A Peculiar People - Chapter One

James “Jimmy” Antwan Miles the Third laid across the foot of his bed, head hung over the edge, eyes staring at the open window that looked down on the neighborhood park. It was a hot summer night, hotter than usual he’d heard his parents say as they’d shut the door to his room on their way out. The heat didn’t bother Jimmy so much, not on a night like this, when the sky was clear and every star was out, eager to be seen. Jimmy saw them, saw them all and wanted nothing more in life than to know each one of them by name and visit them.

Jimmy rolled himself up onto his bed and lay staring at the ceiling. Two days ago, he and his dad spent the afternoon pasting a giant star map to his room’s ceiling. He already knew where to find each constellation, knew the constellations by name, even knew the names of the major stars in those constellations.

Space. The final frontier. Jimmy heard the familiar Star Trek line playing through is mind, then it was Star Wars…in a galaxy far, far away. Space… could there be anything more beautiful? Jimmy didn’t think so, not at eight years old.

He rolled onto his side, eyes now on the packed bookshelves lining the wall at the side of his bed. Books on everything you wanted to know about space, models of various shuttles, a shadow box with a handful of NASA mission patches secure inside, a menu and an alien keychain from a café near Area 51, the shelves were a wealth of dreams and fantasies.

Jimmy exhaled deeply as a smile crept across his face. He was going to space. Not now, of course, his dad said if he played his cards right (whatever that was suppose to mean), Jimmy might be ready to go into space in twenty years.

Twenty years…that was an eternity for an eight year old. Why would it take twenty years? Jimmy knew the answer of course. He’d read everything there was to read for an eight year old on the topic and had even purchased a few books a little out of his league so he’d have them to read when he was ready for the more advanced stuff.

He was a smart kid, a genius by some accounts, but he was still very happy being eight, no need to hurry things along too quickly. But twenty years…surely he could get into space faster than that. Surely…

His eyes began to blink slowly as his lids got heavier and heavier, pushing him closer to sleep. He was tired, just not ready to sleep yet. Twenty years, he kept thinking. He couldn’t wait twenty years. Who could?