The PSYning [X]
They never understand her when she says sunlight smells like warm laundry and that snow smells like papercuts and that dizzy feeling you get after you spin around and around and around, but they agree when she says rain smells like everything, never mind if it’s coming or going.
Everything has that smell now and she sucks it up deeply through her nose, relishing the loud snorting sound that drives her daddy crazy, licking absently at the way the earth seems to fill her entire mouth with it.
There is a beetle trying to crawl over her shoe. She crouches down and nudges it with her thumb, grinning as it startles and beats a hasty retreat, slipping into the wet dress with barely a sound. Nearby, a group of worms are sliding out of the soil, and she wants to poke them too.
“C’mere, sparks,” Daddy says, curling his fingers at her, and she gives the worms one last look before going to his side where she’s immediately scooped into his arms. Laughing, she clings to his neck and skooches up to throw her legs around him, cheek pressed into the worn, soft fabric of his jacket. It smells like car oil, like gasoline. She likes those smells.
Glancing over his shoulder, she spies Papa standing some feet away, hands in his coat pockets and head tilted back, looking up, lonely. He looks like that sometimes, like he doesn’t know where he is, even when she brings him to their favorite park and they feed Fletcher, their favorite duck. She can tell it’s Fletcher because his wings are old and messy and he can’t fly very well, but Papa says it’s because he’s really lived. She always makes sure to give Fletcher extra bread when the other ducks aren’t looking.
Daddy moves and lowers her slightly so she can peer into the telescope. It’s blurry, and she says so, and Daddy twists a knob until everything straightens out and comes in clear. She sees a million little fairy lights, but she leans back and nods. “I see them. Those are the Ple — Plee-ayd-ees. Abby Harrington has a book, Daddy — she brought it into school the other day because it was astronomy day in science — and it says the Plee-ayd-ees are seven sisters who were turned into birds and then stars because their daddy was sad.”
He smiles down at her. “Oh yeah? Well, I know something about them that even Abby Harrington doesn’t know.”
She reaches up and puts her hands on his cheeks, rubbing them back and forth. She likes how his “shadow”, as he calls it, prickles her palms. “Tell me! Tell me tell me tell me.”
“Papa actually told me this one,” he says, pointing up, and she follows his finger until she sees the seven sisters with her own eyes. They’re bright enough that she doesn’t need to look through the telescope. “See, once upon a time, there were a bunch of angels in Heaven, but they all got bored because Heaven’s boring.”
She squints, trying to see past the stars. “How boring?”
”Really boring. You know how you don’t like doing fractions? That’s all they did in Heaven. They had to do fractions forever.”
That is really boring. And awful. “So what did they do?”
“Well, some of them were nerds and loved doing fractions, so they decided to stay. But some of them decided to leave and come down here, because we’re so much cooler than anything up there.”
She hears Papa snort and looks over at him. He’s watching them, so she waves. He waves back.
“But when an angel leaves Heaven, it has to leave part of itself behind,” Daddy goes on, and Papa looks back up to the sky, so she does too. “And when an angel leaves part of itself behind, it becomes a group of stars, like the Pleiades.”
“The Plee-ayd-ees are an angel?”
“They’re what the angel left behind, sparks.”
If that’s true, then Heaven must be a big place, bigger than she’s ever dreamed, because there are a lot of stars in the sky.
“Wanna see my favorite?”
“Yes!”
Daddy puts her on the ground and moves the telescope around until it’s pointing somewhere else, right above where Papa’s standing, where he’s staring, and Daddy adjusts it so she can see into it. A group of stars in a cloud appear, bright blue, bright white, and it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. Even prettier than Chioma Miller’s butterfly clip with the jewels on it.
“Do you know what that one is?”
She opens her mouth to say she doesn’t, but then she smells the ocean, and apple cider, and the pages of The Iron Giant, and exploding pens, and plain soap, and smiles, and “how was school today, my dear?”, and putting up the Christmas tree, and dancing to Hannah Montana (even though she knows Daddy hates it), and feeding Fletcher, and curling up on the couch with ice cream and watching Once Upon A Time, and goodnight kisses.
“It’s Papa.”
Daddy gently pulls her away from the telescope and back up so she can hold onto his neck, and he holds her tighter but he’s not looking at her.
She follows his gaze and smells the stars.
