Catch a Falling Star

by Meg McKinlay

  Easier.

  I think that’s what does it.

  I’m crying. It’s just a little, at first, and then it’s a lot. “I’m not fine. I don’t bounce! I can’t …” I’m sobbing and I don’t know where it’s come from and I know exactly where it’s come from.

  Mum’s bending over alongside me. “Oh, love. What’s all this?”

  “You’re never home,” I say. “I have to do so much stuff and I don’t mind … only I do. I do if …” Something rises in my throat and I gulp. “Do you always have to work so much? It’s like you put everything away and there’s nothing left of Dad and now you’re putting us away too, because it’s easier and I can’t … I need …”

  “Oh, Frankie. It’s not like that. It–”

  “Yes, it is. It is. That’s how it feels and that means it is.”

  Newt isn’t saying anything. He just sits down beside me and kind of leans in, the way I did to him up on the hill. And all of a sudden, I wonder if he’s been feeling this too.

  How would I know when he’s never said anything?

  How would Mum know when I’ve never said anything? When all I do is act fine and grill cheese and do the exact right jiggle in the lock?

  I need I need I need …

  Things I hadn’t even thought of until now.

  Things that just come tumbling out.

  “Dad was never gone,” I murmur, almost to myself. “You never told me he was gone. He was on an island with driftwood and …”

  “He what? But he never–”

  “I never said goodbye. I never said anything.”

  “Oh, love.”

  I feel like I’m breaking Mum but I have to keep going.

  “Then it was too late. And now it’s always too late and we’re supposed to act like he was never here, like he was never even Dad.”

  Mum sits down beside me and puts her head in her hands. “I’m so sorry, Frankie. I know it’s been hard on you but I didn’t know … I had no idea.”

  Now Mum is crying. Now we’re two people sitting on the side of the highway crying in the middle of the night while cars whiz past following a dead space station.

  And now we’re two people hugging doing all those things and I’m crying so hard I wonder if I’ll ever be able to stop but at the same time I feel better than I have in forever.

  “My arm hurts,” Newt says, to no one in particular. “It’s broken, you know.”

  Mum actually laughs out loud. She pulls back so we can see each other’s faces, and looks me right in the eye. “Okay,” she says. “We’ll be okay. I promise.”

  We get to our feet and brush ourselves off. I open the car door for Newt and wait as he climbs inside, then give him back the torch. Mum’s standing behind me and when I turn she puts a hand on my shoulder.

  “Precious,” she says softly.

  I don’t know what she means so I just wait.

  “That’s what I was going to say before. You kids are so precious. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you. I … oh, God.”

  It’s like we both realise at the same time. I look into the car, at the empty seats. Mum looks at me and then all around us at the bush and the hills and the darkness.

  And then we both say it together.

  “Where’s Kat?”

  “I thought she was with you.”

  And right at that moment, a voice yells my name and I turn to see her stumbling down the hill towards us.

  Twenty-seven

  “Frankie, wait!” There’s a panicked edge to Kat’s voice, as if she thinks we’re going to drive off without her.

  I stare at her and all I can think is, How come she’s in her pyjamas? But then I realise I’m in mine too, that my bare feet are sore and I’m actually freezing.

  And while I’m thinking this, Kat falls. She trips on something and goes head over heels.

  I run across the road. She’s about a hundred metres up the hill, sprawled in the dirt, leaves and sticks in her hair.

  “My leg hurts.” She groans as I squat beside her and I think, Oh, no. One sleepover, two broken bones. But then she tests her weight on it and gets shakily to her feet. “I think it’s okay.” She nods, almost to herself, then looks up. “Why didn’t you wait for me?”

  She means back at the house, I realise. It feels like that was a hundred years ago.

  “I didn’t know you were awake,” I say. “Not at first. Then I saw Newt and …”

  “I was awake for ages,” Kat says. “All the air went out of the mattress. I was so tired and then I was maybe half-asleep and there was that sound, like the world was ending. It was Skylab, wasn’t it? I can’t believe it.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “A bit. I was trying to catch up, but I kept losing you over the hills. Then I took a wrong turn and had to double back. It was so weird, like being in a movie. All those lights … and that weird burning smell.” She grimaces and leans back against a tree. “I can’t believe it came right over here. It looked like the sky was exploding. Then when I saw you going … that was so dangerous! You should have stayed inside, under concrete.”

  “I don’t think our ceiling’s actually concrete. Anyway …” I hesitate, but only for a second. “I had to go. I had to follow Newt. I … he’s my brother.”

  “I know. I know, Frankie.” Her eyes meet mine. “And I had to follow you, because …” I see her trying to slow her breathing, so she can talk. “I’m sorry about before. About everything.”

  I can hear Mum and Newt coming up the hill behind us. There’s no time to really talk.

  But it’s enough for now, that one word: Everything.

  “Me too.”

  “You know …” She smiles. “The whole time I was trying to catch you, I couldn’t stop thinking: I’m running wild in the bush! I’m running wild in the bush!”

  I laugh. “Oh, no. I hope your mum doesn’t find out.”

  “Don’t worry.” She holds my gaze. “She won’t.”

  “Kat?” Mum crunches up beside me. “Are you okay?”

  “I just tripped on a rock. I’m fine.”

  “Thank goodness,” Mum says. “What a night! Let’s head back, then. I think we could all use some sleep.”

  I go to follow, then stop. Kat hasn’t moved. She’s staring at the ground. “This isn’t a rock.” She bends down and touches something. “It’s warm,” she says. “But what …?”

  Newt shines the torch, and we all stare.

  The thing Kat tripped over isn’t a rock or a branch. It’s a thick piece of metal about the size of a small plate. It’s a greyish-green colour, almost circular but twisted in places, wobbly-looking as if it’s been … melted?

  Next to me, it’s like Newt’s stopped breathing.

  Kat looks at him. “Is that …?”

  He nods. “It must be.”

  “Should I … is it okay to pick it up?”

  “I don’t think it’s dangerous.”

  She reaches for it gingerly as if it’s something unpredictable, something she can’t quite trust. But it’s only metal – metal that went to space and came back again, that fell to Earth right at our feet.

  “Here.” She doesn’t even look at it properly. She doesn’t turn it over in her hands and study it. She holds it out towards Newt.

  His eyes widen. “Can I hold it?”

  “You can have it.”

  “You mean to keep?”

  “That’s why you were out here, isn’t it? That’s what you were looking for?”

  He hesitates.

  “Go on. It’s a donation – for science.”

  Newt takes it – slowly and carefully as if he can’t quite believe it.

  He isn’t the only one.

  Mum frowns. “Are you sure that’s not some piece of old rubbish? I thought Skylab fell all the way over there.” She points off into the distance.

  “Actually,” Newt says, “approximately five hundred pieces were estimated to fall over a footprint approximately
6400 kilometres long, remember?”

  Mum shakes her head. “I actually don’t remember all that, Newt. But luckily I don’t need to, because I’ve got you.”

  We head back to the car, Newt clutching his little piece of Skylab. He doesn’t take his eyes off it, not even to look at the road. I stay close to him and when the school bus comes roaring back in the other direction, going faster than even Ronnie usually drives, I grab his hand extra tight, just to be sure.

  Twenty-eight

  In the morning, Mum takes us to school.

  For no good reason, she says. Just because.

  She says she will, and then she does.

  Which is lucky in the end, because the school bus doesn’t turn up.

  We don’t find this out until later, of course, when the other bus kids finally get to school.

  “We waited for ages!” Jeremy says but no one cares because the only thing they’re talking about is Skylab.

  The whole world is talking about Skylab. And it feels like maybe the whole world is coming to the south coast of nowhere, Western Australia.

  There are cars everywhere and people all over the place – booking up the hotels and stripping the supermarket shelves. Some are driving out of town trying to find pieces of Skylab. Others are staying in town trying to find people who don’t mind having a microphone shoved in their face, who don’t mind talking on camera about what it was like when a space station fell on top of us.

  Literally on top of us. Some people even found pieces in their yards. Dale’s uncle has a hole in his back shed.

  It was pure luck no one got hit.

  NASA is very sorry. At least they are when they realise there are actual people down here and not just kangaroos. At first, all they could say was, “We assume Skylab is on the planet Earth, somewhere”, which is not really the level of detail you want from the world’s top scientists.

  Apparently, there was a lot of confusion because the phones weren’t working properly. Even the Skylab watchers in Canberra announced that it had come down safely over the ocean. Mrs Easton said Merv had to ring them up and say, “Excuse me, but it’s actually fallen on our heads!”

  “Good old Merv!” Jeremy says, and Mrs Easton doesn’t even correct him.

  In the end, it turns out NASA did it on purpose. Not that they meant to hit us, exactly, but late last night when it looked like Skylab might land on North America, they decided to make it tumble, delaying its re-entry. It made a clean arc across North America, swept south over the Atlantic and finally broke apart above the Indian Ocean.

  Above us.

  People are angry. There are protests in the streets and letters to the newspaper. Kat says her dad is ropeable and the council is going to send NASA a littering fine.

  I wonder if they’ll actually pay it?

  Maybe they can ask Ronnie to cover it. Because apparently he’s about to become very rich. A radio station in San Francisco is giving $10,000 if someone can get there within seventy-two hours with a real piece of Skylab. He hasn’t made it there yet but he’s well on the way. We’re lucky he didn’t drive the school bus all the way to Perth in his hurry.

  ***

  At lunchtime on Friday Kat passes me a bulging brown bag.

  “I couldn’t fit it in my lunch box,” she says.

  “Don’t tell me you found another piece?”

  Everyone’s looking for Skylab. The headlines today said Treasure Hunt and Skylab Rains a Fortune in Debris.

  Kat laughs. “Open it.”

  I do, and then I laugh, even more loudly.

  It’s a bread roll, with a twisty bit on top. It’s burned on one side and the twisty part looks like a troll face. Or maybe a tumour.

  She grins. “I made it for you.”

  “There’s nothing inside it,” I say. It’s literally just a plain bread roll.

  “Yeah, sorry. It was too hard to cut, even with the electric knife. Mum said I left them in too long.” She shrugs. “I smeared some brown stuff on the side, the way you like it.”

  I turn it over. “What is it?”

  “Gravy. We had a roast last night.”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah, of course you did.”

  We both laugh then, together this time. Because we’re okay. We hardly slept on Wednesday night. Thursday morning. Kat squeezed into the other end of my bed and we talked and talked. I showed her my Storm Boy project and I told her … not everything, but most things. Everything that was mine to tell. And she told me about how her mum drives her mad sometimes with her endless baking and her after-school chats.

  And I said, “Oh, you poor thing! How can I ease your suffering?” because I knew she wouldn’t mind. Because we’re not fighting, even though we were before. Even though maybe we will again. Maybe you have to sometimes if you want to stay friends.

  ***

  Just before the bell goes, Mrs Easton looks right at me. And I look right back at her.

  “Frankie,” she says, but I’m already out of my seat.

  I walk to the front. My back’s to the class at first but then I turn.

  I could be a teacher, I think. I could be a nurse or a journalist or …

  I take a deep breath.

  “When I grow up,” I say, “I’m going to be an astronomer.”

  Twenty-nine

  I don’t have a salad bowl.

  I don’t have a puffy jacket.

  All I have is me – my shaking legs, my thumping heart.

  I didn’t write it down, didn’t practise it.

  I open my mouth and trust the words to come out.

  “Because I’ve always wanted to,” I say. “And because my dad was one.”

  And although it’s last thing Friday, the room falls quiet.

  “It wasn’t his job or anything. It was just his hobby. But he was serious about it. We had a Space Shack and a telescope, a really powerful one. You could see the surface of the moon right up close.”

  Without meaning to, I reach out my hand the way I used to, and every eye in the room follows.

  ***

  “Because there’s so much about space we don’t know. That we won’t know for ages. A long time ago people used to think the stars were gods, or that the gods were in the stars. Now we know that’s not true but there’s still so much to learn. And even though it’s science it feels a bit like magic, as well. I like that about it, that it can sort of be both.”

  I don’t know what to say next so I take a breath and look out the window. The school bus is pulling up. Mr Despotovski drove us this morning; I wonder if it’ll be him this afternoon.

  Yesterday, Mum came down and met us at the gate. Just because, she said. She’s taking a bit of time off – not a lot, but a little. Enough.

  Because there are so many people who need helping. Me and Newt. And Mum too. The three of us together.

  I think we’ve talked more in the last two days than we did in the last year.

  More about Dad than we did in the last six.

  I showed Mum my Storm Boy project too. Kat said I should, and she was right.

  It was more brave and honest than I could be face to face.

  It felt like it would be strange to be there when she read it, so I left it on her pillow. Later that night she came in and hugged me, her cheeks wet with tears.

  And I didn’t pretend to be asleep, not even for a second.

  “Frankie?” Mrs Easton says. “Are you finished?”

  All at once I’m back in the room. “Sorry,” I say. “I was thinking about the Milky Way.”

  The thing is, I’ve remembered something.

  “My dad told me something a long time ago,” I say, “and I’d forgotten it until now. I was only six when he died, so …” I feel dizzy for a moment but I press my feet to the floor and keep standing. “Did you know that even though the planets have their own separate orbits, they can still affect other planets? They can draw them in closer. Or move them further away.”

  I look out at Kat and she’s got the b
iggest smile on her face.

  “Anyway,” I say. “That’s just one cool thing that we’ve learned about space. And that’s all I wanted to say.”

  There’s clapping and strange looks but mostly clapping.

  “Well done,” says Mrs Easton, and it’s not “outstanding” but it’ll do.

  I head back to my desk, but before I sit down, I add one last thing.

  “Oh, also. Space is amazing, and I really enjoy lettuce.”

  Thirty

  It’s cloudy tonight when we go up to the hill, the three of us.

  The four of us, in a way. In every way that matters.

  We don’t have a shiny plaque but we have a “Welcome to the Universe” sign. I’ve written “Charlie Avery” on it and then “Dad”.

  And underneath that, “This is his place forever.”

  Because it is, right here. This is the exact and only place he belongs.

  We don’t have a marble stone but we have a piece of Skylab.

  We have a photo too.

  Mum said I could choose it and I didn’t even have to think.

  When I went to my room instead of the bookshelf, she raised her eyebrows. When I came back with the photo, she smiled. It was a sad smile, and that’s okay. It’s actually perfect, because life is full of mess and mistakes and there’s no point trying to hide it.

  We’re going to get the other photos out later. We’re going to put them back inside their frames, set them up on the mantelpiece and the walls and any place we like.

  That’s for later. Now is this.

  “Here?” Mum says.

  I glance at Newt, then nod. It’s a good spot – not in the Shack but near it. On top of the hill so it’s close to the sky, and slightly to one side – the house side, so we can see it from the big window, so it’s right here with us whenever we want.

  Newt puts the Skylab piece down and I lean the sign against it. We dig them both into the dirt a little, fixing them in place. Then I pass the photo to Mum. “Here.”

  It’s wrapped in plastic, sealed tight with sticky tape. But still it will weather. The wind, the sun, the rain. Eventually it will fade.

  That’s okay. Not everything lasts.