Clear Skies

by Jessica Scott Kerrin

  Anton Spagnolli and Heimlich Fester won first place for their project about the revolutionary birth control pill and its predicted impact on society. Smaller families. Big deal. Both Arno and Mindy agreed they’d been robbed.

  “Hi, Mindy. Guess what? I just won a contest to go to tomorrow night’s opening of the new observatory.”

  “You did? That’s fab.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Buddy told me you met the new boy.”

  “Yeah. Robert.”

  “My mom said she’ll drive me to the movies this afternoon, and that I can invite him, you and Buddy.”

  “What’s playing?”

  “A new documentary about outer space!”

  “Far out!” Arno buried the mouthpiece in his chest. “Dad, can I go to a movie about outer space? Please? Mindy’s mom will drive.”

  “Sure.” His dad dug out a dollar from his wallet and handed it to Arno. “So long as you make your bed right after lunch. You need to earn your allowance. Remember?”

  “How’d you know I didn’t make my bed?”

  “Lucky guess.” His dad pointed to the counters. “And tidy all this while you’re at it.”

  “Thanks, Dad!” Arno turned back to the telephone. “I can go,” he said.

  “Fab. We’ll pick you up at one.”

  Grinning, Arno sat down to eat his sandwich. Winning a contest and now going to a movie about his favorite topic? What a great day!

  After lunch, Arno’s dad left the house to continue his rounds. He took Comet, who jumped up into the passenger seat and peered over the dashboard as if Shotgun was his middle name.

  Arno stood in the driveway waving goodbye, the blazing Sun pounding on his head and shoulders, heat waves wafting up at his ankles. As the white van backed out, Arno got a clear view of the company logo.

  Stinky’s.

  The boxy letters loomed large. There were lines of air wafting above the company name with a housefly weaving in and out as if overcome by the smell. Painted cartoon flames streaked from the wheel wells like a hot rod, only the flames weren’t red or orange. They were painted baby-poop brown.

  The whole thing was meant to be funny. And it had been until that fateful day Arno got trapped inside.

  He shuddered to think about it, so he quickly went back inside. Besides, he had to make his bed and attend to the mess in the kitchen.

  Every item in Arno’s room had something to do with astronomy. The curtains had constellations printed on them. His bedside lamp was shaped like the crescent Moon. He had a large map of the solar system pinned to his ceiling above his bed. It featured data about each planet: its diameter, its distance from the Sun, its length of day and its axis tilt. On his bookshelf were his notebooks filled with “Clear Skies” newspaper clippings and his own deep thoughts.

  He put his gutted robot back on the shelf beside the projector, then pulled up the sheets and smoothed out the bedspread, which was printed with spinning galaxies. He fluffed up his pillow and set it down just so. Done.

  Arno paused to admire his clay solar system, the one he had built that morning, and forgot about the mess he’d made in the kitchen. He counted eight planets drying on his desk.

  He frowned. Saturn was still under his bed.

  Arno wished Comet was with him. Maybe he could coax the little dog to crawl under and retrieve the planet by making a game out of it. Comet was pretty gullible.

  But Comet was bouncing around in the van with Arno’s dad, looking forward to the ice cream cone that his dad would surely buy for him because he always did.

  “Well, then, I’ll just have to rescue Saturn myself,” Arno said firmly, squaring his shoulders. “No sweat,” he said. “Only take a second,” he said.

  Arno didn’t budge. He didn’t even bend down to try. He had made the mistake of picturing himself stuck under the bed, trapped, the weight of the mattress collapsing on top of him. His chest tightened, his breath became ragged, his mouth went dry.

  Suddenly, Arno felt dizzy. He took a few staggered steps backwards until he stood in the door frame and leaned against it for support.

  “Blast it,” he said quietly.

  The doorbell rang.

  It was Mindy, putting him out of his misery.

  FIVE

  Mindy stood on the front porch, her ponytail drooping against her neck in the heat, her long bangs twitching with each blink of her eyes. Mindy’s mom sat in her sky-blue Ford Galaxie out front, with Buddy and Robert sitting in the back seat. All the car windows were rolled down.

  Mindy was chewing gum but stopped as soon as Arno opened the door.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked with worry. “You look as if a giant asteroid is heading our way.”

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  Mindy’s bangs twitched.

  “Where’s Comet?” she asked, looking past Arno into the house.

  Mindy loved Comet. She rewarded him with dog biscuits whenever he rolled over for her, four paws flopping in the air. It had gotten so that as soon as Comet spotted her, he’d flip onto his back faster than the speed of light. She had a biscuit ready in her hand now.

  “With my dad,” Arno said. “Doing the rounds.”

  Mindy tucked the biscuit back in her pocket.

  “Ready to split?” she asked, blowing the bangs out of her eyes.

  “Yeah,” Arno said, shutting the door behind him. “It’s nice your mom’s driving us.”

  “For you, maybe,” Mindy said. “She’s giving me the silent treatment.”

  “What for?”

  “I kind of had an accident this morning.”

  “A chemistry accident?” Arno asked.

  “Is there any other kind?” Mindy gave him a crooked smile.

  Mindy owned the one and only chemistry set on the block. The set came with a real Bunsen burner, glass test tubes, beakers and flasks. It also contained a variety of dangerous substances that meant a lot of fun for any kid lucky enough to get to mix things with her.

  Arno would never forget the day she unwrapped the set at her birthday party. The cover of the box promised it would introduce boys to the wonders of modern chemistry, and it showed a picture of a boy in a white shirt and tie who was pouring something from a test tube into a flask to create a mysterious puff of smoke.

  Mindy flipped off the lid, blew the bangs out of her eyes and said, “Boys? Boys?! We’ll see about that.”

  Later, she created such a cloud of stink, the sulfurous rotting-egg smell drifted all the way to Arno’s house. That reek took weeks to get out of Mindy’s curtains and bedspread, but only after repeated washings and being hung on the clothesline to dry.

  After that, Mindy mostly followed the scientific method, but she was still not afraid to disregard instructions altogether and come up with her own experiments. She liked to tinker with chemicals and design her own concoctions. Potassium nitrate was one of her favorite ingredients. It was used in gunpowder, fireworks and rocket fuel. Sometimes, the results were explosive.

  “The best inventions come from the unexpected,” Mindy once told Arno while he studied the scorch marks running up the side of her garage door.

  Arno followed Mindy down the porch steps and climbed into the back seat as Buddy and Robert scooched over to make room. Mindy jumped into the passenger seat next to her mom.

  “Hello, Arno,” Mindy’s mom said, ignoring the pink bubble that Mindy began to blow with her gum. “Nice to see you.”

  “Thanks for inviting me,” Arno said, barely remembering his manners as Mindy’s bubble got bigger and bigger.

  Mindy’s mom adjusted her huge bug-eyed sunglasses, then pulled out and headed down the street. She was wearing a scarf to hide the curlers in her hair. Arno could tell that she was trying very hard to ignore Mindy, but when the bubble exceeded all laws of physics, she snapped.
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br />   “Cut that out!” she barked. “You’re distracting me!”

  Mindy popped the bubble and grinned.

  “So, Robert,” Mindy said, twisting around to face him in the back seat. “Tell us about yourself.”

  “Well, let’s see,” Robert said. “I’m from Canada, as you already know. My old man works for a big business machines company so we move a lot. That’s a drag. My mom hates it here. She says no one speaks proper English.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mindy’s mom muttered.

  “I like how you say ‘mom,’” Mindy said. “Like it rhymes with ‘gum.’”

  He shrugged.

  “I have a sister, but I wish I didn’t,” Robert continued. “She’s in grade ten and she thinks she’s Brigitte Bardot. She’s a huge American Bandstand fan so she flipped out when that show was cut from ninety minutes to just an hour. But I’m glad. If I hear ‘Venus’ by Frankie Avalon one more time, I’ll barf. What else? Oh! I was the star in last year’s school drama. It was a gas.”

  Robert said “draa-ma,” not “draw-ma.”

  “That’s fab. Do you have a dog?” Mindy asked.

  “No,” Robert said, frowning. “Sorry. Just two cats.”

  “Do you like science?” Mindy asked.

  “You bet I do,” Robert said. “Especially astrology.”

  “Astrology isn’t a science,” Arno said.

  “Sorry?” Robert said.

  “You heard me,” Arno said, leaning toward the open window to catch some wind on his face.

  “Hey, Robert,” Buddy said. “Do Mindy’s astrology sign.”

  Arno gave Buddy a sharp elbow, which Buddy returned with the biggest toady smile ever.

  “Okay, since you asked,” Robert said. “Mindy. When were you born?”

  “November 23rd.”

  “That makes you a Sagittarius. It means that you’re happy, absent-minded, creative and adventurous.”

  “I’m not absent-minded,” Mindy said.

  “Is that so,” her mom said, lowering her glasses to give Mindy a hard stare. “How about this morning, when you forgot to turn off your Bunsen burner? Quite the botch job.”

  Mindy blinked.

  “Neat!” she said, turning back to Robert. “How’d you do that?”

  “Astrology,” Robert said, crossing his arms. “Which is a science.”

  “Bunch of hot air,” Arno muttered.

  “Sorry?” Robert asked again, leaning forward so he could see past Buddy to squarely face Arno.

  “I said it’s blowing hot air,” Arno announced, which it was, with all the windows down.

  He had just figured out that Robert was a lucky guesser who used general words that could describe lots of people. It was all a crock.

  No one spoke for a few awkward minutes. Arno shifted his legs, which were sticking to the vinyl seat. He stared at the back of Mindy’s neck. A few stray curls coming loose from her ponytail were sweat-soaked.

  “Here we are,” Mindy’s mom chirped, pulling to the curb in front of the Capitol Movie Theater, which was designed to look like an old English stone castle.

  Odyssey in Outer Space was printed in large blocky letters on the marquee.

  Everyone spilled out onto the blinding sidewalk.

  “I’ll pick you up here right after the movie.” Mindy’s mom said. “Don’t stray.”

  Everyone nodded, then headed inside, where the temperature dropped like an icebox.

  “Air-conditioning,” Robert said, grasping the fancy carved oak and brass railing. “Now that’s Space Age progress. The Sun must be blasting 500 degrees today.”

  Robert said “progress” like “pro-gress,” not “praw-gress.”

  “I love your accent!” Mindy said. “It’s so fab.”

  Arno was not impressed. “Five hundred degrees?” he repeated. He wheeled around on the stairs to stop Robert in his tracks. “Is that what you think the Sun’s temperature is?”

  “More or less,” Robert said with a shrug.

  Arno scowled.

  “Here we go,” Buddy muttered to Mindy.

  Mindy puffed her cheeks.

  “Fun fact. The temperature at the surface of the Sun is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, 27,000 at its core,” Arno said. “So, you’re way, way off with your numbers.”

  “It’s hot out.” Robert rolled his eyes. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  Arno studied him without blinking.

  “I bet you don’t even know what the Sun is made of.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Okay. What?”

  “Well, gas,” Robert said. He paused to study the psychedelic pattern in the carpet. “I think.”

  “Can you be more specific?” Arno drilled, arms crossed.

  “Arno,” Mindy interrupted. “We should jet so that we can get dibs on good seats.”

  Arno stood his ground as waves of moviegoers bumped past. He took a deep breath because he was about to deliver one of his favorite speeches.

  “Our sun is made out of hydrogen and helium atoms. It’s held together by gravity and creates both light and heat in a process called nuclear fusion.”

  He took another breath and continued, while his audience shifted from one leg to another and looked everywhere but at Arno.

  “Nuclear fusion rams atoms together, and our sun converts about four million tons of matter into energy every single second. It’s a good thing Earth receives only a tiny fraction of the Sun’s total energy or we’d be toast. The rest streams out into space.”

  Robert yawned. “Sorry,” he said in his annoying accent. “Are you done?”

  “It’s the solar wind, or hot gas, coming from the Sun that blows past comets, giving them their long tails,” Arno added. “As I mentioned before. Now I’m done.”

  “For now,” Buddy added, loud enough for Arno to hear.

  The four turned to march up the rest of the stairs and through the felt-covered doors into the semi-darkened theater.

  It was already packed. Even the balcony was crammed. The few remaining empty seats were in the front row, and only two of them were together. Arno sat down at one end and Buddy quickly slid in beside him. Mindy and Robert moved farther down the row.

  “Guess who I saw wearing cowboy boots in today’s newspaper?” Buddy asked. “I’ll give you a hint. My dad met him at NASA.”

  Arno wheeled on him.

  “Listen up. I’m here to see a movie. So I don’t want any more jibber-jabber from you.”

  “Get real,” Buddy said. “I’d rather sit with Mindy and Robert any day but look around. Full house.”

  Arno did a quick scan.

  “Blast it,” he muttered as he settled into his leather seat and was forced to stare straight up at purple velvet curtains. The colossal marble statues at each side of the stage — women wearing robes and holding up torches — loomed overhead. Above him, the vaulted ceiling had been painted with clouds and stars.

  “What a neck-breaker,” Buddy complained. “Good thing I can tough it out like an astronaut.”

  Arno sighed.

  He didn’t want to be in a bad mood. After all, he was about to watch a movie about outer space! He listened to the happy chatter around him. He heard that the movie was a triumph of film art, that they would witness the solar system as it would look to a voyager rocketing through space. They would travel into the farthest regions of the universe, past the Moon, the Sun and the Milky Way and into galaxies spotted by only the strongest telescopes!

  Arno couldn’t help but grin.

  The curtains began to part, and the house lights dimmed to black. A hush swept through the theater.

  At precisely that moment, Arno became acutely aware of the hundreds of warm bodies pressing forward from all the rows behind as well as the balcony above where smoking was
allowed.

  Arno caught a whiff of that smoke now.

  What happens if there’s a fire? he wondered. It was an odd thought, but he couldn’t get rid of it. All that smoke! He glanced around for escape routes and only saw two exits way at the back.

  That didn’t look like enough for so many people.

  His mouth went dry.

  The movie opened with shot of a black star-filled sky, making the theater feel puny and cramped. Then the musical score exploded without warning. The audience flinched and covered their ears, Arno included. It was unlike anything he had ever heard.

  There was relentless banging on the low notes of a piano.

  Horns and trumpets blared when he least expected it.

  Screeching violins stopped and started as the camera panned the cosmic scene and came across one massive celestial body after another.

  It was disturbing.

  Terrifying, even.

  The jarring music, which seemed to be coming from every direction at once, bounced off the vaulted ceiling and came down on Arno’s head. He felt as if the black theater walls were pressing in and the giant statues were in danger of toppling over, crushing everyone in the first row.

  Arno gripped the armrests and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to catch his breath.

  Please no, he thought. Not now. Not in front of all these people.

  But it was happening. The dizziness, the tightness in his chest, the frantic thoughts of being trapped, of being smothered.

  When he braved a look at the screen, a colossal asteroid was hurtling toward him, end over end, symphony horns bellowing.

  It was deafening.

  Arno jumped out of his seat and bolted up the aisle toward a dimly lit exit. He could no longer hear the thunderous music because the sound of his pounding heart filled his ears.

  Arno felt for the door and scrambled out into the lobby where he collapsed onto the first bench he came across. He sat with his head in his hands, gulping the popcorn-scented air.

  “You okay?”