The light before we land.
You're nineteen.
Alright- alright, cheating. That's skipping ahead a bit. Because you're nineteen when it happens, but you're not nineteen yet, you're seventeen and a half and Jimmy's picked you up from school on the bike, and as you're flying past the estate- no helmets, hair in your mouth- he says, so casual like, don't need it anymore, do ya, and just like that, you don't. You're seventeen and a half and so stupid, Christ, and so in love.
And then you aren't.
For your eighteenth birthday mum gets you this pamphlet about taking your A-levels. She leaves it sitting on the counter next to your slice of cake. When she gets home, she pulls a little bag out of her pocket, and there's a necklace too, thin little budget-store chain with a bit of sparkle on the end- a snowflake, a star. She makes you cry. She drives you crazy, but not tonight. You promise her you're getting a job, you're getting your life on track. You make a promise to be better. You almost keep it. There's a job in a shop, and there's Mickey, and both of them are so steady, totally steady. You fold clothes and eat chips and sit around pretending to care about the match. You have dinner, the three of you, in front of the telly with plates on your knees, repeating neighborhood gossip and worrying about your cousin's kids. During the day it feels right, alright, it feels like the sort of thing you're supposed to be doing. Mickey's sweet. He's always been sweet. Your mum don't mind him, not really, she's known him since he was two foot high and didn't have all his teeth. And Mickey likes her fine, and that's the way it's supposed to be when you're- whatever this is, whatever it is you're doing with your life. You're not going to uni- what would you study, really, when everything's so, ugh, really, and you flunked half your units- and you're not gonna be a model because you haven't got the height, and like Shareen says, you've got too much going on behind you. Not that it's her business. Still, it's fine. It's really fine. You've got plenty to keep you busy, and friends to go out with on Saturday night, and decent clothes and Sundays off and it's all good enough-
-except sometimes, you look up.
And it's those stars- it's those stars in the distance, sometimes when you're in the park by yourself, sitting on the swings just idling back and forth, breaking your heart over Jimmy or wondering if Mickey's washed his socks this month or fretting that mum's got a new boyfriend she isn't telling you about- when you look up, they're there, all bright and cold and far-off, looking down, disappearing behind the clouds. You wonder, sometimes, what they're seeing. How bright it would be- this estate, this earth- if you were looking in from the dark. Only sometimes. Not all the time. You drank too much once and flopped down on the slide, and it was freezing against your back, and you shut your eyes, and-
-you could still see them. Those stars: pinpricks in a blanket, flashlights, headlights across the lot. Living, somehow, even if they're not properly alive. Waiting. Anyway, you had to get to work in a few hours. You had to forget.
These are the things you treasure in the world, the small stupid things that make you smile: getting out of work five minutes early, some silly little praise from your supervisor, a decent haircut. You thought you were getting the first one- early home, maybe a drink with the girls before that- but no, somebody's got to take the lottery money down, and that somebody is Rose Tyler, of course it is, when your feet hurt and your back's aching and you'd really like a pint. It's alright, though- somebody's got to do it, and Delia's got a baby waiting at the crèche, and that's more than your feet and your back put together. So you take it down, and as it turns out, somebody's mucking around in the basement, somebody who hasn't got better things to do. Only-
-run, he says.
Run.
You do, and your heart's in your throat and your lungs burn, you can't even feel your feet- God, when the roof blows, for a second you don't feel anything at all- and you can feel the blood in your veins moving so fast, all up your spine and into your face and over the tops of your thighs. You lean down and feel them with your hands- hot to the touch, pumping life through you, all awake. You don't sleep for hours. You keep thinking about him- his funny sad eyes, the laugh lines around his mouth, his heavy hot sweater under that coat- and you wonder if he blew himself to bits. You wonder who would collect him. What his family's like, where they are. If they'd ever know. You wonder who would have collected you. So when he asks you- skipping again. Just a bit. Because you're nineteen now, and the story's really starting. Things are moving. He asks you, and you've been asked before. Quit. Come away with me. It's not the first time you've run. Rose Tyler: you used to run away once a week, when you were thirteen. Thirteen and tired of just having a picture of dad to talk to, tired of mum's shabby boyfriends and the girls at school. Your mum says it was the strangest thing, though: you never took anything with you. Nothing at all. You always ran with the clothes on your back. Sometimes you got pretty far.
You'll run again, now. One more time. You're sorry, but you've got to: before you get old, before you get a boyfriend like Howard or marry Mickey or get those stains on your teeth from smoking too much. God, you're selfish, but somebody's got to understand. Is it worse to go, than to stay? Is it nobler in the mind? Well, that's from a poem. It's not going to help. You just know you can't sit still here, planted on the swings, on the sofa, on the sales floor. You love Mickey. You love your mum. You like watching people on the bus, kids waving at you from car windows, you like shopping and you like your room and you could stay, you ought to stay because-
-well.
Just to see what it's like. To those great blue stars, with the shirt on your back. How far you can go.
You're nineteen.
You can go pretty far.