The Hero Next Time: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 4)

Chapter Six: Sunny, Summer, 1977

Sunny saw the commercial for Star Wars, and it changed his life.

For his first eleven years, his whole world had been his house, his family, Lawrence Street, his friends, Spagnol's, Gurdwara Sahib Sukh Sagar on Wood Street and its associated events with the Khalsa Diwan Society. For those eleven years, he'd thought that was all he needed.

Then he saw Darth Vader for the first time, and Ben Kenobi, and their lightsabers; the Millennium Falcon, the Tie-Fighters, the X-Wing Fighters; and then he saw Luke Skywalker swing across that chasm while holding on to Princess Leia, and his mind expanded to encompass a new world, a place that existed a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

They'd only just started learning about outer space and the planets in school, but this movie, which would be playing at the Odeon Theatre on Sixth Street Uptown very soon, took the bland facts about the universe and made them exciting. Now he wanted to go into space and have adventures with Luke, Han Solo, Chewie and the gang, and he wanted to bring his friends with him.

He had to see that movie.

He ran upstairs to find his mother. He found her in the bathroom, giving Bishan a bath. "Mom! Mom!" he said. "Can I go see Star Wars?"

"Sunil, give us some privacy," she admonished. "Your sister's having a bath."

Six-year-old Bishan stood in the tub, her already long black hair clinging to her wet body, soap suds running down her legs as his mother rinsed her with water scooped from an empty margarine container. Before Sunny looked away from her, suddenly feeling bashful, he noticed something about Bishan that confused him, and the two feelings together pushed him out of the room.

Behind the closed door, he said, "Mom, can I go see Star Wars?"

"What in the world is Star Wars, Sunil?"

"It's a movie about space ships and lightsabers and princesses and Darth Vader."

"Darth what?" She pronounced Darth like dart.

"Darth Vader! He's the villain and he has this wicked mask and he breathes funny. He can choke people with his mind!"

"That sounds awful, Sunil. Why in the world would you want to see that?"

"Because it's cool!"

"I'm sorry, Sunil, but if this is something your sister is too young for, then we can't bring you to see it."

"Bishan doesn't have to see it. Why can't Dad just bring me?"

"Your father is too busy, Sunil. What with work and his stewarding duties with the union, and his activities with the gurdwara, he has very little time remaining in the day, and that time he wishes to spend with his family. All of his family. If this is an activity we cannot all do together, then there is no way he'll want to do it, and he's the only one who can drive."

He felt his chances slipping away. "Maybe Bishan will like it!"

"No, I won't," Bishan said through the door. "It sounds scary. I don't like the sound of that Vader guy."

"There you have it, Sunil," Mom said regretfully.

Sunny huffed in frustration. "I'm going outside, Mom."

He stomped down the stairs, angry, but also disturbed. He'd never seen his sister naked before, and it shouldn't have jarred him so much, but it had. He was of the age where he started noticing differences between boys and girls, and he'd just noticed a very big difference that he'd never considered before. He'd just thought everybody had pee-pees, and he knew that girls made babies in their bellies because he remembered when Bishan was in Mom's belly, but he'd just thought boys and girls touched their pee-pees together when they wanted to make a baby.

Apparently, that wasn't how it worked, because Bishan didn't have a pee-pee, and now he suspected other girls didn't, either.

He wished Rachel wasn't the first person he saw when he went outside, because now he was picturing her standing naked in a bathtub, soap suds running down her legs, his eyes travelling up those legs to the missing pee-pee between them, and now his belly fluttered, and his own legs tingled as if soap suds were running down them. He had to stop and take a breath, because his heart was beating fast.

Rachel looked up from the hopscotch board she was drawing in chalk on the street and smiled at him, and for the first time since he'd met her when they were five, he found her beautiful, even though her hair was a rat's nest in the back, her knees were skinned from kneeling on the sidewalk, her clothes grubby and in need of laundering. Suddenly he wanted to give her a bath, and for the first time in his life, he didn't think about baths only as a way to get clean, but for other, more pleasurable sensations. He wanted to touch the soap suds as they ran down her leg. He thought that would feel very fine, indeed.

"Hi, Sunny," she said. "Want to play hopscotch with me?"

"Actually," he said, "I was wondering if you want to play Star Wars. I can be Luke, and you can be Leia."

Her brow furrowed. "What's Star Wars?"

He told her everything he knew, and in the telling, the urge to bathe her faded away, as it should have, because he was only eleven, and such things were in the future, and Star Wars was right now, and it was everything.

Eventually Al and Joe joined them. They'd seen the commercial too and shared his enthusiasm, so the four of them organized a mock lightsaber battle with their parents' vacuum cleaner crevice tools. Rachel didn't want to be Princess Leia, so they took turns being Luke, Ben Kenobi, and Darth Vader, and Al even played Leia for a while, which was brave of him, but he said as long as nobody tried to kiss him, he didn't feel weird about it. "Except Rachel," Al qualified. "If she wants, she can." 

As soon as he'd said that, Sunny knew Al had been as affected by Rachel as he had, maybe not today, but some other day when he hadn't been around.

"No, thanks," Rachel said, but she gave him a long look, as if she were reconsidering.  

Sunny looked to Joe, wondering what he thought about Al's suggestion. A few years ago Rachel had announced to the world that she and Joe would get married one day. Did he still feel the same way, or was that just childhood fantasy? He wondered, because he knew that to say such a thing now, at their age, would have much more significance than it had when they were seven.

Joe just shrugged and said, "No one has to kiss anybody."

So, they continued their lightsaber battle, and no one kissed anybody, because they were all just friends, regardless of what one person or the other wanted, and that was okay, because none of them were ready to explore deeper, older feelings for each other. They could be innocent a little while longer.

Sunny never did get to see the movie when it first came out, but he caught up later after the sequel came out, and he was able to watch the movie on VHS tape at home.

As for Rachel, well, the urge to bathe her faded away that day, but it would return with a vengeance, to his dismay, long after he could do anything about it.

Thanks for reading this far! Younger readers might not have been around when the first Star Wars movie came out, or be able to relate to the craze it created, but for the older ones, I hope I captured the feeling you felt when you saw that first commercial, or watched that first scene with the Star Destroyer, the marvel of special effects at that time. If you liked what you just read, hit "Vote" to send this title up the ranks, and leave a comment about how the movies affected your life when you were younger.

To return to the present day and see what Jordan has to show the LSDC, please click on "Continue reading."