Written the other day
“Can we pretend that airplanes
In the night sky
Are like shooting stars?
I could really use a wish right now (wish right now, wish right now).”
They would be in about five worlds of trouble if someone heard them, or one of the other kids turned narc, but Darien always had a knack for locating fun-sized candy bars and other items of monetary value, and between his bribes and Lita's terrifying glares, they avoided quite a bit of trouble and trips to the matron's office.
Two kids, aged eight and ten, climbed up a very rickety ladder onto a roof smudged with pigeon crap. Lita wore her faded pink pajamas that were a size too big and Darien's brand-new blue coat. She clutched bony, sunburned hands around her knees, and peered at her friend. "Do you really think you'll like Those People?"
Darien glanced back at her, in an uncomfortable, squirmy boy way. If he said yes right away, it'd hurt her feelings, because he knew that he was leaving and she was not. But he couldn't lie either. "I might."
An airplane streaked across the inky night sky with a whirl of faraway engine and a streak of bright white light. She shivered involuntarily, even though she had been too young to remember that day. "Do you think you'll be happy, and make new friends?" Lita asked softly, clutching her knees tighter. Under the pink flannel they were scraped and unbandaged. Do you think you'll forget me when you're no longer so alone?
Darien sat up straight, and followed the airplane trail with his intensely blue eyes. "Make a wish," he said suddenly.
"That's not a shooting star, stupid," Lita scoffed, the name coming easy because of familiarity and the fact that she was terrified of a sense of abandonment she couldn't explain.
"But you can pretend, and maybe one day you'll also be away from here, and somewhere where you can see real stars, and then maybe everything will be all right and your wish will come true even if it had to wait a while."
He sounded so hopeful that she made a half-hearted wish at something that would likely never happen. But they still had each other for a few precious days, and that was something.
***
"That's Vega, from the constellation Lyra," Nick pointed at a bright, winking star high in the heavens, and Lita shivered and leaned closer to him as they lay on the blanket in the park. He was dorkily enthusiastic about astronomy and math and physics, a lot of which went over her head, but his arms were strong and his hands were steady, and when she looked up into his eyes, for the second time in her life, she felt as though she could trust someone.
A streak of white cut across the sky, and she chuckled at the flash of a distant memory. "Airplane."
"Nah, meteor, actually," Nick smiled, and his brown eyes glittered in the darkness. "Make a wish."
She propped herself up on her elbows and leaned down so that her mouth was a whisper away from his. The grass was soft underneath them. "Okay."