The first star appeared in hot August of a bad summer. Lingering on the cusp of the darkness hemming in the park, Sam shuffled a soda can between his feet. He ignored Joey and Tim’s waves from across the street. Distant bolts of lightning filled him with annoyance. Where was his guy anyway? An increasing glow emanated from a nearby trash can and caught his attention- what the f***- and when he looked inside, a star sat pulsing, radiating, melting the garbage and wrappers surrounding it. Its light illuminated the hollows of Sam’s cheeks and eye sockets as he picked the burning thing up in his hands.
“It’s a star,” he thought as he rolled it over slowly in his palm. Fingering his stash and roll of money in one pocket, he slipped the star into his other. It was time to go home.
“What’s that?” Tom asked as Sam shut the door.
“It’s a star I found at the park,” he said, and let its gentle rays fill the room. Tom was washing dishes, and the bubbles in his hair seemed to dance in the light.
“That’s awesome, I really like it. Can you set it out on the balcony though? The light might keep me awake.”
Carrying the star Sam walked through their bedroom, no longer noticing the crunchy layer of leaves carpeting the floorboards underfoot. There were always leaves around the apartment; Tom was a sidewalk sweep and when the windows were open they sometimes flew in. Once they piled so deeply they brushed the ceiling, and Sam had to hire an industrial vacuuming company to help clean. The presence of the leaves seemed harmless to everyone but one of Sam’s best friends and clients who sometimes avoided visiting. But he didn’t visit much those days anyway.
Sam sheltered the star in a corner of the balcony, but as he expected it wasn’t the last. The next day he picked one up from the steps of a convenience store, one of his local haunts, and a week later fished another from a neighbor’s rain gutter. Sometimes he’d find them in clusters, as if they’d built nests and families. Other times none would show up for weeks. He had never seen anyone else with a star, and as a result rescued them from garbage men multiple times. As the days grew short and cold, stars and customers dropped at an increased pace. Sam awoke more exhausted each day.
“I don’t know. I just collect them,” Sam answered when when Tom asked him what the stars were for.
“But we’re almost out of places to put them; we haven’t been able to go out on the balcony for months and they’re starting to take over the laundry room.”
Sam was nestling them in his winter clothes, filling the inside of his boots with light and warmth in a way he could not do for himself.
“I know,” Sam said. “I’m sorry. It won’t last forever, I’m not keeping them. They’re not even mine. I’m just collecting.”
But it seemed like it would last forever. Among his flannels and thick socks Sam found old photos of brighter times. He gazed at himself and a girl with strawberry lips dancing among the frames until the sun banished the starlight.
Across town, Sam’s ex-girlfriend crushed a morning cigarette with her heel and entertained the idea of non-existence. She sat on her balcony in one of the seasonally rare rays of sunshine and let herself think. Nonexistence. Not death, and nothing so crude as suicide. Maybe nonexistence wasn’t right either. Perfection would be life as a barnacle. She peered down the road at her brother’s retreating back and wished she could share the sentiment with him. Barnacles were appealing not only for their limited levels of consciousness, but for their inherent lack of responsibilities. Barnacles never let anyone down, and nobody blamed s*** on a barnacle. F*** it, she wanted to be a barnacle. Maybe some day. Instead she took her jade plant from its hiding place and let its leaves bow to the morning sun.
Having just returned home via subway- like a blood-borne disease to a wound- Ryan stood outside his door and gulped deeply. The chained fences and walls surrounding him pulsed to the beat of his ears, thickening his headache. His breaths rattled like a box of tic-tacs. Blisters had sprung across the swells of his palms and his eyeballs burned. Disgust startled him like a whiff of s***, and he searched for the source. A sprig of crushed flowers hung from his shoe lace. Ryan looked at it, sat down, and puked his guts out.
Three weeks later Ryan received a call from his sister.
“I wish I was a barnacle,” she told him.
“Yeah, I wish I had a microwave. And that my stomach lining could calm down. And that I had rich parents who could bail my --- out of debt. Actually I’d welcome any level of lucidity in mom.”
“Wait, you’ve talked to her recently?”
“Ha. No.” Ryan made a sound with his nose.
“‘They f*** you up, your mom and dad.’”
“Yeah.”
“Are you depressed? I mean like really,” she asked, hearing the moldy tone in his voice.
“No.”
The question ‘are you really depressed’ meant ‘are you buying narcotics from my ex again’ and the topic of discussion didn’t entice Ryan.
“So how about Sam though?” he followed up, not unkindly.
“Alright whatever. Yeah well life’s not interesting anymore if that’s what you mean. But I’ve started stamp collecting. I should go.”
“Goodbye, I love you.”
She hung up the phone but instead of sorting stamps polished silverware as if royal guests would be arriving at any moment. But it was time to take a trip downtown. She put on her favorite boots and headed to the subway. After braving the humanoid discomfort of Las Ramblas she turned down the coolness of Sam’s street only to see her brother. Eyes blood shot, it was rare to see him on the romantic tree-lined avenue.
“Oh...hi. Yeah Sam’s not here and Tom actually told me he hasn’t been living here lately.”
“Okay.” Had she even wanted a hook-up? Sam looked half relieved too.
“Come with me, let’s check the usual places.”
When they found Sam, he was huddled beside a shopping cart off of El Born. Colonized by armies equipped with guidebooks and on quest for Kodak moments, the historic maze held only hordes of tourists whose buzzing antennas stung the air and flapping wings crowded the nest of streets. Sam was invisible.
“Oh, my God, I’m so glad to see you guys,” Sam stood and greeted Ryan. As he embraced the barnacle girl, she realized the flesh had wasted from his hands. What was left were the clicking ivory fingers of a skeleton.
“Are you ok? We can help you,” she said, taking in his face. He rested his eyes everywhere but the white and craggy terrain of her barnacle face.
“Yeah, yeah, let me show you something here,” he gestured. But Ryan had already peeled the sheets back from Sam’s grocery cart and let out the radiance of the stars inside. He swilled through their mutely smoldering forms with his fingers.
“What are they for?”
  “I don’t know, I just collect them. Sometimes people see me and come over to buy one but they’re not mine, so I just give them away.”
But no buyers seemed nearby now. Although the dusk brought visitors flocking with its promise of nightlife, it still purpled the stone buildings and faces in the square as it had for hundreds of years.
“Tom mentioned some things. Actually, he said the apartment was pretty full now.”
“That’s the problem. I’m wheeling these around because there’s no more room. Is there any chance you could find some room to keep them safe for me?”
Sam followed them relieved, scouring the air for the faint salty-sea scent the barnacle girl trailed behind her. Ryan breathed easier in his concrete labyrinth of a neighborhood in the bowels of the city. Since he disliked food and never ate, the three of them stacked the stars in his empty cabinets like canned goods. They shone bright. Ryan wouldn’t have to spend any more money on electricity bills as long as he kept the cabinet doors open.
At the barnacle girl’s house, she and Sam filled the closet on what had been Sam’s side of the room with the fragility of the light mimicking the fragility of their conversation. She wanted to touch his hair but didn’t. By the time the stars were stored, enough room was cleared for Sam to move back in his old room with Tom. Instead he left anxiously, propelled by strawberry lips. On the street he searched anxiously like the junkie he once was, but this time for power and not powder.
Ryan and his sister stood by the door.
“What are they for? Like why do you think he gets them?” She asked, and as she scratched at her ragged fingernails their edges felt more and more like the crusts of barnacles.
“I don’t know, they’re not even his. He just collects them. It’s not like he wants to.” Looking out the window Ryan saw Sam scavenge something from the branches of a tree, departing to the creaks of his shopping cart. Ryan shivered and felt sick.
“I can’t even see them unless he points them out.”
“Well yeah, he’s the only one I think.”
“Lucky f***.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s a stupid thing to wish if that’s what you’re thinking, that you could find stars like him. He’s not well. And they’re not even his.”
“I guess we all collect them now.”
Eventually they grew accustomed to the mild warmth and humming presence the stars brought. Ryan’s house filled with them until they were spilling out the windows, so he deserted it. Only the schizophrenic woman next door noticed it, and occasionally she screamed “Fire!” into the dark. Ryan moved in with his sister. The two of them were alone together like they had been as children, but instead of living under the shadow of alcoholism and absence they lived in the presence of starlight. Nevertheless by spring his sister had basically bec0me a barnacle, spending hours anchored to the rock that was her bed.
After dinner a tapping came from the window. They peeked out, having entertained no visitors recently. It was Sam. He crawled in over the sill.
“This is it,” he said.
Earlier that day he had lifted a star to collect it and found an empty envelope beneath it.
“Please...this is the address I found on the envelope. I went to the door and knocked a million times without an answer. Will you try?” Sam spoke like a man who had trudged a hundred miles through the desert. The barnacle girl nodded instantly, seeing that skin from areas of his face had worn off now too. A gape between his nose and cheekbone offered a miserable view of his upper gums and teeth. Sam went on.
“I don’t even know, I just collect them, but the address is important, at least I think...”
“These things are bad for you,” Ryan assessed. He knew the feeling. The barnacle girl touched Sam’s shoulder and the sweet waves of the ocean took over.
“Of course we’ll go.”
“Okay.”
The address was easy enough for Ryan and the barnacle girl to find- it was the location of one of their childhood homes. When they knocked on the door, a priest answered.
“Ah.” He took a folded slip of paper from his bathrobe.
“Take a left from here and keep walking until you get there. Then use the paper.” Offering them his blessing, he shut the door. They took a left before reaching a graveyard whose headstones glittered invitationally.
A clicking sound rose from a smoky form lounging in the corner, and Ryan turned towards it. Seeing the pen it gripped- click, click, click- he put the slip of paper in its hand.
“Find Maizy, and then go here,” it intoned, jotting an address for Ryan before click, click, click. Like a clock marking the passing seconds in a place where time was no longer relevant. The barnacle girl waited outside.
They found Maizy bagging groceries at her job in the supermarket.
“Oh yeah,” she said, and handed them a stack of paper grocery bags.
The two returned home and gingerly packed the stars away. The barnacle girl found Sam asleep on their couch and left a cup of tea and a straw, because it didn’t look as though his lips were full enough to sip regularly. His face looked so old.
By the time they left the house, their shoulders were piled high with bags reaching nearly 10 feet tall. They walked for hours, slipping between tapping heels and black ties. Ryan only had to stop to vomit twice- the area they arrived in around evening wasn’t the type to provoke much bowel activity. Dark approached when they reached the washed out street the graveyard figure had instructed them towards, and a light drizzle had begun, turning the bags into mush. Like two towers of light they walked slower now, tired even from the weightless loads. Finally they arrived.
It was a multi-story residence marked with faceless guards. A halfway house or shelter, maybe. Walking around to the correct number, they cradled the lights and waited. A woman of middle age opened the door and stooped forwards. Her hair looked like it had been splashed with white paint and combed through. She coughed and sat down in what had grown into a moderate rain.
“Hi mom,” the barnacle girl said. She sat down as Ryan unloaded the remaining bags, gathering the stars in piles around the doorstep. They glimmered brightly, illuminating the rivulets of tears on the woman’s empty cheeks and the raindrops picking rainbows from the pavement oil. The mist took on a golden warmth. Babbling, she collected them in her arms breathlessly. The two familiar strangers left, washed by the shining rain and feeling a lightness in their limbs. Ryan looked back for a moment as he reached his fingers overhead to catch the drops of rain from a hanging branch. Unflinching, he breathed deeply.
When the barnacle girl returned home, Sam was still there, sleeping slowly and deeply. She touched his hair and smiled. It was like sea grass.