Читать книгу Birthday Boy - David Baddiel - Страница 11

A shooting star! A really big one, tearing up the sky! Through the telescope, it looked amazing, like a comet, or a rocket, or a firework. And it didn’t just go in a split second, like shooting stars do: no. It stayed travelling across the night sky for what seemed like ages, in a long arc from one end of the horizon to the other.

It was astonishing, beautiful. Sam couldn’t believe he was the only person in the world seeing it: surely NASA, or Jodrell Bank, or Brian Cox, or someone from the Star Wars Resistance, was also watching. But he didn’t think about that for too long, because – while the star was still shooting across his vision – he remembered what his mum had said.

You can wish upon a star. You should wish upon a star.

Sam wasn’t superstitious. In fact, he had been pretty tongue-in-cheek about it when saying to his mum, just as she was putting him to bed, “Does that actually work?” But this was different. This was a star so bright, and so fast, and so present in the sky that it really did feel to him that it might be magical.

And so – he wasn’t to know this, because he was looking through the telescope – on the stroke of midnight (it wasn’t actually a stroke: it was a small, almost silent click, as 11:59 became 12:00 on his clock) – he said, out loud, towards the star:

“I wish it could be my birthday every day!”

At which point the star seemed to burst into even greater light – it seemed to glow, extra-brightly, for a second – and then it fell from the sky, straight down. Sam tried to follow it with his telescope, and for a moment he could, even though it was travelling really quickly. This star looked as if it was on a mission to come to Earth! Or as if someone had shot it out of the sky! Perhaps, unbeknownst to Sam, his telescope was mounted with a laser beam that had blasted into the heart of it!

Unfortunately, these thoughts got in the way, and meant that Sam couldn’t track the journey of the star all the way down. It appeared – but this couldn’t be right – to land in the middle of the river, either in the water itself, or maybe on one of the islands. Sam could see one of these through the telescope. But it was dark, and covered in trees, and definitely not lit up by a falling celestial object.

Sam lifted his eye from the lenspiece. He looked around. Nothing, it had to be said, very magical appeared to have happened. His room, with its posters of the Starship Enterprise and Battlestar Galactica, was the same. On the floor stood his new skateboard, and trainers, and book, and guinea pig. Who was looking at him with quite a strong sense of, “Wishing on a star? Who are you – Jiminy Cricket?”

Sam felt a tiny bit disappointed. Not being superstitious, there was no real reason for him to think that wishing on a star would have any effect, but he had somehow felt wishing on this star, being so bright, would mean something. Clearly, he thought, I was wrong there.

Never mind, he thought, and went over, picked Spock up, gave him a quick stroke, opened the cage and put him inside.

“Happy birthday, Sam,” he said to himself, one last time.

Then he realised he was, at last, tired, and so went up his little ladder to his top bunk bed, shut his eyes and fell asleep, immediately.