Gerald’s Stars

Gerald kept his head down, the sky a detestable sight. Sun or rain, it didn’t matter. Hanging his shopping bag on his wrist, he pulled out a cigarette and sought a lighter from his pocket as he waited by the side of the road.

A speeding lorry zoomed past and splashed him with the leftovers of last night’s collected downpour. His hands stopped. The cigarette drooped with damp, his hair and clothes dripping.

Two playing kids strayed from the supermarket carpark and found it amusing to bump into him, knocking his bag from his hand. They didn’t apologise. They ran back like they had knocked nothing more than a sodden lamppost. Stupid, rotten, annoying kids.

Something poked Gerald’s elbow. There was only one thing that had a tendency to do that, and that thing was tied to him by blood relation of being an elder sister.

“What is it?” he asked without turning to look. He picked up his soaked shopping.

“I could be a robber with a gun,” Anna said, stepping into view, and showing off that smirk of hers, “and you wouldn’t even care to turn around.”

“Nothing of value here.” Gerald pulled out another cigarette.

“God, you’re acting like such a grumpy old man.” Anna looked him up and down. “You’re starting to look like one, too. Here I thought you still had twenty years of cuteness left.”

“Screw off,” said Gerald, his patience snapping as he realised he had forgotten a lighter. “Why are you even here?”

Anna brightened up. His sister, three years older, the age of twenty-five, classified as one of the most annoying people around by the government, always had an irritating shine to her. Like everything was perfect if she just smiled it away.

“There’s a meteor shower tonight,” she said. “I was hoping—”

“Stop right there.” Gerald put his hand an inch from her face, tempted to palm her forehead as a joke. But he wasn’t in the mood for it. “I don’t care about any of that.”

“But you used to—”

“No. I repeat my ‘screw off.’ Now get out of here.”

Anna didn’t move. Her smirk had faded, replaced with that horrible desirably-forgettable concern.

“It’s not your fault,” she said.

“Stop saying that!” Gerald’s frustration burst out in a quick breath. “Every stupid year, you tell me at least twice. I know. I get it. I’m not blaming myself. Mum and Dad were always going to split. It doesn’t matter, does it? Why do you keep bringing it up?”

Anna gazed up to the clearing clouds. “Then why do you hate the stars? You always thought they were magic. Like wishes.”

“No,” said Gerald. He shook his jacket vigorously, drops flying without direction. “No. They’re not wishes. They’re not hope. They’re just stars! Tiny specs of light from lightyears away. Most of which have probably stopped shining. Now, are we done? Are you just here to annoy me? Because you don’t need to be in my presence to do that.”

Anna smirked again. “I know you’re free this evening.”

“How could you possibly know—”

“Sarah told me you got fired.”

Stupid, rotten, annoying Sarah. “Then, I am busy searching for a new job,” he said. “Very busy.”

“Calvin would like to see you again. Your adorable nephew misses you.”

“It’s a one-way feeling. And he’s not adorable.”

Anna’s smirk only grew as though she could see a truth only she wanted.

“Perfect. I’ll pick you up at eight. Ta-ta, Gerry.”

She sauntered off to her perfectly parked, perfectly clean Bentley. Gerald detected a spring in her step...

Stupid, rotten, annoying sister.

*

Why had he let himself be picked up? Why had he ridden in the back of the car to play with Calvin? And why were they going to the abandoned train station in the hills?!

Gerald hated it. He wanted to be back home, maybe playing or watching something to help ease the blues. Not here, not as an unneeded part of his sister’s family.

As they hiked up the through a steep forest which no one should ever have to traipse through in the darkness with nothing but torches, Gerald’s plan was to run when no one was looking. His sister would only be angry for a week. Possibly two. But it didn’t matter. What good would come from looking at the stars again?

“Uncle Gerry,” Calvin’s voice squeaked from his side. “My foot’s stuck.”

Gerald sighed. Anna didn’t turn around to help. What a standout mother she was.

He bent and pulled the vine free from Calvin’s trainers and nudged the boy forward. “Go on. Catch up with your silly mother.”

“Can I have a piggyback?” the boy begged. “My feet hurt.”

So do mine! Where’s my piggyback? “Fine,” Gerald sighed.

Calvin didn’t weigh much more than a backpack full of daily necessities. But a backpack didn’t talk and sniff, and now Calvin wouldn’t stop pointing his torch at everything and inquiring what it was. Gerald kept his answers simple: a tree, another tree, probably a bear that eats talkative children.

They reached the summit of what must have been a twenty-four-hour walk of hell. It smelt of damp grass and rust, sprinkled with a pointless breeze. The familiarity of it had a deep coldness. The single carriage of the leftover train still sat in the decrepit station. It was supposed to have been removed decades ago, but protests protected it because of wildlife. Now, nature had made a home here. Vines claimed the carriage and white lilies sprouted all over where they weren't wanted.

Anna pulled free her telescope from her backpack. Gerald set Calvin down and the boy ran over to his mother talking about bears and meteors and meteor-bears.

Gerald couldn’t recall being like that... but he could recall this place as he shone his torch on the platform where they had once shared a late-night meal before stargazing. There had been a meteor shower then, too. But it wasn’t the meteors that had interested him. Only the stars. They were so... They had a... He didn’t know. They were just... fascinating.

But the memory came with his parents’ voices. He and his sister were taking it in turns on the telescope. He jumped around, eager to use it again even though it has only been five seconds since his go. His sister laughed more then than any other day, and so did he. But their parents were talking a few metres behind. Quietly at first as though they didn’t want Gerald and Anna to hear. Then they started yelling at each other. Gerald stopped jumping. He recalled doing that more than everything else. The spring in his step had forever been taken. He also remembered Anna standing in front of him... though he wasn’t sure if that really happened. But he did know he was the one who had wanted to come up here and look at the “beautiful stars...” He was a stupid kid.

“Anna,” trepidation crept into his voice. A bile rose in his throat. “I’ve got to go. I’m sorry. I can’t stand it here.” His heart crept to an unhealthy height in his ears.

Anna was already at his side, gently poking his elbow, before he had time to run. Calvin was giggling and staring through the telescope at the end of the broken train track.

Anna didn’t say anything. She wasn’t smirking. There wasn’t a concerned look on her face. She was just there.

Gerald didn’t like being taller than her; Anna had always been the bigger person. But she could look up to him when he hung his head, always trying to implant her face on his brain in those moments when melancholy struck.

He... didn’t deserve her.

Anna tugged his cuff and guided him to the telescope. Calvin hopped to the side, still staring up while Gerald stared down at the moss and mud.

“Just one look,” Anna urged.

Gerald took a deep breath. “One look,” he agreed, caving in.

He hesitated. It was just a telescope. Why was an inanimate object topping him so?! Anna didn’t hurry him; she’d wait there all night, no doubt. He couldn’t do that to her.

He bent and peered through the lens.

The universe had always been mystifying. How big was it? Would humans ever travel those stars? A young Gerald liked to think so. He also liked to believe each light had a story of its own, a story so grand no one could ever know them all. The meteors were their discarded tales, the detached parts they didn’t need anymore. How funny it was to think about now. Childish but... nice.

The sky, the night full of such beauty, was like nothing else. The echoes of his parents’ yells were in the past; their constant ringing finally silencing.

The fulgent stars were like pin picks of reality, poking and stabbing Gerald’s heart. He didn’t hate them. He had never hated them. Piercing the veneer shield he had out in place, the tears fell and his eyes closed as he stood straight. The lights were still there behind the eyelids. Forever in the darkness, forever with their beauty. He would never forget them no matter how hard he endeavoured.

Anna crept up beside him. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know she was smirking. “Pretty, right?” she said.

“Yeah,” he cried. His voice didn’t sound like his own; it was more fitting for ten-year-old Gerald. He stared up at the sky, his neck cracking. “They’re pretty. They’re beyond beautiful. They always were… Thank you.”

Anna poked his elbow. “Anytime.”

Gerald laughed, wiping his eyes. Clever, not-so-rotten, but sometimes annoying sister.