Based off Prompt 4: Night Sky Conspiracy from Weird Girl Writing Prompts.
Through the thin walls of the double-wide, Sawyer could hear his brother sobbing in his bedroom. Part of him wanted to ignore it. Part of him wanted to help. However, the vast majority of Sawyer’s thoughts were focused on the fact that the damned walls were spinning again. Apparently he had drank more than he realized.
Sawyer stood in the hallway with a hand placed firmly on the cheap wood-paneled wall. He didn’t regret going out that night—he never regretted a night with his old friends. But he might have been regretting the excess to which he had drunk.
It was all too easy to have another and another and another. Now the walls swayed, and the dirty-carpet floor moved beneath his feet.
“Miles,” Sawyer made his way to the closed door of his brother’s bedroom.
There was no answer, just the suppressed sound of a sniffle.
“I…do you want to talk about it?”
Sawyer wasn’t entirely sure what ‘it’ was. Miles was what their mother called a ‘sensitive soul’. It didn’t take much to make him upset. A sad movie, a crushed bug, sometimes the wrong words caused Miles immense amounts of distress.
While he could neither relate nor understand, Sawyer always felt a deep sense of guilt at knowing his brother was upset. It was perhaps the only thing he ever felt truly sorry for.
“Miles,” he said again.
He held the doorframe with a death grip as the hallway swayed around him like the tides of the sea.
“Go away,” his brother finally spoke at last.
“No. I…I want to make sure you’re alright.”
“I am, now, go.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
Sawyer ran a hand through his hair and let out a sigh. He placed his forehead on the smooth surface of the door and waited. He wasn’t like Miles, or even his mother. He didn’t know how to say the right things at the right time.
“Shirley said there was going to be a meteor shower tonight.” Sawyer paused before continuing. “Do you want to go see if we can see it?”
Miles didn’t answer right away. He figured that maybe his brother was ignoring him. Then, the door opened.
Sawyer nearly stumbled into the room. Miles looked at him with a cold expression. His eyes were still red and puffy. Tears stained his cheeks.
“Where were you tonight?”
“I went out.”
“Where?” Miles held the same intensity in his gaze that their mother held. Sometimes Sawyer wondered if the two of them were mind-readers.
“Just a couple bars downtown. Then we went to Shirley’s place. You…could’ve joined us, you know.”
At that, Miles raised an eyebrow. “I’m seventeen.”
“Right, yeah, well…I was seventeen once. It’s not like I think you’ve never been out drinking.”
“I haven’t.”
Sawyer hesitated at the door. Even in his inebriated state, he could hear the undertone to Miles’ words. “I’m not like you,” was what he meant. Maybe it should have hurt, but it didn’t. He was glad his brother wasn’t like him. Someone in their family had to be the one to climb out of the hole they were born into.
“I heard about the meteor shower, too,” Miles offered. “I was reading an article about it this morning.”
“So,” Sawyer leaned against the door jam. “Should we go check it out?”
Slowly, Miles nodded. He pulled a hoodie off the back of a chair and shrugged it on.
The street lights of the trailer park obscured the skies just enough to make star-viewing less than ideal. Miles pointed this out almost immediately as they stepped out into the night. Sawyer shrugged and continued walking. He didn’t plan on stargazing from the neighborhood. Instead, he led Miles towards the forest behind the park.
“A forest isn’t a good place, either,” Miles protested.
Sawyer almost laughed. He wondered if his brother truly thought he was that stupid.
Upon entering the forest, Sawyer found the ‘secret’ trail. As a kid, he used to sneak out with some of the neighbors. They’d steal a bottle from someone and hide out in the woods, sometimes staying up until the sun rose. Sawyer wondered if that was still a tradition.
“How long has this been here?” Miles asked, clearly surprised to find the little trail.
“A while,” Sawyer replied.
The forest behind the trailer park was nothing special. It was a little under five acres that separated them from a newer development. However, somewhere at the center of it was a large rock. It was so large that an old ladder had been placed beside it so that kids could climb to the top.
Sawyer scaled the ladder with ease, despite the alcohol. Miles followed.
Above them, the stars were brilliant, sparkling like sunlight on water. Sawyer was the first to sit down. The rock was firm and cold beneath him—grounding him. Suddenly, he was brought back to his youth. He was reminded of the days he spent with his friends. They spent their days doing all the things they had been told not to do, like it was a checklist.
Miles sat down beside him. In the dim light, Sawyer could tell that whatever had upset his brother was no longer bothering him. The younger boy gazed up at the stars with a calculated expression.
If Sawyer were a stronger man, he would ask Miles what had been upsetting him. He would comfort him in the way adults should. Instead, he wished he had brought a case of beer with them.
Silence fell between the two as they sat upon the smooth rock in the middle of the forest. In the distance, Sawyer heard the sounds of the town–car horns, music, tires on concrete. Somewhere, two people were in a heated fight about something. A door slammed loudly, and an old car started its engine.
“So, Mom says you’ve been applying to colleges. Where do you want to go?”
Miles seemed surprised by the question. He glanced over at Sawyer. “I’m not sure yet. I think I’ll go wherever I can get the best scholarship.”
“You’ll probably have your pick.”
“Maybe.”
“What do you want to do? Still the…space stuff?”
A smile tugged at Miles’ lips. “If by space stuff, you mean astrophysics, then yes.”
“Then tell me about meteor showers if you know so much.”
Miles thought for a moment. “Well, meteor showers are caused by trails of dust and small rocks left behind by asteroids. Earth travels through these trails, and the debris gets trapped in our gravitational field. It falls to Earth at really high speeds.”
Sawyer nodded. “Then why do they sparkle?”
“They don’t really. I mean, it’s just the debris catching fire due to the friction.”
“So, meteors are really just fiery rocks?”
“Basically, yeah.”
He thought for a moment. “And what does your science say about wish-making?”
For the first time that night, Miles laughed. “Well, nothing, really. But I’d like to believe that maybe that small change in our atmosphere could…cause some kind of butterfly effect.”
“That’s not the same thing as a wish.”
Miles rolled his eyes.
For a moment, silence fell between the two of them. Crickets and frogs sang in harmony as the city droned on in a stream of ambient sounds.
“How long are you back in town for?”
“A week or two,” Sawyer replied. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and fumbled with the lighter for a moment before getting it lit.
“And then where?”
“Dunno, wherever they need me, I guess.”
“Do you like it?”
He blew out a cloud of smoke. “Yeah, I love working twelve-hour shifts in the direct heat—it’s my passion in life.”
“You could do something else,” Miles offered.
Sawyer said nothing. Miles was right. There were countless other things he could be doing with his life. However, he had fallen into some sort of comfortable displeasure working for the oil fields. He didn’t hate the job. It paid well. He would often get two weeks off at a time.
Before Sawyer could find the words to reply with, he noticed something shoot across the sky.
“Do you see that?” He pointed.
Miles squinted. Even with his coke-bottle glasses, the boy was nearly blind. “Where?”
“It’s gone. It went somewhere over there,” he gestured to the outskirts of the city. “It looks like it landed over by the old manufacturing plant.”
“Meteors typically burn up in the atmosphere,” Miles explained. “It’s unlikely it landed.”
“Well, this one did.”
He sighed. “I really don’t think-”
“There’s another,” Sawyer said.
Miles looked back up at the stars.
“Where?”
He adjusted so that he was closer to Miles and pointed up towards the stars, where a small light flashed idly.
“Oh, yeah,” he finally saw it. Miles pressed his glasses further up his nose and continued to squint. “That’s not a meteor.”
Sawyer frowned. “Sure it is. It’s not a star, it’s flashing.”
“Yeah, but meteors don’t look like that. It should be moving–falling. That light is staying in place.”
“Is it a plane?”
“Maybe, but that would be really high up. Also, planes have a green and a-”
“Look, another one,” Sawyer pointed to a spot in the sky not far from the first flashing light.
In silence, the two brothers watched the flashing lights. The rest of the skies remained as they always were, but the two lights continued to blink.
“Aliens,” Sawyer gasped.
Miles groaned. “That’s not aliens.”
“Yes, it is. Look, that one flashes and then the other one flashes. They’re taking turns. They’re…”
“Communicating.” Miles finished the sentence.
It was as if the two flashing stars were talking to one another. Neither Sawyer nor Miles spoke. They both watched, frozen by the strange sight. The lights continued to ‘talk,’ and Sawyer felt a chill race down his back.
“What is that?” He asked at last.
“I don’t know,” Miles replied. Rarely were those words a part of his vocabulary.
“It really does look like they’re talking to one another.”
Miles dug through the pocket of his hoodie before pulling out a worn notebook and a pen. He flipped open to an empty page and began to write something. He glanced up at the sky and then continued to write.
“What are you doing?”
“They are talking to one another,” he explained hurriedly. He glanced up and took another note.
“How do you know?”
“It’s Morse code.”
Even Sawyer knew what Morse code was, although he didn’t know how to read it. “And you can understand them?”
“Not all of it,” Miles admitted. “But enough to know what they’re talking about—the basics at least.”
“And?” Sawyer prompted.
It took Miles a few minutes to finish what he was writing. Finally, he glanced at Sawyer. “They’re trying to find something.”
“Find what?”
“A ship?”
Sawyer grinned wildly and stood up. He looked towards the manufacturing plant. “Miles,” he looked down at his brother. “Don’t you get it? That meteor I saw—the one that landed—was a UFO.”
“Sawyer-”
“And those up there, that’s the government or…someone looking for it.”
“I don’t-”
“C’mon, why else would there be two blinking lights talking in Morse code?”
Miles didn’t appear to have an answer for that.
“Even if it’s not an alien,” Sawyer continued. “Whatever they’re looking for went down over there. I know where it is. I saw it.”
“Even if that’s true…”
“My truck is out front, we can-”
“It’s nearly one in the morning, and you’re still drunk. We’re not taking your truck to-”
“You can drive.” Sawyer was hardly listening to Miles as he jumped down from the rock.
“No, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Miles hesitated, peering down the edge of the rockface. Sawyer noticed the undeniable look of embarrassment. “I…I don’t have my license.”
“What? Why not?”
He gave a hopeless shrug. “I didn’t pass the test.”
“You’re like a genius, and you couldn’t pass the driving test?”
Miles glared. “It was hard and…I didn’t get much practice. Mom’s been gone a lot and…”
“I’ll direct you,” Sawyer offered. “But don’t you want to check this out? Where that thing landed…it’s not far from here. Five miles, tops.”
Miles hesitated again.
“C’mon.”
“I…what if it’s nothing?”
“What if it’s something?”