I sat in the field, baring my face toward the heavens as I watched the stars die. It was a warm summer night. The grass tickled my palms and the soles of my feet. A soft breeze lifted my long hair off my neck. It might’ve been pleasant… If I hadn’t been watching the world end.
I wasn’t the only one in the field. Ratty blankets and lawn chairs were everywhere. Some of the stargazers were loud, like the group of kids from my school, off to my right.
Maybe they’ll ask me to hang out with them... No, they won’t. Should I go sit by them? No… I can’t do that.
They laughed and shouted, swearing and joking, ‘ooh’-ing and ‘ah’-ing like it was the Fourth of July.
But groups like that were rare. Most of the people were quiet, and – like me – they were there alone. Most of us just watched the stars blink out. Not talking. Not making any sound. We just watched, and wondered, and waited.
It wasn’t one by one. They disappeared in threes and fours; sometimes small handfuls at a time. One second they were there, and then… just… gone.
An older woman and her husband sat to my left, on a neat, clean blanket, probably purchased just for the night. Their clothes looked faded, washed out, but then again, this wasn’t some fancy, black-tie event. They’d probably worn the grubbiest clothes they owned. I plucked at stray threads on my worn, hole-filled jeans, glancing at the couple for a moment when the woman started talking, then turning my gaze back to the sky. She had her arms crossed in front of her chest, like she was trying to hold something in. Her husband had an arm around her shoulders and a tight, drawn expression on his face.
And an expensive-looking watch on his wrist. My fingers twitched.
“Can’t they stop it?” the woman whispered. The words sounded volumes louder than the raucous laughter of my classmates, and I was pretty sure everyone in our little patch of field listened, just as I did. “Don’t they know what’s causing it yet?”
There was a long silence. I didn’t look at them again, but I think the man with the watch probably shrugged. Shook his head. Squeezed her shoulder… Something.
Then he spoke. “Don’t worry, hon.”
Don’t worry. Right. Because it was only the end of the universe, after all. No big deal.
“It takes thousands of years for the light from some of those stars to reach Earth… We’ll be dead and gone long before whatever it is reaches us.”
She let out a small sigh that could’ve been of relief. Because her husband was so smart. Smarter than all the scientists who came on the news and basically babbled about science to hide the fact that they didn’t have a clue what was going on. Because who cared if her descendents and the rest of the human race saw the end of Earth as long as she was six feet under when it happened.
Or maybe it was a sigh of dissatisfaction. Because she was smarter than her husband. Because she – like me and my online friends – had already realized that the light from stars thousands of light-years apart all disappearing at the same time meant that whatever ended those stars was moving much, much faster than the speed of light.
Those stars up there didn’t even exist anymore. They were dead. Maybe they’d been dead a long time. They were ghosts, fading slowly as their light continued on after their deaths, the way a screaming woman’s echo might continue on for a few seconds after she drew her last breath.
“Twinkle, Twinkle, little star…” The song flashed through my mind. “How I wonder what you are… Up above the world so high. Leaving behind an empty sky…”
I played with the rhyme in my head for a few minutes, then gave up. Fell back into the field to give my neck a rest. A few seconds of odd peace passed before the feeling of bugs in my hair sent me back into a position sitting upright.
I suddenly felt like running. I wanted to just get up and start moving. Onto the road, all the way back into the city, where streetlights and neon signs blocked out the stars every night.
I could run fast, like I had after leaving that store I went to last weekend, where I thought one of the cashiers might have noticed something off about me. I’d run down the street, a bulge in my pocket and a light, free feeling in my chest.
But the field was too far away from the city. I was no athlete. I measured my distance traveled in city blocks, not miles. When I left, it would be on one of the shuttle buses, like most of the other gawkers who’d made the trip out into the country to get one last, good, long look.
Some people had brought telescopes. Others, cameras. Everyone wanted to ‘capture the moment’, just like the news anchors told them to. Everyone wanted to see the things their grandchildren might not be able to: stars and polar bears.
I didn’t see the point. If some huge thing, event, whatever, was really out there destroying entire galaxies, who cared if you had footage of the last starry night sky posted on your Facebook page?
But I guess I did care, a little. Or why would I be there? Looking, just like everyone else.
Maybe it was time to stop making the trips out to the field. Maybe it was time to just… Live. I didn’t want to be like the pathetic losers around me who sat and watched because there was nothing they could do to stop it.
But I was like them.
In real life, there was no big mission to send Earth’s finest into space to go battle the darkness. There was no unlikely team of heroes, braving the final frontier and forging friendships and loving relationships along the way.
There was just waiting.
“I can’t stand it anymore,” the woman said with a shudder. “Let’s just go home.”
Back to the city, where stars were obscured by the haze of civilization.
The couple got up and folded their blanket. The woman clutched her purse. They picked their way through the rows of spectators, toward the line of buses that waited in the distance.
I waited a few seconds, then got up and brushed myself off. I followed them. Got on the bus just after them, eyes slipping past those of the bus driver – not the same one I’d ridden out with. Took the empty seat just behind the man and woman.
Others were already on the bus, waiting. Most were asleep, heads tucked into their chests like roosting birds as they tried to make up for lost sleep. They’d have work tomorrow, or school. Appointments, business meetings, dates, tennis lessons at the country club. Packed schedules. They hadn’t really had time to come all the way out into the boonies. But then again, how many more chances would they get to sit and watch the world die?
How many more years, months, weeks, days, would it be before even the ghosts faded and all that was left in the sky were the little moving lights of airplanes and satellites?
The bus started moving. People stirred, changed positions, and peeked past their eyelashes.
I waited until the other passengers settled back down again into at least a half-rest, my gaze skimming over the interior of the bus tiredly, like I was bored.
The man in front of me snored. The woman leaned against him as she slept, still and quiet. They probably had some grandchildren my age. If I were the bus driver, I’d guess that they had grandchildren. Maybe a granddaughter they took with them to stargaze... And if a girl followed them onto the bus, and sat by them, he’d probably assume that she was related.
After all, who else but a granddaughter would reach forward, pull the sleeping woman’s purse toward her, and start rummaging through it? No one outside the family would ever dare.
I took what I wanted from the woman’s purse, discretely slipping the small items into my sweatshirt pocket. I also took a stick of gum from the pack that was there – ladies like her always carried gum, or mints, or something – and popped it halfway into my mouth, letting the end stick out for the driver or the other passengers to see if they were watching. A bored granddaughter taking a stick of gum from her grandma’s purse. Nothing odd about that.
Then I put the purse back onto the seat, next to the woman.
The man looked like a heavy sleeper… But no, it would look too suspicious, taking the watch right off his wrist. There was no reason whatsoever for someone to do that.
I settled back in my seat and rested my head against the window, staring at the farmland we passed by. Certain parts were almost familiar now. I’d seen them on other nights, and would see them again, every other night I came.
A few more pinpricks of light disappeared from the sky as I peered upward.
How much longer until the star-killer came to Earth?
How long before the sky was empty?
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Can we pretend that airplanes, in the night sky, are like shooting stars... I could really use a wish right now, wish right now, wish right now... I think I was listening to that song when I started this.
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