The boy in the drawing had a square, pale brown face and eyes like long narrow boxes with circles in them. The circles were coloured dark brown. He had black hair that was like a fat upside-down ‘U’ on top of his head. His shirt was a brilliant red, blue and green. It was like the shirt Mom’s sister had given him, wrapped in plastic. Lavi had taken off the plastic and hung up the shirt in his closet. The boy had skates on. The boy was flying and his shirt stretched out behind him, like wings.
Rahul sat on the floor of his bedroom and looked at the drawing. He coloured the sky with a pale blue crayon, dividing it up into squares, and then going evenly from left to right, left to right, till they were all done. He had left white spaces for the eight clouds. They were all the same shape, like flowers with six perfectly symmetrical petals. There were two clouds in front of the boy, two behind him, and four on top.
Rahul lay down on his back on the floor and stared at the ceiling. He could see the stars that Mom had pasted on the ceiling, but only just. Slowly, as he lay there, they grew brighter and brighter and brighter. Rahul looked at the stars. There were twenty-nine of them because one had fallen off. They all had the same shape. He had asked Mom to stick them in regular rows.
He got up and looked for his skates. He strapped them on. It took him a long time to do things like that. Then he glided to his closet. He liked skating better than walking. He took his new shirt off the hanger. Then he put it on over his white T-shirt. He didn’t button up the shirt because that took too long.
Rahul skated to the window. He pushed it up, and open. He put one leg out of the window. Then, carefully, he put the other leg out of the window. He sat on the sill. It was dark outside. He could see stars high up in the sky. There were more than twenty-nine stars in the sky.
Rahul jumped. He fell
and fell
and fell
until the net of the sky (which he could see sometimes when he squinted at it) caught him and bounced him high up, so high he was in the middle of the clouds.
There were more than eight clouds in the sky. They all had different shapes but he didn’t mind. The clouds were cool and wet and bouncy, and felt good against his skin. They smelt of wind and rain and night.
He flew on through the clouds, kicking his legs against the air like he did in the swimming pool. Between the clouds, and from high above, the stars threw out shifting beams of light at him, pale blue, orange, red, yellow, and some colours he didn’t know the names of. They reminded him of the concert Lavi had once taken him to. He had started jumping up and down and yelping because of the loud music and the lights and the people standing too close to him, so they had gone back home. Lavi had not minded. But the beams from the stars felt different. He could hear the stars singing, some low and deep, and others light and shrill. It did not make him feel tense. It made him happy.
He flew in a large arc around the city. Below him, he could see lights and lights and lights, twinkling in the air and on the water. He could see the broad black river and the lights on the bridges. He could see roads come together and go apart like bright long strands of spaghetti, and the cars on them crawling like bugs. He flew over the roofs of houses, over fields and pools and people’s backyards.
It was so much nicer than being in an aeroplane.
He could be free, he could breathe, he didn’t need to yelp or stop his ears. When he looked down, he could see that the city was joined end to end, in a perfect circle. He knew exactly how he would draw it when he went back home.
He flew on.