Catch a Falling Star

by Meg McKinlay

When I read this one, I laugh out loud.

  On Wednesday next week, at precisely 1.05 pm, sixty-five radio stations all over the world are going to run a special “meditation broadcast” and they want as many people as possible to tune in. Even if you can’t, you’re encouraged to focus your thoughts skywards for seven and a half minutes on one thing only – lifting Skylab up.

  This worldwide effort is being coordinated from America by the Brookline Institute for Psycho Energetics, which sounds like something made up for a TV show. Only they’re real, and despite the fact they have exactly five members and their headquarters is probably in someone’s lounge room, they’re hoping to get over a million people. According to their calculations, if they get that many, they’ll have a decent shot. I don’t know what their calculations are based on, but they seem pretty confident. Their spokesman says this is a “bona fide science experiment” and if they can push Skylab 170 kilometres higher there will be no chance of it falling, ever.

  The Skylab Project Director doesn’t sound quite as confident. When asked for comment, he said simply, “Well, I hope they can help us out.”

  I glance down the hall, where Newt is shut away in his room. Would he want to read this? Especially since it’s bona fide science and everything.

  I can practically hear him now. Actually, this is ridiculous! Did you know this is ridiculous?

  I fix up my kindling tent and shove the paper back inside.

  If anyone does this, it’ll be people on the other side of the world; they’ll be at work or school, or maybe on their lunch break or something. They won’t be sound asleep like people here on the south coast of nowhere, Western Australia, where it’ll be 1.05 am, twelve hours in the future.

  Technically. Officially. Because of the international dateline and all that.

  Except no one’s really going to do it, are they?

  Of course they’re not.

  I strike another match and this time I watch through the little window until the flame takes over, until the words crumble into ash.

  Eleven

  12.55.

  The red dots on my bedside clock stare directly at me.

  What am I doing?

  It’s Wednesday night. Thursday morning. Somewhere on the other side of the world a million people, or at least five, are getting ready to focus their thoughts skywards.

  Right here, on this side of the world, I’m getting ready to join them. The thing is – once it was in my head I couldn’t get it out, no matter how much I polar-beared. Because what if they get a million people but they need a million and one? What if my brain is the one that makes all the difference?

  So before I went to bed, I set my alarm. Ridiculous. But still.

  I look out the window. It’s an ink-dark sky, alive with stars. I throw a jacket on over my pyjamas, slide my feet into slippers. A few minutes later I’m outside in the night, sitting on the flat rock on top of the hill. It’s wet with dew but my jacket is long enough to sit on.

  Unless I climb a tree, this is the highest point for miles. I know it doesn’t make sense but none of this does, and it feels like something – to be as close as possible, to be out here under the stars.

  I flash the torch on and check my watch. 1.02. As the second hand speeds around the dial, my heart starts to race. Should I start at 1.05 to the second? Isn’t every clock different anyway? Without the broadcast, how will I know when to start and stop?

  1.03.

  I’ll start when I start. Even if it isn’t exactly the same as everyone else, it’ll be close.

  1.04.

  Wait. Would it be better to close my eyes or look up at the stars? Maybe I should be sitting in some kind of meditation pose. Maybe …

  The second hand ticks over and I start.

  I put a picture of Skylab in my mind and stare hard at it. I close my eyes so I can’t see anything else, and then slowly, slowly, I imagine pushing it upwards. I watch it move in my mind’s eye and it almost feels exciting, like I’m really doing something, and I wonder if everyone else – all one million and one or possibly just six of us – is feeling this too.

  I sit and imagine and watch and feel and after a while I start to wonder how long has passed and whether I should open my eyes and check the clock. And then I wonder who decided on seven and a half minutes anyway because it feels like an oddly specific length of time and maybe the sort of thing you’d come up with if you wanted something to sound more sciencey than it actually is.

  When I open my eyes, it’s 1.14. I’ve done two extra minutes and I don’t know if that’s good, bad, or nothing at all. Whatever it is, it’s over.

  And now that it is, I feel silly. I should go back to bed. It’s cold out here and in spite of my jacket the damp is seeping through my pyjamas.

  As I head for the path, something strikes me. This is the first time I’ve walked it alone at night. Before, there was always Dad, holding my hand. I remember our matching yellow gumboots and the way I used to watch our feet – one big pair, one small – picking their way down the rough trail.

  I turn and look along the ridge. The Shack squats at the end like an old man bent against the wind. And then I’m walking, watching my one pair of feet, and then I’m there, standing beside it.

  The door is padlocked and the lock is rusted shut. But none of that matters because I’m not going in. I’m just … I don’t know. I’m just here. Pressing a hand to the wood, peering through the narrow gaps between the boards.

  It’s much darker inside. There are no windows and the light from my torch is weak. But it doesn’t matter because there’s nothing to see from here anyway. The corner directly in front is where the telescope used to sit – the Celestron Orange Tube C8 that was Dad’s pride and joy. The empty space looks all wrong, like a mouth with the front teeth knocked out.

  “Frankie?”

  I jump, feeling a sharp pain as my palm snags on the splintery wood. When I turn, Newt’s coming towards me across the ridge. No coat, no slippers, shivering in his Doctor Who pyjamas.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” I step back and towards him, standing between him and the Shack. “I … I couldn’t sleep.”

  “So you came out in the freezing cold to sit on top of a hill?”

  I open my mouth, then close it again.

  He grins. “You were doing that psycho thing, weren’t you?”

  I feel my face flush and am glad of the dark. He did know about it, then. I suppose he left the article in the box because he didn’t need that one, because it was ridiculous.

  “Well, how come you’re awake?” I retort. “Don’t tell me you were doing that psycho thing?”

  He gives a little snort. “I’m awake because I heard your alarm go off. Then I saw your torch up here, so …”

  “It was dumb,” I say. “I was about to come back anyway.”

  “Didn’t look like it.” He steps neatly past me and peers in towards the Shack. He doesn’t have a torch, though, and I swing mine away so he can’t see inside.

  “Come on.” I grab his arm. “It’s late.”

  Surprisingly, he doesn’t argue. He lets me spin him around, then he walks ahead of me back along the ridge. We’re about to start down the slope when he stops and looks up. It’s a clear night and the sky is a carpet of stars.

  Skylab’s up there somewhere, invisibly orbiting.

  “I wonder if you moved it,” he says. “I wonder if you’ve saved us all.”

  “Very funny.” I nod towards the house. “Back to bed.”

  He’s turning when suddenly he points back at the Shack. “Hey! Did you see that?”

  “What?”

  “There was a shooting star. Right over the top there.”

  “No,” I say. “I missed it. Let’s go.”

  I shine the torch on the ground and watch our feet pick their way down the path. One big pair, one small.

  And when I’m sure he’s not looking, I turn around – just for a second – in case there’
s any lingering glow of light.

  Things That Fall From the Sky

  Shooting stars.

  Technically, I suppose they’re really falling from space. Is space the sky? I’m pretty sure it isn’t. An astronomer would know that.

  Maybe I knew that, once.

  Stars die in a beautiful blaze, leaving a fiery trail behind them.

  That’s what people say. That’s what I’ve seen on TV, but never in real life.

  There’s no trick to it, Dad always said. All you have to do is choose one patch of sky and keep watching.

  You’ll see one, short-for-nothing. Trust me on this.

  I never have, though.

  When I was little, I used to stare until my eyes watered, then blink at the exact wrong moment, just as everyone else said, Oh!

  I’ve seen flashes in the corner of my eye that made me turn my head, made me wonder.

  But I’ve never been sure.

  It doesn’t count unless you are. Unless you’re so sure about that blazing trail you want to jump up and yell, “Hey! Did you see that?”

  That’s when you know you’ve been lucky. That’s when you get a wish.

  Newt hates it when people talk about wishing on stars.

  “Stars are already amazing,” he says. “Science is amazing. Why do people have to try to make it all magical?”

  I wonder if I’d make a wish. It feels like it would be a shame to miss that chance. But there’s only one thing I’d want to wish for, and it would be the one thing I know could never come true.

  So what would be the point?

  Maybe it’s better that I never see one, so I don’t have to decide.

  Twelve

  Twelve million people.

  That’s how many they got.

  Twelve million.

  Plus me, maybe. I don’t know how they counted. How could they possibly include people who got up at the last minute and sat on a hill on the other side of the world?

  But anyway, they got a lot. And it didn’t make any difference at all. Skylab didn’t move one single centimetre. Why would it? The news is laughing about it. People who did it are laughing about it. They never really believed it would work. Of course they didn’t!

  Maybe I’d be laughing too if I wasn’t so tired. I don’t know how many hours of sleep I got but it wasn’t enough. In class, I’m trying to focus my bleary eyes on the board when Rachel puts her hand up.

  “Mrs Easton,” she says, “shouldn’t we be doing duck and cover or something?”

  Mrs Easton frowns. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Duck and cover. It’s when you hide under your desk and kind of curl up. Mum told me about it. It’s for nuclear bombs but it might work for Skylab too.”

  “I’m not sure ducking is what’s needed,” Mrs Easton says. “In any case–”

  “It was in the newspaper!” Rachel protests. “They said we’d have twenty minutes’ warning. To duck. That’s what it said and Mum reckons you’re meant to practise at school, so–”

  “BOOM!” Jeremy bangs the lid of his desk. “SKYLAB!”

  Rachel jumps and Dale laughs. “Forget about ducking! My uncle knows where there’s an underground bunker, out near the desert. It’s from the war or something. There’s enough room for ten people.” He stands and starts pointing around the room. “Eeny, meeny, miney, mo …”

  “In England, people are going to hide in smugglers’ caves,” Jeremy adds. “Have we got any of those around here?”

  “We have caves,” Dale says. “Maybe not the smuggling kind, though. Is that important?”

  Mrs Easton raps her ruler on the blackboard. “That’s enough, thank you. There will be no need for anyone to hide anywhere. The news likes to make things sound dramatic, that’s all. My husband says there is no danger to us whatsoever.”

  “Good old Merv.” Dale sniggers.

  Mrs Easton shoots him a warning glance.

  Merv is her husband’s name. Dale knows this because his dad volunteers for the State Emergency Service, which is where Merv works. I know this because once when a tree branch came down on our carport, they came out and pulled it off with a truck and a chain, yelling, “Heave ho, Merv!” and “Go easy, Brian!” while Mum watched nervously.

  “Hmmm.” Jeremy strokes his chin. “This Merv of yours … he’s a scientist, I suppose? An expert of some sort?”

  Mrs Easton gives him the blackest look you’ve ever seen and hands out a maths worksheet.

  ***

  That night I dream about ducks who live in an underground bunker. They’re scared of smugglers or the sky or something else I can’t quite put my finger on. They’re trying to lie low until the danger passes, but the bunker is made out of desks, and someone keeps opening the lid.

  Dale’s face stares down at them. “Only room for ten!” he chants in a singsong voice, as if they’re all just playing. “Eeny, meeny, miney–”

  An alarm blasts me awake. I fumble for the clock, jabbing at the button.

  12.55. I groan. I can’t believe I forgot to turn it off. I was tired all day from last night; now tomorrow – today, actually – is going to be worse.

  I roll back towards the window, willing myself to sink back into sleep. And my eyes are closing when I see the light. A star, blurring in the corner of my vision?

  Then I see it again – a flash of something up on the hill.

  It’s a swinging light, too low to be a star. Too steady to be anything other than what it is.

  A torch. Up on the hill. Inside the Shack.

  I don’t stop to put on shoes. I don’t grab a jacket or a torch. I just run.

  One of the boards has been twisted off its nails and pushed aside. Newt’s made a gap for himself, wide enough to squeeze through, to edge his way in.

  Wide enough for me to peer quietly through, to see.

  He’s sitting at the table, surrounded by papers. He scans them in the torchlight, pausing every now and then to shake off dust or cobwebs. He’s on the taller of the two stools but he looks so little, like a kid who’s finally been allowed to sit at the grown-ups’ table. His white hair is fuzzed up from sleep in what we used to call his “mad-professor” look.

  I stand there for a long few seconds, then take a deep breath. “Hey, Newt.”

  If it was me, I’d jump in fright, but he doesn’t move at all.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper. “You can’t be up here.”

  He leans across and reaches for another pile of papers.

  The gap is narrow but I manage to scrape through. I won’t look around, I tell myself. I won’t even breathe in if I can help it – the old smells, the memories. I’ll get Newt out and then snap the board back into place behind us.

  But as soon as I’m inside, he swings the torch, illuminating one corner after another.

  “Look at all this.” He says it as if it’s a discovery he’s made. As if this place isn’t as familiar as home to me.

  It’s thick with cobwebs and dust but the Shack is still the Shack. It’s tiny yet it never felt cramped. It felt like the exact right size for the thing it was made for, which was sitting quietly and looking at the stars. There are shelves along one wall, the small table and stools pushed up against another. And there’s more room than there used to be, now the telescope’s gone. Only the retractable roof is still here, the pulley system with the crank handle. Dad could have automated it but he liked turning it himself, watching the roof open inch by inch.

  I liked that too.

  “I can’t believe all this stuff’s here.” Newt waves a hand and in spite of myself, I look.

  The photos and diagrams and star charts, the newsletters and flyers Dad used to have sent from all over the world. The pages of handwritten and typewritten notes he made – we made – about what we’d seen and what we were going to see and when we were going to see it.

  Everything’s laid out exactly as he left it. Why would he bother putting it away? He was going to be back before we knew it.


  Newt looks up. “I thought this place was empty. I thought that guy took everything.”

  “What guy?”

  “I don’t know. A guy. He came with a ute and then Mum ran inside crying.”

  I swallow. Newt was four when Mum sold the telescope. I didn’t think he’d remember any of that.

  The guy who bought it was so excited, said his kids were mad about space and they were going to love it. Then he looked at me and Newt and asked Mum why she was selling it, and she put her hand over her mouth and ran into the house.

  After a while the man turned to me and said, “Well, maybe I’ll give you the money, then?” and I nodded. I can still feel him counting fifty-dollar notes into my hand, my fist curling tightly around them so they wouldn’t blow away.

  “I didn’t know you remembered,” I say. “You were so little. I thought …”

  “I remember things.”

  For a second there’s something on his face I can’t read.

  “Newt,” I say quietly. “Do you ever want to talk about Dad?”

  He shakes his head. “It makes Mum sad.”

  “Yeah, but … that’s not what I asked.”

  He holds my gaze and doesn’t reply.

  “That guy only bought the telescope,” I say finally. “Everything else was just …”

  “Just left here. Sitting here all this time.” He fans out some pages, sending dust flying. “Sputnik, Apollo, the moon landing.”

  As he pulls the page clear, the edges flake away beneath his fingers like old paint, crumbling onto the table. Crumbling and … crawling?

  “Newt!” I lunge, sweeping the top few pages onto the floor, the spider along with them. It scuttles between papers as it lands and I stamp down hard with my foot, squishing its black body, its red stripe, beneath the faded type.

  “Hey!” he protests.

  “That was a redback!”

  “Oh.” He reaches for the papers, spider guts and all.

  And something catches in my throat, because there on one of the pages is my name in wobbly little-kid letters.

  SPESHAL SPACE REPORT BY FRANKIE JEAN AVERY APRIL 1972

  It’s only a quick flash in the torchlight, but it’s enough. More than enough. I can almost see my five-year-old self sitting right here at the table.