Dark Blue

Part ii-Black Holes

2

I had been coming up to this one spot for quite a few months now- a special place I'd accidentally discovered when I was trying to find a place where I could sit by myself, comfortably running away from my troubles. It was truly a beautiful place and every time I came up here, I felt as though I could break free from everything that held me down. Just to have freedom from my troubles, my insecurities, just life in general. To talk to the stars and the moon. I came up here every night, the moment the sky turned dark blue, sneaking out of my house- My parents never noticed. Barely anyone did. I could have just sat by my bedroom window and looked at the stars, but it's never the same. There’s something about being outside, to really see the stars as they are- not through a barrier of glass or seeing it framed with a flung open window. And after the first night, I felt so much more awake and made it my own project to learn the sights I saw every night, so I could fully appreciate them. On the twentieth or so night I came up here, I saw a figure sitting on the grass.

**

The night is cool and mysterious and I couldn’t wait to get to the top. But then I see a figure there, shrouded in moonlight with their head upturned, looking up at the sky. My breath catches in my throat and I panic. I'd never seen anyone else up here before. The figure just sits there and I don’t know what to do. I start to back away slowly, like a hunter in the wild, before turning around to run back down the hill. But then a voice calls out from behind me, making me freeze in my tracks. 

“No, wait! Don’t go.”

I slowly turn back around, breathing quickly as the figure stands up and begins to make its way towards me. I want to run away, but I am there, frozen to the ground. The figure comes right up to me and to my surprise, it’s a boy. A boy around my age. I take a deep breath and my lips start shaking in fear.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m a friend,” he says cautiously.

“How do I know that?” I ask my voice trembling and slightly higher than it normally was.

He takes my hand and leads me out to the middle of the grass, ignoring my protests and weak attempts to pull away from his grasp, before he lies down on his back, pointing upwards to the sky.

“Do you see what I see up there?”

I look up towards the sky and the stars are there shining. To anyone else, it could be an astronomical spectacular in the sky or just pretty things in the sky. But up there, I see freedom. An escape from my destiny. When I look down at him, I see that he’s completely captivated by the stars and only then, do I realise, that he was looking for the same thing.

“Yes, yes I do,” I say, before lying down cautiously next to him. I wasn’t completely relaxed yet, but there was something about this boy, but I didn’t know what. He sits up suddenly, and offers a hand.

“My name is Oscar. How about you?”

“Delilah,” I say shyly, shaking his hand.

“That’s a very nice name Delilah,” he says, smiling. I smile back at him uncertainly. He lies back down on the grass.

“So Delilah. What’s your favourite star and why?”

So there it started- a friendship under the stars. Every night when I came up here, he would be lying under the glittering sky, waiting for me. We talked about everything under the sun. From favourite music, to random discussions about odd socks, to the melting ice caps and the plight of the polar bears. But we never steered into anything how I felt about the world, and how the world was against me. Or indeed, anything that could bring up the monsters from under my bed. I was adamant, and when he first bought it up, I kept my guard up.