The Night Sky

Adelaide tore through the door, wrenching at the handle like the world was wrenching at her heart. She dived into the blanket and pillows, and immediately recoiled. They still smelled of him, of insolence and selfishness and of her love. Through the tears flooded the memories; scattered nostalgia of stolen kisses and interlocked fingers and stares, wholeheartedly naive stares into ocean eyes and endless pupils.

Downstairs she could hear the front door closed gently, and then the silence. The scream of uncertainty that comes after something like this echoed through the walls, permeating an air of tentative distance, a reluctant surrender to doubt. Like mice, the whispered their unimportant words in a world that was uncrushed. A world so far removed from when she was now.

“Adelaide...” came the muffled voice she’d been waiting for, hiding in the far corner of her room.

“Go away!” she screamed, slamming the pillow and playing it as a drum, a drum that had perhaps just called her fat or maybe have pinched her backside or might even have taken away her first love.

“Adelaide. I have something for you. Something... from him.”

She was up before the words had settled, darting cat-like across a floor lovingly littered with rainbow teddies. On top of the highest shelf, perched like a lighthouse, was a little UFO shaped box. She lifted it down gently. The top was curved, conical but flat, and stars were cut out of like the remnants of a pastry sheet. She lifted this lid up, hearing the old hinge creek in acknowledgement. Underneath, halfway through her plie, balanced a small plastic ballerina. She wore a distinguished blue dress, her head held high looking at where, just a few seconds ago, had been her night sky.

“Where is it?” Adelaide demanded of the figurine.

“Underneath. Locked.” Replied the ballerina.

“What?! Where’s the key?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say. He might have taken it with him, before he...”

“Don’t say it,” Adelaide cried, her eyes glistening with rage and pain.

“You’ll have to go to his house to get it. I can’t go for you.”

“I don’t want to go.”

And with that, Adelaide collapsed into her bed, a hurricane in need of her drizzle.