Shooting Stars

Jimmy was your typical young boy who got goose bumps when he looked up into the sky and dreamed of the day he can shoot aliens and do somersaults on the moon. He would put the empty goldfish bowl on his head, wear one of the spare lifejackets from their boat, wrap toilet paper around his body and wander around the house in slow motion, pretending he was on the moon. His mom would shout at him for wasting toilet paper and his dad would pretend he was an invading alien from the Planet Zonk. They would spend hours playing Alien Attack in the backyard. Jimmy loved his mom and dad. He looked up to them like they were Superman and Wonder Woman. They would take him to the park, the arcade (even though he was too small to play most of the games), the movies, the beach and anywhere else their adventures took them. They were so happy together, the three of them. Things had been different more recently; his mom was disappearing on business trips all over the country. He started noticing that her trips were getting longer and he was starting to miss her. Well, he didn’t miss her yelling at him to clean his bedroom while he was playing his video games. That’s why he made the most of playing games and drinking Coke, something else she didn’t let him do, while she was away.
He was just about to complete level 8 until he was blinded by a light in the corner of his eye. He looked over at the window and saw the low hanging sun in the orange sky. Jimmy knew that it wouldn’t be long until the earth had its back to the sun to face the moon and its starry aura. He dropped his video controller and sprinted up the stairs two steps at a time to get his telescope. Jimmy couldn’t believe that it was finally going to happen. When his dad told him about shooting stars for the first time he was amazed. He was even more amazed when there were going to be some in a week’s time. Jimmy had been counting down the days, even the hours, when the stars would streak across the sky. Once he burst into his room he wrapped his arms around his new telescope, which was three inches taller than him, and picked it up by leaning backwards so that its legs hovered over the ground making him lose balance. Realizing that wasn’t going to work, he put it down and picked it up again only this time he bent his knees, wrapped his arms around it so that it was now five inches taller than him, and then lifted it up. Jimmy went carefully down each step, placing both feet on each step, until he made it to the bottom and then hurried into the kitchen where his dad was cooking dinner.
“Jimmy, I’d better not see you running with that telescope again otherwise you’ll be in trouble young man”. His eyes couldn’t match his stern voice. Jimmy timidly apologized under his breath as he was never used to his dad telling him off; he was doing it more and more recently. He never liked being told off, especially by his dad. After an awkward pause, Jimmy conjured enough courage to say something.
“But dad the sun is just setting and I don’t want to miss the shooting stars” Jimmy started the sentence quietly until his excitement about the evening’s events caused him to finish his sentence louder than he had started it.
“Calm down sport. We have time! And how can I forget that they’re tonight when you’ve reminded me five times today already” He finished checking the pizza in the oven then grabbed Jimmy under the armpits and spun him around in the air pretending he was a space ship flying around the universe. “But now it’s time to eat dinner then we’ll head for the hill, sound like a plan?”
The hill was where Jimmy’s parents took him together ever since he could remember. It was where he was introduced to the stars, the moon and the universe all in one night. They would take a blanket, a flask of coffee and a telescope, and spend all night gazing to the sky. But for the meantime Jimmy would have to eat dinner before he could see the stars again. Besides, he could never say no to pizza, especially when there were no vegetables on it. Jimmy pounced on the couch from behind, misjudged the distance and ended up sprawled on the floor in front of the TV.
“Jimmy! Get back here! We’re going to eat dinner at the table tonight”
“But we only ever eat there when mom’s here”
“No, but we’re going to tonight…and tomorrow night”
“What about the night after that?”
“At the table”
“Is it because mom’s going to be back then?”
“No Jimmy. If I’ve told you once I’ve told you one hundred times, she’ll be back when she can be” His dad ended their bickering with his raised voice that hung in the sudden silence. Jimmy was shocked by he and his dad’s recent bickering. “I’m sorry sport; I didn’t mean to shout at you. Dad’s just been busy at work this week. But I think you should take this piece of Pepperoni pizza before I do.”
He sliced the pizza into slices and wedged one out of its circle. Jimmy got impatient of his dad cutting up the pizza, so the moment the first free piece was available he grabbed it with both hands; but it was too big, so his dad picked up a piece and guided it into his mouth using his two missing front teeth as a target. They finished the entire pizza and washed it down with a couple of sodas.
From Jimmy’s constant pestering, his dad decided that they should leave early. They packed up the car and left as the sky was changing from bright blue to navy. It took about 10 minutes to drive and with each minute they travelled farther away from electric lights and deeper into the natural moon light. As he gazed into the darkening sky, he wondered if his mom was looking at the same picture he could see. His mom was an artist, so she would always talk to Jimmy about painting and drawing. His dad converted the garage into her studio and in there she would keep all of her paintings she was either working on or personal ones that no money could buy. She focused mostly on landscapes and nature, but one day she showed dad and Jimmy a painting she had been working on for a while; it was called ‘The Universe’. She was inspired to paint it for them and their obsession with the sky. They both thought it was amazing and stared at it in wonder for long periods of time without blinking. Even though Jimmy’s dad had influence him with his astrological career from an early age, Jimmy decided to draw a picture for his mom to follow in her footsteps also. After using up half of his eraser and sharpening his pencil leaving its carving on the table, his masterpiece was ready. He presented his work to his mom a couple of nights later and explained how it was them together on the moon as a family with aliens in the background, and the Earth in the far distance. His mum was so excited to see his stick people hovering over a big bobbily circle with strange creatures around them holding hands. When she commented on them being together as a family, her voice went quieter; then she paused for a moment lost in thought. Jimmy asked if she was ok, and she insisted she was fine and that it deserved a special place to hang, so she walked into her studio and stuck it up next to her “The Universe” painting. Jimmy felt like a true artist seeing his work up next to his mums. The picture he was looking up at was exactly like the one she painted not so long ago. The bouncing car snapped Jimmy out of his daydream.
“We’re here!” Jimmy cried at the top of his lungs, realizing that they were already there.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Get the telescope set up like I showed you to last time, but this time don’t run with it”
Jimmy nodded bashfully and obeyed his father’s command. He flew out the car and went to the back seat where the tall and skinny telescope lay sleeping. He grabbed its legs and cradled it up to the top of the hill and stuck its heels into the soft soil. His dad followed a moment later with a blanket, a flask and a torch. Jimmy went to his aid and together they shook the blanket in the air as though it was a magic carpet, until it gently lowered itself on to the grassy floor. Before Jimmy realized it, his dad tackled him to the ground leaving him in hysterically laughing from his father’s ticklish hands on his tummy. Soon the tickling stopped and they lay still next to each other looking up into the sky.
“You see that bright one there? I mean the one brighter than the rest?” A hairy arm swung into mid-air and paused with a finger hovering under the brightest twinkle in the sky.
“That’s the International Space Station. If you look really closely, you can see the separate parts to it.” Jimmy squinted as hard as he could to see it, but it only gave him a headache. Instead he relaxed and explored the others.
“And you see that bright red one to the right of the Space Station? Well, that is called a Red Giant. It’s a dying star. Oh would you look at that! On this side of the sky there a bunch of tiny dim stars, the ones that you can barely see? They are called a Nebula and that’s a very baby star”. Jimmy was silent; he was in amazement of the sky and its mystical wonders.
“Dad, doesn’t the sky look like the picture mum painted? Remember ‘The Universe’?”
“Yeah, I guess”
There was a silence between them, much like the one when his dad had yelled at him.
“Daddy, are you ok?”Jimmy’s dad sat up and Jimmy complied.
“Jimmy, I’ve been meaning to tell you something. I’ve been avoiding having to but you’re gonna have to know sooner or later.” He took a deep and controlled breath before he began. “I know that things have been tough the past week with mum away”
“Is she coming back?” Jimmy abruptly jumped in, hoping for the answer he wanted to hear.
“No, Jimmy. No. She isn’t coming back” his dad said in a very serious monotone.
“But…what do you mean? You said she’d be back” Jimmy said in his timid voice that could barely be heard.
“I said she would be back when she was ready to come back, and it turns out that she isn’t.”
“When will she be ready?”
“She won’t be sport.”
Silence resonated through Jimmy, his dad and the stars. His dad swung his hairy arm around Jimmy’s shoulder to make him feel secure and safe, but he ended up holding Jimmy so tightly he couldn’t breathe. Jimmy wasn’t sure what to think. The parents he loved and admired so much were now two separate people. He found it hard to interpret that a mum and dad could actually separate.
“Will I ever see mummy again?”
“I’m sure you will, one day sport. But think of all the fun we’ve been having without her, hey? We can turn her studio into a games room and we can play video games and ‘Alien Invasion’ all day.” Jimmy suddenly released himself from his dad’s forceful grip and looked him in the eye.
“What about the moon picture I drew of us three together on the moon?”
There was another silence, in which Jimmy looked away from his dad and into the sky. He focused on the Red Giant that became more and more blurred by the rapidly rising water level in his eyes.
“Why did she leave us?” It was that moment the tear from Jimmy’s tear erupted and spilt down his left chubby cheek. His voice had suddenly become high-pitched and squeaky.
“I don’t know sport, I don’t know. Mum just isn’t very happy right now and she needs to be alone for a while.” His dad’s voice was now becoming surprisingly high-pitched like Jimmy’s.
Jimmy wanted to believe his dad, but he didn’t know how life was going to be with one parent. As Jimmy was still looking into the night sky, there was a white flash. Jimmy rubbed his eyes to drain out some of the water to try and see what it was. There was another white flash, but this time Jimmy could see that it was a straight line that darted from one side of the sky to the other that stabbed the darkness. He kept looking up and saw another star shooting across the sky. He didn’t understand it.