Fiction
Fiona Johnson is building an artificial star in her bedroom closet. She has always wanted to be part of the universe. The star is made of found objects including eyeglasses, light bulbs, laser pointers and chicken wire. She has also used a strand of her own hair and bits of her foster mother’s gold eyeshadow. Vicki doesn’t know about the star, and a lot of things.
Fiona imagines that when she finishes the star it will explode into light and everyone will see her for the first time. The International Renewable Energy Agency will offer her a job, and her mother will reappear, sober, and Amanda Neiman will want to be her friend.
Instead, Amanda Neiman tells everyone Fiona has lice.
The star is almost finished but Fiona needs a wrench. People don’t throw out perfectly good wrenches; she knows this because she checked all the garbage pails on her street for three Wednesday nights and the dumpsters behind the strip mall, too. Vicki certainly doesn’t have a wrench so the only option is to borrow one from the school janitor, Mr. Franco, while he is washing the floors.
Now there’s a white-yellow glow radiating through the cracks in Fiona’s closet door. Vicki is shouting because the school called to say Fiona is a suspect in the case of a certain missing tool and then Vicki stops and says, “Heavens, child, what is this?” Fiona cries out and throws her body over the star. It burns, and her skin peels and curls into a thousand tiny mouths, but she doesn’t feel it. She scoops the star up in her arms and runs past Vicki and through the house. She runs down the chipped patio steps, past the Chevy that hasn’t run for two years and across the street to the park. The neighbours stand on their lawns but they can’t look for fear of blindness. Nothing has ever been this bright.
Fiona and the star are in the middle of an open field. It feels like day, but Fiona knows it is night, the time for stars. Mr. Franco is there, and he says he isn’t mad at her for stealing his wrench, that the star is beautiful and she has nothing to be sorry for.
Fiona does not think about the time Vicki called her a dirty little bitch or how hard her teacher laughed when she told the class that aliens were real but very far away. She doesn’t think about the loneliness of her room at night or the times she has been hated or pitied or, worst of all, loved. Instead, Fiona takes a running start and heaves the star into the sky and with a burst of light she is gone.