached that read:

“For Eli, who still reads among the stars.”

I didn’t tell anyone.

I just tucked it on the shelf behind the dictionaries.

The next morning, when I returned, someone had placed a single dandelion on the frame.

Fresh.

There were no dandelions near the school.

It was November.

Weeks passed.

The notes stopped.

But one day, I walked into the room and found something I hadn’t seen in years.

A model rocket.

Old, but clean. Standing upright on the table like it had just been placed there.

No note this time.

I brought it home.

That’s when the twist really came.

I showed it to my dad, who used to help me build rockets as a kid.

He took one look at it and went pale.

“Where did you find this?”

I told him.

He flipped it over and pointed to the initials carved into the base.

E.J.R.

“Elijah James Randall,” he whispered. “That was your cousin.”

I didn’t remember him.

I was only four when he passed.

But my dad told me everything.

How Eli used to come to our house, how we built that exact rocket together one summer.

How he was obsessed with space and wanted to be an astronaut more than anything.

After he died, my uncle donated most of his books and projects to the school he’d attended.

That school.

Suddenly, everything fit.

The hoodie. The shelf. The Voyager note.

I wasn’t just seeing a ghost.

I was reconnecting with a part of my family I never got the chance to know.

It wasn’t scary anymore.

It was beautiful.

A bridge, built across time and memory.

After that, I started a science club at the school.

Named it “Eli’s Orbit.”

We meet once a week.

We read, build things, talk about space.

Some of the kids know the story.

Some just think Eli’s a made-up mascot.

But every once in a while, I find a note.

Sometimes on my desk.

Once even in my glove compartment.

The last one I found was just five words.

“You’re doing great. Keep going.”

I cried when I read that.

Because I needed to hear it.

We all do, sometimes.

Whether it comes from a friend, a stranger, or a cousin long gone.

Love doesn’t disappear.

It finds its way back to us—in whispers, in notes, in little green glasses grinning in the sun.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from Eli, it’s that kindness echoes.

You may never know the impact you have on someone’s life.

A book left on a shelf.

A conversation in a parking lot.

A rocket that somehow makes its way home.

So keep leaving good behind.

You might not see the bloom, but the seed matters.

Thanks for reading.

If this story touched your heart, please like and share.

You never know who might need a little Eli in their life today.