The Trouble with Shooting Stars

by Meg Cannistra

  Chiara looks at me, her big brown eyes pale in the candlelight. She stares so long, her gaze burning holes into my mask. Ugly, ugly, ugly, bounces around in my brain. That awful word I can’t shake. I want to sneak back under the covers and hide once more.

  But her smile only brightens. No sadness. No pity.

  “Why are you staring at me?” she asks. “Do I have food on my face? We ate dinner in a rush tonight, and Alessandro always says I’m a messy eater.”

  “No.  You’re fine,” I say. “Why are you staring at me?”

  She shrugs. “We’ve got the same exact eye color. It’s neat.”

  With that, Chiara hops from the bed and walks back over to the window. “You could come with us tonight, if you wanted. Your drawing was nice,” she says. “Alessandro can be annoying, so don’t listen to him. You could draw all the pretty things you see in space with us. It’s bellisima up there. Do you want to come?” She tilts her head to the side, her dark braids floating around her.

  I jump off the bed, the comforter falling to the floor. “Come with you? Up into the stars?”

  Chiara nods. “Yeah. Where else would I mean?”

  I look at Jean Valjean sitting on my bedside table, his starry turtle shell not at all like the real night sky. The zeppelin’s shadow floats on the wall, rising and falling like the tide.

  Mom’s voice filters underneath the door. It’s angry but hushed. Dad’s chases after, his shouting louder than hers. Their voices are a muffled mess, tangled together in a wrestling match, trying to pin the other down.

  I thought they went to sleep.

  Chiara looks at the floor, pretending like she didn’t hear my parents’ yelling. “You should come with us,” she says.

  I take one last look at the bedroom door before pulling an old, too-big hoodie over my pajamas. I follow Chiara through the window and into the cold November night, my parents’ arguing drowned out by the wind.

  Chapter 9

  You know how dangerous it is bringing a non-spazzatrici into the heavens, Chiara,” Alessandro says from behind the ship’s wheel. “Do you realize how much trouble you’d be in if Papa found out?”

  “As much trouble as you’d be in if Papa knew you forgot me on the moon two weeks ago.” Chiara stares at her older brother, her gaze unblinking.

  I stand behind her and awkwardly toy with the hair floating around my shoulders. Alessandro has a point. Bringing me along doesn’t seem that safe, but I don’t want to be at home.

  “Fine. She can come along.” Alessandro sighs. “But I’m not happy about it. She’ll have to help out.” He looks me up and down as if I were a soldier before nodding his head. “At least you’re taller than Chiara. You won’t need help reaching ropes or equipment. Name’s Luna, right? Like the goddess.”

  I nod.

  The ship is massive. Much bigger than it looks from the outside. It’s impossible to take it in all at once. My eyes dart around, trying to collect each piece of the ship. To memorize every angle, every curve, every single bit of it.

  I look back at my window, the zeppelin already at least four feet above it. It doesn’t feel like we’re moving.

  My heart leaps into my throat. I’m really going up to the stars. I’m going to see the moon up close.

  “How fast does the ship fly? And how does the whole atmospheric pressure thing work?” My fingers itch for my pencil and sketch pad, but I forgot them in my excitement to board the ship. I’ll need to remember all of this. “How can any of this work? This isn’t a dream, right?”

  Alessandro rolls his eyes. “Are you going to ask a million questions all night?”

  “Leave her alone and steer the boat, will you?” Chiara yells. “Papa said you passed out you were so excited on your first trip.”

  “Did not!” Alessandro shouts back.

  “Just ignore him,” Chiara says. “That’s what I do.” She tugs at my hand. “I’ll give you a tour.” Chiara walks me around the middle portion of the deck. Past groups of old-looking barrels and long, twisting pieces of rope, neatly coiled like snakes.

  “What’s your ship’s name? And who is she?” I point at the lady at the front of the ship. She’s beautiful.

  Chiara places her hands on the smooth railing and looks down, the wind lifting the braids slightly off her shoulders. “She’s named Stella Cadente—Shooting Star. And the lady at the front is the goddess Luna. I like her, too.”

  The trees tickle the bottom of the ship, trying to grasp at us with the tips of their branches, as we move past the Sapientis’ attic.

  “The zeppelin’s balloon can expand and retract depending on the size of the space we’re in,” she says. “That’s what it’s doing now. It’s like a set of lungs. Breathing in and out.”

  “And what happens when we get up into outer space?” I ask. “How do you even travel to the moon in one night?” My eyes widen. “And how do our heads not explode from all the pressure? Do we change into spacesuits and helmets? Do you have one for me to borrow?”

  Chiara laughs. “You do have a lot of questions.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s just that this is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. Ever.”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “It must be very weird.”

  “Just a little.”

  “We don’t have space suits. Or helmets. But our heads have never exploded.” She pushes off from the railing and dances back into the middle of the deck. Both sides of the ship have clean, polished wooden staircases that lead to the stern and bow. Alessandro stands at the wheel, his back to us as he directs the zeppelin out from the wedge between our two houses.

  “Then how does it all work?” I spread my arms wide. “You don’t run out of oxygen?”

  She shakes her head. “Papa says it’s magic.”

  “Of course it’s magic,” Alessandro yells over his shoulder. “You saw the stars in the forest. What else would it be?”

  “It’s just that we learn all this stuff in science class and then that’s not how any of it works?”

  “Atmospheric pressure is real. Science is real,” Alessandro says. “But so is magic.” He shrugs. “These things aren’t mutually exclusive. Magic and science can coexist. Sometimes they’re the same thing.”

  Chiara points overhead. “This is my job. I’ve got to turn them all on and off.”  Ten brass lanterns hang along the deck, illuminating the darkness with their bright flames.

  Between the staircases leading to the bow is a silvery-blue door with a large brass knob. A sliver of a moon is etched into its front. “What’s in there?” I ask.

  “That’s where we keep our equipment.” Chiara smiles. “And it’s the ship’s nursery. We keep the baby stars in there—the ones you saw in the forest.”

  Chiara skips toward the door and waves for me to follow.  “I need to check on them. Depending on how good they do getting used to the atmosphere, we’re going to release them tonight. Wanna see them?”

  “Yes!” I almost shout.

  The zeppelin’s balloon pushes out from between the roofs. It squeezes to fit into the small space before blooming to its full capacity as if it were taking a deep breath. Just as Chiara said. Like a healthy set of lungs.

  I follow after Chiara. She opens the door about half a foot and pushes in through the small gap. “Stars run hot. We have to keep the warm air inside until they’re used to the cold.”

  I shove my way into the room and close the door quickly behind me. A glaring white light hits me in the face. It forces its way beyond my eyes and into the darkest parts of my skull. I close my eyes and try to shield myself from its reach, but it burns through my eyelids.

  “Oh, I forgot,” Chiara says. She hands me a pair of round dark-lensed gold and leather Amelia Earhart goggles. “Sorry. Put those on quick.”

  At first it’s difficult to fit them over my mask, but Chiara helps me yank them down. When I reopen my eyes, the light is no more powerful than a small flickering candle in a dark room. �
�Why was it so bright?” It felt like a high-powered X-ray machine—much more powerful than the one at Dr. Tucker’s office.

  “The little stars. They get brighter the closer we get to space. Aren’t they adorable? Poor babies!” she says. “They’ve haven’t been feeling well.”

  It takes a moment for me to spy them in their little bassinets. I gasp and step back until my heels collide with a bucket, sending a mop and broom clattering to the floor.

  “Sshhh,” Chiara scolds, her big brown eyes framed by matching goggles. “You’re going to make them even more nervous.”

  Inside the room are five dark-blue bassinets.

  And in each bassinet is a star.

  “What are they?”

  “Stars, obviously,” Chiara says.

  “But they’re . . . babies?”

  “Aside from shooting stars, all stars come from the souls of humans who pass on. It takes a long time for a star to be born though. These baby stars are the souls of people who died nearly thirty years ago.”

  Chiara must see the confusion on my face, because she starts to giggle.

  “Humans—everything inside us, even our souls—are made from stardust,” she explains. “When we die, we’re reborn and spend the rest of our days as stars. Watching our families on earth, bouncing around, shining bright.”

  Catholic school teaches us that if we do good deeds on earth, our souls will be rewarded and sent up to heaven. I imagined heaven to look like a big, fluffy cloud kingdom with a huge golden gate. Something about that idea always felt a little stuffy. Like an exclusive country club that makes you pay to get in. After all, why does heaven need a gate?

  Chiara’s explanation is a much better afterlife than standing around in white robes with golden halos. Being a star and floating around in the heavens with other stars. That sounds like a much less stressful way to spend eternity.

  The stars blink like lightbulbs that could go out at any second. They don’t seem as cheery as they did the other day in the forest. Their tiny faces twist and contort. Tinny wails echo from their mouths.

  Chiara grabs a hot water bottle and thermometer off a table in the back and proceeds to fuss over the stars. She places the hot water bottle on one star’s belly while checking the temperature of the one right next to him.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Why are they sick?”

  “Oh, it’s just a mess.” She frowns at the thermometer’s reading and scribbles down some notes at a nearby table. “They’re not like animals or human babies with mommies or daddies to teach them how to be stars. Spazzatrici have to take them to earth for training. There was a huge rainstorm when we were bringing them down, and they all caught colds. They’re actually hotter than they should be right now.”

  “All that heat is coming from them?” Sweat collects on my forehead and under my arms. I wipe it off with the back of my hand.

  “Usually it’s hot, but not this bad.”

  One star cries out the farther away Chiara moves, its little howls helpless and sad. My heart twists at the sound and I move forward, wanting to do something, anything to make it feel better. But what could I do for a star? I don’t even know how to take care of a human baby.

  “The colds are just regular colds, but since they’re babies—baby stars—it’s harder for them to shake.”

  “So it’s like they don’t have strong enough immune systems to bounce back?”

  She nods. “Poor dears. They do like singing, if you want to help,” she adds as if reading my mind.

  “I’m not the best singer. My dad says I sound like a cat howling at the moon.”

  Chiara laughs while preparing a small syringe of a purple liquid from a medicine bottle. She feeds it to the star on her right and dabs its face with a washcloth. “Cat howling makes up a lot of a star’s lullabies,” she says. “Just try it. But they only understand Italian.”

  “My granny used to sing one to me they might like,” I say. “It’s the only Italian I really know.”

  “Try,” Chiara says.

  The other stars around the one crying begin to yowl too, their little voices feeding off one another. The noise rattles around in my head.

  I close my eyes and begin Granny Ranieri’s favorite lullaby. “Stella, stellina, la notte si avvicina. La fiamma traballa. La mucca nella stalla.”

  The stars’ cries soften, their loud wails now gentle little coos.

  I open one eye and look at Chiara. “My Italian isn’t great.”

  “That was good!” She claps her hands together. “Look how peaceful they are now,” she says. “My mama used to sing that one to Alessandro and me. I can sing the rest with you, if you want.” Chiara starts the lullaby where I left off: “La mucca e il vitello, la pecora e l’agnello.” She smiles. “Do you remember the rest?”

  “A little.”

  Chiara sings again, and I join in with her, our voices warbling and only slightly in harmony. “La chioccia con il pulcino, ognuno ha il suo bambino, ognuno ha la sua mamma, e tutti fanno la nanna.”

  The little stars wiggle in their bassinets. Eyes heavy with sleep.

  “Worked like a charm.” She looks at the chart on the table. “Hopefully the rest will help them start feeling better, but we might not be able to release them tonight.” Chiara moves toward the door. “We need to let them sleep.”

  We exit onto the deck and close the door, and then Chiara takes our goggles and hangs them on a nearby hook. She blows into her hands, snuggling deeper into her plush down coat.

  I curl my hands into my hoodie’s sleeves and stuff them into my pajama pockets. The wind is blowing faster now. It stings at my burned, unhealed skin. My breath comes out in plumes of white smoke. I wish I had my coat from the downstairs closet.

  “How’re the little stars?” Alessandro asks from his station behind the wheel.

  “They’re not doing too well,” Chiara says, frowning. “Still have temperatures. Acting fussy.”

  Alessandro tosses his hands into the air. “We need to release them sometime, Chiara. They aren’t your pets.”

  “I know they’re not.” She crosses her arms over her chest and wrinkles her tiny nose. “But it’s still not safe.”

  We travel even higher. Nausea hits me in waves, and I take deep breaths to settle my stomach. I don’t even risk looking over the railing. Even from the middle of the deck I can see the New York City lights far, far beneath us.

  The ship zips through the sky, surrounded by darkness and the twinkling, curious eyes of millions and millions of stars. It all moves so fast, like shooting through the subway tunnels at lightning speed.

  I gulp down my seasickness—cloud sickness?—and follow Chiara up to the stern.

  Alessandro pulls out a strange-looking device, like a compass but much larger and with more doodads affixed to its sides. It’s gold, old-looking, and several little metal spirals and knobs poke out of it.

  “What’s that?” I ask. A tingle of excitement rushes through me, and I wish again that I had my sketch pad. There are so many things I want to remember about this strange trip.

  He grins and buffs some dirt off the gadget’s side with his sleeve. “This is my family’s pride and joy,” he says. “It’s the moon tracker our nonno built. Now all the spazzatrici use it. The best, most accurate moon tracker available.”

  I lean forward, getting a view of the gadget’s face. It looks a little bit like a clock face, but instead of numbers, a moon, constellations, other planets, and what looks like earth circle the perimeter. In the middle are three arrows, like a clock’s hands. One sits steady on earth while the other two rotate in opposite directions. On the very outside of the gadget, surrounding the moon and other images, are five shooting stars, moving in slow progression around the edge.

  “What do the knobs sticking out of the sides do?” I ask.

  “One flips the device’s face to show more locations. This spiral one twists and helps us navigate to the part of the earth that’s closest to the moon.”
r />   “Doesn’t that take a long time?”

  He shakes his head. “The zeppelin’s fast. Much faster than any airplane or rocket.”

  “That’s incredible,” I say, tugging at the sleeves of my hoodie.

  “Spazzatrici are incredible.” Alessandro straightens a bit, pride shining in his eyes.

  The idea of magic still feels strange to me, almost impossible—like trying to hold on to a dream right as you’re waking. I point to the twinkling rubies on the edge of the gadget. “What do these mean?”

  He smiles. “Shooting stars. You do know what those are, right?”

  “Of course I know what shooting stars are,” I say with a huff. “You make wishes on them and they’re supposed to come true.” The Fourth of July before Dad and I got into the accident, my cousins and I spent the night lying on a blanket at the beach. A shooting star flew by and we all made wishes. I wished for the next year of school to be the best one yet. Dad and I got into the accident the Wednesday before Labor Day weekend—right before the first day of school. My stomach drops. “It’s never worked for me.”

  “They do come true!” Chiara says. “But not in the way you might think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Alessandro looks at his sister, and Chiara shrugs. “It’s rare for them to answer wishes asked from people on earth. Too many wishes at once.”

  “If you’re up here and you see one flying by, you can catch one with a net and it’ll grant your wish,” Chiara adds.

  “Sometimes. They don’t grant every wish.” He frowns. “It needs to be a good one.”

  The cogs in my brain click together as realization sets in. A wish for my family to be normal again. My dad and me fully healed. There is hope. “Have you ever caught one?”

  “Once, but they’re difficult.”

  “And usually kind of mean,” Chiara explains.

  “But it’s possible.” I bounce on my tiptoes. “Did your wishes come true?”

  He shakes his head. “I didn’t wish for anything. That would be unprofessional.”