Tears and Crashes

“I hate all of you!” Sasha shouts, her voice cracking. Salt starts to stain her cheeks.

“Oh Sasha, what’s wrong darling?” Margie asks sweetly.

“Drama, drama, drama” Quinnie whispers for everyone to hear.

“Argh!” Sasha shouts and she storms out, back down the hall and slams her door. Billy pushes food around his plate, his eyes fixed on the peas wiggling in gravy, getting cold. 

Sasha couldn’t get a word in sideways and looked to Billy for help more than once. He tried to intercept, find a break in the chaos: “Did anyone notice- ” wait… wait… wait... go! “has anyone heard-” 

No luck – any courtesy extended to guests had been long lost now. Billy shrugged at Sasha to say “I tried” from across the table. Sasha started to cry, dragged her chair out loudly and the conversation did not stop. Daisy was whinging about a bone in her chicken and Gracie had spilt all her peas on the floor. Bella and Quinnie were bickering about an English paper, Frank had turned up the TV to listen to the score.

“I hate all of you!”

Billy looks up to the Gilberts now also all staring at their plates, silent but for the TV. Billy umms: “I better get going…”

Frank sighs, “We will sort this out Kidd, don’t worry. You know how Sasha can be sometimes”. Billy wants to say If you would just listen, but the words get caught in his throat. As he gets up to scrap the leftover dinner into the Tupperware on the counter, Margie joins him. “Any chance you know what this is all about?”

Billy doesn’t know how to say “well, the stars kind of disappeared last night” so he chokes on an “I don’t know. Thanks for having me Margie.”.

Billy rides hard on his bike up the hill to get home. I wish I knew what to do he thinks and laughs at himself for being a dork. Billy rounds the corner, up the curb into the yard. He throws his bike onto the lawn by the gum and climbs up the wooden plank ladder and through the just big enough trapdoor and flops onto the floor exhausted. He takes some deep breaths, timing them with the distance lap of the ocean against the cliffside. He looks out the window and sees a summer storm brewing off the horizon.

Billy tucks himself into his hammock, wrapped in a blanket. His sun-soaked skin heats it up fast. His chicken filled belly drains the rest of his energy. The stars and where they have gone has filled his head since his birthday. Grains of doubt have made a home in between his lungs, hardening into a rock. Tomorrow, it will dissolve to sand. Daddio will have answers he thinks. Tomorrow the sand will sweep back into its ocean home. The alarm will be raised. 

Sasha smells the storm from under the covers. It smells of hot concrete and sunscreen. She doesn’t see the sky turning dark, she just feels the warmth of the summer day break. 

Across the island the storm clouds build. TVs are turned up for the 10pm news. Children away in dreamland. Parents and grandparents, business men and women, the guys from the surf club and the mother’s groups, sit around hearing: Breaking news! A nauseating-news jingle is heard across the Island. The anchor appears and in a low voice states “Welcome to News One: Tonight’s breaking story – The night sky.” The suited-up man seems far too happy. His face is plasticed in place, his smile is just in his mouth.

Across all the houses and apartments whispers are exchanged and worried faces gasp open. “Turn it up” some say, “oh this is why I don’t watch the news” say others. 

A little girl in a blue house with a wraparound veranda hears the news break. She strains to hear from her doona cocoon. Her hot breath mixes with her balmy skin and within a couple more breaths she violently spasms, kicking off the blanket in a tangle. Breathing heavily she feels the frustration at the whole situation ebb around the room.

The man continues: “Over to Jenny with all the details.” A woman in a red dress stands in front of a screen that reads: NATURAL DISASTER? She shares his wide smile, her bouncy voice begins, “Thanks Brent. Starting last night and due to continue for the next couple of nights, across the world the stars have disappeared! I know what a shocker!” She laughs soullessly. In all the living rooms whispers turn to “Huh? What?”s. Curtains are raced to and pulled open. Outside there is no sky to see anyway! A dark storm hovers over the Island as far as the eye can see, this way and that.

Sasha hops down from her bunkbed. She tiptoes to the bedroom door and cracks it open. Jenny continues, “the world’s leading scientists have released a statement that the cosmic phenomenon is a once in a hundred-thousand-year occurrence. It causes a blackened sky. We are understanding that it is nothing to worry about. That everything will return to normal.”

Sighs of relief are shared between people on their lounges, to people and their lonely rooms.

“For more about what to do we cross live now to the Island’s mayor. Mayor Lilicent what are we meant to think about this?” The screen splits to show the Mayor. Every racing heart on the Island slows to peace. Mayor Lilicent is a small woman, with narrow shoulders beneath wide pads in her blazer. She sits behind her wooden desk in The Office, swallowed up by the grand room. Many plaques in fancy frames line the walls behind her in a perfect grid. She smiles with her whole face, creasing and crinkling back at the camera.

“Thanks Jenny and love the dress by the way!” On the other side of the screen Jenny blushes and swats away the compliment. “Look, I can understand that this is a scary time for us all.” The smile wipes off her face in an instant and the screen wipes Jenny away to be wholly on the Mayor. “We are so lucky to have a team of experts who have been able to give us answers so quickly. There is nothing to worry about. All we can do is remain calm.”

Jenny’s voice questions, “have we had any word on the Princess?”

Lilicent replies sternly “I have spoken with her, and she has passed on the call for calm. This will all be over soon. In the meantime, we should go about life as per usual. If you are fearful of a night without the stars, we suggest that you stay indoors when the sun is down.

Jenny appears again, “Thank you Mayor, your beauty and calm is a gift to us all.” The screen behind Jenny turns to a map of the land. “Now to the usual weather report.” She says. “Thunderstorms are expected across the Island tonight and into tomorrow…”.

Most TVs are turned off after because the questions have been answered. Dishes are stacked in dishwashers or piled in the sink for tomorrow. Showers are taken and teeth brushed. Alarms are set for a morning wakeup call. Heads hit pillows and slide off to sleep.

The senior Gilbert’s Margie, Frank, Bella and Quinnie, sit around the TV, turning it down. Margie starts “This must’ve been what Sasha was so worried about. Poor thing was so upset about the whole thing.”

“Poor thing? Come on Margie - hardly”, Quinnie replies, “just can’t help but make a drama outta whatever”.

Bella adds, “she could’ve just asked like a normal person”.

Sasha lets out a sigh, plods back to bed, leaving the door cracked. She slides under the covers and tucks them under her chin snuggly. Phew she thinks, but the knot in her tummy doesn’t ease. She shuts her eyes, but sleep doesn’t come. Minutes or hours later she hears Bella and Quinnie tiptoe into their beds. Sleep comes to them quickly, their breaths evening out into a synchronised beat. In and out, in and

out, in and out. Sleep comes for Sasha through them.

Lightning erupts from the brewing storm. It is moving across the sky in a monstrous wave, climbing meters high. As it roars across the sky it eats the calm. The ground shakes.

Billy gets spooked awake with the thunder’s roar. Jolting in place. He huddles in his hammock. Birds scream, darting to safety. The caw of a black cockatoo was in his dreams. And the cackle of a kookaburra laughed “rain is coming”, it laughed.

Rain splutters onto the metal roof of the treehouse. Then it begins in earnest, pounding in strong sheets one after another after another after another. Not breaking for breath. Thunder rips out blaring over the rain. The heat of the day breaks with the rain, and he pulls his blanket across his shoulders into a hug. Silent amongst the chaos.

If I am still, the monster will not know I’m here, he thinks. Lightning cracks closer this time, lighting up the inside of the treehouse and its world outside. Billy counts the elephants in between aloud, his voice drowned out by the rain, so just for him “one elephant, two elephant, three elephants, fo-“. Thunder bellows, tearing the sky above the lightning open. Daddio told Billy that “the seconds between the two tell you how far away the lightning lives.” Far away he thinks. “Safe here” he says aloud.

Lightning – thunder. Tear, crack. Lightning – thunder. Tear, crack. Lightning, elephants, thunder. Tear, crack. Chasing one another along the storm into the ocean. The sea responds sending stupendous waves against the cliff face. Some so angry the spray flies above the edge and Billy can see the mist rise.

Billy climbs out of the hammock carefully and quietly. He pulls the blanket along with him and sits on the floor looking out the window. The storm has moved, filling the whole sky, no end in sight. Tear, crack. The rain keeps sheeting, carried by wild wind. Tear, crack.

Summer brings storms and the first is the most brutal. The heat of the days invisibly joining forces until the sky cannot take anymore. Tear, crack, sheet.

The fear that has taken home in Billy’s chest, moves around in a thick ball. He stands still wrapped in his blanket hug. Tear, crack. Until he too tears, the fear swelling over his lips. And laughs. Laughs?

Well, funny thing about fear isn’t it. The ways that it comes out. Sometimes angry, like the storm, scared and sad without her stars lighting the way in the sky. Sometimes in tears, spilt onto dinning tables, in frustration from sisters. Sometimes in laughter. Mostly giggled. Sometimes chuckled or chortled or cackled.

Billy wraps the blanket around his neck, fastening it in a knot around his neck. He walks out of his treehouse onto the roofless slice of balcony. Water droplets as big as the marbles he and Sasha play with fall onto him. Sounded worse inside he thinks.

He slips down the fireman’s pole landing in a soggy heap. His pyjamas soak in the mud. He stands and the spaces between his toes slosh with warm earth. Sheet, sheet, sheet. The spaces between his hands widen, arms outstretched claiming the rain. Tear, crack. The space between breaths heavy with storm, give way to chuckles. Tear, crack. The spaces in between his calm, filled with his efforts to be big and know what to do, give way to the wild. Tear, crack.

Billy looks at the sky. The branches of the gum sway. The tree doesn’t, the trunk rooted into place. He smiles and runs into the space in-between the cliffside and the gum. Tear, crack. How I wish I could do that Billy thinks.

He thinks about how easily Scott tears open. How he can crack apart so easily, without wiping his eyes at all as the tears fall. How Sasha cracks, exploding with anger or sadness or joy. How they are storms. He looks around and confirms his aloneness. Tear “Ahh… hahaha” he tries, crack. He takes a deep breath swallowing stray storm. He waits. Again, lightning lights up the sky. Tearing a hole in the clouds, striking the sea… and-!

Funny thing about reading is how it works as it is happening… to say: screams filled the world around Billy. Roaring in competition with the storm. The shouts poured all around Billy in the dark stormy night. But it’s just words on a page. So, let’s stop. Fill up your whole head with the sounds of you. Of a time you felt scared, maybe not because the stars disappeared and no one is around to ask about and Ma isn’t here to answer and Daddio left at the worst possible moment. But fill it with you.

Billy screams loud and the storm roars back – crack. The sky gobbles it up. Billy shouts into the clouds and the rain keeps falling. He laughs and the thunder chortles back. He dances and the wind whips wild. He sits on the grass, looking out at the ocean and the lightning puts on quite the show.

On a hill in a field of wildflowers on the other end of the Island, a girl screams back. She is lost at home. She cannot talk to her mum. Her Mother does not come in dreams anymore. It’s been three nights and no word. No little girl should be all alone. The mayor checks on her for five minutes on the phone. When she cried and feared and wept with tears, the mayor said, “look we will discuss this later”. But at six years old - what does discuss mean and can’t later be now?