The Color of Coral
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Will you hear a story?
It’s about a girl and a mountain. And me.
The most beautiful girl I ever saw…
The highest mountain on the planet…
And me.
But I’ve not told it to anyone for 61 years, 9 months, 2 weeks, and 4 days…
#
The girl’s name was Daisie Rae. Her parents were workout instructors named Kris and Angie. That’s not really important though. I just think you have to know it, because I think it’s why they named her Daisie with an ie instead of Daisy with a y. But I don’t know why I think that.
Anyway, she was the most beautiful girl in the girl.
Daisie was my best friend though, so I couldn’t tell her she was beautiful. I had to show her, is what my dad said.
Our parents had taken a trip to Arizona. We had a babysitter but she was doing her homework, so Diasie and I were in the backyard, climbing the tree.
We had the bare bones of a tree house. Just a bunch of random wooden planks, nailed to the best spots to sit at. And a bunch of rope, running from branch to branch like a guard rail.
From our best spots, we had a lookout through the tree. We could see for miles and miles. There was this mountain way off, and at night the brightest stars would gather around it. You could see all kinds of stars at night from our tree.
Daisie and I were sitting with our backs to the tree, leaning against each other. We had binoculars and a low-strength telescope, and we were trying to get a better look at the surface of the moon.
For the ball drop at midnight, a bunch of the neighborhood kids had gone to the Bruno’s to light sparklers and eat smores. I could see the campfire and the trail of the sparklers, and I felt a breeze.
Wanna pretend? Daisie said.
Yeah, I said.
Pretend like…. she said.
Like…
Like we’re wife and husband, she said.
You’re my wife? I said.
You would be lucky to have me, she said, properly.
She made a funny face and the moonlight shined on it, and I laughed. She was so funny sometimes. I wished I could be funny like her. Then she turned and was sitting on the branch in front of me, looking down.
Pretend like…I said.
Like…
Like you can move the stars. Rearrange them, change their brightness.
Yeah, she said. And move them closer and farther away, but you can’t make new ones.
Yeah, I said.
Pretend like…she said.
Like…
Like you can move the mountains. Put one of top of another, change their flatness and steepness.
Yeah, I said. And you make a mountain that is the highest spot on the planet.
So high that you can see the stars even when you’re looking down? She said.
Yeah, I said. Like a big blanket of them spread out on the ground.
Like coral on the ocean floor, she said. All those colors. All the pretty colors. Like when the sun reflects on the coral through the water…
And then we were quiet for a while. Like we’d figured something out or came to an agreement.
Pretend like, she said, after a time.
Like….
Pretend like… you want to kiss me.
There was a breeze. Kiss you…
Yeah, kiss me, she said. You’ve done it before, right?
Yeah, of course, I lied.
I turned a little and looked in her direction. Right at her eyes.
They were blue-green, not hazel. More green than blue. And she was wearing earrings tonight. Just little things. But I didn’t see them before. She also had on this really pretty shirt. It was checkered, red and blue, with buttons in the middle, and no sleeves, like a vest. Like how jeans look but it was softer, and lighter, with a neat folded collar. It was blowing gently in the breeze.
Well, so, she said. Kiss me.
I turned a little to look at her, but I looked down quickly. And then slowly back up.
There was a thin silver necklace beneath the collar of her shirt, and it caught the light of the moon, winked at me.
I pursed my lips a little and tasted the strawberry skittles chapstick. And I smiled at it. Looking at her in the eye now.
We moved really slowly, carefully, like wrestlers, and when we had leaned all the way in, we were still so close. But I was afraid to close my eyes. And I was too close to see if she had closed her eyes.
Somehow, our lips touched. The softest touch ever. Like not even a kiss. Seriously. It was like holding your breath under water. Just floating, suspended. Seeing how long you can hold it.
Which wasn’t long. Like 2 seconds. But it was a long 2 seconds.
We pulled back just a little, to look each other in the eyes again. Still so close, and her eyes were so bright. I was smiling so big.
And then I fell out of the tree.
Landed smack on my back. The wind knocked out of me. Just like when I fell off the monkey bars back in first grade.
I gasped for breath, stood up and paced around, gasping more and more. Hands on my hips, trying to act cool, like I wasn’t trying not to cry.
#
Daisie moved away a little while after that. She just didn’t come to the bus stop one day. Her house had a For Sale sign in the front yard, but it was crossed out, said, SOLD now.
Even the gym had been emptied out. You could look in through the front glass windows and see all the way back, into the mirrors on the wall, and see a far-away reflection of yourself.
My parents were worried at first, because it’s hard to lose a best friend. But, they said, we meet and spend time with many different people in life. We make new friends at many different steps along the way.
I said okay, and I made new friends. But none of them were like Daisie. And it seemed like every time I looked at a mountain, any mountain, I thought about her. Even when I tried not to; I couldn’t help it. I could climb trees and look at the stars at night, and I didn’t think about her. The mountains were different. The mountains and the coral. I don’t know why.
#
Would you move mountains for a girl?
For a girl? But why?
Yeah. Because you love her.
Oh.
I don’t know. Probably not.
Why not?
Well, it’s probably really hard to move mountains, isn’t it?
Yeah, it’s really hard.
And it probably takes a really long time, right?
Yeah, a really long time.
So you’d have to really, really like a girl to do all that work and spend all that time.
Yeah, you’d have to really, really like her. Like love her.
But why does she want you to move mountains?
She doesn’t, really. She just wants to look down at the stars, and you’ve got to be pretty high to do that.
But why look down and not up?
I don’t know…
Maybe because when you look up at the stars, they ask you questions. And when you look down at them, they give you answers.
How do you know? Is that true?
I can’t say. I feel like it might be true. But I don’t know why.
Hm…yeah?
Possibly. But I’d like to find out.
#
I started out small. Almost didn’t realize what I was doing at first. I got a job working the gondola. Got to see how people went up every day. Then I thought how I could make bigger gondolas for rock and dirt and boulders. Soon, the highest gondola chair was too low, and we had to build more, higher. Again and again we did this. Until we ran out of parts. Couldn’t make any more.
Then I had to come up with a new idea, had giant skyscrapers hoisting giant boulders and slabs of rock that were the size of small mountains themselves. We dropped one, and it fell on old Mr. Henderson’s place right when he was out getting the mail.
We had to take some time off and build him a new house. But we needed money so we had to sell all the equipment.
Henderson’s house was rebuilt for very little cost, same way he had insisted. So we added a small treehouse for his grandkids and we thought of ways to use the extra money.
The mountain was 25,000 ft high at that point. Not as high as Everest, but close. I was 45 at that time believe it or not. I had spent 34 years, after that night with Daisie, trying to move mountains. Trying to find out if it was possible, at least. And years passed. The mountain didn’t move an inch didn’t grow an inch in height for 20 years. Ppl thought I gave up, or died, or my favorite, that I gave up and died. But I had come up with another plan. And in 20 years I finally had enough money.
I was going to the moon. I was going to blow up a chunk of the moon. And it was going to be set right on top of the mountain I’d been building my whole life. But once we took a spaceship to the moon, and landed, and I set the dynamite—I had to blow off the perfect size chunk, which would be way too big to carry on any kind of space craft. And as soon as the dynamite went off, the chunk of matter would be launched into space with no gravity. Gravity!
That was the plan.
I would have to break off a chunk of the moon at an angle that would send it shooting back to earth right at my mountain. And since that was such a small target, nearly impossible to get exactly right, I would have to have a spaceship standing by right when my moon chunk was nearing earth’s atmosphere so we could throw a massive net around it, a net the size of Texas, with straps the size of roads, no rivers, a strap that ran the length and width of the Mississippi.
So we did just that. And by we I mean I. No one else wanted to help, to risk dying for something so pointless.
So I went up on my own. And I succeeded. But when I blew off my chunk, a stray chunk launched off into space in the opposite direction. I feared for a moment that it would shoot through space and somehow disrupt an alien community.
#
When I caught the chunk & guided it back down, I hovered over the spot, admiring my mountain that was now 42,000 feet high.
I had done it. Had moved mountains. Given my love the highest viewpoint where she could look down at the stars... which is exactly what I did just then. And I saw a star growing brighter and brighter, getting larger and larger, like it was coming right at me. As it got closer, I recognized that it was following the path of my ship coming back from the moon. And I realized it was that other chunk that had broken off! It had circled around the moons gravitational pull & sprung after us at the spot where my spaceship’s thrusters had disrupted the Earth’s atmosphere. And that’s all I had time to discover.
Word on Saturn’s rings is that it was a gorgeous explosion of blue-green light. The stray chunk smashed the spaceship directly on top of my mountain.
It created a minor earthquake, the force of a giant piece of moon rock landing on earth’s tallest mountain. I didn’t live to see the results of the debate—would it be considered man-made, since it essentially had been, even though it was made up entirely of non-man-made planet matter….
#
Wait, you… you’re…dead?
Well, I’m not alive. I died the day I finally moved that mountain. But I think maybe a tiny piece of my soul shot out in the explosion and splatted against this star we’re sitting on. I mean, since I’m talking to you and all…
But that means… am I…?
No, no. You have a body. Look down, at your hands. But you’ve been talking to me like I’m sitting right next to you, when really, that’s not true at all.
So where are you? What are you?
I’m here. Part of this star. In space.
Are you… are you the kind of star that gives answers?
I think I might be. But haven’t I asked you questions, as well?
Maybe you’re mostly an answer star but you ask questions sometimes too.
Yes, I think that would be more likely.
Is this the end of your story?
No, not quite.
But what happened to the girl? Where is Daisy Rae?
You mean Daisie? She’s somewhere, alive and well and happy.
Oh.
We were silent.
Does she know about you moving the mountain?
That’s the most important question you’ve asked me.
Really? Wow… So, does she?
But of course.
So why is that important?
Don’t you know? The rumors have been swirling through the Milky Way for some time now…
No… I don’t know of any rumors…
Ah, well then. I’ll try not to be so dramatic about it. They say she cried tears that had more happiness and more sadness in them than any tears that had ever been cried before, and that when her tear landed in the dirt beneath her feet, it settled into the earth like a seed, and all the happiness and sadness that Daisie poured out into that one tear had more heat and power that all the lava in all the volcanoes on earth. They say Daisie’s tear grew out of the ground into a massive volcano, except instead of being hot and exploding with molten lava, it was cold, filled with the coolest spring water, like a mountain with the insides removed. They say Daisie drowned in her own tears… the same way that I was crushed by my own mountain.
But you’re…here now…aren’t you?
I am here. I became this star.
…and Daisie…what happened to her? What did she become?
Well, I think that’s rather obvious now, don’t you?
#
From atop a lonely star that drifted along the vast expanse of space, there was a perfectly cloudless view of planet earth. From this far-out vantage, a great unseen mass of neon light was indeed perceptible to the naked human eye: the coral on the ocean floor emanating shades of translucent light, all the colors of the rainbow and many more besides. And for the space of a too-short moment, the time it takes to draw a breath, or to kiss a girl, the luminous rays of those water-reflected colors shined brighter than the sun.