Change is Possible
By Angela Pope
Sometimes surprises are good and sometimes they are bad. It was a good surprise when there was a lockdown because it meant Noah didn’t have to go to school. When he saw it on the news, he was so happy he jumped in the air like a Jedi Master but that gave mum a bad surprise and she almost spilt her coffee. Adults don’t always like the same surprises that kids like.
Today’s surprise almost turned bad because mum looked grumpy when dad said he’d drop Noah off at the mall. Everything will be all right, though, when mum sees what the surprise is. Noah pats the package in his jacket pocket to make sure it’s still there. Mum didn’t ask him what he’d bought with his pocket money which is a good thing because right now, the surprise is a secret. Secrets can be bad like when Luke Skywalker didn’t know that his dad was Darth Vader, but sometimes they can be good.
Noah’s mum works in the mall. She has an office in a shared space. Noah isn’t allowed in mum’s office. She says she can’t trust him to behave. Noah doesn’t like not being trusted but maybe after today, things will change. When you give someone a good surprise, they like you more.
When he thinks about the shared space where his mum works, Noah imagines lines drawn in chalk so that people know which part of the space is theirs. Or maybe they use coloured tape on the carpet because chalk lines get messy when you walk on them. Some of the shops in the mall have stickers on the floor in the shape of arrows so that you know which way to walk. That’s because of social distancing. Sometimes mum says she needs some social distancing from Noah. He’s heard her telling dad when she thinks Noah isn’t listening. She says she needs her own space.
Space is also a place where there are planets and stars. Grandad is a star now or maybe he’s a Jedi Master. Grandad used to talk to Noah on Zoom, and he used to make Noah laugh, especially when he tried to do a Jedi Master jump which wasn’t very often because grandad’s bones were old. Sometimes Noah talked to grandad when he was supposed to be doing schoolwork instead. Noah still had to do maths, even during the lockdown, which was boring. Noah likes numbers but only if they’re big because that makes them more interesting. Grandad said he used to find school boring too, but it was important that Noah worked hard. He said there was no point in being clever and keeping it a secret. That would be like being a Jedi and not using the Force.
When grandad died, they had to watch the funeral on mum’s laptop because of Covid. They didn’t see how grandad turned into a star which was disappointing. Noah doesn’t really believe grandad is a star. Sometimes adults tell kids lies because they like to keep the truth secret. If he was a star, grandad could watch Noah all the time, but he’d have to have a powerful telescope like a Hubble to see from that far away. The Hubble telescope has taken pictures of Mars, even though Mars is 87 million kilometres away. Noah has seen it on YouTube.
Noah often lies awake at night thinking about the stars. He has some on his ceiling that glow in the dark. His mum put them there when he was only four which was a long time ago. He thinks of his mum floating in space and going all the way to Mars. One day people might have to move to Mars because of climate change. If mum went there, she would take her laptop. She uses it to help people put numbers in the right places so that everything balances. When the astronauts went to the moon, there were lots of people doing things with numbers at mission control. Getting the numbers right was important so the rocket didn’t crash.
Mum looks like she’s trying to smile when she sees Noah waiting for her, but it’s hard to be sure because she’s wearing a mask. Her eyes look tired. Mums get tired a lot because they have so much to do. Noah walks with her through the mall and follows her into the lift that goes up to the car park. As he rides up, he imagines he’s on his way to a launch pad. If he was an astronaut, he would be famous. When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, there were 650 million people watching him on TV.
When they step out of the lift, mum pulls her car parking ticket out of her purse. There’s a woman with spiky black hair already standing in front of the ticket machine. She puts her ticket in, but the machine spits it straight back out again.
‘It keeps saying the ticket’s faulty,’ the woman says. She grabs the ticket and shoves it back in. Her movements are jerky like a robot.
When Noah was younger, maybe when he was six, he used to pretend to be a robot. He would make the muscles in his arms and legs go stiff and he would walk without bending at the knees. Not all robots have legs. The Mars Rover is a robot, but it has wheels. It’s called Perseverance and it has artificial intelligence so that it doesn’t bump into things. Noah showed his dad the YouTube video of Perseverance landing on Mars. Dad said Perseverance was a great name and it was something Noah needed more of with his schoolwork.
One of the best things about robots is they don’t get grumpy, and they can’t cry because the salt in tears would make them rust. Also, robots don’t have to wear masks, even in supermarkets, because they don’t breathe so they can’t catch Covid. Noah has never seen a robot in a supermarket, but he thinks it would be a good idea if one could do your shopping for you because then you wouldn’t get sick. It seems weird that Perseverance can do experiments on Mars but there isn’t a robot that can do your shopping.
Noah turns to his mum. He wants to tell her that the woman looks like a robot. He also wants to tell her that they should have robots to do your shopping and that maybe if they did, grandad wouldn’t have got sick. But he chooses to be quiet. He doesn’t want mum to shush him.
During the lockdown, Noah’s mum shushed him a lot. Once he counted the number of times in one morning and it was over 23. He got tired of counting after that. That was the bad part of the lockdown. The good part was that he got to watch YouTube every day and sometimes dad watched it with him. Dad wasn’t that interested in Mars, but he loved the funny video of the albatross doing a crash landing. It made him laugh a lot. His dad likes albatrosses. He used to take tourists to see them. He has a van with an albatross painted on the side, flying in a bright blue sky. There aren’t many tourists anymore, but dad says there will be lots again soon. That will make mum happier because dad will have more money.
The albatross on YouTube was coming back to its nest when it had the bad landing, and the whole world saw it. It face-planted and did a somersault so that it was lying on its back with its feet waving in the air. Noah felt a bit sorry for the albatross and hoped it wasn’t too embarrassed. It was probably tired because an albatross flew up to 190,000 kilometres in a year. If you thought about it, an albatross was a bit like a space station except a space station spent years orbiting the earth and an albatross spent years flying across the oceans. It’s a shame an albatross can’t fly far enough to get to the stars because grandad would laugh a lot if an albatross crash landed on his star. If Noah closes his eyes and thinks really hard until his head hurts, he can still remember the sound of grandad’s laugh.
‘Bloody machine. Why won’t it work?’ The woman with the spiky black hair sounds weird when she talks. Noah had a toy car once that made a weird whiney sound before it stopped working altogether. That’s what the woman’s voice is like. Maybe she’s about to stop working altogether too. Maybe her arms will fall limp by her sides and her eyes will shut. In ‘Star Wars’, R2D2 put himself on low power mode after Luke Skywalker disappeared. That’s how Noah felt after grandad died.
The woman shoves the ticket back into the slot but this time it disappears and doesn’t come out again. Noah imagines the white piece of card falling through the empty dark insides of the machine like an astronaut falling through space.
‘Shit!’ The woman thumps the machine. ‘How am I going to get my bloody car out now?’ She sounds like she might cry. It’s like she’s angry and sad all at the same time, just like mum was when grandad died. Mum still gets sad sometimes. Noah heard her telling dad the other night that she was frightened she was going to forget what grandad looked like. That’s what gave Noah the idea for the surprise.
Grandad always used to say, ‘you can do anything if you put your mind to it.’ Noah looks at the machine. Maybe he can work out the answer to the problem. There’s a sticker on the machine that says, ‘Change is Possible’. Next to it there’s a card swiper and a keypad which is what mum always uses to pay but there’s a slot for coins too. And underneath that, there’s a phone number.
If Noah was a Jedi Master, he could use the Force to make the ticket come back again. He tried to use the Force to bring grandad back after he died. He screwed his face up so much trying to make it happen that he gave himself a headache, but it didn’t work. That’s because Star Wars isn’t real. It’s made up. So instead, he says, ‘Ring that number,’ and he points to the phone number on the machine.
The man who answers has a deep voice, almost as deep as Darth Vader’s. Noah can hear it because the woman has her phone on speaker.
‘Whereabouts are you?’ the man asks, but before the woman can answer, he says, ‘It’s all good, I can see you. I’ll get you a new ticket.’
Noah looks around. There must be a camera somewhere, but he can’t see it.
A ticket pops out of the machine and the woman with spiky black hair takes it.
‘Thanks kid,’ she says to Noah.
Noah thinks about the faulty ticket lost inside the black hole of the machine. When a person you love dies, it makes your heart feel like it has a black hole inside it. Black holes aren’t empty spaces. They’re crammed with things all stuffed together tight just like mum’s heart is stuffed so tight with feelings that it hurts. Perhaps the inside of the machine is stuffed tight with faulty tickets. Some people think black holes evaporate over time, but it takes billions of years for that to happen. Noah hopes it doesn’t take billions of years for mum’s heart to feel better.
‘I’m very proud of you,’ mum says.
Noah puts his hand in his pocket and touches the paper bag that has the surprise in it. It’s a photo of grandad with mum that he took with his phone last Christmas. The man in the shop printed it off for him. Noah bought a photo frame in the shape of a star too. He’ll put the photo in the frame when they get home.
As he goes through the sliding doors to the car park, Noah spots the security camera up high in the corner. He gives a little smile and a wave as he leaves.
