Second Star to the Right

Two schoolboys plan a trip home

SCHOOL’S OUT, SO ANDERSON Skeete and I visi-text our parents for the OK to go to Miami Beach in Oistins. They give it, and we celebrate by each buying a lead pipe coconut bread, a Plus drink, and a fish fritter from Pearlene’s Best Street Food before beginning a leisurely trek down Bay Street.

Near The Boatyard, an H2O PSV cruises past before floating to a gentle stop. It’s the B93. It spews around 80 people from its 30-person capacity, which still manages to leave it crammed. The driver, Brakesjam, looks expectantly at Andy. Andy’s the new boy at school, arrived just three months ago, but everyone notices him. He’s got that thing they call charisma.

Andy smiles at Brakesjam and points towards the beach. The tall lanky driver, folded behind the wheel like a praying mantis, smiles back at Andy, ignoring me completely. I’m not offended in anyway; I’m used to it.

“Careful, boy,” Brakesjam warns him, “Them waves real rough today.”

Brakesjam cruises on. Drivers in Bim—or Bar-Bay-Doze, as tourists pronounce and live it—love speed. They’re as likely to shear the corner off a No Speeding sign as to smear a pedestrian around one. But despite his tag, Brakesjam has a safety record that’s second to none. He’s the slowest driver on the island.

In fact, stepping off the pavement is much more dangerous, because gutter moss is treacherous. One slip could see you clinging to the undercarriage of a government bus going to Chalky Mount. Although for many, that’s actually much better than clinging to the inside of one. Chalky Mount is CIMIC. Or officially, The Chalky Mount Investigative Clinic. That’s where all the Space Orphans are culled.

Brakesjam was right. The waves at Miami Beach are in a supremely turbulent sulk. They look ready to kill. So, while we wait for them to get it out of their system, Andy fishes a short, thin plank from his rucksack.

“What’s that?” I ask.

He pauses as if he hasn’t heard my question. I’m just about to ask him again when he says, “It’s a sign.”

I stare at it. It’s blank. I pose another question. “A sign of what?”

Before he can answer, the tag team of Linville Collymore and Jacinta Sealy come running up, hand-in-hand. Linville’s sun-bleached dreads bounce around his head like a mini corona, while Jacinta’s smile dazzles the universe. She has dark skin, big brown eyes, and sharp cheekbones. All her friends say she has Arawak blood. Her enemies say it’s Carib, from the man-eaters. Both rumours are untrue on many levels, but she laughs them away with ease. That’s why all the boys like her.

The two of them look right through me to Andy’s sign.

Linville says, “Hey Skeete, cool beach art, man.”

Jacinta adds, “Emerald flying fish too. Dah look real cool.”

I look again, more closely this time. In my own vision, Andy’s ‘sign’ remains perfectly blank. But by now I’ve seen enough. I look away.

Once the Atlantic simmers down, we swim, catch crabs, and eat conch eggs. And when Linville and Jacinta have used up all their downtime and gone home, Andy gives me a long look and smiles slowly. “Sereteh traga’thi. So, where were you last?”

I give him the same smile. “Sereteh traga’thor. Ichon. You?”

“I was in Skopje, then Gwangju.” I ticked off a few other places. He laughed, then added his own list. “It seems like between us we’ve covered the planet.”

I shook my head. “Neither of us mentioned Bandiagara.”

“Interesting,” was all he said.

When they first arrived alone eighty years ago with their ‘tiny, helpless, kitten features’, every country on Earth welcomed the Space Orphans—a first for refugees. But these days, they’re undesirables just like the rest. Space Orphans age more slowly than humans, but the bad news gets there eventually. By the time they’ve reached fourteen, SOs look like nothing a human would want to find in their bed pouncing on wool.

A few of us got wise early on. We adjusted our appearance and blended in. Or edited memories and records and moved on. 

No one remembers us; we simply never were. Before this place, I was the son of a corporate billionaire from Seoul who designed vintage binary chips for old interactive gaming museums. My current parents, both government officials, can vaguely recall a trip to a DNA reject orphanage. But like most others, they barely see me. I’m not sure they remember adopting a son.

The teachers are the same. I’ve enrolled and never graduated. Seen many students come and go. That suits me fine. I enjoy school: it’s the best place to learn about human society. That’s why I’ve been at Harrison’s College for over fifteen years.

As we sit looking out to the ocean, Andy says, “I’ve built a ship.”

I know he doesn’t mean a canoe. In the short time he’s been at Harrison’s, I’ve been watching him closely. If Andy told his teachers he’d made a telepathic robot, they’d fall over each other vying for shares. So, I simply nod and say, “Trath’a gara. Good to know. Well, since we’re making plans, I can get the CIMIC orphans out undetected.”

“I know you can,” he laughs. “You’re in every class at school. Sometimes simultaneously.”

He’s right. On this planet I have spectral and radar invisibility—no creature indigenous to Earth can detect me unless I want them to. I’m fond of this place called Barbados, but I sense it’s time for a change. And to tell the truth, I’m also pretty angry.

Because unlike the other SOs, I carry ancestral memories. I can remember things that happened before I was born. No doubt there were others like me, but I believe they’ve all been culled by CIMIC.

We’ve been staring at Andy’s thin plank for some time. Now I look at it properly, I can see it’s like a plexiglass screen. I can see the darkness of space, faint lines growing stronger. It looks like a map of the galaxy with stop signs. Suddenly, I feel light and free.

Beneath Andy’s skin I catch the image of a furious looking grizzly-faced creature. Seems he’s as angry as I am. The image sports a pair of rust coloured, viciously curved fangs that run from twisted jawbone to ear. In his smoky blue eyes I can see my reflection. Serrated fangs, more twisted jawbone—and a mouth that behaves like an ancient woodchipper. There’s human blood on my cheek.

“I wonder why our people left us here,” Andy muses.

Looking up, past Earth’s srath’atha sky and think of a quiet, promised vengeance that been eighty long years in the waiting. “I’ll tell you everything on the way back.”