I told him it looked like the stars had brightened and then blinked out, all at once.
'Fuck the stupid stars,' Diane said. (I was shocked: fuck wasn't a word she customarily used, though Jase and I were pretty free with it now that both our ages had reached double digits. Many things had changed this summer.)
Jason heard the anxiety in her voice. 'I don't think there's anything to be afraid of,' he said, although he was clearly uneasy himself.
Diane just scowled. 'I'm cold,' she said.
So we decided to go back to the Big House and see if the news had made CNN or CNBC. The sky as we crossed the lawn was unnerving, utterly black, weightless but heavy, darker than any sky I had ever seen.
* * * * *
'We have to tell E.D.,' Jason said.
'You tell him,' Diane said.
Jase and Diane called their parents by their given names because Carol Lawton imagined she kept a progressive household. The reality was more complex. Carol was indulgent but not terribly involved in the twins' lives, while E.D. was systematically grooming an heir. That heir, of course, was Jason. Jason worshipped his father. Diane was afraid of him.
And I knew better than to show my face in the adult zone at the boozy tag-end of a Lawton social event; so Diane and I hovered in the demilitarized zone behind a door while Jason found his father in an adjoining room. We couldn't hear the resulting conversation in any detail, but there was no mistaking E.D.'s tone of voice—aggrieved, impatient, and short-tempered. Jason came back to the basement red-faced and nearly crying, and I excused myself and headed for the back door.
Diane caught up with me in the hallway. She put her hand on my wrist as if to anchor us together. 'Tyler,' she said. 'It will come up, won't it? The sun, I mean, in the morning. I know it's a stupid question. But the sun will rise, right?'
She sounded absolutely bereft. I started to say something flippant—we'll all be dead if it doesn't—but her anxiety prompted doubts of my own. What exactly had we seen, and what did it mean? Jason clearly hadn't been able to convince his father that anything important had happened in the night sky, so maybe we were scaring ourselves over nothing. But what if the world really was ending, and only we three knew it?
'We'll be okay,' I said.
She regarded me through pickets of lank hair. 'You believe that?'
I tried to smile. 'Ninety percent.'
'But you're going to stay up till morning, aren't you?'
'Maybe. Probably.' I knew I didn't feel like sleeping.
She made a thumb-and-pinky gesture: 'Can I call you later?'
'Sure.'
'I probably won't sleep. And—I know this sounds dumb-in case I do, will you call me as soon as the sun comes up?'
I said I would.
'Promise?'
'Promise.' I was thrilled that she'd asked.
* * * * *
The house where I lived with my mother was a neat clapboard bungalow on the east end of the Lawton property. A small rose garden fenced with pine rails braced the front steps—the roses themselves had bloomed well into the fall but had withered in the latest gush of cold air. On this moonless, cloudless, starless night, the porch light gleamed like a beacon.
I entered quietly. My mother had long since retreated to her bedroom. The small living room was tidy save for a single empty shotglass on the side table: she was a five-day teetotaler but took a little whiskey on the weekends. She used to say she had only two vices, and a drink on Saturday night was one of them. (Once, when I asked her what the other one was, she gave me a long look and said, 'Your father.' I didn't press the subject)
I stretched out on the empty sofa with a book and read until Diane called, less than an hour later. The first thing she said was, 'Have you turned on the TV?'
'Should I?'
'Don't bother. There's nothing on.'
'Well, you know, it is two in the morning.'
'No, I mean absolutely nothing. There are infomercials on local cable, but nothing else. What does that mean, Tyler?'
What it meant was that every satellite in orbit had vanished along with the stars. Telecom, weather, military satellites, the GPS system: all of them had been shut down in the blink of an eye. But I didn't know any of that and I certainly couldn't have explained it to Diane. 'It could mean anything.'
'It's a little frightening.'
'Probably nothing to worry about.'
'I hope not. I'm glad you're still awake.'
She called back an hour later with more news. The Internet was also missing in action, she said. And local TV had begun to report canceled morning flights out of Reagan and the regional airports, warning people to call ahead.
'But there have been jets flying all night.' I'd seen their running lights from the bedroom window, false stars, fast-moving. 'I guess military. It could be some terrorist thing.'
'Jason's in his room with a radio. He's pulling in stations from Boston and New York. He says they're talking about military activity and airport lockdowns, but nothing about terrorism—and nothing about the stars.'
'Somebody must have noticed.'
'If they did they're not mentioning it. Maybe they have orders not to mention it. They haven't mentioned sunrise, either.'
'Why would they? The sun's supposed to come up in, what, an hour? Which means it's already rising out over the ocean. Off the Atlantic coast. Ships at sea must have seen it. We'll see it, before long.'
'I hope so.' She sounded simultaneously frightened and embarrassed. 'I hope you're right.'
'You'll see.'
'I like your voice, Tyler. Did I ever tell you that? You have a very reassuring voice.'
Even if what I said was pure bullshit.
But the compliment affected me more than I wanted her to know. I thought about it after she hung up. I played it over in my head for the sake of the warm feeling it provoked. And I wondered what that meant. Diane was a year older than me and three times as sophisticated—so why did I feel so suddenly protective of her, and why did I wish she was close enough that I could touch her face and promise everything would be all right? It was a puzzle almost as urgent and nearly as disturbing as whatever had happened to the sky.
She called again at ten to five, when I had almost, despite myself, drifted off to sleep, fully dressed. I groped the phone out of my shirt pocket. 'Hello?'
'Just me. It's still dark, Tyler.'
I glanced at the window. Yes. Dark. Then the bedside clock. 'Not quite sunrise, Diane.'
'Were you asleep?'
'No.'
'Yeah, you were. Lucky you. It's still dark. Cold, too. I looked at the thermometer outside the kitchen window. Thirty-five degrees. Should it be that cold?'
'It was that cold yesterday morning. Anyone else awake at your place?'
'Jason's locked in his room with his radio. My, uh, parents are, uh, I guess sleeping off the party. Is your mom awake?'
'Not this early. Not on a weekend.' I cast a nervous glance at the window. Surely by this time there ought to be some light in the sky. Even a hint of daylight would have been reassuring.
'You didn't wake her up?'
'What's she going to do, Diane? Make the stars come back?'
'I guess not.' She paused. 'Tyler,' she said.
