by Meg McKinlay
In spite of myself, I turn towards the window. If you know where to look, you can still make out the Shack all the way up on the hill. Trees have grown around it, their scraggly branches hiding the front door, the “Welcome to the Universe!” sign Dad and I painted. It’s faded and peeling, fallen sideways off its hook above the rusty padlock.
No one goes up there now. There’s no point. With the telescope gone it isn’t a Space Shack any more. It’s just a broken-down shed with a hole in the roof.
“Frankie!”
Mum’s voice makes me jump.
“I don’t think we need a fire yet, love. Maybe you could come and help with the dishes.”
“Okay.” My voice feels unsteady, like I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t.
I’m about to close the paper and drop it back into the box when something makes me stop. I slip the double page out and fold it – over and over until it’s small enough to hide in the palm of my hand. Small enough to slip into the pocket of my jeans.
I don’t know why I do it. I just do.
It’s silly, I tell myself as I take a tea towel from Mum. I’ll put it back later. It’ll be cold enough for a fire after school soon and I’ll need it then – to crumple up and stuff inside a tent of kindling, to set a flame to.
And that’s what I’ll do.
Definitely. Probably. Because Skylab falling has nothing to do with us.
Five
On Monday it’s cold but sunny, the best kind of autumn day. At lunchtime Kat and I sit in our favourite spot on the bench outside the shelter shed.
“What’s that brown stuff?” Kat points at my sandwich.
She’s got a ham and salad roll. Her mum bakes the rolls at home, shaping the dough so there’s a fancy little twist on top. I’ve got a cheese and Vegemite sandwich I slapped together about ten seconds before Newt and I made a dash for the bus.
And, apparently, some brown stuff.
I peer at it. “Maybe peanut butter?”
That’s what I made for Newt; I must have forgotten to clean the knife before I did mine.
“Yuck! Why would your mum mix peanut butter and Vegemite?”
I shrug. Kat doesn’t know Mum’s usually either still asleep or already gone when Newt and I get up. Her mum insists we go to their house during the holidays, but as far as they know, we’re only alone for an hour or so on school days, and a few extra on the weekend, the way it was when we first started staying home. Kat has no idea I make most of our lunches. And some of our dinners.
“It’s actually pretty good.” I take a bite. “Might be the next big thing.”
“Very funny.” She tosses a piece of crust to a magpie that’s been stalking us.
I press my back against the corrugated iron, soaking up the warmth, and look out across the playground. We’re supposed to finish eating before we do anything else but there are kids all over the place throwing balls and spinning skipping-ropes and playing elastics. On the other side of the assembly dots, the boys have already staked out the bat tennis and King Ball courts. If we want to play, we’ll have to elbow our way in later. We used to do that all the time but lately we’ve stopped bothering.
“Oh, look out. Here comes trouble.”
At first I think Kat means the magpie, but when I look up, Newt’s weaving his way towards us, right through the middle of an intense game of Poison Ball.
“Look, Frankie!” It takes me a while to work out what he’s holding. It’s the radio Mum gave him – part of it, at least. He’s taken it to pieces, stripping the wire off the drum and unscrewing something from the back.
“That was a birthday present, Newt. Don’t wreck it!”
“I’m not!” He looks indignant. “I’m analysing it. It’s science.” Something crosses his face. “Oh, do you think Mum will mind?”
I sigh. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’s fine.”
Newt brightens. “This might be good wire for the antenna too. I wonder if I can swap some.”
He wanders off, stepping through a game of jacks and narrowly avoiding a low-flying skipping-rope.
Kat shakes her head as a netball whizzes past his ear. “Sometimes I wonder how he survives.”
“Yeah.” I lick the last of the actually-quite-disgusting peanut-butter-Vegemite combo from my fingers. “Tell me about it.”
***
When we go back in after lunch, there’s writing on the blackboard.
STORM BOY PROJECT, it says. And underneath that:
WHAT is the story about? (Plot)
WHO is the story about? (Character)
WHERE does the story take place? (Setting)
DESCRIBE your favourite part.
DESCRIBE your least favourite part.
WHY do you feel that way?
Mrs Easton taps each line with her pointer.
Jeremy groans. “But that book is so dumb. I still don’t get why we couldn’t do the other one.”
A couple of kids glance at me, then look away. They get it, even if Jeremy doesn’t.
Storm Boy is the book we just finished reading in class. It’s about a boy whose best friend is a pelican called Mr Percival. It’s really good and nowhere near as weird as it sounds. Or maybe it’s both those things. I don’t see why it can’t be.
“You should also,” Mrs Easton goes on, “include one other aspect of the book you think is particularly worth exploring. And I want you to really give that some thought.” She looks slowly around the room, her gaze resting on each desk in turn. “Remember, you’ll be in high school next year.”
She turns back to the board and adds:
Other Relevant Aspect
She looks pointedly in Jeremy’s direction then underlines “Relevant” again.
“I’m giving you plenty of time.” She picks up a piece of chalk. “I want you to show me what you can do.” She turns to the blackboard and writes in the top right-hand corner: STORM BOY PROJECTS DUE 11th JUNE.
“Wow.” Kat counts on her fingers. “That’s practically a whole month!”
“It’s also possible,” Mrs Easton goes on, “that some people did not give the book their full attention during class and may want to consider reading it again.”
This time, she doesn’t even have to look at Jeremy. “But it was so boring!” he protests. “The only good bit was when the pelican got shot.”
“Yeah, that was unreal!” adds Dale. “My uncle shoots ducks. I go with him sometimes. That Storm Boy kid is a total wuss.”
“Quiet!” Mrs Easton taps the board so hard little puffs of chalk dust fly into the air. “Storm Boy is a beautiful book. An Australian classic. It was time for a change, that’s all.”
She looks everywhere but in my direction and I look out the window – at the playground, the flagpole, at everything but the sky.
It wasn’t time for a change. Nothing ever changes around here. Year Six has been doing To the Wild Sky for as long as anyone can remember and we’d be doing it this year too, if it wasn’t for me. I knew that even before Mrs Easton took a copy out to start reading. Before her eyes widened and she looked quickly up at me.
I’d already seen the cover, with its picture of a small plane crashed into water, and I knew there was no way we’d be reading that book. There was no way Mrs Easton would ever mention it again.
No one ever wants to talk about Dad. If they accidentally do, they start waving their hands. “I’m so sorry,” they say. “I just didn’t think.”
I thought that was a good thing. Easier. Like putting the photos away.
But you can’t put Skylab away. It’s coming whether we like it or not.
And Dad’s back in my head too, no matter what Mrs Easton does.
It’s funny when you think about it – that she replaced a book about a plane crash with a book about a bird.
It’s because she didn’t know. Because she doesn’t know.
And all at once I’m glad about that. I think about the knick-knacks on the mantelpiece and Mum star
ing at Skylab as if she’s never seen it before and all I can think is that I wish people would talk about Dad.
I wish it more than anything in the world.
Things That Fall From the Sky
Birds.
From the heat, sometimes. Up north, it gets so hot, birds fall clean at your feet.
I found a dead bird once. It was lying in the middle of a track in the bush, like it was waiting for me.
Mum said a feral cat must have got it, but there was no mark.
It looked perfect, like it was only resting.
What if a bird dies from old age, the way people die in their sleep? And they’d never know when they hit the ground. One minute flying, the next minute gone.
That would be all right, I think. That would be okay.
Planes.
People don’t talk about that much, though. They don’t want to alarm you.
Instead they say, Relax and enjoy the flight. Watch the clouds from your window. Read a book and have a cup of tea. In the absolutely improbable and unlikely event of anything at all please use the inflatable slide.
I’ve never been in a plane but Kat has, when she went to visit her grandparents in Sydney. She said the Earth was a patchwork of colours and the ocean was a bowl full of sky.
I wonder if that’s what Dad saw.
He wouldn’t have been reading a book or having a cup of tea. He would have been looking out the window the whole time. He had been in a plane before but not like this. It would be so different to being in a big plane, he said. He could hardly wait. There would be almost nothing between him and the sky.
I wonder if he saw the bird.
That’s what did it, they said.
In the unlikely event of a bird breaking your windscreen …
In the unlikely event of an uncontrolled descent …
In the unlikely event of you crashing into the wide ocean …
It was a tiny plane. It was bad luck. It was wrong place, wrong time, a one-in-a-million thing no one could ever have predicted.
They fell from the sky like a stone.
One minute flying, the next minute gone.
Six
On Friday I bring my sleepover stuff to school.
Newt brings his antenna kit. The coathanger hooks stick out of his bag like a weird art project.
“I don’t think Mrs Blair is going to let you muck around with their TV,” I say.
“Actually, I think she will.”
He’s probably right. Kat’s mum’s always been good about Newt’s funny little projects, even when he shrank Samboy chip packets in her oven and made baking soda volcanoes on her nice clean floor. Kat’s father is less enthusiastic, but we don’t see much of him because he works such long hours. As well as his normal job, he’s also the mayor, so he has lots of meetings and stuff.
Which is handy, because it gives Kat’s mum time to air out the oven and mop the floor again.
As Newt gets off the bus, his bag swings wildly and I grab it just in time to keep the coathangers from spiking him in the arm.
***
Last thing in the afternoon Mrs Easton scans the room with that look in her eye.
I hope it’s not me. It could be me. After the salad bowl incident, she said she’s not going to tell us the day before any more. Now, she expects us all to be ready, just in case.
If it’s me, what will I say?
I could be a nurse because there are so many people who need helping and because it’s important to give back.
That’s what Mum says sometimes when she comes home late and tired. So many people helped her when she needed it and now Newt and I are old enough to look after ourselves, she can help people right back.
I can’t be a nurse. If I get up there and start talking about that, who knows what will come out of my mouth?
Next to me, Kat’s sitting up straight and still. She’s not looking at Mrs Easton. She’s being perfect and right and at the same time pretending she doesn’t care so Mrs Easton will think she’s the one doing the choosing.
Kat’s busting to have her turn, because if there’s one thing she knows, it’s exactly what she’s going to do in the future. She knows what subjects she needs to study and where she’s going for uni and the best spot for her office. It’s going to be near the river in Perth, with a view out the window and a playground kids can use while they’re waiting.
“Katrina?”
When Kat talks, she’s clear and confident. She doesn’t hesitate or stumble once. She makes everything sound so simple, so easy and perfect, that I almost want to be a paediatrician with an office by the river too.
Because the future depends on children, she says, and because it’s important to contribute to society.
Mrs Easton beams. “Well, that was excellent. In fact, a perfect note to end the week on.”
When Kat sits down, she’s practically glowing.
“That was great!” I whisper. I’m happy for her. Of course I am.
But the truth is I feel something else too.
Jealous? Sad? It’s neither of those things exactly, yet at the same time it’s both, kind of mixed up together. Because I was so sure like that once. And not just me, but Dad too. He said I’d have to work hard if I wanted to be an official real astronomer but I could definitely do it.
“You have a good brain, Frankie-short-for-nothing,” he said. “A good brain and a curious mind. And that’s the best possible place to start.”
That’s why I was so excited when he told me about the astronomy convention. “All the way over in South Australia,” he said, “and we’re going!”
Only when he said “we”, he didn’t mean me. He meant him and his friend, in his friend’s tiny plane, which only had enough room for the two of them and no extra space for a very small girl, not even if she begged and said she didn’t mind sitting on Dad’s lap and would be fine without a seatbelt.
It wasn’t for kids, Dad said. It wouldn’t be any fun for a small Frankie, not even one with a good brain and a curious mind. But when he got home, he’d tell me all about it.
And so he went, in that tiny plane, across the desert – and the ocean – and I stayed. And then he stayed gone.
For the longest time after that, just looking at the stars made me feel sick. Like the Earth and sky were swirling around me and I was the only thing standing still.
That’s why I can’t be an astronomer any more. Because I can’t spend the rest of my life thinking about them. I just can’t.
***
Kat’s still glowing when we get to her house. We sit at the table and her mum serves us tall glasses of milk and chocolate chip biscuits, warm from the oven. Newt wolfs down three biscuits as if he hasn’t eaten in days and then asks if he can borrow some wire. “Not plastic. Needs to be metal.” He flips through his antenna notebook. “Copper, if you have it.”
Kat’s mum hurries out to the shed like she’s been set an important challenge. As the door bangs behind her, Kat sighs and reaches for another biscuit. “I wish those talks were being marked.”
I nod. “I reckon you’d definitely have got it.”
Kat’s on a mission this year. Because everyone in the school knows Mrs Easton doesn’t give A-pluses, not ever. “A is the highest mark,” she says, “and that’s that.”
But if anyone’s going to make Mrs Easton break her rule, it’s Kat. She always has amazing ideas for projects and she knows exactly what teachers like. Even in kindy, she used to print her name carefully on all her work and keep her pencils sharpened.
She drains her glass and wipes away her milk moustache. “So, do you want to work on yours?”
I hesitate. I don’t really feel like thinking about it now, with jealous and sad all tangled up inside me. “I should be all right. I’ll probably be a nurse or something.”
“Oh, lovely!” Kat’s mum comes in with a coil of wire. “Like your mother. Such important work, nursing.”
Kat rolls her eyes and I smile back at her. “
Seriously, don’t worry. I’ll work something out. Maybe we could …”
Watch TV, I was going to say but Kat’s already out of her chair.
“Oh, good,” she says. “Because … wait a sec.” She goes down to her room and comes back with an armful of books. She spills the pile onto the table and retrieves a roll of pale blue cardboard from under her arm. Whenever we have a special project she gets one of these so she can do it like a poster.
“I really wanted to get started on that Storm Boy thing,” she says. “I’ve got heaps of ideas.”
I pick up a book. They’re from the public library in town. This one’s about seabirds. There are others about South Australia and fishing and coastal wetlands.
“You can borrow them if you want. Hey, I got you some cardboard too. Hang on.”
She’s back a minute later with another sheet of card. “I hope you don’t mind white. I wasn’t sure what colour you’d want.”
“White’s great, thanks. A blank canvas.”
“Exactly!” She grins and starts leafing through one of the books.
While she takes notes, I go to my bag and get my copy of Storm Boy. When I flip to my bookmarked page and sit reading, Kat gives me a funny look.
“How come you’re doing that? Wait … don’t tell me you didn’t give it your full attention during class?”
She does the last bit in a Mrs Easton voice. It’s scarily accurate.
I laugh. “I thought I’d have another look through it, so …”
So I can read it properly, so the good bits aren’t wrecked by Jeremy calling out things like, “Err, spew!” and “I wuv you, Mr Percival!”.
“So I can think about that ‘relevant aspect’ thing,” I finish.
“Oh, okay. I’ve already chosen mine. I’m going to do the life cycle of the pelican. I’ve got heaps of good information. No one else is going to have these books, either. You can borrow them if you want.”
“Thanks.”
Kat takes notes and I read. After a while Newt puts the TV on so he can test his antenna design. I don’t know if this is what Mr Despotovski meant by “rudimentary” – from here, it just looks like a twisted bunch of wire. Then again, Newt could probably explain the angle of every twist if I asked.