Catch a Falling Star

by Meg McKinlay

  The phone rings but I don’t move.

  Newt looks at me. “The phone’s ringing.”

  His eyes are on mine. They’re not on his notebook or the TV or staring at the wall of his room. It feels like he’s actually right here with me for the first time in ages and like it’s now or never, so I let the phone ring and ring until it stops and then I say it.

  “Newt, you know Dad died, right?”

  He freezes.

  The phone rings again. He turns towards it.

  I don’t move. It’ll be Mum, apologising for something. Asking about beans and spaghetti.

  This is bigger. This is more important than beans and spaghetti, or even a roast with crunchy-bum potatoes.

  The phone rings for longer this time. I wait. And wait. When it finally stops, I start speaking again.

  “Just because they didn’t find his …” I can’t say the word. Body. It makes him not-Dad, somehow. It makes him a thing. “Just because they never found him doesn’t mean–”

  “I know that.” Newt jabs a finger at the button on the TV. “I’m not a little kid.”

  “Newt, listen …” I begin, but then the phone rings again and he jumps up.

  A few seconds later, the receiver clunks down onto the little table. “It’s for you!” he calls from the hall. And by the time I pick the phone up, his door is closed and he’s gone.

  “What?” I don’t mean to sound so annoyed, or maybe I do. Beans and spaghetti and grilled cheese and …

  “Sorry,” Kat says. “Were you outside or something? Mum said to keep trying. She’s freaking out about Wednesday.”

  For a second I can’t think what she’s talking about. It’s like Newt has knocked everything else clean out of my head.

  “About the sleepover? She wants to know what your ceiling’s made of.”

  I sigh and then I tell her it’s concrete. Definitely. Even though I have absolutely no idea.

  Sometimes all people want to hear is that there’s no cause for alarm. Sometimes telling them that is better than worrying about the truth.

  ***

  On Tuesday Kat tells me it’s okay. Her mum said she can still come. And that’s good, because on Wednesday, NASA is certain. More certain than they’ve ever been. Skylab will be down within twenty-four hours. Today, tonight, tomorrow.

  We don’t know this from the newspaper or the TV, but from the radio, which is giving hourly updates. The teachers listen at school, tuning in at recess and lunchtime, and possibly when they tell us they’re ducking out for a second to grab something from the office.

  Ronnie listens on the bus, hunched forwards over the steering wheel. After school he drives slowly on the way out of town and the whole bus is quiet. There’s no one singing or yelling or throwing banana peel as a crackling voice says that down here on the south coast of nowhere, Western Australia, we are now on the flight path considered most likely to see the death of the 77.5-tonne space station. That if NASA’s current predictions are right, Skylab’s charred remains will start to plummet Earthwards just after midnight and that parts of WA might be in the line of fire.

  They’re saying “plummet” now, instead of “arrive” and “tumble”. They’re saying “line of fire” and “charred remains” instead of “sprinkle” and “spectacular”.

  And everyone is shocked and saying What are the odds? and Do you reckon we’ll see it? and Line of fire? and How can we find out what our ceiling’s made of?

  Except for Newt, who doesn’t seem surprised or scared or anything like that. Who seems kind of excited and nervous but also weirdly calm.

  And also except for me. Because I can’t help feeling like I knew this was going to happen all along, and I’m trying to keep an eye on Newt without making it obvious because Kat’s sitting next to me with her sleepover bag on her lap and the whole point of tonight is that it’s not about him.

  Before the radio cuts out, we hear one last thing:

  With the situation changing hourly, space officials have stressed that they are guessing.

  “Guessing!” someone mutters. “Thanks, NASA.”

  “It’s not too late to buy a helmet!” Jeremy calls out. “I’ve got some in my bag.”

  When we get off, Newt runs ahead up the hill.

  He doesn’t have to wait for me to open the door today, because Mum will already be home. She even organised to finish early so she’d have plenty of time to spare. By the time we left school, she’d be peeling potatoes and basting the meat.

  I have no idea what basting is but if it helps make the roast, I’m all for it.

  Maybe it’ll be in the oven already. I sniff the air, in case I can catch the smell drifting down. But there’s only eucalyptus: that clean, fresh smell the bush gets after rain.

  The roast wouldn’t be in yet, I decide. She’s probably just got the oven preheating. She’s probably …

  When we reach the yard, my stomach drops. The carport’s empty. Newt’s jiggling impatiently on the doorstep.

  Kat frowns. “Where’s your mum?”

  I get my key out, trying to act casual. “She won’t be long.”

  Please let her not be long. Please let her not have forgotten. Please …

  Inside, I glance at the oven. Maybe I should get it going, put the meat into the pan.

  I flip the oven dial. How hot does it need to be? And how long does a roast take to cook? It’s nearly four o’clock but it won’t matter if we eat a bit late. Maybe I should leave it, wait for Mum.

  I pour two glasses of milk and find some Scotch Finger biscuits in the back of the cupboard. I get the potbelly stove started then sit at the table with Kat, like this is what I do after school. I try not to look out the window. I try not to look at the clock. I try not to look twitchy while my thoughts race, while I wonder whether I should call the hospital, whether I should put the meat in the oven.

  Kat glances down the hall. “Doesn’t Newt want a biscuit?”

  “He’ll come if he does. Probably not, though. He’s working on something.”

  “As usual.” Kat dunks her biscuit. “What is it this time – homemade volcanoes or rudimentary antennas?”

  She smiles and for a moment I want to tell her everything. About Newt’s bedroom and the Greek myths and that weird newspaper article. I want her to laugh and tell me I’m being silly, what a ridiculous idea. As if he’d ever think that!

  But it’s our sleepover night and her voice is in my head. I just wish it could be the two of us sometimes, you know? You and me.

  This is our night, our one night. And even if Newt does have some strange idea about Skylab, it’ll be over soon. The Earth is more than seventy per cent water and statistically speaking Skylab will be down somewhere in the ocean, a thousand miles away. Eventually, Newt will pull the paper from his walls and put his notebook away and if he has a fruit-shaped bruise on his heart, I’ll try to help him fix it.

  Because I’ve turned out so well and that’s just what I do.

  Kat nods towards the window. “Imagine if Skylab came right over here. We’d have a pretty good view.”

  “Yeah.” As I look out, I picture us sitting on the verandah while Skylab blazes overhead. Watching it like a movie playing on the dark screen of the night sky.

  There are footsteps then, and Newt comes through from the hall. I point at the table. “Want a biscuit?”

  “No, thanks.” He walks past into the lounge room then out the front door.

  Everything in me wants to get up – to watch through the window and make sure he stays in the yard. But I make myself stay put. I dunk my biscuit and drink my milk through the crumbs that have gathered on the surface and whenever I feel myself starting to worry, I count crumbs instead.

  Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight …

  “So,” Kat says, “do you want to work on your thing for Friday?”

  She offered to help again after last week and I said yes because what else was I going to say and obviously I need all the help that I can g
et. I wish I didn’t, though. I wish I could just …

  Stop looking out the window, Frankie. He’s fine.

  “Yeah,” I say. “That’d be good.”

  Kat gets her pencil case and an exercise book from her bag. “I’ll make a list. Then we can write pros and cons and–”

  There’s a noise outside, a thump on the roof. A bird, maybe. Or a possum. We get them in the roof sometimes, making a racket.

  Kat frowns. “What was that?”

  Before I can answer there’s another sound, different now. A series of small sounds – not at all like a possum that runs around madly not caring who hears it, but slow and deliberate and quiet, like something – someone – trying not to be noticed.

  The sound of footsteps.

  He’s not a baby. You don’t have to watch him every second.

  But this is different.

  He’s eight, Frankie!

  “He’s only eight, Kat.”

  I don’t mean to say it out loud. As I run for the door, I hear my voice like it’s coming from someone else.

  But there’s no time to be surprised by it because then I hear something else.

  “Frankie!”

  It’s too late to do anything – to yell Newt! or run to get the ladder, which maybe I shouldn’t have hidden in the first place because at least that was safer than him doing what he’s done.

  Which is to climb the tree near my window, crawl along the wide branch and jump across the gap onto the roof.

  Which was easier on the way up than it is on the way down.

  It’s too late even for me to stand underneath and have the wind knocked out of me.

  It’s too late to do anything but watch him fall.

  Things That Fall from the Sky

  Newt.

  Twenty-three

  By the time Mum gets home from the hospital, it’s seven o’clock.

  The second time she gets home, I mean. This time with Newt, who has his arm in a cast.

  “Greenstick fracture,” Mum said when she called earlier. “Could have been a lot worse.”

  The first time she got home was approximately 4.15. Approximately seventy-five minutes after she was meant to be home; approximately seventy-five seconds after Newt fell from the roof.

  Just in time to pull up and wave and call out, “Sorry! I’m here! Sorry!”, followed closely by, “Oh, my God! What happened?”

  Luckily, Newt was sitting up by then so she at least knew he was okay. She at least didn’t have a long, horrible moment when he was flat on his back staring up at her, his mouth moving but no sound coming out.

  By the time they get home, I’ve made dinner. It isn’t a roast because I didn’t know how long it would take and also because even though I looked up “basting” in the dictionary, I’m still not really sure what it means.

  Instead, I made apricot chicken. Kat helped too, if by “helping” you mean looking through cupboards for stuff and saying, “How come you’ve got so many cans of baked beans?” and asking over and over, “Are you sure it’s okay to use the stove by yourself?” and “Do you think I should call my mum?” in case I didn’t hear her the first few times.

  When Mum’s headlights sweep up the hill, I set the table and take the dish out of the warming oven.

  Newt rushes straight to the TV. “I hope we haven’t missed it!” He presses the button and a few seconds later the opening music for the seven o’clock news crackles into the lounge room. The picture is crystal clear.

  Mum comes in shortly after. When she sees the table, she stops. “Oh.” She holds up a newspaper-wrapped package. “I bought fish and chips.”

  “I cooked,” I say. She could have told me.

  “Why don’t we save that for tomorrow, then?” As she sets the package down on the table, the smell of salt and vinegar makes my mouth water.

  I shrug and ladle chicken into a bowl. “I don’t feel like fish and chips.”

  In the end, we leave both on the table.

  “People can choose what they want,” Mum says. “If there’s leftover chicken, we’ll save it for later.”

  As soon as I taste it, I know there’s going to be plenty of leftover chicken. Maybe it’s because we didn’t have any apricot nectar. Maybe it’s because I’m not actually sure what nectar is in the first place. I thought it was something to do with bees or the gods. I ended up using apricot jam mixed with hot water, while Kat stared at me and said she was sure her mum wouldn’t mind popping over to help.

  Mum eats fish and chips. “They won’t keep,” she says. “No point wasting them.”

  Kat tries the chicken. A few minutes later, she pushes her plate to one side and reaches casually for a potato scallop, like she was planning to all along.

  Newt fills his plate with chicken and takes it over to the TV.

  “It’s the last night!” he says. “We have to watch. Plus, look how clear it is!”

  “Hardly worth a broken arm,” Mum replies through gritted teeth.

  From the grin on Newt’s face I don’t think he agrees.

  Mum turns back to the table. “Apparently,” she says, “Newt went on the roof to adjust his antenna. Which – also apparently – he put up there weeks ago.”

  She’s looking right at me. I chew my chicken slowly while Kat takes a handful of chips.

  “I can’t believe you let him on the roof, Frankie.”

  “I didn’t let him. He just went up there.”

  “It was fuzzy yesterday,” Newt says simply. “I fixed it.”

  “You’re meant to be watching him! You know what he’s like.” Mum shakes her head. “You should at least have told me, so I could stop it happening again.”

  I almost laugh. You can’t stop Newt doing things, not if he really wants to. All you can do is hide the ladder, hold your arms out, hope he doesn’t hit the ground too hard.

  Anyway, how would Mum have stopped him when she’s not even here? All of a sudden I want to list all the things I haven’t told her over the years. All the things she’s never had to hear, never had to deal with.

  But Kat’s sitting across from me, staring. Tonight was meant to be about the two of us and somehow it’s all about Newt again.

  The TV gets louder and we turn towards it. Newt has his hand on the volume knob and his gaze fixed firmly on the screen. Which is full of Skylab.

  Skylab will be down tonight, sometime before 7.49 tomorrow morning. This seems oddly specific and I wonder why they don’t just say 7.50. Maybe they’re trying to sound sciencey, like the Brookline Institute.

  “There will be nine orbits between now and then,” Orange-Tie Man says, “with two of those being directly over Australia – one at 11.09 pm and one at 12.36 am.”

  He holds up a card with a big map of Australia on it. There are two lines drawn across it as if it’s wearing a sash. One goes across the east coast and the other goes right over here.

  “State Emergency Services are on high alert,” he says, “and a direct telephone link has been established between NASA and our official Skylab watchers in Canberra.”

  Newt glances out the window and as he does I see that flash again, of something on his face I can’t quite read. Something sort of nervous and excited and thoughtful and worried, all rolled into one. He’s tapping his foot, twitchy, the way he gets at the front door after school. As if he’s waiting for someone to turn the key to a door he’s desperate to go through.

  At the very end of the bulletin, Orange-Tie Man gives us his most reassuring look, the one he usually saves for news about the nuclear arms race. “NASA advises,” he says, “that on Skylab’s final orbit around Earth, if there is any possibility of it falling on a populated area, they should be able to correct it at the last minute, sending it harmlessly into the ocean.”

  “See,” Kat says, “I told you they wouldn’t let anyone get hurt.”

  “They can’t do that!” Newt says. “What if …” He trails off, then turns to Mum. “I’m staying up. I have to–”

&nbs
p; “No, you’re not,” Mum replies firmly. “It’s a school night. And there’s been plenty of drama for one day. I want you to have a shower and get ready for bed.” She glances at the clock. “Have you set up the air mattress, Frankie?”

  I haven’t. I was going to do it before, after we’d played Yahtzee. Which we never got to do. All we got to do was cook and eat and get in trouble.

  The batteries in the pump are dead so I blow the mattress up puff by puff, taking little breaks when I feel lightheaded. Kat offers to help but it’s kind of gross asking a guest to swap spit with you so I keep going, pressing with my hand until things feel firm. That’ll be plenty, I tell myself. That’ll be enough.

  By the time I’ve finished and the bed’s made up and we’ve had our showers, it’s 8.30. A game of Yahtzee only takes about half an hour but Mum says it isn’t fair for us to stay up when she didn’t let Newt.

  “If you promise to keep your voices down, you can talk in bed for a while,” she says. “How about that?”

  Some sleepover, I think as I click the light off.

  I should probably just be glad the sheets are clean.

  Twenty-four

  We’re quiet at first, then after a while Kat rolls over. The mattress makes a squeaking noise as she turns towards me.

  “Come to my place next time. It’ll be easier.”

  I don’t reply. I’m not pretending to be asleep or anything. I just don’t know what to say. I know she’s right but I don’t want her to be.

  “Even this weekend, if you want. Mum won’t mind. Hey, maybe we could try for the drive-in again.”

  It’s the way she says it, I think. How easy she makes it sound. Like all she has to do is ask and everything will fall into place.

  Something about it makes me feel … I don’t even know what. It’s like I’m stuck somewhere between sadness and anger. And maybe that’s what makes me say what I do.

  “I know your mum won’t mind. I know that.”

  No sooner are the words out of my mouth than part of me wants to haul them back in.

  But a bigger part of me doesn’t.

  Maybe it’s the darkness. Funny how you can say things there you wouldn’t say face to face. Funny how it opens you up.