Little Star

The blinds are drawn over the windows.

I'm alone in the dark, whimpering. My brain kicks at my eyeballs from behind like it's trying to escape. I don't know what "dying" means but it must feel like this.

I've been in bed since this afternoon when I suddenly vomited all over Benjy's bare feet and green bedroom carpet while playing with our Matchbox cars. We both began crying – for different reasons – and his mom called my mom to come pick me up immediately.

There's a clock on my wall but I don't know how to read it. Only its edges are visible as golden outlines from the night light, but its tick-tick-tick becomes an endless trail of ants marching across the walls, over my chest, up my nose, into my pounding skull.

My night light is a plastic moon with a smiling face; he winks at me, the only clearly-visible thing in the room. All the other familiar objects of my three year-old life – my rocking horse, my low book cabinet, my plastic football toy-chest – have been replaced by strange creatures half-hiding in the darkness, waiting to pounce.

Under the damp covers of my own bed, I am transported somewhere I have never been before: a scary, hostile place where my body burns, aches and leaks. Where I have to fight to live.

A golden vertical line slices through the dark, opens into a rectangle too bright for me to stare at. I don't understand "God" but my body reacts with the same awe and fear. Two tall thin shadows appear inside the rectangle, one lingers while the other slips into the darkness with me, kneels by my pillow:

MOTHER [whispering softly]: Are you feeling any better, honey...?

I can only whimper. She holds a piece of ice against my forehead, so cold it burns my skin, sends rippling shivers all the way to my toes. I moan and turn my head away. I don't want that.

MOTHER [to the other shadow]: He threw up again, on the rug. Can you grab me a towel from the hamper? [beat] No, not one of the good ones!

There are sighs of irritation, shuffling sounds, violent chills from more ice cubes that make me cry out in pain. Then the glowing rectangle collapses and I am alone in the dark again.

I roll over, press my clammy face and body against the cool wall. It brings relief even though it makes me shiver harder. My eyelids begin to droop until I realize that I am being watched.

Something is outside my window.

From behind the drawn blinds, there is a soft yellow glow: not the sun's glare, but brighter than a full moon. I sit up in bed, emboldened. Sliding up out of my covers, I raise the blinds.

A single eye the size of a diner plate presses against the glass, staring back at me. Set in a glowing head with glowing skin, it radiates only curiosity, kindness.

The head enters my home through the window pane as if passing through water, brightening my room with shimmering yellow light. One giant eye, a pointy nose, a torso, long angular arms and knees and feet follow through the glass until a tall being stands in my room, the top of its head nearly touching the ceiling.

Towering over me, it smiles softly. I hear its voice inside my own head, which doesn't hurt anymore:

TALL ONE: ///COME///HOME///AND///PLAY

Its words aren't words like we speak, but their sounds are high-pitched, like a child. It makes me giggle; I should probably be afraid, but I'm not. I'm delighted, trusting and ready.

The Tall One turns back towards the window and passes through the closed glass like before. On the other side, it watches, waiting for me to follow.

I hesitate, I'm afraid to open the window myself because I was always told:

MOTHER: Never open the window by yourself, Danny... you could fall out and die!

Out on the roof, the Tall One reaches an impossibly long arm out, its four-fingered hand passes right through the glass to take mine and pull me back through.

Outside, my sweat-soaked pajamas are suddenly dry, my bare feet unbothered by the frozen tar shingles of our roof. The Tall One's eye slow-blinks gently:

TALL ONE: ///FOLLOW///US///LITTLE///STAR

I look out at the grey Detroit night, the sideways dashes of freezing rain sizzling around the orange sodium streetlights:

ME: Out here I'm gonna get even sicker!

It kneels down, touching a tingling fingertip to my cheek:

TALL ONE: ///NONE///ARE///SICK///HERE

It lifts one foot off the rooftop, then a second. Its body floats a foot off the ground. I try to copy it but am bound by gravity. Frustration scrunches my face.

TALL ONE: ///DO///NOT///THINK

My tiny legs stumble, skinning my knee on the roof shingles. Without thinking, I push my body off the ice with bare hands until I realize I too am floating in the air.

Pleased, the Tall One slowly drift upwards, a leaf on the wind:

TALL ONE: ///FALL///INTO///THE///SKY

I don't think. I do. I know how to do this, going by wanting to go, upwards, upwards. Have I done this before?

We rise high above my house. I look down at the street corner I'm not allowed to cross by myself. At the vacant lot across the street with the scary trash mountain that my mom says is full of dangerous things. It's a tiny bump from up here.

I can see the next block over where a bee flew into my mom's hair while she was riding her bike and she fell off and broke her nose. And then higher: the houses begin to form squares, like the quilt on the couch downstairs that Nana made us.

The Tall One and I float higher still, laughing with joy as we twirl around each other slowly and pass through clouds. The air here is even colder but its yellow light keeps me warm. Movement is pure intention, effortless, careless as play.

Far below is the groaning city of Detroit, farther off still, the faint lights of other cities, other countries, far-off lands with different languages and music and foods. My heart swells with excitement at the future, then contracts as I see the boundaries of my own brief life.

ME: I want to see... everything.

TALL ONE: ///IMPOSSIBLE///BUT///YOU///WILL///SEE///MUCH

The Tall One points upwards, higher into the sky, towards the rising sun and I follow. We float together faster — birds shoot past us like bullets, cloud banks tear apart and reform – as the blood orange sun swells to swallow us like a mouth.

++++

And now we are somewhere else, far away but also right here, everywhere. We aren't even separate anymore. The Tall One is me and I am it and we are also everyone else in this place. The sky isn't made of air and light but voices, feelings, togetherness, love. The voice I hear now is both theirs and my own:

VOICE: ///ALWAYS///REMEMBER///YOU///CAN///FLY

I think about lifting up my feet and falling into the sky, and as I do, this separates me again from everyone else here and suddenly I am myself again, a three-year old boy named Danny who lived in Detroit and didn't feel good a few minutes ago.

From the faceless cloud, The Tall One re-forms and emerges. It points to a black dot hanging in space just in front of the tip of my nose. I have to cross my eyes to see it clearly.

TALL ONE: ///REMEMBER///LITTLE///STAR

Shapes move inside that black spot: patterns of squares, city blocks, houses, a rooftop and a bed--

And sunlight. Warm orange sunlight beaming through the window onto my bedroom carpet. My pillow is still damp with sweat as my mom enters my room with a glass of clear apple juice and two slices of toast.

I was starving. I wanted to tell her everything that happened but my body insisted on first devouring the toast, drinking down the juice:

ME: Mom... last night... I flew all over the world.

MOM: You did? Well, we were very, very worried about you down here. You had a fever of 103.

ME: Is 103... a lot?

She takes my empty juice glass and sets it down, wraps her arms around me. Burying her face in my sweaty hair, she nods. Her shoulders shake, softly crying tears of relief.

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