Eyes Up & Eyes Out

“Can you see it?” asked Christiane, scanning the cloudy night sky with her eyes.

“I’m still looking,” replied Scarlett, who sat next to her in the frame of Scarlett’s bedroom window, probing the night sky with the aid of binoculars, but unable to see much. “All these dang clouds.”

“I told you you’re not going to see it,” said Christiane. Noticing a light turning on, in an upstairs room two houses over, she put a hand on the binoculars and said, “Let me see something.”

Scarlett, down with disappointment, relinquished the binoculars, but noticed Christiane wasn’t pointing them up – she was pointing them out towards the houses. “What are you doing?” asked Scarlett.

“Seeing about something better than the bland nothingness of space.”

“But the mission to Mars –”

“I’m sure we can just look up some pics on Google. Ms. Mulberry never said we couldn’t observe it that way for the project,” Christiane stated bluntly. Looking into the window of two houses over, she saw two young boys starting up a game of Mario Kart on their Nintendo. “Nothing but a batch of brats,” she sighed and handed the binoculars back to Scarlett.

“It’s sad you don’t even care about human history in the making,” sighed Scarlett.

Christiane put on her best bitch face and snapped back at Scarlett, ”There are way more important things going on than that. You might notice if you looked out, instead of up, once and awhile.”

“First off, it’s once-in-a-while, not once and awhile. Second, what do you do that’s so important?” Exaggerating herself to mock Christiane, Scarlett said, ”Oh, I have to play field hockey. Oh, I have to go shopping for a new dress. Oh, my church needs my help.” Ending the exaggeration, she continued, ”None of that is going to matter once we reach Mars. Humans living off Earth is going to change everything. This matters.”

“There are plenty of problems here,” blurted an irritated Christiane. “There are kids – starving – every single day. That matters. Are you saying you don’t care?”

“Kids have always starved, and they always will, but space is –”

“You’re unbelievable,” said Christiane, shaking her head. “If nothing on Earth matters anymore, why are we even bothering with this science project, huh?”

With a heavy hand of arrogance, Scarlett replied, “Well, they’re not going to want idiots colonizing Mars. I’m sure a bachelor’s degree will be the bare minimum.”

“And just leave everyone else here to rot?”

Scarlett’s answer was an absolute yes, but even she felt like that would come across a bit heartless, so she simply shrugged. Just then, something caught Christiane’s eye outside the window, and she looked through the binoculars.

“No way… I can see it!” said Christiane, in absolute awe. “There’s a dot moving in the sky. That’s gotta be the spaceship, right? That’s actually pretty incredible.”

“Oh my God! Let me see,” Scarlett blurted, ripping the binoculars out of Christiane’s hands.

“Uh, rude,” was Christiane’s response, but Scarlett didn’t care. She was straining her eyes, trying to get a good view of the space shuttle as it made its way into the exosphere, but it was obscured by a mass of clouds.

“Those dang clouds!” said an annoyed Scarlett, dropping the binoculars from her face. “It probably wasn’t that great anyway.”

“You’re kidding, right?” said Christiane, excited. “I just saw it, and it was amazeballs!”

“You could hardly see anything.”

“I could see enough.”

“Well, I’m sure you think you –” started Scarlett, but something outside the window had caught her eye, and she lifted the binoculars to look into the window two houses over. “Oh my God!”

“What is it?” asked Christiane, concerned by Scarlett’s reaction.

“Mr. Kendrick just broke his kids’ tv. He’s going on a rampage.”

“Who?” said Christiane. “I can’t really make out what’s happening. Tell me.” What Scarlett saw next was Mr. Kendrick grabbing his sons, one by one, giving them a good hard spanking on the butt with his belt, and sending them out of the room.

“He’s beating them with a belt. We should call the cops,” declared Scarlett, removing the binoculars from her face.

“What? Why?” replied Christiane.

“Those kids are being abused,” whined Scarlett.

“It sounds like they’re just being punished. It’s not like he’s punching them in the face. Is he?”

“No, but kids shouldn’t be punished like that.”

“Maybe when we get to Mars they won’t be, but here on Earth, they are. Now, can we get back to the project already?”

Scarlett took a moment to think about this. Then she lifted the binoculars back to her face, stared out of the window, and said, “No… I’m still looking.”