Stars

“The stars like talking to me when I’m alone, mama.” A small girl said. She kicked her legs back and forth as the porch swing swung under her. “Do they talk to you too?”

“Baby, I told you not to keep going on about this. You’ll scare your brother— you know how sensitive he gets.”

”But mama!—“

”No buts, Darlene. I don’t want to hear anymore ‘star talk’ out of you. Now get on— Elwood is stopping by soon and I have to get ready.” The rain thin woman said. She ashed her cigarette and shuffled inside. Darlene followed her back into the trailer. She stared at the brown, mottled carpet as she thought about the bright voices from the night before.

Crickets brayed against the bullfrogs as their contending Melodie’s played the soundtrack to Darlene’s walk along the creek. Silver lane park sat above Sullivan’s Gulch— where a small creek ran through it. Darlene spent more time looking for salamanders than she did in her school work. It upset her mama the few days she was home— but Darlene didn’t care for papers or writing forms the way she did about splashing through water and finding shiny rocks.

Across the stream a blue rift caught her eye. It belonged to an off-white jagged masterpiece of a stone. Darlene had to have it. She hop scotched across the dry rocks to cross the creek. She didn’t want to soak her tennis shoes— her only other pair were still drying out from the last salamander hunt.
She admired the strange rock— thinking of the moon overhead before stuffing it in her pocket.

“Darlene! Hey, Darleneeee!” Her brother’s voice, Carl, man chord around the creek from overhead. “Mama wants you to come home!” She heard his little feet scamper off before she could call back.
She huffed a sigh before trudging up the hill. Elwood always cut her creek adventures short— for that alone, she had a deep distaste of the man.