Satellite by Nick Lake

Author:Nick Lake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2017-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

it’s 1 of my first nights at the ranch.

Grandpa wakes me—it’s full dark outside, no moon.

“what’s up?” i say.

“come on,” he says. “meteor shower.”

he takes me out onto the porch, then lowers me into the rocking chair. there is a little table & on it he has already put 2 steaming mugs of hot chocolate, with marshmallows floating in them.

he drags over a kitchen chair & sits in it, next to me.

we look up at the sky. as my eyes adjust, stars start to appear in the gaps between brighter stars, until the sky is a milky profusion of millions of stars, shining ice-bright in the darkness.

“there,” says Grandpa. he points.

i look. a streak of light across the sky.

“there.”

another.

another.

little sparking bolts across the darkness, as meteorites burn up in the atmosphere.

“make a wish,” says Grandpa.

i do.

we sit in silence for a while, watching. every few minutes a shooting star gleams into being, the movement making us turn to it. the air is cold: Grandpa gets a blanket & spreads it over my legs. i drink the hot chocolate. it is warm & sweet & the marshmallows have half melted into it: it is 1 of the many wonders of the earth.

so why is it that when i c the planets & stars above me, the glowing firmament, the heavens, it makes me feel something tight in my chest, something that feels like homesickness?

i lean back & rock slightly in the chair. i am looking up at that incalculable expanse of stars.

“u ever wanted to go back up there?” i say to Grandpa.

he shakes his head. “no. & u?”

“no,” i lie.

& i don’t tell him what i wished for.

i don’t know why not.

i just don’t think he’d like it—i don’t think he wants me to do what he & my mom did. i think he wants me to do what he’s doing now—take the ranch, keep it going. he doesn’t want me doing flight training, reading up on astrophysics, entering the air force.

anyway. i think about that night, as i close my eyes & the pain of my broken leg soaks me, immerses me.

because now i’m not going to be learning to fly any time soon, am i?

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