The tall oak trees were darkened by the ashen sky that hung over their long limbs. We sat on the cold, rough rocks as the brown cannel churned by our small feet. His pale hand rested on his lap as he watched the stick he threw kayak down the unseen rapids laying centimeters under the surface.

“Victoria?” Lukas asked with green eyes turned up at me. “Why is the water brown?”

I shrugged to the seven-year-old. Being merely four years older than him, how would’ve I known? Looking back, I now realize how close our small home was to the coal mine that most of the working class depended on. My father used to work there. That was before my mom had to be the sole provider for our family. She worked as a music teacher when we were living in that cookie-cutter Hundred Aspens neighborhood.
I now know that it wasn’t the brown water that was the issue. It was the hot air that occasionally burnt our eyes and lungs. However, the chemicals floating around the air was no concern to two children who were too busy worrying about the lion that suddenly interfered their jungle safari.

“The water used to be kind of blue-ish,” he noted. “Sometimes it looked a little bit green.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, kicking pebbles into the cannel.

There was a moment of silence as Lukas turned his blonde head to the waters, squinting his juniper eyes.
“What if all of the entire water of all of the earth turned brown?” he mused. “And we all turned brown because everyone showered in brown water?”
“It would be better than the grey smoke,” I told him. “At least the brown water doesn’t smell horrible. The smoke hurts to breathe, sometimes. The brown water probably wouldn’t hurt ‘cause it’s just water.”
“Victoria?” asked Lukas. “Is it from a fire?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered. “It comes from those buildings over there. If it were a fire, the firemen would put it out.”

Lukas tapped a stick against the cannel’s concrete walls.

“It would be nice to be a fireman,” he admitted. “You should be a fireman…”
“Why me?” I raised an eyebrow. “Why not you?”
“‘Cause the firemen can’t do anything about the smoke,” explained Lukas. “But a superhero can.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah. If I were a superhero, I could take a big plastic bag like the ones Mom gets from the store, and then I’d fly over those buildings. I would scoop up all of the smoke and then fly up to space. When I am in space, I would open the bag and let all of the smoke out.”

I liked his logic. The plan seemed to work out in my mind. The only problem was that Lukas wasn’t a superhero. Not at that moment, anyway. My eleven-year-old mind thought that maybe one day he would get magic powers and then he could fly.

“Well,” I said. “I don’t want to be a fireman. I want to be an astronaut so I can go into space with you.”
“Do you promise?” he inquired. “Space is really dark, and I’m afraid of the dark.”
“I promise.”

It’s funny how things like this come to mind when you’re forced to look back in fear of looking forward. The air had turned humid and foggy from the grey smoke. It was difficult for me to breathe in that moment, let alone Lukas who had asthma. I folded my arms together as I entered the cold room.

“Victoria?” his frail voice called.
“Yeah, Lukas?” I asked.
“Did you see the fishes?” Lukas’s pale face was etched with concern.
“Yeah, they’re cool,” I commented. “I like the see-through one. You can see its brain. It looks like an alien.”
Lukas’s face instantly turned grim.
“I look like an alien,” he sadly said, starting to anxiously play with the ventilator chord that ran to his nose with a finger clasped in a weird plastic clip that glowed red on the inside.
“Nah,” I responded, also turning sad. “You look just fine.”
“Victoria?”
“Yes, Lukas?”
“I don’t want to breathe,” he stated. “It hurts. I don’t like it.”
“Don’t say that,” I scowled. “You need to breathe to live.”
“I know… Victoria… I’m scared.”
“Me too, Lukas,” I replied as my eyes began to burn again. “But I made you a promise. We’re going to go to outer space together. We’ll find out who really looks like an alien- the one in a rocket or the one in a cape.”

He grinned, the fear leaving his green eyes.

I gently put the superhero action figure on the dirt. My mom was softly sobbing behind me. It was one thing that we lost Lukas, but we were about to lose our home as well. Anyone who could leave town left. That included almost all of her music students. The music program itself had been shut down entirely. We were going to leave town as well, but we weren’t going anywhere better. There was a teaching position across the state and a tiny, two bedroom apartment that was calling us. We couldn’t bring Lukas along with us, but we couldn’t leave him completely alone. My mom and I left Captain America to guard Lukas’s final resting place.

Today, I watched a plastic bag tumble down the dirt road and thought of him. He had a collapsed lung, and I had a broken heart. It was the worst of two extremes. I placed a picture of Lukas on my wall so he’d keep me company here.

It had been the first day of school in a new place. We watched Hamlet in the English class. Though I hadn’t been paying too close of attention to the Shakespearian language, something caught in my brain.

Does one dream when they die? I would like to think so. Death was another form of sleep, in a way. At least, that is what Shakespeare thought. If anything was certain, Lukas was dreaming as he always had before. Part of me knows that he was dreaming of alien fishes, rockets, outer space, and superheroes.