Meteors
“I think I’m having a bad day.”
Sara bit her tongue on the retort that almost jumped from her lips, pausing merely for dramatic effect before drawling deliberately into the smoke-fuzzied air, “It’s 3:45 in the morning. Bad day today, or bad day ongoing? Or like, does 24 hours constitute a day, because this really isn’t—“
“A bad week, maybe.”
“Yeah, well, me too.” Especially now, having been drug out of bed in the middle of the night, forced to creep through her silent house without waking her housemates and now sitting with him on the back steps that were very quickly turning her entire bottom to an increasingly numb block of ice.
Paul just looked at her, a small smile tilting that mouth that could match her quip for quip, when provoked, tugging at the hem of her pajama pants. “I’m finding it very difficult to take you seriously.”
Confusion brought her brows together and then she frowned. “The wiener pants aren’t my fault, asshole—you’re the one who drug me out of bed in the middle of the night.” His furtive tapping against her window had echoed a sharp staccato over the soft whir of the fan beside her bed, and she had groaned, pulling the duvet over her head. Eventually, she had parted the blinds and, pressing her nose to the glass, practically growled. “Don’t you have a girlfriend you can wake up in the middle of the night?” He had merely nodded, crooking one finger to draw her outside.
Now, she could feel her cranky scale climbing, scarlet creeping over her cheeks with an illusive heat as it so often did when she got annoyed, and she snatched his Marlboro, inhaling deeply, fighting the tickle in her throat. Her eyes, the color of the sky during a summer thunderstorm watered at the effort and she looked heavenward to clear them. With a dainty clearing of her throat, she handed the cigarette back.
“Who wears Oscar Meyer pajama pants anyway?”
“I do.” The silence enveloped them as he visibly bit back a grin, toeing at the splintered wooden stop with the tip of his shoe.
“Why are you having a bad week?”
She stared off into the distance in that dreamy way that sometimes cracked the façade that she tried so desperately to maintain, gnawing at her lower lip. “I think that my desk chair has gotten uneven—it wobbles sometimes when I move.”
“Like a weeble? Don’t worry, it won’t fall down.”
“My mascara has gotten all dried out and clumpy, my favorite pen ran out of ink, the sole of my right converse is declaring itself independent from the rest of the shoe nation, I’m graduating from college in three months and I have absolutely no marketable job skills, and I think I may be getting osteoporosis.”
“You don’t wear mascara.”
“Of course I don’t, what do you want me to be, spider-eyes?”
He smiled, the first genuine smile she’d seen in days, the kind that starts somewhere deep in your chest and ends round about your hairline. “Come on, Sara-bear, we’re taking a trip.” He grabbed her hand with the enthusiasm of a boy half his age, tugging her across the gravel driveway in her fuzzy slippers, the big tigers’ heads banging against her ankles with every step.
“Where are we going?” She was torn between intrigue and annoyance, the latter losing ground fairly quickly. His dirt brown Oldsmobile 84, arguably not dirt-colored by design, but who could tell by now, was parked halfway into the bushes and she had to duck under a branch just to get in. Sinking into the expansive velvet seat, she felt a thrill of excitement flit through her, a touch of adventure. “Paul,” she whined. “Come on, where are you taking me?”
He merely smiled, backing the huge car that she had affectionately termed the Wide Ride out of the driveway. “It’s a surprise, now stop asking.”
The ride was quiet, the song on the radio the only accompaniment to their thoughts. He bobbed his head along to Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer and she stared out the window, pressing her nose to the glass, watching the thick fog that hovered over the moonlit ground, painting the whole night with a dream-like brush, soft and fragile, threatening to dissipate at the first word spoken. The stars hung suspended above them, unmoving as they sped underneath, and she traced a fingertip over the glass, stenciling the constellations there as if to remember them more clearly, more concretely, with less of that transient feel that seemed to encompass the night, and their lives. Becoming aware of their path, she turned back to him. “I’m not going skinny-dipping.”
He turned left onto the highway leading to the Reservoir where more than one night had led large groups of not-so-slightly inebriated freshmen (and upperclassmen, though they wouldn’t admit it as readily) to doff their clothes for the sake of summer-night bonding. He chuckled, taking the first left before the one to the Res. “No, you’re not. I’d have to get you wasted before that, right?”
She nodded sagely. “Of course.”
He grinned, maneuvering the Wide Ride alongside a stand of pines and killing the engine. “Come on.” Hopping out of the car, he headed for the woods, and she had to jog to catch up, nearly tripping in the process over the branch-littered ground, the cold seeping through the thin jacket she had grabbed on the way out the door.
“If I’d known we were going for a hike, I might have worn more appropriate footwear.”
He just grinned, kicking at one of her tigers. “I would never ask you to forsake fashion just for a hike.” He flipped on a huge flashlight that she hadn’t even noticed in the car and an almost invisible path became apparent. He started down it without her, and she could only trip after him.
The trees arched black and silent above them, forming a fractal pattern with the midnight blue sky slicing its way through in chunks and grabs, the stars just barely visible. She felt like complaining, though a discomfort with the dark woods was more the reason than actual annoyance. “Geez, why are we doing this? It’s creepy. I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things,” she grumped in a near-mumble, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Hush, or I’ll make you.”
She could hear the amusement that laced his words and was forced to grin in turn. “Whatever, I’d drop you like a bad habit.” She shoved at his back with a laugh and he stumbled down the path a couple of feet. They walked in companionable silence for a good ten minutes, and Sara wrapped her jacket more tightly to her, hiding from the brutal wind that rustled through the old pines. She hadn’t yet been able to figure out Paul’s intentions tonight. He was so often impulsive, but this set a new record, and she wasn’t so sure that she was enjoying it.
“Alright, there’s a big decline right here, so be careful,” Paul spoke up, interrupting her internal analysis. She automatically grabbed his shoulder for support, following him down what seemed like steps carved into the stone of the slope, though it was obvious that no man had taken a tool to the earth there. “Okay, almost there.” He stepped over a gap in the stone, then turned around and offered his hand. “Big step.” The fissure between the slope and the slab of stone that stretched out before them looked as if she could shimmy right through to nothingness if she wanted to. Becoming aware of the rock on which they were standing, a shiver traced down her spine, realizing that their perch hung suspended over the valley past the plateau on which they lived, held on by that nothing she had just stepped over. Logically, she knew that it was attached at the base, but the feeling of hovering, balanced above infinity, refused to leave her.
“What is this?” she whispered into the night.
“This. . .is what I wanted to show you.” He led her with a gentle tug to sit Indian-style upon the cold rock and then killed the flashlight with a flick of his thumb. Abruptly they were plunged into darkness and she gasped audibly, all rational thought escaping as she realized that they were literally surrounded by stars: in front as far as the eye could see, arching overhead, wrapping around either side of their perch. The tiny torches were all at once crystalline pure, cold, unmoving, stretching into forever—and as comforting as her mom’s vegetable soup and cornbread, wrapped between ice-cold hands on a night just such as this. He stretched out on his back beside her and without a word she mimicked his movement, relaxing into the unwieldy stone without a thought to discomfort or a word of complaint. The cold seeped through the cotton separating her from the rock, but she ignored it. She felt immeasurably small, a dot on the face of a giant planet, held down by its imperceptible spinning. She could almost feel the pressure that held her there, pressing her into the stone with a gentle force like two hands upon her shoulders, not letting her miss one second of this experience.
She didn’t have a joke to make, no rabbits left to pull out of her hat. “Why are you having a bad day?” Her words sounded hoarse, breathed into the sanctity of the darkness, surprising even to her. Paul didn’t speak for a long time and she wondered for a moment if he had even heard her above the rush of the silence.
He was rarely serious, but as his deep indrawn breath broke the silence, she could practically feel their banter slip away, as desperately as she wanted to wrap her fingers around it and hold tight, as desperately as she wanted to hide behind it. “Do you ever think that every decision you ever made was wrong? That you’ve gotten to a point where you can’t go back and change anything? But you don’t know how to continue on the path you’re on. . .where to go?”
She was shaken by his question, the lack of preamble, and the fact that she felt as if the words could have been her own; she curled her fingers into the rock, nails scraping over the sandstone to keep from grabbing his hand. She just needed a touch to calm the fear, fear that she usually denied but that after he had put it into words, acknowledged as a mutual dread, was undeniably real. “Yeah, I feel that way.” As graduation loomed before them, the future waited on the other side, the unknown that threatened to devour them. He had talked about joining the Peace Corps and she would be in grad school. . .somewhere. The distance would stretch between them until it didn’t matter anymore. Distance wouldn’t be the issue, they just wouldn’t bother to call, wouldn’t have the time, wouldn’t want to.
“What are we supposed to do?” His voice was muted in the still night and she shook her head, knowing that he couldn’t see her. All of a sudden, above their heads one of the pinpricks of light shot across the sky, arching high over its comrades, leaving them behind as it made one last lunge for freedom. Mesmerized, Sara and Paul automatically linked fingers, holding tight as if to keep from following the star’s path. No words were needed as a calm settled over them like a warm quilt; maybe the world wasn’t ending. If a huge ball of flaming gas, millions of miles away could arch its way through a pitch black sky, no thought to trepidation or fear, completely free and alone, maybe they could find their way as well. Their fingers laced like the strings on a baseball mitt, Sara squeezed tight. After a minute, Paul squeezed back, gently, and Sara smiled into the darkness.
