Before he climbs out of the window, Caleb takes one more look at the recordings he’s written down. The first
313.15m x 341.6m
has a time and date beside it: 3.15pm, August 2. The second set of results were recorded at 6.30pm.
314.05m x 342.1m
Even now that it’s getting late, when it’s easy to doubt himself, to believe that he made a mistake, he remains convinced that he was careful. He really was. He took his time, didn’t rush. No slips, no fumbles, not even any interruptions. His concentration had been absolute. According to these results, the graveyard has grown ninety centimetres in one direction, fifty in another, and has done so within three-and-a-quarter hours.
He doesn’t realise how deep he frowns, how his face folds slightly in at brow and chin.
He returns the jotter to the bottom of a pile of exercise books and papers in the bottom drawer of his desk. It’s not as if Father ever comes in here to root around, but Caleb feels protective of his odd and disturbing discovery. He not ready share it yet. He needs more. Not that he’d bother to share it with Father. Who knows what kind of withering abuse that would bring? There would be the classic sigh, then anything from a selection of possible verbal attacks. A bit of grief for bothering him with something so ridiculous, perhaps. Or accusations that Caleb must be up to no good, hanging around that graveyard again. A load of senseless shouting about acting dumb, about shameful behaviour, about this, about that. A combination of any or all of these responses is what Caleb could expect. Words like ‘honest’ and ‘really’ and ‘truth’ only ever serve to rile Father up.
Time for some fresh air. And a whole lot of space.
Out of his bedroom window he goes, dragging his quilt and pillow with him. Across the slope of the roof he creeps, until he reaches the garage roof, and here he makes himself comfortable, using the quilt like a cocoon. He wriggles his head deep into the pillow.
Straight up there’s one hell of a view.
It’s another clear night. The stars are all sitting way, way back in the sky, and he hates it. Hates the way he’s drawn to this. Hates that he can’t stop looking, despite what it does to his insides. It aches him. It’s a dull thrum, a craving he struggles to understand.
Look at it all. There’s so much in the darkness. It goes too far to think about.
He’s one kid on one roof, in one town, in one country, on one planet, in one solar system. One. The stars don’t care about his sorrow, because they know nothing of it. All the way out there, so, so far, it wouldn’t matter to them. To them, or anyone else.
They glitter at him, jewels at the bottom of oceans upon oceans, and he tries to feel the distance, get a sense of what endless actually means.
Why is there so much of it, so much that it makes this planet tiny, a blade of grass in a swooping field? This one little ball with life smeared across it. Life that makes choices it thinks are important will have an impact on the grand scheme of things. The grand scheme is too, too big. People’s worries and miseries are all pointless because one day they’ll all be dead and gone and gone is forever and the universe will keep on going until it stretches itself into nothing and then that will be gone too.
This single insignificant boy looks up into forever and knows those stars are not big burning eyes staring down at him. The stars are looking to where they are going. They’re leaving him more alone with every passing second.
Look at me, he thinks. Look at me, just once.
Just.