The Star Under the Floorboards

By Hypatia Artemisia

Just before Dolly went upstate for her procedure, she told me about the star under her bedroom floorboards. 

“I’m sorry I kept this from you,” she whispered, staring blankly at the white wall, “I wanted it for myself.”

I asked if I should bring it to her (I had read somewhere that eating a star could grant you immortality). Dolly shook her head and laughed, then smiled, eyes twinkling, “No, Joan. It’s for you now.”

---

A star, I contemplate as I clamber up the pear tree that branches towards her bedroom window, what would a star look like up close?

I’d seen the satellite images on the TV, though dad says everything the government puts up there is fake. How hot it looked—a vermillion ball of fire that would burn your tongue off and blow your stomach to smithereens if you tried to eat it. 

Hotter than 10 packets of Mr. Chili's Nuclear Hot Sauce, I bet. 

I remember last summer, when church leader Mrs. Crosby took us camping on the outskirts of town. In the gentle night, unperturbed by neon billboards or streetlights, the stars crept out of hiding and danced across the sky. They were incandescent—not quite like diamonds, not quite like eyes, not quite like salt specked on a pitch black frying pan—they were out of this world. And when the dawn ushered them back behind the mountains, I didn’t dare ask but I wondered, if the stars were like God.

If I saw the star under the floorboards with my naked eyes, would I be blinded like Saul when he gazed upon the face of God?

The closest I’ve ever been to a star was when the comet passed over our town. They had predicted it on the TV, and me and Dolly swore we would stay up to watch it fall. Dolly was small and pale as a china doll, sick since she was a baby, but she was braver than anyone, and when I fell asleep that night, Dolly kept her word.

“I climbed out there,” she said, (out the window I’m climbing into right now). “I crawled under the barbed wire and I ran up the hill and there it was! In a bed of dandelions and ryegrass -- aglow with the light of the heavens!”

---

The room is empty. The floral wallpaper has been painted over with white. I crawl on the ground searching for a loose floorboard, collecting sawdust under my fingernails. When my raw palms detect the subtle ridge, I take a deep breath, and push the moth-eaten board aside.

It’s much smaller than I expected, and not as shiny. Just as I drop the star into my pocket, I hear the construction men from downstairs. I hurry home, and I imagine Dolly in a white room. A room whiter than this one, whiter than the one downtown, whiter than the one upstate. 

A room composed entirely of starlight.