The Silhouette

• Harry Stevens, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2013

“My Dad’s an astronaut!” That’s what the little eight-year-old girl squealed every at school. It was a rather hard fact for some of the children to grasp, but it was true: Claire’s Dad was an astronaut.
Dad was usually away for months at a time, either in space or doing intensive space training up in Florida, but that didn’t bother Claire or her Mum one bit. Every opportunity they had to speak to him, he always said at some point, “I’m always thinking you two, and I can’t wait to come back home soon.”

It was a Wednesday afternoon and Mum had already whisked Claire back home after another day at school. As far as the girl was concerned, Dad was doing electrical work up inside the big thing in space he called the International Space Station.
Claire ambled downed the corridor clutching a Lego kit and turned a corner into the living room to see Mum staring in a most unsettling way at the television. Claire’s angle of the screen wasn’t very good but she could see the words “space station” in big letters.
“Mummy?” she asked.
Mum turned to the girl, causing that strange look to disappear into the jovial mother she’d always been. “You want to play with the Lego?”
“Yes, yes!” Claire ran towards Mum with the kit. She didn’t notice Mum switch off the television.

Dinner time came an hour later and Claire relished in her spaghetti bolognaise. Once she’d ploughed through that, she ran to the middle of the garden with Mum in tow where a telescope stood. It was a shiny, silver device that Dad bought for the family of three. There were three eyepieces on it so everyone could look at the same thing at the same time.
Claire and her mother scanned the clear sky for stars and planets. They saw Saturn and its rings; they saw the great star Sirius; there was also Jupiter.
It was about eight o’clock when they aimed the telescope at the gigantic Moon. Claire knew a few of the names of the craters on the Moon and delighted herself in reciting them.
As she picked out another crater, a small black silhouette of something slid into the telescope’s view. Claire could immediately tell from its shape that it was the International Space Station; she’d seen it before going past the Moon.
However, it wasn’t moving as fast as it usually did, and for some reason, Mum suddenly turned away from the telescope.
Claire watched as the silhouette slowly split into ten separate black dots. The space station had fallen apart. Dad was in the space station.
“Mummy, what’s happened to Dad?” she begged.
Mum broke into tears. “I’m so sorry,” she cried. “Daddy’s not coming home anymore.”
It took Claire a moment to realise what she just saw. Then, too, she cried.