Clear Skies

by Jessica Scott Kerrin

  Arno looked up. An usher had followed him out.

  “I …” Arno shook his head, embarrassed. “Where are the restrooms?” he asked lamely.

  “Down the hall to the left,” the usher said, pointing with his flashlight.

  He watched until Arno got up on shaky legs and turned the corner.

  Inside the marble-tiled restroom, Arno stood at a sink and splashed his face with cool water. It helped, but he knew that there was no way he could go back inside the theater.

  He dried himself and scowled at his pale face.

  He couldn’t call his dad to come get him. His dad was in the van doing his rounds with Comet.

  Even if Arno walked home, what would he say to Mindy and the others? Her mom told them to meet on the sidewalk right after the movie. They would be worried if he didn’t show up.

  What if he told them the truth? That he had claustrophobia? Would they make fun of him?

  Or worse, would they feel sorry for him?

  Arno slipped into a quiet corner where he could still see the grand spiral staircase. His hiding spot was also out of sight from the concession counter where employees flicked popcorn at each other now that the lineups had disappeared.

  Arno’s mind raced. He thought he could manage his claustrophobia by avoiding triggers that brought it on. Only, his list of triggers kept getting longer and longer, expanding without end like the universe.

  Being pinned down with a heavy wool blanket.

  His dad’s van filled with toppling baskets.

  The Raleigh Deluxe Space Rider contest.

  The narrow space beneath his bed.

  Photos of cramped space capsules.

  Dark, crowded movie theaters.

  Calm down, he told himself. Sure, there were some things he could no longer do, things that weren’t all that important in the great scheme of things.

  But astronomy? He loved being in wide-open fields under giant nighttime skies with no danger of feeling trapped or crushed.

  Arno held on to that thought with the gravitational force of twin stars orbiting each other.

  When the theater doors finally flung open and people started to spill into the lobby, Arno got up from his hiding spot and mingled with the crowd.

  “Hey!”

  Arno turned. It was Buddy, who was rubbing the crick in his neck.

  “What happened to you?” Buddy asked.

  “The view from the balcony was better,” Arno said. “Let’s go find the others.”

  They made their way to the sidewalk where Mindy and Robert stood chatting in the raging sunshine.

  “What a fab movie!” Mindy exclaimed as soon as she saw them.

  Heads nodded all around, including Arno’s.

  Mindy’s mom pulled up to the curb, and the four scrambled inside.

  “That part about Mars maybe having vegetation?” Robert said from the back. “It blew my mind.”

  “Or that it would take four years moving at the speed of light to reach our next closest star,” Mindy said.

  “And what about Jupiter having twelve moons!” Buddy exclaimed. “Maybe I can visit one of them after I land on our own!”

  “I learned a new word, Mom,” Mindy said. “Nebula.”

  “What’s a nebula?” her mom asked, adjusting her sunglasses.

  “A nebula is dust that’s left over from an exploding star. A super … super what, Arno?”

  “A supernova,” Arno said, realizing just how much he had missed.

  “A supernova. It’s a star that runs out of fuel and then explodes at five billion degrees!” Mindy added. She turned around to face Arno. “You’re awfully quiet.”

  Arno shrugged.

  “But you love outer space.”

  He shrugged again and looked out the window.

  “Didn’t you like the movie?” she pressed.

  “Sure,” Arno said. “But. You know. I already knew all that stuff.”

  “What about the ending?” Robert said. “I’m still thinking about that!”

  “Me, too!” Mindy said. “I can’t get my head around it. What do you think, Arno?” she asked.

  What could he say?

  “I can’t get my head around it, either,” he replied glumly, stuck in a car where it felt as if time was standing still.

  SIX

  Everyone in the Ford Galaxie was quiet, each lost in their own deep thoughts.

  “Can I turn on the radio?” Mindy asked her mom, breaking the silence.

  Her mom nodded.

  The radio station blared commercials for everything from cigarettes to television sets. Arno looked out his window while an ad played about the new Volkswagen Beetle, a little rounded car so different from all the other large tail-finned automobiles that surrounded them.

  Then a Tang commercial came on.

  “Did you know my dad’s working on the Tang account, and he’s trying to get astronauts to drink it once they get to outer space?” Buddy asked from the back seat.

  “Yes!” Arno and Mindy replied in unison.

  Mindy switched to another station, one playing a Motown song about a heat wave.

  “Hey, Mom,” Mindy said while bobbing her head to the beat. “Arno won a radio contest this morning.”

  “You did?” Mindy’s mom glanced at Arno in the rearview mirror. “What did you have to do?”

  “Answer an astronomy question.”

  “He gets to go to tomorrow night’s grand opening of the new observatory,” Mindy boasted.

  “I’ve been to an observatory,” Robert said. “Back in Canada.”

  Arno leaned forward so that he could stare past Buddy to face Robert.

  “You have?” he asked, genuinely interested.

  “Sure. It was out of sight.”

  “What did you see?” Arno asked, all ears now.

  “Jupiter. Saturn. I remember that. Oh, and a nebula just below Orion’s Belt. That was really choice!”

  Arno wanted to hear more. He wanted to hear everything!

  “What about comets?”

  “Sorry. I don’t think so.”

  “What about galaxies?

  “Galaxies?”

  “You know, other than our own Milky Way?”

  “I can’t remember if we did. Sorry. It was a while ago.”

  “Oh, you’d remember a galaxy if you’d seen it!” Arno said. “They’re huge!” Arno was excited. He couldn’t help himself. “Fun fact. Our Milky Way Galaxy consists of billions of stars and adds about four new stars every year. But we now know there are countless other galaxies in the universe.”

  “So we’ve heard,” Buddy said. “It was in the movie, remember?”

  “Oh,” Arno said. “Right.” But he perked up again and added, “With the exception of a few of the closer galaxies, all of them are moving away from us so that the whole universe is spreading out with galaxies getting farther and farther apart!”

  There was silence in the car.

  Then Buddy said, “That was in the movie, too. You were there, weren’t you? Up in the balcony?”

  Arno clamped his mouth shut.

  “Anyhow,” Robert said, “we saw some neat things in the night sky, but what I’ll never forget was the feeling of standing beneath that giant telescope. It was kind of scary.”

  “Scary?” Arno swallowed. “What do you mean?”

  “Forty-five tons of steel and glass hung above my head, held in place by these enormous braces. I felt so small!”

  “Hey,” Buddy said. “That’s how astronauts must feel climbing inside the space capsule of a massive rocket ship.”

  Arno remembered the photos of astronauts doing just that.

  “Exactly,” Robert said, confirming Arno’s worst suspicion.

  “What else do you remem
ber about the observatory?” Mindy asked.

  “Well, the roof was shaped like an upside-down bowl,” Robert said.

  He said “roof” like “rewf,” not “ruhf.”

  “That’s the dome,” Mindy said. “Right, Arno?”

  Arno barely nodded.

  “Yes, the dome,” Robert said. “It made sounds like thunder when it opened a slit to let the telescope peek through. We stood far below, waiting for our turn to climb this narrow staircase so that we could see into the eyepiece.”

  “Was it dark inside the observatory?” Arno asked. He couldn’t help himself.

  “Dark enough,” Robert said.

  “How many people were there?” Arno asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe thirty. It was quite a small space so we had to crowd together. The giant telescope took up most of the —”

  “How many exits were there?” Arno asked.

  “How many exits?” Robert repeated. “Why?”

  “How many?” Arno insisted.

  “One, I guess. The same door we came through to climb up into the observatory.”

  Arno slumped back in his seat.

  One exit. A crowd of people. A small space. Massive equipment pressing down. Dark.

  Arno realized that he had never thought much about how it would feel to work in an observatory. If the observatory Robert had visited was in any way the same as the one that was opening tomorrow night, then Arno was sure to have a panic attack. Only this time, he’d have one right in front of his hero, Jean Slayter-Appleton.

  And that would dash any hopes he had about becoming an astronomer.

  Each of these thoughts hit him in rapid fire, like a meteor shower.

  “What’s wrong?” Mindy asked. “You look like you’ve discovered a DSO.”

  “A what?” Arno asked numbly.

  “DSO. Deep Sky Object.” Mindy paused. “Like in the movie …”

  Buddy wheeled on Arno. “You must have fallen asleep up there in the balcony.”

  Arno’s face burned.

  “Get a grip! Arno wouldn’t fall asleep during a movie about outer space!” Mindy said.

  “I didn’t fall asleep,” Arno said gruffly. “It was just a dorky movie.”

  Mindy gasped with surprised hurt. Buddy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Robert gave an awkward cough.

  “Here we are,” Mindy’s mom announced, pulling to the curb in front of Arno’s house. “Have fun at the opening of the observatory,” she said.

  None of the others said a word.

  Arno walked up his driveway without looking back, but he could feel everyone staring at him with the searing heat of an exploding supernova.

  He crossed his front porch and went inside. No family. No Comet. It felt as lonely as the far side of the Moon. He stood for a minute, trying to decide what to do.

  He could go back to his room and look through his astronomy book to find a new activity. There was an interesting one about building a star clock out of two disks that could be dialed and lined up with the North Star, Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper to tell the time at night.

  Arno slumped. Why bother? He’d never become a real astronomer.

  It was the saddest thought he had ever had. He felt tears coming on, standing there alone in his house.

  Arno walked into the kitchen and picked up the telephone. He dialed the number his mom had posted on the refrigerator in bright orange crayon.

  “Hi, Aunt Faye,” he said. “It’s Arno.”

  “Hi, Arno,” she said. There was a crisp edge to her voice.

  Arno could hear a baby wailing in the background.

  “How’s the new baby?” he asked politely.

  “Hungry,” she said. “Like always. Is everything okay?”

  “Yes,” Arno said with a choke while twisting the telephone cord around his free hand.

  Silence, except for the baby.

  “Did you want to speak to your mom?”

  “Sure,” Arno said.

  Arno listened to voices and the howling baby, who wasn’t even stopping for air. Then he heard his mom on the telephone.

  “Hello, Sunshine!”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  The sound of her voice and his nickname made him want to pull up a chair to sit down. He did.

  “What have you been up to?” she asked.

  Arno thought he’d start with something funny.

  “I watched Buddy stick his feet in a bucket of ice water.”

  “Another astronaut endurance test?”

  “Yeah,” Arno said. “You should have heard him screech. It was hilarious.”

  “I’ll bet. What else is new with you?”

  “I made a solar system out of clay. It accurately shows the relative sizes of each planet.”

  But then Arno remembered Saturn, and that made him sad all over again. He wilted a bit in his chair.

  “Sounds wonderful. I can’t wait to see it,” she said.

  Arno didn’t want to talk anymore about the solar system with Saturn under his bed, impossible to recover.

  “I met the new kid down the street. Robert.”

  “What’s he like?” she asked.

  “He thinks astrology is a science.”

  “Is that so,” she said. She sounded amused.

  Arno regretted bringing up Robert. Robert had spoiled Arno’s excitement about the observatory.

  “I won a radio contest for tickets to the new observatory,” he said.

  “Congratulations!”

  “Thanks.” Arno paused. “I’m not sure I want to go.”

  “What? You love astronomy! That’s all you ever talk about. And you’ll get to meet your hero … what’s her name? Jill Something-Apple Pie?”

  Arno chuckled. He knew his mom was kidding.

  He remembered the night in the backyard after he’d given a slide presentation of the eighty-eight constellations to his family using his Show Me projector in the living room.

  He had promised a stellar show, but his brothers sat glumly on each end of the couch, arms crossed, sucking the life out of the room like twin dark stars. Even Arno couldn’t ignore the snoring after only thirty minutes in.

  When he turned on the lights, there was a smattering of polite applause, with both brothers and his dad rubbing their eyes and stretching as if they had woken up from a nap.

  Upset, Arno fled to the backyard, collapsed into one of the lawn chairs and lay face up to take in the beauty of the universe.

  He heard the back door squeak open. His mom came outside. She spotted Arno, then grabbed another lawn chair to sit beside him. She looked up.

  Nobody spoke for several minutes.

  “Oh, look. A shooting star,” she said, pointing.

  “You know it’s not really a star, right?” Arno said. “It’s just dust that heats up and glows when it hits Earth’s atmosphere.”

  He knew he was being crabby, but he didn’t care.

  “I know,” his mom said. “Let’s see if I can find the Big Dipper.”

  “You don’t need to do this, Mom,” Arno said, still staring straight up.

  “Don’t be silly. I want to find it and then the North Star, like you told us in your talk.”

  Arno softened. She had actually listened to him.

  She studied the night sky.

  “There it is,” she exclaimed, pointing again. “Now, where’s the North Star? You said to draw a line between the two stars at the front of the ladle and follow that to the next bright star. Oh! There it is!”

  “Polaris. The North Star that all other stars appear to circle around,” Arno said. Then he added, “Good job.”

  They quietly lay there.

  “There’s a double star in the handle of the Big Dipper,” Arno said. “Triple if you look
through a telescope. I forgot to mention that.”

  “Really?”

  His mom studied the handle. She squinted.

  “I can’t see it.”

  “I can. It’s the second star from the end. It was used as an eye test for entering the army in ancient Athens and Sparta.”

  “I must be getting old.” His mom sighed. “My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. I guess I need a telescope.”

  They lay there some more. It was a clear night. The sky was breathtaking.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Arno said.

  “For what?”

  “For listening.”

  “Oh, Arno! I loved your talk,” she said. She gave his hand a squeeze before going back inside.

  The next day, she came home with a telescope called a Moonscope, with its tripod included. He knew it cost a whopping amount — $19.99! — but his mom explained that everyone in the family, even his brothers, had agreed to chip in.

  That night they pointed it at the Big Dipper.

  “Well, look at that,” his mom said, staring through the eyepiece. “There really is a double star in the handle. And I can see the third one, too. Amazing.”

  And it was.

  * * *

  Arno rocked back in his chair. The mess he had made emptying the kitchen drawers was still on the counters, and Buddy’s scuff marks still marred the floor.

  “Come on, Mom! Jill Something-Apple Pie?” Arno repeated on the telephone. “Her name is Jean Slayter-Appleton.” He twisted the phone cord in his hand. “I know she’ll be there. But …”

  Should he tell his mom? Should he admit he had claustrophobia? Would it make any difference? It wouldn’t take away the fear, he knew that.

  And that’s what he so desperately wanted. But now he realized his mom couldn’t do that.

  “But what?” she pressed gently.

  Arno was doing everything he could not to cry. The baby was still wailing and Arno could hear his aunt calling out to his mom, something about a rash.

  “What’s wrong, Arno?” his mom said, ignoring Arno’s aunt and the bawling baby.

  Arno swallowed.

  “Nothing,” he managed. “It’s just that I’m worried there won’t be clear skies tomorrow night. That’s all.”

  “Oh,” she said, sounding relieved. “Of course. You can’t have a cloudy night blocking the telescope’s view of the universe. Well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”