Head In The Stars

"Hey! Wake up!"

It was dark and my blanket was wrapped tightly around me. I must still be asleep. Why else would I hear Millie's voice?

"Hey!"

I rolled around then poked my head out to look blearily around. Oh.

Down below on the ground stood an annoyed Millie.

"You're making Aron wait you know," she said.

I rubbed my eyes. "What...?" What time was it? It was dark and the crickets were still hard at work, so why was Millie running around...?

"You promised we'd go exercise with him," said Millie.

That's when my brain finally clicked into gear. Oh no.

I sat up stiffly and rubbed my whole face with my hands. Other than Millie and me the whole room was empty.

"But..." I mumbled from behind my hands. That had been days ago, I wanted to say.

"You can't go back on your word," said Millie forcefully.

I grimaced then sighed. What was it about Millie that made me and everyone else listen to her?

"Fine. Wait outside, I need to get changed."

Millie grinned then went out and I let myself fall back onto my bed. It would be so easy to just... drift... off...

But Millie said Aron was waiting so I steeled myself and slithered out and down the bunkbed.

--

"You're slow," said Millie when I emerged from the room. She was standing opposite the dorm door with her hands on her hips.

"Yeah, well, someone woke me up..."

"Yes?"

I meant to formulate something witty to scold Millie with but it got lost somewhere between my half-asleep brain and my mouth so I gave up.

"Nevermind."

I started towards the entrance of the dorms but a little arm barred my way.

"Here!" said Millie, holding out a small package of chocolate cookies to me. "Morning snack."

I opened the package and bit one. "Thanks."

Millie beamed then led the way out of the dorms.

Out in the carpark, by my van, stood Aron. He was looking in the back with a hand raised to block the light from the street lamp, a light that barely made a dent in the blue ink dimness of the morning.

"Sorry for slowing you down," I said. "You didn't need to wait for me..."

"It's no problem," Aron said, straightening with a smile. "I'm happy to wait for you."

I clearly knew the context of that sentence but it still made my heart do something strange.

"Good morning," said Millie.

"Good morning," Aron replied.

"Where we headed to?" I asked, pushing everything else from my mind.

"Just the nearby park," replied Aron. He pointed in a direction. "Have you been there? It's just down the street."

I thought a moment but still had to shake my head.

Aron beckoned and me and Millie followed him onto the street. He pointed again. "See the trees down there? It's just there. Not far."

It did indeed not look too far.

"Race you there," I said. Without waiting for a response, I sprinted down the path. There was something in the cold morning air that made me want to shout.

"Eh?"

Little feet pattered behind me. Millie had decided to join me in my mad dash to the park.

This wasn't cheating. There was no way I'd be able to beat Aron, a trained professional, in anything related to athletics so underhand tactics like this was my only option.

At least that's what I thought.

Seven, eight, nine... twelve. That was the number of laps of the park Aron and Millie ended up running.

It was more than any of the other officers exercising that morning and, of course, way more than me.

"What do you feed that kid?" asked Gaming as he chugged a bottle of water he'd just filled up at the water fountain.

I squatted on the ground, arms on my knees, still panting. I shook my head.

It was a park for general public use not just for sports so it had a large playground area for children and an area set up next to that with machines for the elderly to practice their moves but it was still too early for any of them, so I sat on one of their machines and tried to recover my breath.

I watched as Aron and Millie rounded the bend and began their thirteenth lap.

It was Millie that was setting the pace with Aron keeping in step and I got the feeling that he could go a lot faster if he wanted to. The monster.

"You should ask Aron what he eats," I said to Gaming.

He laughed. "That guy's insane. Like, most of us are pretty fit when we enter the academy, it's kinda like, why choose this job if you're not into running around, but Aron just... I don't know how, but he could run all day if he had to."

"I believe it."

It wasn't just the stamina, there was also a focus, a cold drive in him as he moved, like he was a predator a thousand miles away from his prey yet certain to make the kill.

"You okay there?"

I looked up. Aron and Millie had finished their competition and come to find their out-of-shape companion. Me.

"I'm fine," I said with some difficulty.

"Really...?" Aron sounded concerned.

Please don't rub it in.

"You look terrible, Lachlan," said Millie.

"Thanks."

"You should exercise more," she added.

"Keep going and I'm not taking you to the library later today."

Millie immediately pinched her own mouth and sat down next to me. Aron and I laughed.

"So, library day, is it?" Aron asked as everyone gathered and headed out of the park.

"Well, yes, but now I'm thinking I need a nap..."

Millie tugged urgently on my sleeve, a hand still pinching her mouth shut. Her eyes looked distraught.

"But I can probably take a nap at the library. Happy?"

Millie smiled and wrapped her arms around mine. "Thank you," she said in a very sweet voice. Typical.

--

We got to the library right as it opened, and Millie was awarded the prestigious prize of being first in through the door. The prize, of course, being nothing in particular but a certain sense of pride.

I'd brought her to a different library than last time so as the lights flickered on, and the air filled with the smell of coffee, Millie wandered the science section while I returned the books. Two she'd finished reading, one she'd skimmed, and the last three she'd set aside with a hauty huff. When I'd asked what was wrong with them she just gave me a disappointed sigh and shook her head. If she doesn't grow up to be a scientist then maybe there was a future for her in book reviews. Scathing book reviews.

I returned the books, there was no line at the counter, then went to go wander amongst the shelves myself. I must admit that I'd gotten it in my head that Millie could mostly look after herself and didn't need constant supervision.

The fiction section didn't have anything that jumped out at me, so I went over to the long reading tables at sat, head on my arms and eyes closed. Like the other library this one had been built decades ago when space wasn't at such a premium and they could afford to dedicate large areas like this to tables for reading. Or napping.

Some indeterminant time later I woke to find Millie seated opposite me reading a thick tome. There was an equally eyewatering stack of books next to her.

I sat up a little and rubbed my eyes.

"Find anything good?" I asked.

She nodded. "I like this library," she said.

I smiled and went back to my nap.

I felt much better when I woke later. There was no more ringing in my head and the world didn't have that weird zoomed in quality.

Millie was still sitting opposite me but I guessed that the book in front of her had changed, though I couldn't honestly tell. All those sciency books looked the same to me. I yawned, stretched then looked around.

There were other people in the library now and the far end of our table had filled with uniformed students. It was a weekday so I wasn't sure if they were highly studious students here studying or if they were the opposite and just here to play hooky, but they were quiet enough so I let my judgement slide. Over on the other table the usual crowd of older folks with newspapers had arrived and set up camp. I never knew how a person could get so much use out of a few sheets of paper. Maybe they were looking at the horse races.

I checked the time on my phone.

What to do? It was still too early for lunch and Millie still looked glued to her books.

"I'm going to have a look around," I told Millie.

She nodded so I pushed back my chair and got up to wander the books again.

If I was honest, I wasn't just tired from the early wake up call. Last night, it had taken me ages to fall asleep. The song in my head from the afternoon hadn't gone away and had just continued to loop and loop and loop, like the most annoying of earworms that had no beginning or end or chorus, just verse, verse, verse. It was infuriating.

And also exhilarating.

Back before, before my current job, before my ex was my ex, I'd always had songs playing in my head. I don't know when it started or if I was just born like this, but it was like there was a jukebox permanently plugged into my brain.

At first, I'd thought it was normal, then I'd thought it was just songs I'd heard that had gotten stuck in my noggin, but eventually, I'd realised that they weren't. They were songs that came from me.

My first song had been horrible, as had the next, as had the next, but it had been so incredibly fun to take the buzzing in my head and turn them into something that vibrated to life in the real world.

The excitement changed as I got better and older, but it never truly went away, at least, not then.

For years now there had only been static in my head, a deadness like a backed up river. I could speak, yes, but beyond that I may as well have been mute.

Burnout, that's what I told my bandmates. They'd nodded understandingly as they went their way and me mine, but I think they guessed that wasn't the whole truth.

What even was the whole truth? Until a few days ago I would have had to say that I didn't know.

Even now I wasn't quite sure. What had it been about riding on the back of Aron's bike that had brought the music back?

And now that it was back, what was I to do with it?

The muscle that had spun out melodies and lyrics so easily back then was now stiff and atrophied and hard to even move. I'd thought, ignore it, enjoy it, but don't do anything with it, but that just seemed to make things worse. It made me ache and agitey.

I stopped in front of a bookshelf and peered at the top.

This was ostensibly the English language literature section and the small sliver at the top was English language poetry. I reached up and pulled down a book.

To try and tame the agitation I'd made a half-hearted attempt at noting down the melody and writing a few lyrics but it had all come to nothing. It wasn't just that I was out of practice. There was something else that was blocking things up and I had a good idea what it was and that I wasn't going to be fixing it any time soon.

So, I decided to do what I'd read some musicians do: write in a different language.

For years I'd thought that non-native English speakers that wrote songs in English were doing it to appeal to a wider audience, to maximise their reach, but then I'd read an interview that suggested something different, that writing in a language that was not your own can give you distance from what you're writing about.

Writing songs is inherently embarassing. It's like you're stripping then going for a stroll down the street. It's exposing like few other things are.

Which can be good for expressing emotions and thoughts, but can make it impossible to go deeper than skin level. It's just too personal. Writing in Chinese, either Cantonese or Mandarin, was just too difficult.

I flipped through the poetry book. It was old and moulding a little. I closed it then grabbed two more and headed back to the table, Millie, and her pile of books.