Story [Issue 74] Stargazer

[tweezers 1,034]

 

 

    

 

 

I pull myself up over the edge of the wall, the rough concrete grabbing at my hands, and the slight breeze behind me pushing me up and over with a gentle laugh. The sky is clear and cloudless, the stars punching bright white pinpricks through the deep navy backdrop. The moon fights for attention with the millions and millions of dots scattered everywhere, and illuminates the roof in front of me. A ventilation box in the middle, a ladder stretched languidly across its length, and a person sitting on the opposite side, her palms splayed out behind them, legs dangling dangerously over the edge, and her head perpendicular to the ground, fixated on the great dark dome above.

 

I stumble towards her, sand and bits of detritus pricking at the soles of my feet as I go. The soft crunching alerts her to my presence, and she lets her head drop backwards completely, revealing a pair of brown orbs staring at me. They dance merrily as they take in the seven year old standing there, and the mouth suspended above them spreads into a wide upside down grin.

 

“Hey, kiddo. Why’re you up here?” comes the greeting, as my sister flips her head the right way up and half turns around to look at me better. I move towards her, smiling, arms outstretched, into her waiting embrace. “Can’t sleep”, I mumble, burying my face in the ratty white shirt that she uses as a pyjama top. She laughs softly, pulls her legs up off the edge to move closer to the middle of the roof and sits cross legged. I clamber into her lap, with the smooth ease of having done the same thing for five years.

 

“You’re too young to not be able to sleep, you know. Weren’t you playing with that kid from next door after school?”

 

“We only played inside. She wouldn’t let us go outside today.”

 

Another soft laugh. We both knew who she was, and also why it was said with all the venom a seven year old could muster.

 

“Why do we have her everyday anyway? When’re they going to come back?

 

We also knew who ‘they’ were. That word brought a quiet sigh, not a laugh.

 

“I don’t know, kid. Whenever they feel like it is when. Is that why you can’t sleep?”

 

I didn’t reply. I didn’t know how to properly say why I couldn’t sleep. Or why I was up on the roof in the middle of the night.   

 

Another quiet sigh.

 

“Tell you what. How about I show you how to have fun with the stars?”

 

“Okay!”

 

“See, not all of those stars come out every night. Most nights you’ll see that one there, and that shiny one there, and if it’s cloudy you won’t see any, but usually they switch places.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Easy answer, or real answer?”

 

“Easy.” I didn’t want to try making sense of the complicated truth.

 

“Well, shining all night is hard, and sometimes the stars get tired, so they don’t want to come out at night. Kind of like how if you play all day and get tired, you don’t want to go to school.”

 

“So are stars like people?”

 

“Yeah, they are. You remember that movie you saw the other day where all the people formed up and made patterns?”

 

“Yeah!”

 

“Well, just like that, some stars like to make patterns of different things. The grown-ups noticed this a long time ago, and they pointed at the stars and said ‘that group of stars looks like a dog’, or ‘that lot look like they’re making a bear’, so they made a map of the sky with all the shapes in it, and then they called the shapes ‘constellations’."

 

“Constellations?”

 

“Yeah, constellations. But the thing is, you might not see the same shapes that they saw.”

 

“So?”

 

“So you can make up your own ones. See, look at those ones near the moon. Tell me what you think they look like.”

 

“They look like…a hat!”

 

“And those ones over there?”

 

“A clock!”

 

“See, you’re getting the hang of it already.”

 

The moments dissolved into each other, becoming a blur of new shapes, laughs, and the shared warmth of two siblings with nothing to do but look at the stars and make things up. I woke up the next day in my bed, with my sister curled up next to me, fast asleep and still in her pyjamas.

 

Ten years later, I lie on a different roof and remember that warmth. And miss it. Why was she on the roof that night? Probably for the same reason that seven year old me was, except that she knew why no one told us to come down. Or why no one was there to tell us to come down.

 

The stars above me are still punching white pinpricks through the navy sky. The moon is still fighting for attention. The grown-ups are still sticking to their shapes and calling them constellations.

 

My sister won’t be looking at the stars tonight, though. She hasn’t been for a long, long time, not since that day with the speeding car, and the broken light, and the hospital, and the big black box.

 

So I’ll stay here. And tonight, I’ll look at the stars. And maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up in my bed, seven years old, with my sister curled up next to me.

 

I probably won’t.

 

But I want to.

 

God, I want to.

 

 

[Magenta 5,165]

:'(

[maryam98 1,171]

So sad :( But very well written, too.

[GrandExecutioner 1,403]

Cri

[gokuMI6 1,290]

:(

10/10

for emotion , 

The same feeling i got from hearing it

 

 

 

 

[Tanko757 0]

All around me are familiar faces...

[Zggy 0]

Wow. This story was so beautiful! Subtle and heartbreaking, it just made me cry for ten minutes. I would recommend this to anyone! 

[tweezers 1,034]

Wow. This story was so beautiful! Subtle and heartbreaking, it just made me cry for ten minutes. I would recommend this to anyone! 

[Magenta 5,165]

Wow. This story was so beautiful! Subtle and heartbreaking, it just made me cry for ten minutes. I would recommend this to anyone! 

waw dis mult want's to propagate sorrow .-.

[Zggy 0]

waw dis mult want's to propagate sorrow .-.

I do hope that you know that's not what I meant. I would share this story around as it is so touching, not to "propagate sorrow" as you put it.

[Magenta 5,165]

I do hope that you know that's not what I meant. I would share this story around as it is so touching, not to "propagate sorrow" as you put it.

:ph34r: k