Face-Slapping14 min read
I Came for the Stars, Stayed for the Truth
ButterPicks14 views
I arrived in Huaihai under a sky the color of old metal.
The airport lights smudged the horizon. The city breathed with the low hum of engines and factories, and the air tasted faintly of iron and distance. I pulled my too-large suitcase behind me and stared up, as if the stars might have remembered me.
"You're Lydia Huang?" a man's voice asked behind a gate of hedges and fog.
"Yes," I said. "Lydia."
He nodded like someone who had been expecting a name he had only seen in a ledger. "I'm Atlas Carr. Jordan's friend."
"Atlas." I repeated the name, tasting it. Atlas had been my father's friend—Atlas Carr—who in the years since my father disappeared had become the only compass pointing toward that lost line on my map. Atlas had told me about Luciano Foley, the "meteor hunter" who kept to himself on the south ridge. Luciano had a reputation people passed around like a secret.
"Luciano won't be easy," Atlas had warned on the phone. "He lives like a hermit. He trusts instruments more than people."
"I can be trusted by instruments," I had said.
Atlas had laughed then, short and dry. "We'll see."
I found the villa half a day later, tucked into the hillside like a machine carved from good weather. A clock stood by the fireplace, old and honest, its face a little scratched. The nameplate read FOLEY in brass.
I pressed the bell.
"Don't," the intercom said in a flat, oven-cool voice.
"Is this Luciano Foley?" I asked, and then added what I always added: "Atlas Carr said I could come."
"I already turned him down," came the voice. It clipped the air like a ruler. "Tell Atlas to stop sending people."
"I know," I said. "But I thought— I promised my father—"
A long silence. Then, "Come in."
I almost laughed from the porch, surprised at my own luck. "So your name really suits you," I told the man who met me at the foot of the stairs.
He looked like a man bred from knife lines: sharp jaw, white shirt, sleeves rolled to the middle of his forearms. Luciano Foley watched me with eyes like black glass. He said, "Lydia Huang."
"That's me," I said.
"Why do you want to hunt meteorites?" His tone was not cruel. It was testing.
"Because they're like pieces of the sky that decided to come closer," I told him. "Because my father—"
"Jordan Zhao?" he interrupted.
"You know him?" The name came out flat with relief.
"I met him," Luciano said. "He left one night. People like him leave signatures. He liked loud laughter and quiet coffee." He turned away like he had offered enough.
"He taught me about stars," I said. "And he left me a piece of rock on a red string. It's all I have."
Luciano's eyes flicked briefly to the thin red thread on my wrist, a tiny meteor slice wrapped in wire. "Short promises," he said. "Good hands."
"I can carry my weight," I said. "I can be useful."
"From now on," Luciano said, "you are my woman."
I had expected 'assistant,' or 'helper,' or something easier. His words hit me like a cold current. "What do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean you travel with me. You eat what I eat. You learn what I will teach. And you don't make it harder for the work." He paused, then added: "I won't hold your hand. Don't hold mine either."
We argued a small, polite war of words for twenty minutes. He refused my money; he refused names; he refused to let Atlas come with us. In the end he shrugged and said, "Prove you can do the work, and you'll be welcome. For now, there's a room upstairs and one rule: don't touch what's not yours."
I slept that night listening to the villa breathe. The old clock ticked like a distant engine. I lay on the couch with the red string between my fingers and thought of the nights when Jordan would lift me to the eyepiece and make me feel like the whole sky was small enough to hold.
"You're up late," Luciano said one night without turning around. He had come out and sat where the moonlight pooled.
"I can't sleep," I said.
He pointed at the telescope by the window. "Want to look?"
"No," I whispered. "I can't name the stars yet."
"You will," he said. "Or you'll learn other things. Either way, you'll find a reason."
"Why do you do this?" I asked suddenly.
He looked at me as if deciding whether I deserved the answer. "Because they fall," he said. "Because even when all the world thinks they're gone, they can still be found."
His coldness had an odd warmth. He taught me how to load a metal detector, how to read the weather maps Luciano kept folded like folded breath. He let me clean glass until the smudges came away. He showed me how to wrap a meteor sample in tissue with a care that looked like a religion.
"These trinkets can be worth fortunes," Luciano said once, tucking a small chip back into its padded box. "People will offer you gold for them. But that's not the value. The value is in the finding."
We made for the mountains the next morning. Jagger Bishop, the shop owner who sold us gear from a basement store called "Nobody Survives," followed us with a bundle of supplies and a grin like he had hidden his teeth.
"You're really not the sort to travel with people," Jagger said as he watched Luciano arrange the packs. "He's the kind who prefers the company of rocks."
"People are more complicated," I said.
"Yeah," Jagger agreed. "People like you get things done."
Samuel Aguirre drove us to the drop-off. He smoked, and his smile creased his weathered face. "You folks mind if I come along for the first leg?" he asked.
Luciano glanced at him and nodded. "Fine. Lead."
We moved into the green like three pieces in a slow clock. Luciano walked like a path had been carved for his boots alone. I kept pace, feeling like a small machine learning to move on new rails.
On the first night in a farmer's hut before we entered the real hills, Samuel pulled out two stones wrapped in plastic and set them on the table.
"Found these last week," he said. "Fireballs over the ridge. Figured you might want a look."
Luciano lifted a magnifier and tilted the stones to the light. His brows didn't move, but something small and cold passed over his face.
"These are staged," he said. "Someone's making them. They put older fragments—things with oxidation—back in the dirt and dig them up in front of the teams. It's called burying a mine."
Samuel's face fell. "Eh? Not my vibe."
"Not your vibe?" Luciano tapped the glass. "These are made to look like fresh falls. A trader will bank on a buyer's ignorance. Someone's been selling 'fresh' pieces to make quick money."
"Who would do that?" I asked.
"People who need money," Samuel said. "People like your cousin, maybe."
My throat tightened. "My cousin? You mean Ulysses?"
"Never heard of that guy," Samuel said.
I had told Samuel about Ulysses Casey—he was the name I had to watch for, the man who'd borrowed money from my family and then vanished. "He took my uncle's savings," I said. "He said he was buying in for large meteor tips. Then he vanished."
Luciano didn't look surprised. "Scammers hide in the same corners as honest people. They'll take what they can and vanish into city lights."
I made myself keep quiet that night. I drew by the fire, trying to breed patience out of charcoal and paper. Luciano sat a little away, working a blade like it was finishing a blade's prayer.
We tracked a fireball sighting into a tangle of trees. The detectors sang to the ground like bees. For a week we dug and found nothing but old rocks and the kind of silence that stretches the skin.
Then Samuel handed Luciano a wooden box at dusk. Inside was a small fragment, like a scrap of night.
"Found it yesterday," Samuel said, chest puffed like a rooster. "Map included. I thought—well—"
Luciano felt it, turned it in the light, swallowed such a slow sound I could hear it like a coin dropping. He put on gloves and set the fragment in a padded box. "Seal it. We'll verify at the lab."
He tucked the box into his pack and told Samuel, "Stay on the trail. We leave the ridge at dawn."
We camped in a thin circle of trees that night. Later, at our fire, Samuel told stories of what the mountain had given and taken. He laughed and said, "You two city folks are stubborn, but the hill will teach you."
"Why should I keep trying?" I asked Luciano, the question lifting like a bird caged in my chest. "What if we don't find anything and we go home with nothing?"
"There is a difference between giving up and choosing to stop," he said. "You will know which is which."
We left early. The air moved like slow hands. We worked the detectors until they clicked like clock hands. On the third day I stepped into a low shaft and my boot hit a hard ring. The sound was wrong and right at once.
"Here," I said, voice thin with hope.
Luciano hurried over. The detector screamed, a bright high tone. He knelt and brushed dirt, then his fingers froze. He unfurled his handkerchief and held the fragment up to the light. It was a small, slivered thing, dimpled and black with a vein of silver like lightning.
"Yours," he said.
I almost cried out. I set my own red thread against it, but he took it and pressed the fragment into the silver loop on my wrist.
"Keep it safe," Luciano said. "Meteorites are mean to hands but kind to hearts."
The fragment hummed a tiny warble against my skin—like a memory waking.
We took the fragment back to the observatory in Huaihai. They ran spectrometers, and the lab techs leaned close, noses wrinkled like they were reading a poem. The results smiled back: a rare chondrite with compounds that only formed in places without air. It was clean; it was old. This one would be worth study.
But the moment of joy slipped into the eyes of someone in the crowd who had not been with us in the mountain. That man—Ulysses Casey—stared like a hawk.
Later, when the observatory arranged a small public seminar with a charity auction to fund further fieldwork, Ulysses showed up with swagger. He had that kind of confidence that stole room light, then tried to sell it back as his own.
"Luciano," he said, stepping into the circle where we presented the fragment. "Nice piece. Almost like one I handled last month."
"Did you?" Luciano asked.
"Of course," Ulysses said. "Why else would I be here?"
I felt something tighten in my hands. I didn't know how the day would turn, but I knew how it should: truth ought to be like a good instrument—accurate, unblinking, indifferent to life.
When the auction started, the room's couches were full. Scientists from the observatory and donors in suits had come for the drinks and the promise of stardust. Cameras leaned like curious birds. Ulysses smiled into the lenses like a man who could sell the moon.
"You're a mess of confidence," Luciano said to me, quietly. "You want to do the talking?"
"Me?" I hadn't expected it.
Luciano nodded. "You found the piece. You're the finder. Tell them where Ulysses fits into your story."
I had thought the plan would be cold. I hadn't expected the flood of sound when I stepped up to the lectern.
"Good evening," I said, and the room swallowed the words like a space. "My name is Lydia Huang. Two weeks ago, a man named Ulysses Casey borrowed money from my family. He promised to buy meteor leads, and then he disappeared. We spent months looking, and then we followed a sighting and found this." I lifted the fragment.
Ulysses smiled like a child at a plate of candy. "That's mine," he said casually.
"Is it?" I asked the room. "Because last night we checked records. He has been selling 'fresh finds' to at least three dealers in two cities. He buys old fragments, buries them where a sighting is reported, then reclaims and sells them as fresh. He uses luck and people's ignorance to make a fortune."
"That's absurd," Ulysses said, voice oily. "I've done nothing illegal."
"I have his messages," I said. "I have his bank transfers." I turned and gestured. Luciano pressed PLAY on a small device.
A thin recording crackled. A man's voice—Ulysses' voice—filled the auditorium, complaining about 'having to seed the field the old trader wanted' and describing the exact technique of burying fragments to make them appear fresh. The room turned; the air sharpened.
"Audible proof," Luciano said.
Ulysses went from smooth to stunned so fast a mark could be made. He laughed first, a shaky sound. "This is fake," he said. "You doctored this. You can't—"
A hand went up from the science table. The head of the lab spoke quietly into a microphone.
"We ran comparatives. His fragments match old rusted surface profiles. They are not recent falls. We've also matched a transfer trail—transfers to his account from off-shore wallets used in various 'finds' payments."
The dignity left Ulysses' face like color from paper. He became entirely smaller. He smiled with the edge of a knife tryng to hide a cut. "This is slander," he said. "You don't know—"
"—what?" someone in the front row asked. "How he got your money?"
I stepped forward. "This man took money from my family. He claims he was investing in meteor leads. He took the money and then sold fake 'fresh' fragments as finds. He created false hope and made money on it."
Ulysses' lips moved. He called names, reached for lawyers, insisted that everything was legal. He demanded the recordings be proved, the documents authenticated. The room started to murmur. Someone opened their phone and broadcast the audio live.
A crowd gathered quicker than I imagined. People took out their phones. They filmed. They leaned forward with hungry eyes. The man who had been so assured now had his composure fray. His voice strained like a wire under too much wind.
"You can't—" he said. "You don't know what you've done. You'll ruin me."
"Is that what you're worried about?" a donor in the back asked. "Do you think anyone will buy from you again?"
Ulysses tried to smile—an act like a mask slipping.
"No," he said. "No, I didn't—"
"Admit it," Luciano said quietly. "You took what you could."
Pride collapsed first. His shoulders sagged in stages, like a ship's masts after a storm. Then shock took over—eyes wide like someone watching the world tilt. He paced a step, then two, like a man whose legs hadn't heard him yet.
"You're making a mistake," he began, then swallowed and tried new words. "This is a misunderstanding. Those transfers were loans, investment—"
"Loans?" someone laughed, short and sharp. "Who's lending to that account?"
Denial was a flailing thing. Ulysses reached for the lectern, fingers curling. "I didn't know those were fake," he said. "I didn't know. You—"
"You were selling them," I said. "I have the emails."
I watched his face change faster than a weather chart: smug, to confusion, to alarm, to pleading. He fell back into that rawness I had felt when my family's money had been taken—like a door tripping open on the night a thief left.
"Please," he said, voice cracking. "Please—I'm sorry. I—I'll pay it back. I will—"
A chorus rose around him: camera shutters, the electronic hum, the low talk of astonishment. Phones went up. People started to clap, first timidly, then louder—as if applauding a justice finally delivered. Some laughed. Some filmed while talking. Someone shouted, "Bring him to the police!"
He sank down on the nearest chair like a man seated on water. His suit creased. He bowed his head and wrapped his hands uselessly around his face. The room buzzed like an unmade hive.
A woman in the front row stood and spoke, steady as a bell. "If we have proof of victims," she said, "we'll press charges. We won't let this happen again."
Ulysses lifted his head and suddenly began to grovel. It was gutting and raw and awful.
"Please," he said to everyone. "Please—I'll return the money. I'll—I'll do anything. Don't make me lose my job. Don't—"
No one rushed him with violence. The crowd did what modern people do best: record, judge, and let the law run its slow course. People filmed, they whispered, some clapped. The man who had been confident minutes before now clutched at his tie, his suit damp, his mouth a small, stupid O of panic.
Someone near the back laughed, bitter and sharp. "You're not a hunter," the laugh said. "You're a thief."
He was taken away by security at the request of the observatory director. A few people followed him in the hallway, cameras still recording his stumbles toward the exit.
He begged and pleaded at the doorway, "I'll make it right! I swear!"
No one seemed to hear the pledges as the room turned back to the fragment on the table. My red string hummed slowly at my wrist like a small engine.
After that, the fallout moved so fast. News outlets posted the recording. The auction was canceled. Ulysses' accounts were frozen pending inquiry. My family's demands for repayment were registered. I watched the headlines bloom and fade and, in the middle of it all, sat with Luciano and Samuel and Jagger.
"You did well," Luciano said at the end, quiet and close.
"I just told the truth," I said.
"Sometimes the truth needs a voice to carry it," he answered. "Good to have you. Shame you had to use it on him."
I kept thinking about the arc of Ulysses' collapse: pride, to shock, to denial, to pleas. The crowd's reaction—there were whispers, applause, laughter, pity. Someone filmed him prostrate and the clip ran twice on the evening feeds. It felt like a public anatomy.
After the storm, we returned to the ridge with new permission, new caution. We hunted more patiently. I began to sketch on the nights by the fire, drawing the angles of Luciano's shoulders when he worked the detector, drawing the way the old clock at the villa tipped its second hand like a small, repetitive heart.
Weeks later, Luciano sat across from me in the villa, the clock between us. "Are you going back home?" he asked.
"No," I said. "Not yet."
"You could move on," he offered.
"I don't want to forget how to look up," I said. "I don't want to stop wanting a piece of the sky."
"Then keep looking," he said.
In time, I found something else: a paper I had given to the director of the observatory, a small letter asking for help to find more information about my father's last trip. They dug into archived logs and old messages. After months, a message came through: Jordan Zhao had been following reports of an unusual magnetic disturbance two valleys over. There were no bodies, no signs of mechanical failure. He simply stopped responding the night his jacket was found near a meteor scar.
"You think he ran off?" Samuel asked.
"No," I said. "He wouldn't leave me."
Luciano didn't speak. He folded his hands over the clock; the tick tapped soft.
I kept hunting. My hand became steadier with the metal detector. The red string with its tiny meteor fragment grew warm on my wrist in a way that had nothing to do with weather.
One winter I went back to the city and stood in a courthouse square that smelled of hot coffee and cold concrete. Ulysses was there, the case open and public. He had attempted offers of restitution in a dozen ways—selling pieces he had claimed were authentic, promising returns, begging forgiveness. The law moved. So did the public.
At the trial, victims spoke. Ulysses listened, sinking into a smaller and smaller chair. He cried for parts of it, then his mouth hardened as he tried to justify. It didn't help.
When it was done, the judge ordered restitution and community service, and mandated the public posting of his scams. He was punished with a fine and public shaming arranged by the observatory: an open recounting of his methods, shown to all his clientele.
At the public square, he stood and read a hand-scrawled confession into a microphone while cameras rolled and strangers took pictures.
"I sold you stars and peddled pieces of dust," he said. "I am sorry."
His voice began arrogant, then faltered, then hung on a string.
"I did it for money," he said. "I saw people who wanted belief more than truth and I used it."
Someone shouted, "You used grief!"
He flinched. The crowd hissed like a sea.
"Please," he begged then. "Please forgive me—I'll pay back every penny—"
A woman in the front started to laugh. It was not a kind laugh. "Go to the police," she said. "Go to the judge. Not to us."
His knees bent, and suddenly he was on the cold concrete, his suit dusted. He reached out with a hand like an apology thrown in the gutter. People recorded. People whispered. Some clapped. Someone threw birdseed at him. I couldn't be sure which reaction was worse—some smiled, some shook their heads, a few took photos for justice blogs.
"Beg me more," a man near the back yelled. "Beg the people you hurt."
Ulysses crawled, the selling man reduced to a smaller thing than those he had conned. He begged and pleaded and named no one specifically. The crowd's faces shifted—shock, then morbid curiosity, then satisfaction, then disgust. It was humiliating, public, total. The man who had once sold hope now sold only confession, and the price was all he had left: his dignity.
When the day ended, he was led away by officers, and the square emptied slowly. Some recorded the moment and fed it into the jumpy appetite of the internet. The videos went viral.
Back at the villa, Luciano watched the little news clip and said nothing. He folded the paper and placed it underneath the old clock. I wrapped my red string around my fingers and thought of my father. The meteor fragment on my wrist had been given back to me by the mountain first, then by luck and careful work.
"Keep it," Luciano said at last. "Slip it in a drawer and wind the clock once in a while. Memory likes motion."
So I wound the brass key. The second hand ticked. The clock breathed.
"Will you keep hunting?" Luciano asked another evening by the telescope, the night sky a slow turning fan.
"Yes," I said. "Because I want to know why he left. Because I want to find more pieces. Because some things must be found."
"Good," Luciano said.
He gave me one last instruction before the year wore out: "If you ever meet a man who sells the sky and also confuses debts with devotion, point the detector at his feet and don't trust the glint of his smile."
I laughed. "I'll remember."
I still had the tiny meteorite slice on the red string—the only piece I had left of Jordan. I took it from my wrist when I packed for another season. At night, when the cold pressed at the windows, I would put the fragment on the old clock's face, like a moon over a small town. The clock ticked. The fragment looked like a small, brave scar.
On the morning I finally found a clue that might lead to my father—a receipt, a name, a place in a valley that hadn't yet been searched—I wrapped the meteorite and the red string in tissue and tucked them into the deepest drawer of Luciano's metal expedition box.
"I'll need this," I said.
"Yes," Luciano replied, and for once his voice wasn't just a tool. "And one day you'll take it with no need to look back."
I closed the drawer and wound the clock once more.
The second hand moved in a patient, small sound. It sounded exactly like someone who had been waiting for years and did not mind waiting a little longer.
The End
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