Catch a Falling Star

by Meg McKinlay

  Contents

  Cover

  Blurb

  Praise

  Logo

  Chapter 1

  Things That Fall From The Sky

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Things That Fall From The Sky

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Things That Fall From The Sky

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Things That Fall From The Sky

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Things That Fall From The Sky

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Things That Fall From The Sky

  Chapter 20

  Things That Fall From The Sky

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Things That Fall From The Sky

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Things That Fall From The Sky

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Dedication

  More From Meg McKinlay

  It’s 1979 and the sky is falling.

  Skylab, that is.

  Somewhere high above Frankie Avery, one of the world’s first space stations is tumbling to Earth. And rushing back with it are old memories. Things twelve-year-old Frankie thought she’d forgotten. Things her mum won’t talk about, and which her little brother Newt never knew.

  Only … did he? Does he?

  Because as Skylab circles closer, Newt starts acting strangely. And while the world watches the sky, Frankie keeps her own eyes on Newt. Because if anyone’s going to keep him safe, it’s her. It always has been. But maybe this is something bigger than splinters and spiders and sleepwalking. Maybe a space station isn’t the only thing heading straight for calamity.

  “A witty and tender story mapping the marvels of science and the human heart.”

  Anna Fienberg

  “Endearing characters and stellar storytelling.”

  Glenda Millard

  One

  It’s 2.53 on a Friday when I find out the sky is falling.

  At least I think that’s what Jeremy Ricardo said. The sound is a bit muffled because of the plastic salad bowl on his head.

  Jeremy’s wearing the bowl and a puffy jacket because it’s the closest he can get to a spacesuit. And he needs a spacesuit because he’s going to be an astronaut when he grows up, just like Damien last week, and Trevor the time before. I don’t know what the odds are of three kids from the same class in a tiny little town on the south coast of nowhere, Western Australia, becoming astronauts, but it seems like they’d be … astronomical.

  Ha. I look down at the desk so Mrs Easton won’t see me smile, so she won’t say, What’s so funny, Frankie? and Perhaps you could share it with the rest of the class?

  This isn’t a rest-of-the-class joke. I’ll save it for later, to tell my brother Newt. He might be only seven but he’s obsessed with science of all kinds. He’s even named after a scientist – Isaac Newton – which is how he got his nickname. He’s probably got a better shot at being an astro-anything than Jeremy ever will.

  “Interesting.” Mrs Easton nods encouragingly. “Keep going.”

  She calls this “Fantastic Futures”. She says because we’re in Year Six now – almost high school! Almost kind-of-sort-of on our way to being grown up! – it’s important we start thinking about what comes next. So when we have time last thing Friday, she chooses a couple of kids to give a little speech. It’s the absolute simplest thing in the world, she says. All we have to do is talk clearly and confidently about what we want to do when we grow up, giving two thoughtful and relevant reasons for our choice.

  So far today we’ve had Jenny King (a teacher, because it’s the best job in the world and because I want to be just like you, Mrs Easton) and Darren Mackie (a mechanic, because I like cars and because cars are unreal).

  And now Jeremy.

  Kat slides a note across the double desk we share. In her neat, loopy handwriting, it reads:

  Because space is amazing! And I also enjoy lettuce.

  I stare straight ahead, biting my lip to stop myself laughing. Suddenly all I can see is Jeremy up in space taking his helmet off to toss himself a quick salad.

  “It was in the newspaper,” he says. “It probably won’t hit anyone, but still.”

  This is my first clue that I may have misheard. I mean, if the sky’s coming down, I’m pretty sure it’s going to hit someone. I lean towards Kat. “What did he–?”

  “Frankie Avery!” Mrs Easton’s eyes narrow. “I hope you’re listening?”

  “I was,” I say quickly. “I mean … I am.”

  “Excellent.” She walks towards us between the rows of desks. “Then you’ll be able to tell me what Jeremy said.”

  Kat’s mouthing something I can’t make out. She points towards the ceiling and mimes something dropping, going splat! on the desk.

  Jeremy’s muffled voice floats through my head and no matter how I twist it, it sounds the same. I know it can’t be right but Mrs Easton’s next to me now. She peers at me with her beady bird eyes and it’s all I’ve got so I open my mouth and say it because what have I got to lose?

  “Um … the sky’s falling?”

  Kat puts her head down on the desk. Laughter ripples around the room. Behind me, Marcus Simmonds crows, “Oh, no, Chicken Little. We must go and tell the king!”

  Jeremy snorts. “Not the sky. Skylab. It’s a massive satellite or something. It was supposed to stay up in space but there was some kind of problem. The newspaper said something about a solar panel or …”

  There’s more but I don’t hear it. And it’s not because of the salad bowl. It’s because there’s a roaring in my ears, drowning out everything else.

  Because Skylab? It’s a thing I know, a word I know. And when I hear it I’m back in the Space Shack on a chilly autumn night.

  May 1973. Almost exactly six years ago. How many days? I would have known that once. I would have been counting.

  I stopped all that in the end. I had to. Mum said we needed to let things go.

  I thought I had. I thought I did. But suddenly it’s right here. Suddenly Dad is right here, just like he was that last night.

  He’s wrapped a blanket around me and cranked back the panel in the roof. Above, the sky is bright with stars. Newt has more blankets on because he’s only two and Mum doesn’t like him being out in the cold.

  “He’s too little,” she says. “He doesn’t even know what he’s looking at.” But she lets Dad take him. Because it’s Newt’s birthday and even though he’s already had his cake and his presents, Dad wants him to have one more thing.

  He sits Newt on the stool next to the telescope and holds him while Mum snaps a photo.

  Then we look up.

  Not into the telescope tonight but through the open roof. It’s better like this, Dad says, because the thing we’re about to see is moving fast.

  Dad puts Newt on his shoulders and I stand on my tippy-toes, as high as I can get. We stand on the telescope platform together, our faces turned to the clear night sky. And then we see it – a bright flash streaking overhead, blazing through the dark.

  I tug on Dad’s jacket. “Is it a shooting star?”

  He smiles and shakes his head. “It’s Sk
ylab. One of the world’s very first space stations. And a space station, my lovely Frankie, my lovely Newt, is nothing at all like a star.”

  He was right too. For one thing, stars don’t fall to Earth. At least not this quickly – not after five years or even six. Stars are sure and steady; it takes millions and billions of years before their light even starts to fade. Stars are pretty much as forever as it gets.

  But space stations are made by people. People who roll out metal and hammer in rivets and put it all together like Lego. People who do maths and make plans and blast things off into space and hope they got it right.

  Skylab. It went up. It’s coming down.

  “They reckon it’ll be next month. Or maybe July. Anyway …”

  Jeremy sucks in a deep breath and I lean forwards. There’s something weird about him. Weirder than usual, I mean. The salad bowl’s fogged up and he’s swaying on his feet.

  Despite the fact that this class apparently has one future nurse and two future doctors, none of us moves.

  Mrs Easton lunges for Jeremy. She pulls the bowl off his head and sits him down.

  “Deep breaths,” she says. “Deep breaths.”

  Without meaning to, I do it too. The room becomes steadier. My mind clears.

  After a minute Jeremy gets to his feet. He puts the salad bowl under his arm like he’s just returned from a deep space mission to Mars. “So the reasons I want to be an astronaut are that I think space is really cool and if I work at NASA I can make sure stuff like this doesn’t happen.”

  “Well done, Jeremy.” Mrs Easton gives him a pat on the shoulder. “Maybe don’t wear the bowl next time, though. When speaking in public, it’s generally best not to faint from lack of oxygen.”

  She leads the class in a round of applause. I should clap too but I can’t get my hands to move. All I can think about is Skylab up there, circling, falling. And while Jeremy strides back to his seat, I wonder what it would be like to be someone who thinks you actually have control over things.

  Who believes that if you want to, you can keep them from crashing to the ground.

  Things That Fall From the Sky

  Lots of things. Normal things. Everyday things.

  No one’s surprised when a raindrop hits their windscreen, when a leaf lands at their feet.

  Other things fall, too. Stranger things. Fish and frogs. Showers of them, like something in a story.

  It was Kat who told me about that. It was in a book her mum got from Reader’s Digest called Strange Stories, Amazing Facts. I sat next to her on their couch as she flicked through, reading out all this weird stuff. On one page, there was a drawing of people running for cover as fish rained on their heads. The book said some people thought it was the end of the world, that God’s judgement had come upon them.

  Newt laughed when Kat read that bit. He was sitting at the dining table, taking a transistor radio apart. We hadn’t even known he was listening.

  He set us straight about the fish and frogs. It doesn’t mean the end of the world, he said. It’s actually completely logical. Most things are when you really think about them.

  And if you think it’s strange that a seven-year-old is explaining things to us, that’s because you haven’t met Newt. He’s one of those kids who reads and watches and listens – books of interesting facts, The Curiosity Show on TV, science programs on the radio. And the next thing you know, he’s telling you all about stuff. You’re saying, Isn’t it weird how … and he gets this look on his face and his eyes flicker like he’s looking something up in the filing cabinet in his brain, and he says, Well, actually that’s because … and Did you know that, Frankie?

  The fish and frogs?

  Actually, that’s because of tornadoes. They scoop them up from rivers and lakes and the ocean. They suck them high into the air and whirl them around and around for hundreds of miles. Then they drop them somewhere completely unexpected, making people go ooh and aah and come up with wild and crazy theories.

  Did you know that, Frankie?

  I did not.

  I can’t imagine what it would be like to have frogs suddenly raining on your head. Or to be a frog, raining on someone. I can’t think too much about those frogs – one minute minding their business in a pond, the next minute scooped up and flying through the air.

  Maybe the flying part would make the landing worth it.

  That’s what I hope. That’s what I try to believe.

  Two

  “Are you okay?” Kat slides into the seat next to me. “You look kind of weird.”

  “Wow, thanks.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  We’re on the bus after school. Revhead Ronnie’s drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, the high school kids are throwing orange peel up the back and Newt’s down the front with his nose in a comic. Outside, Dale’s doing circles on his Malvern Star, getting ready to race us to the corner.

  It’s the same as always, only different. Inside my head, my thoughts are spinning like a wheel.

  Ronnie jabs the door button and the bus lurches away from the kerb. By the time we reach the corner, Dale’s a small dot behind us and Jeremy’s hanging out the window blowing raspberries. As we head out of town, I lean forwards and grip the seat in front. Ronnie always takes the last bend too fast. It’s like he can’t wait to get out onto the highway, to plant his foot and cruise.

  Kat frowns. “If you’re feeling sick, you can come to my place.”

  It’d be easy to do that. Our house is half an hour away but Kat’s is only five minutes, the very first stop. And until last year, when Mum decided we were old enough to be home alone, Newt and I used to go there all the time.

  I’m not sick, though. I just feel strange. It’s as if hearing that single word – Skylab – has opened a door, one I closed tightly a long time ago.

  I suppose that’s what’s making me look kind of weird, but I can’t tell Kat that. Instead, I force a smile. “I’m okay.”

  Even if I knew how to explain – about the weird tangle of Dad and Skylab, about how the night Skylab launched was the last night I saw him, about how all this stuff is suddenly right there making me feel wobbly and strange … even if I could do that, I wouldn’t. Because it’s easier not to talk about Dad, even to Kat. Because whenever anyone mentions him, people get this look on their face. All of a sudden I stop being Frankie and turn into that poor girl whose father died.

  “I’ve got stuff to do anyway.” I nod towards the front of the bus. “You know.”

  “Oh, yeah. The birthday boy.” Kat glances at the back of Newt’s fair head. “I just don’t get why you have to do it all.”

  “I don’t have to,” I say. “I want to.”

  It’s mostly true.

  Kat shrugs. Then she bumps me playfully with her shoulder. “Hey, how funny was Jeremy? Another astronaut. Sure thing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you worked yours out yet?”

  “Um … not quite.”

  Kat sighs and I feel like doing the same. It’s not as though I haven’t tried; it just feels impossible. I can’t imagine what I’m going to be doing next year, let alone for the rest of my life. How can it be nearly high school already? How can it be almost 1980? The years are meant to start with seven, not eight. Eight sounds like the future, like science fiction, like …

  “Earth to Frankie!” Kat waves her hand in front of my face. “You’d better think of something soon.”

  “I know,” I say. “Don’t worry.”

  The tatty vinyl squeaks as she shifts in her seat. “I can help you next weekend if you want.”

  She’s talking about Friday. I’m sleeping over at her place so we can go and see Superman at the drive-in.

  And I feel a bit guilty because the truth is I could do my Fantastic Futures talk easily if I pretended I was little again, back when I had everything worked out. When I was four and five and almost six and Dad and I used to spend every spare minute in the Space Shack and there was only on
e thing I could possibly be when I grew up and that was an astronomer – not for a hobby like Dad but an official real one who would probably one day discover a new planet.

  I’ve never told Kat that, even though she’s my best friend. Because that was before and this is after.

  I nod. “Yeah, okay. That’d be good.”

  We pass the wheat silos on the edge of town and Kat bends down to slide her bag out from under the seat in front. When her stop comes into view, Ronnie slows, then pulls off onto the gravel next to the little red car that’s waiting there. Kat’s house is only a ten-minute walk from here but her mum thinks kids should be met after school. She doesn’t like the idea of Kat “running wild through the bush”, which is pretty funny considering they barely live out of town.

  Her mum winds the window down and waves. Kat grins as she hurries down the aisle. “See you, Fran-chess-ka!”

  “See you.” I wave back at her mum, trying not to laugh. My name isn’t Francesca. It’s just Frankie. Short for nothing but not good for nothing. That’s what Dad used to say. Yet no matter how many times I’ve told Kat’s mum, she’s never quite believed it. She says Francesca is a perfectly lovely name and it’s a shame to shorten it and she’s going to use it even if no one else does.

  We swing back onto the highway and the radio crackles into static, the way it always does around here. Houses give way to farms and the smell of the ocean fades in the distance behind us. I settle back in my seat and rest my face against the window until – twenty-five minutes and three stops later – Ronnie drops Newt and me off at our corner.

  We have to walk about a kilometre along the road and then through the bush up the steep dirt track we call a driveway. Newt reads the whole time, but I wait for him anyway. Because even though he’s seven, which would normally be old enough to walk up a driveway by yourself, he’s also absolutely and utterly Newtish. Which means he could easily get distracted and trip over a branch or a rabbit hole or possibly even his own feet.

  When we finally get to the house, I take the key from the zip-up pocket in my bag. I slide it into the lock and jiggle it left, then right, then left with a twist.