Atop a ladder was Naeto, reaching for the lights. The lights flickered as his touch neared. Down below, Gozi held the ladder, rooting it to the ground. A small breeze came, and the ladder tilted, and the ladder swayed, but Naeto did not waver. Gozi was down there—Naeto knew the ladder would steady.

Over the school break, around midnight, the two boys had secretly been recalibrating all the streetlights in their town sector. There were fifty streetlamps on the asphalt road winding down the outskirts of the Asaba sector. Naeto and Gozi had changed fifteen since they began.

“The both of you are always tinkering.”

Gozi spun around, letting go of the ladder. Naeto’s legs gave way as the ladder buckled from under him. Before he could come crashing down, Naeto leaped for the streetlight’s pole, the adhesive suction of his gloves activating. His hands now clasped safely around the pole; he slid down. The ladder had fallen but not touched the ground.

A girl had caught the ladder.

The light from the streetlamp illuminated her face: Bushy eyebrows, wooly brown hair squashed under a baseball cap, and freckles scattered across her face—the brown of old sawdust. Her shirt was an alarming white. Her cargo dungarees were torn at the knees. One of its straps rested on her shoulder. The other fell free. And the girl was tall. Taller than Naeto, but not taller than Gozi. Nobody was taller than Gozi.

“What are you doing here?” Naeto pushed past Gozi, throwing him a semi-angry glare. Gozi would answer for letting go of the ladder and almost killing him, but first, the girl.

“What am I doing here?” The girl squared up, her face inches from his. “What are YOU doing here?”

While Naeto agitatedly adjusted his glasses, she just looked on, slightly amused.

“We—We—” Gozi began to stutter.

“None of your business.” Naeto did not let him finish. He grabbed the ladder she was still holding. The girl did not let go. Naeto tugged at it, and she held on tighter, a smile building on her face. Then, she let go, giggling as Naeto stumbled back, nearly knocked to the ground. Naeto cursed under his breath before placing the ladder back against the light pole.

“Hi.” Gozi lumbered next to the girl, scratching the back of his neck.

The girl narrowed her eyes at him. “Hi.”

“Gozi!” Naeto called in a hushed scream. A startled Gozi rushed forward with confused and asking eyes. Cedar-brown eyes. Naeto sighed, holding the bridge of his nose. “Hold. The. Ladder.” He punctuated every word. “This time, try not to let go.”

Gozi steadied the ladder once again as Naeto climbed back up.

“You still haven’t explained what you’re doing?” The girl waved from behind them.

“We don’t have to explain ourselves, least of all to you.” Naeto dislodged the streetlight’s casing. This was a newer model, and screws were not employed in its fastening. The ones with screws took longer to dislodge.

“Maybe you’d like to explain to the security patrol.”

Naeto stopped. The girl could not physically thwart their operation, but the security patrol could—and it would not be the first time.

“We are re-calibrating the lights,” Naeto gave in, letting the light’s casing hang loose as he began poking through the electrical circuit of the fluorescent tubes. The lights flickered with every touch.

“Re-calibrating?” The girl crossed her hands over her chest. “Why?”

Naeto did not respond. He reached into the chest pocket of his overalls and pulled out a diode filter. He connected this to the circuit bridge, and the light’s sheen went from radiantly harsh to something softer.

“That’s why.” Naeto gestured to the soft light.

River. That was the girl’s name. Since he was eight, Naeto had won the Young Engineers Builder’s Prize three years in a row. He lost the prize after River and her parents moved into their sector a year ago. Naeto was distraught for weeks. River didn’t know the things he knew about mechanical equilibrium, satellite motion, and thermodynamics. But, somehow, she had won the prize by building an unfinished canoe. Naeto always made sure to emphasize the unfinished part. And, unlike him, she never seemed to be trying. She would skip class to go skip pebbles across the lake, paint unartistic murals on the town council’s walls, or work on her unfinished canoe. What twelve-year-old went around building canoes?

River blinked at the soft light, a question gathering in her eyes.

“It’s for the fireflies.” Gozi excitedly answered the still-gathering question. “It’s saving them.”

River slightly cocked her head at him. “There are no fireflies . . . ” She looked up from Gozi to Naeto, who quickly shook his head at her. “ . . . not here anyways.”

“Because the harsh lights keep hurting them,” Gozi muttered.

“Wait.” Naeto clambered down the ladder. “You should not have been able to see us.” He tugged at the translucent fiber overalls both he and Gozi were wearing. Under illuminance, he had designed them to confer a measure of translucency. He had made them after the security patrol caught them the last time.

“You’re tinkering right in front of my bedroom window,” River pointed to her house across the road. “I can’t sleep with the lights going on and off every second.”

“Maybe, next time, don’t live on the outskirts of a sector, away from civilization,” Naeto suggested.

“Maybe, next time, don’t design ugly malfunctioning overalls,” River suggested back.

“They are adequately functional.” Naeto’s voice cracked and pitched a hint higher. “And we are engineers, our outfits are designed for practicality, not beauty.” Naeto had spent sleepless weeks on those overalls and, up until that moment, had believed they were the most beautiful pieces of clothing ever.

“Engineers without safety gears? Not even a climbing rope. I am in awe of your combined brilliance.”

“Well—well, I’m not an engineer,” Gozi said, offering an unsolicited clarification.

“What are you then, big boy?” River sent a smile his way.

And Gozi smiled back. “Well, Naeto says I’m more of an assistant.”

“And who made Naeto chief supreme engineer?” River scoffed.

“Don’t you have things to do? Like a canoe to finish?” Naeto started to take down the ladder. Gozi rushed over to help. Naeto brushed him away.

“Have you been spying on me and my boat?”

“Boat? It’s barely a raft.”

“Naeto.” Gozi tried to stop him.

Stopping was antithetical to Naeto’s character. “And who goes around building a canoe? Nobody uses canoes anymore.”

“Didn’t you get in trouble for messing with these lights before?” It was a standoff, and she was winning. “I heard your parents got a fine from town council for property damage.”

“It’s town council that’s damaging everything!” It was Gozi.

Naeto had never heard or seen him like that. And from the shocked, remorseful expression on Gozi’s face, the big boy hadn’t either.

“I’m—I’m sorry—”

“Who is there!” It was the security patrol. Their flashlights split through the unlit parts of the road.

“Let’s go!” River grabbed Gozi, who grabbed Naeto.

“My ladder—” Naeto made to pick it up.

“Leave it!” River yanked Gozi forward, and the big boy yanked Naeto away from the ladder.

The three teenagers ran, past River’s house, ducking under palm fronds, sneaking through back-ways, and scampering away from barking life and mech-dogs. They ran past the lake, the loud chirping of the water bugs drowning out the slapping of their feet against tar. They ran past council hall, River’s mural of a whale painted across its walls. They did not stop until they got to Naeto’s house. The house was white and shaped like a box.

“Your house looks like a fancy sugar cube,” a winded River announced as she studied the building.

“It’s minimalist.” Naeto realized he and Gozi were still holding hands. He let go. “And you didn’t have to follow us all the way, your house was across the street.”

“I needed the exercise.” River faked a stretch. When she was done, she just stood there staring at the boys.

Naeto hoped she would turn and leave at some point. She did not.

“I’ve never been in your house before.” River hopped onto the metal stairs that led to the front entrance.

Naeto hushed her. His father was a light sleeper. River hushed him back.

“Do you want to see Naeto’s workstation?” Gozi shied in, low and eager.

“Yes!”

“No!” Before Naeto could protest further, Gozi had taken River from the door to the side of the building. Naeto grudgingly followed. There was a scan box lodged into the wall. The big boy grabbed Naeto’s unwilling hand and placed it against the scanner. The scan box identified Naeto’s prints, and a ladder whirred down from the window to the ground.

“You really are a fan of ladders,” River chuckled to herself.

Up the ladder and inside Naeto’s room, the girl looked around, trying to hide her awe, and failing.

“Look at all this . . . tinkering stuff.”

Naeto’s room was hexagonal and large, like three regular bedrooms merged into one. And there were things everywhere—but in a tidy, orderly manner. Workbenches lined with digital worksheets, shelves stacked with jars, huge manuals, and several “high-tech” appliances. A holographic board was sectioned against a wall. Mini wind vane rotors, solar panels, and engine motors were stacked on the floor. River leaned against one of Naeto’s adaptable workbenches. She touched something, and the bench morphed from a smooth drafting table to a low magnetic field, attracting and pulling small metallic objects to its center.

River cupped a giggle.

“Please don’t touch anything,” Naeto sighed from behind her.

She ignored and waltzed over to a smart tool rack shelved over a wall. The rack held a plethora of unfamiliar materials. River took a jar from a row. Inside was a glowing, weird looking stone.

“Is this radioactive?”

A robotic arm snaked down to her and retrieved the jar.

“GeniT does not appreciate disorganization.” Naeto took the jar from the robot and placed it back on the rack.

“Where did you get all this stuff?”

“Naeto’s dad is one of the biggest scientists in the country,” Gozi squeaked in.

“Don’t over-embellish,” Naeto said, rearranging the rack.

“I don’t know what that means.”

Naeto sighed. “It means—”

“Do you want to see something cool?” Gozi turned to River.

River nodded expectantly.

“We don’t need to show her everything.” Naeto rubbed his forehead.

“Do it,” Gozi pleaded, tugging at Naeto. “Please, please, please.”

Naeto exhaled, rolling his eyes. “Fine.” He looked up at the ceiling. “GeniT, starlight!”

Starlight, GeniT beeped back in a mechanically velvet voice.

The room went dark. But only for a moment. Across the ceiling, across the walls, tiny pinpricks of light came, gradually intensifying until a sea of stars burned alive. The constellations followed, in shimmers, tracing stories in the bright dark. A meteor sped across the pocket universe, and River’s eyes followed, and the lights found her pupils, illuminating them. And the planets, in subtle hues of red, blue, and brown, came orbiting into view—the rings of Saturn, the stormy swirls of Jupiter, and the burning of Mars. And galaxy folded into galaxy, and planets uncharted came, with black holes rising and coming undone. And there wasn’t one sun, there were suns. A hum filled the room. It was still and gentle, like space itself had birthed it. And River reached out, her hands going higher, higher, and River touched infinity.

“Did you do this?” The girl’s eyes did not stray from the stars burning across the digital planetarium.

“Naeto did.” Gozi looked over to Naeto.

Naeto took off his glasses and started to clean them. They did not need cleaning. “It’s just crap I put together and—”

“It doesn’t look like crap to me.” River, too, was now looking at Naeto.

And at that moment, Naeto thought her eyebrows were not all that bushy.

“Naeto could put one in your bedroom if you liked,” Gozi offered.

“No, I can’t.”

“Why not? You did one for me.”

Naeto did not answer. His eyes shifted from Gozi to River, and back to Gozi. The three of them stayed like that for a minute, a triangle with quiet edges.

“Is this the re-calibration thingy you were talking about?” River broke the quiet, walking over to one of the workbenches. On the table were circuit components of a streetlight broken up into sections.

“We’re filtering the lights.” Naeto joined her. “We added a diode component to yield softer lights—starkly different to the radiating intensity of our streetlights.”

“The streetlights are too bright,” Gozi explained in simpler terms. “Too harsh. It makes the fireflies’ mating glow invisible. They also can’t hide from predators because the lights give them away. And what happens when they can’t hide or make baby fireflies?”

“They go away,” River answered calmly, a calmness Naeto didn’t think she possessed. “But fireflies are already . . . extinct. I read it in the National Geographic—”

“No, no, not extinct. Just very endangered.” Gozi brimmed with nervous excitement, eager to share this new information. He rushed off to the holographic board and tried pulling up a page. “There have been firefly sightings not far from here, in the Ogbunike caves . . . ” Gozi’s hands were sweaty, and the moisture interfered with the board’s functionality.

“Let me do it.” Naeto nudged him aside.

“If fireflies still live in these places, maybe they still live . . . or can live here. They just need a little help.” Gozi let out a breathless giggle.

“So, unlike the harsher lights, yours doesn’t confuse the fireflies?” River turned to Naeto. “They can differentiate between it and their own lights?”

“It’s still a prototype and needs more research, but yes, we think it could possibly, probably, help save Gozi’s fireflies.” Unlike Gozi, Naeto tried being more practical with his assessments.

“It’s your fireflies too.” The big boy gently shouldered Naeto, not gently enough, for it sent him staggering a little.

“It was your incessant idea to save the fireflies, like my schedule wasn’t busy enough already,” Naeto said, regaining his balance and adjusting his glasses. “I’m only doing this for theoretical research purposes.”

“That doesn’t make them not your fireflies.”

“Let’s agree to disagree.”

River was watching them, amusement in the corner of her eyes. Again, Naeto removed and wiped his glasses. They did not need cleaning.

And morning interrupted, dawn stealing through the blinds.

“That’s my cue.” River skipped to the window.

“Your cue was hours ago.” Naeto folded his tired arms.

“Same time tomorrow?”

“Yes.” It was Gozi.

“No!” Naeto hushed him. “This is not jet club.”

“Tomorrow it is.” The girl laughed, climbing out the window. She slid down the ladder, faster than they both usually did, and she ran off, sunlight trailing after her.

---

And it went on. Day after day, River would sneak in through Naeto’s bedroom window, and she and Gozi would aid him in fine-tuning his invention. They often just watched, giggling and scheming between themselves, and annoying Naeto. It took Naeto a minute to adjust to this new addition. Gozi, on the other hand, was thrilled to have someone else to talk fireflies with.

“Did you know fireflies are beetles, not flies, and are related to ladybugs and rhinoceros beetles?”

“Did you know firefly eggs also glow?”

“Did you know fireflies use their lights to communicate with each other?”

And at midnight, they would all sneak out to add the filter diode to the streetlights. With the three of them, the operation now progressed faster. River also insisted they used safety climbing gear, and she vehemently refused to be called Naeto’s assistant. She did agree to wear the ugly overalls.

One night, they gave her a farlight. Another one of Naeto’s inventions. It was how Naeto and Gozi communicated—mostly for the fun of it. When night gathered, one of them would shine their farlight into the sky, and wherever the other farlight was, it would come aglow. Two farlights in the night sky meant they would be re-calibrating the streetlights at midnight.

“Just like fireflies.” River carefully took the farlight in her hands.

“Just like fireflies,” Gozi repeated, the smile on River’s face finding his.

River’s glee faded. “I live far away. Your lights won’t find my light.” She handed the farlight to Naeto and backed away. “I also don’t think I’ll be here for long.”

River’s parents were research archeologists. They moved around a lot and had lived in many sectors.

“My family is from Rwanda,” Gozi bridged the space between them. “I was born there. My moms say we would go back someday. But that day is not today.” He squatted a little to look her in the eyes, just like his moms did when they wanted to reassure him.

“And there’s a reason they’re called farlights.” Naeto folded the farlight back into River’s hands. “They might not get to Rwanda or wherever your folks move to next, but here in this sector, wherever you are, it’ll find you.”

And what was once two farlights in the night sky became three. And what was once fourteen re-calibrated lights became thirty.

“We should give the new lights a name!” River beeped up.

“I agree!” Gozi beeped up too.

Naeto rolled his eyes as he scribbled new schematics on the holographic board. Of late, Gozi had eagerly been going along with all of River’s ridiculous antics.

“We should call it The River Naetozi Tinker Light!” River sprung to her feet, hands on her waist, victorious.

Naeto exhaustingly rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“It’s our names merged into one!”

“Very original.” Naeto stepped away from the board. “But why does your name come first and written in full while ours gets meshed up? Eh?”

“Because I came up with the idea.” River leaned on the table across from him. “The lights would still be nameless without me.”

“The River Naetozi Tinker Light is a long, ridiculous name.”

“I—I like it.” Gozi chirped in.

“Of course you do,” Naeto scoffed.

“Maybe if you say it over and over, it will grow on you.” River danced in Naeto’s direction. “Say it. Say it,” she began to chant.

“No!” Naeto scampered away from her.

River threw back her head, laughing a bellied contagious laugh, and soon, Gozi joined in. Eventually, so did Naeto.

---

One night, Naeto fell from the ladder and landed on his arm. It was just him and Gozi. River’s farlight had not shone in the sky.

Gozi ran to him. “Let me see.” He gently took Naeto’s hand.

“It’s nothing.” Naeto clutched his arm, stifling a painful groan. The gloves’ adhesive function had not activated in time.

“We shouldn’t have left the safety gear.”

Naeto had left the ropes on purpose. “It takes too much time to set up. Time we do not have.”

“Now see how we’re spending all that precious time.” Rarely was Gozi sarcastic. Naeto didn’t think he was even capable of it. Despite his hurting arm, this amused him.

“This is not funny,” Gozi’s voice grew firm. “This is bad.”

A purplish bruise was starting to spread across Naeto’s arm. Under the streetlight, it was radiant like an overripe avocado.

“I’m sure River will be happy.”

“I think she’ll be upset,” Gozi countered.

A wordless minute passed between them as the big boy inspected the injury.

“We should get you to the clinic.”

“Right, and explain how I got injured and why we are out this late?”

“We cannot leave you like this. What if it’s some . . . internal injury? What if it gets worse?”

Naeto could tell Gozi was not going to back off.

“Fine. Fine. We’ll go to the clinic,” he reassured him. “But let’s go tomorrow, after I come up with an elaborate lie.”

“Naeto—”

“It doesn’t hurt as bad as it looks, I promise.”

“Are you sure?”

“Ugh, I swear it by the River Naetozi Tinker Light.”

River could get Gozi to partake in all her ridiculous antics, but so could Naeto. Gozi was his friend first. He knew how to get him to budge. And as much as Gozi tried to hide his delight from hearing Naeto use the name, the mile-wide smile playing across his lips betrayed him.

“What?” Gozi was trying his best to stay serious.

“What?”

“You’re looking at me weird.”

“You were looking at me weird first.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

The two boys were quietly laughing now.

“Oya, stand up.” Gozi picked Naeto off the ground. “Let’s go home.

---

Unfortunately, the injury was as bad as it looked. Naeto had sustained a non-displaced fracture. And Gozi had been right, River was upset. She paced the length of Naeto’s room, lecturing on and on about how they never listened to her. Naeto just stared blankly at her, his arm in a brace and sling. They had told his father he had fallen off Gozi’s bike.

With Naeto’s condition, the re-calibrating operation fell to River and Gozi. River was a quick study—which she claimed had nothing to do with Naeto’s horrible teaching skills. Adding the filter component to the streetlights became her primary responsibility. They would rendezvous at Naeto’s house, with clear schematics and directions on replicating the filter’s design. At night, Gozi and River would recalibrate the streetlights using the filters. River also started bringing others. Random kids from school. River insisted that the more people knew about saving the fireflies, the better. So, each day, she showed up with a new kid: Ugochi who endlessly mimicked a hawk’s call. Makua and her mismatched socks. Jide who had a birthmark shaped like a tree. Rafael and the clattering rainbow beads in his hair. Nnayeleugo whose laughter was the sound of hiccups. Mazi who spoke six languages. Barefoot Zobam who talked to her reflection and dreamt many dreams. And more and more, they came. If Naeto wasn’t losing his sanity before, he was now. Gozi and River were the only ones allowed in his house, and like he always reminded them, was solely because he needed assistants. Now, he had feral strangers—his classmates—running around his workstation, touching all his equipment with unsanitary hands. For Gozi, it was just more people to share fun facts with:

“Did you know firefly larvae eat snails and worms?”

“Did you know that large groups of fireflies sometimes blink in unison?”

“Did you know firefly light can be yellow, green, or orange?”

After a while, Gozi and River stopped showing up as often. To Naeto’s knowledge, the operation was still in progress—Gozi had mentioned they set up a second base at River’s house since she lived closer to the uncalibrated streetlights. And there was Naeto’s father, who was limiting Naeto’s “playtime” until he fully recovered, making his house inconducive for their operation. And on days when all their farlights dotted the sky, Naeto would wait and wait, but Gozi and River would not come. Even the random kids from school stopped coming.

Naeto began to feel many things—some he couldn’t explain. The recalibration was made possible because of him. The designs and schematics were his. One component wired inaccurately could implode everything. Carrying on without him was unwise on their part. So, he went down to the lake. It was where River held her never-ending canoe construction project.

“Will you ever finish building it?” Naeto asked from behind her, squinting, shielding his eyes from the sunlight.

“We’ll see.” River didn’t look back at him. She was sawing a piece of plywood in half. The cut was jagged.

“That is rather rough.”

“A thing isn’t beautiful because it is perfect.”

That was another thing Naeto found exhausting about River. Her random bouts of philosophical dreamy responses. It was not something she did often, which made it more jarring to witness.

Naeto inched nearer, inspecting the canoe. The places where wood met wood were rough-hewn, bark in patches where the sanding was unfinished. The faint scent of wood sap tickled his nostrils and settled on his tongue. It was pine. Across the planks were paint smudges where River had attempted artistry and failed. The hull had uneven boards held by nails undoubtedly scavenged from a landfill.

Naeto had never seen a canoe on the lake. The floating pads and high-rotor ferries had replaced them all. Things were different in the last sector where River lived. For one, they had canoes. Naeto wondered if her canoe would take to water.

When River was done, she walked home. Naeto followed. She was five steps ahead, him five steps behind, the setting sun a painting on the horizon. River would throw questioning glances at him as they walked, and Naeto would look away. He had never been alone with her before. Gozi was always there. Why didn’t he just confront Gozi instead?

River lived by the lake. So, the walk was a short one. When she ushered him through the front door, Naeto found the house odd. He had never been inside it before. There was one table. One chair. One portrait of something on fire. You could tell whoever lived in it wouldn’t be there long. On the table were bits and parts of the filter diode—River’s workstation.

“Where did you get these materials?”

“I stole some of yours.” River was beside herself with pride. “Mine is not as sleek as your design, and I don’t have an ultra-modern workstation, but it gets the job done. We have recalibrated three more streetlights.”

Naeto clinked his fingers on the table, examining the components. Her putting all this together with nothing but stolen scraps and a screwdriver, was fairly impressive. Naeto didn’t start with scraps. His father was a robotics and electromechanical systems expert and Naeto had considerable access to his gear. He wondered what River would accomplish with the access he had.

“Did you want to talk about something?” River brought his attention back to her.

Naeto straightened up. “You and Gozi should not have replicated the designs without me.”

“Oh,” River paused. “I thought he mentioned it to you?”

“He—he did.”

“And that you were okay with it?”

“I was.”

River let her confusion show, then started to tinker with the filter components. “Also, the rains are back, and the storms have gotten worse this year. We haven’t had the chance to re-calibrate the lights in a while.”

“Doesn’t explain why your farlights have been in the sky these past few nights.” Naeto brought his hand between the components on the table, halting her tinkering. One of River’s brows climbed in response.

“That had nothing to do with the recalibration, we were just having fun.”

“Good to know you’ve both been doing that too.”

River paused again.

“I don’t think this is about the lights.” A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. Her amusement riled Naeto.

“You—you can’t just go around taking people’s friends!” He said it before realizing how pathetic he sounded.

“Well, I thought I was your friend too. Apparently not.”

“That—that’s not what I meant—”

“And Gozi is not property. He is not something to take or give.” There was a shift in her tone. “And it’s not my fault he likes me more than you.”

She was baiting him. He had known her long enough to understand that. Still, he fell for it, all sense of reason flying out the window.

“Maybe he wouldn’t if you stopped flirting with him every five seconds.”

River snickered. “I’ll flirt with whomever I want.”

“Good for you! Find someone else then.”

“Who? You?”

Naeto went quiet as stone. The question had come like a boulder falling into his open palms, and he struggled to find balance.

“Oh.” River’s eyes widened. “You do want me to flirt with you!”

“I—I don’t.” Naeto was unraveling.

“Yes, you do.” River chuckled. She danced up to him, and Naeto staggered back. “This is interesting because you want me to flirt with you, but you also want Gozi to flirt with you.”

It was all too much information and accusations for Naeto to register. He had come to confront River, now he was on trial. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking—”

“Don’t deny it. You’re not subtle, with your wandering eyes.” River was visibly enjoying seeing him spiral. “I just didn’t know you were a greedy little nerd.”

“I am not a nerd!”

“You invented a light filter for your boyfriend. You are a nerd.”

“He is not my boyfriend!”

“Sure.” River comically tiptoed forward. “Though, lucky for you, I like kissing nerds.”

Naeto fled. He stumbled over the table, over the chair, and scattered out the door, and he ran, River’s witchy laughter echoing after him.

---

Three nights later, after his confrontation with River, unable to think straight without her accusations and witchy laughter creeping into his mind and taunting him, Naeto went to find Gozi.

Perched outside his friend’s window, the picking wind flapping at his overalls, Naeto knocked and knocked against the window. Gozi’s home was a small bungalow, so Naeto did not have to worry about falling. When the window flung open, a startled Gozi was on the other side.

“Nae—Naeto—”

Naeto pushed past him, climbing into the room. Just like his, Gozi’s room also had a digital planetarium across the ceiling.

“I have been knocking for hours,” Naeto exaggerated, adjusting his overalls.

“What—what are you doing here?”

Naeto looked up with an angry squint. “I have not seen or heard from you in forever!”

“We saw each other last week.”

“That—that’s not the point.” Naeto shifted where he stood. “Remember the fireflies we’re supposed to save together? What happened to that?”

“Naeto, there’s a literal storm coming.”

“I can see that.” Naeto did not appreciate his patronizing tone. He was seldom on this end of their arguments. “Which is why we must go before it gets here.” He grabbed Gozi’s hand and pulled him along. The big boy did not budge.

“You can’t tamper with electricity under the rain.”

“I know. I am the engineer here,” Naeto threw up his hands, visibly impatient. “GeniT predicts there won’t be any rain for five hours. We can achieve a lot in five hours.”

“You still have your brace.”

Naeto had hoped his overalls would hide it. He had removed the sling to make sure.

“It’s fine, it’s practically healed.” He pulled at his sleeves. “I also brought the protective gear for the ladder,” he smiled, dangling the ropes in Gozi’s face. “I promise not to fall again.”

“Naeto, you can’t climb ladders with an injured arm. You can’t climb ladders in a storm.”

Gozi was speaking to him like he was a child, which they both were.

“Or maybe there’s someone else you’d rather climb ladders with!”

“Naeto, what is going on with you?”

Naeto bit at his fingernails. His palms were slick with sweat. He wiped them on his overalls, only to find them damp almost immediately.

“River said that you—that you like her,” he heaved out.

“Of course I like her. She’s our friend.”

“ . . . that you like her more than me.”

“Eh?”

“Do you?” Naeto swallowed, his voice a crashing LEGO set. “Do you like her more than me?”

Gozi just stood there.

And Naeto continued. “Because I like you, I like you a lot, I think I always have, and when River said it the other day, I was so confused, and I didn’t know how to feel, and then she tried to kiss me, and I panicked, and I ran away, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and I just want to know if you’ve been thinking about me too,” Naeto blurted out, ending his monologue by wiping his eyes and running nose with his sleeve, all in one take. This made it worse because the snort mixed into the tears, and half his face was now smeared in it.

“You . . . you call me your idiot assistant all the time.”

“Oh.” Naeto straightened up. He had not expected that, not after his profound confession.

“I know you don’t mean it.” Gozi’s fingers twisted and untwisted around each other. “I just did not get ‘I like like you’ from being called that.”

Naeto took off his glasses and wiped them with his sleeves. They did not need cleaning.

“I’m changing the lights for you,” Naeto’s eyes avoided Gozi’s, focusing instead on a point on the floor. “You cared about the fireflies, so I did too.”

Gozi just stood there.

“I put up your planetarium so we could see the same stars every night.” Naeto did not look up at the ceiling. He was still focused on that point. “And I built the farlights, so we would always find each other.”

Gozi just stood there.

“Naeto I—I ehm—I don’t know. I don’t know.” That was all Gozi said.

There was a physical aching in his chest. Naeto did not understand it. He hugged himself, cradling his hurting chest, and looked out the window. “I—I’m going to go.”

“Naeto,” Gozi softened. “You could stay here . . . you could just stay here . . . with me.”

And the two boys stood there. They stood there a while. Then Gozi reached for him, trying to knit the space between them, and Naeto drew away.

“Naeto—”

He did not wait for him to finish. Naeto scaled out of the window in one swoop, and he ran.

---

And the rains came down—impenetrable curtains of water. Naeto waded through it, soaked to the bone in seconds. The streets were dark and flooded, half the streetlights sizzling with damp electricity. The torrent rushing through the road drainage was the sound of waterfalls, and it rattled the metal drain covers. Naeto took the ladder from its hiding spot and heaved it against the light post. And in that moment, his resolve wavered. He wanted to turn and run, run back home, run back to . . . No. He was going to climb. And Naeto climbed up the ladder, rain pelting down on him, each drop a small stone. He got to the light casing and dislodged it, the fluorescent plates also coming free, revealing the green-plated circuit beneath. Naeto could barely see through all the water. He was wet. Everything was wet. He could not tell where his body ended and where the water began. But Naeto had done this many times. His hands remembered. He took out the filter diode and inserted it into the circuit. In the downpour, the streetlight went from incandescent to welcoming, finding all the corners of his wet face. The lights reminded him of Gozi.

And the lights sparked, the glass casing shattered, and Naeto fell, and the ground rushed up to meet him. He crashed onto a drainage plate, and it gave way, plunging him into the rushing current below.

---

As the sky unwillingly morphed, giving way to a more radiant intensity and dispersing the deep grays from the previous stormy night, it met Naeto hauling his body down the long, winding asphalt road. There was sand in his hair. Bruises and cuts delicately partitioned his face. His overalls were in shreds, like something caught in crossfire. And they dripped water onto the asphalt. Naeto shook as he walked. When the sun was completely over the horizon, its lights touched the paleness of Naeto’s face; it touched his eyes, and Naeto did not blink away.

His glasses were gone, his tools were gone, and he would never see the rope again. Only Naeto remained. When he had fallen into the drainage the previous night, he had latched onto the walls and held on. He did not let go, not until the rains died and morning called.

In the far distance, Naeto saw the possible outline of a person’s silhouette. Without his glasses, he could not be sure. But the silhouette soon went from one, to five, to many. They surrounded him.

“We found him!”

“Ah thank god!”

“Where were you?”

“Why were you out in the storm?”

“Why were you out at night, eh this boy?”

The voices came crowding him, and many hands touched Naeto. It was a search party. They were all in raincoats, so they had been out all night. Naeto’s father broke through the crowd, hugging him tightly until Naeto’s body disappeared into his. He took Naeto’s face in his hands. His father looked like he had been crying all night.

“Where is Gozi?” It was Gozi’s mother.

Everyone turned to Naeto for an answer he did not have.

“Gozi?”

“Was he not with you?”

“No—no, he wasn’t. It was just—it was just me.”

Gozi had gone after him the previous night. And when his moms realized he was gone, they had reached Naeto’s father. Neither of the boys were with the man. The last contact was River’s parents. When they dragged River out of bed and besieged her with questions, she confessed to everything; what she and the boys had been doing all school break. A search party had formed immediately.

With the search for Gozi still ongoing, Naeto was hospitalized. First, they pumped out all the flood water he had ingested. In addition to his unhealed arm, his leg was now bound in a brace. He had severely sprained his leg in the fall. Naeto would not climb again, not for a while. River came every hour with updates on the search. She came even when there were no updates. She’d just sit there with him. Naeto believed everyone blamed him for what happened—for making Gozi go out in the storm. Had he listened and stayed that night, Gozi would not have followed, and Gozi would be here, he would be safe. And even if everyone didn’t blame him, Naeto blamed himself. But River did not.

They found Gozi two days later.

The torrents had washed him into the lake. He was found amongst the water shrubs.

“Will they let us see him?” Naeto labored out of bed when he heard the news.

“Naeto—” River tried to steady him back.

“They have to let us see him.” Naeto fell, and River caught him. And Naeto cried.

“Naeto, listen, please.” River wasn’t one to plead. “My parents said Gozi was hurt quite bad.”

“What—what does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” River shook her head, wiping away the brimming tears. “I don’t know.” She turned. She could not look him in the eyes for what came next. “They’re taking him back to Rwanda.”

“For what?”

“They said he needs extensive medical care, the type he can’t get here.”

“Rwanda is on the other side of the continent.”

“It is. But Rwanda is Gozi’s home, and the rest of his family is there and—”

“No! His home is here.”

“Rwanda’s medical sector is the leading—”

“No, no!” Naeto clasped his hands over his ears, like he knew what she was going to say, but did not want to hear it.

But River made sure he did. “Gozi’s citizenship gives him free access to their healthcare.”

Naeto went quiet for a while, his hands still over his ears, his eyes shut tight.

“When are they leaving?” he finally asked.

“Naeto . . . they already left.”

Naeto cried all night. He cried the next night, the night that followed, and the night that followed. His best friend was gone, and he did not get to say goodbye.

---

Naeto spent the coming quiet weeks indoors. His father didn’t say it, but Naeto knew he was grounded for life. Naeto was fine with that. He also would not get far given his injuries. He hardly left his bed, and there was now a huge body-sized dent in the mattress. Naeto deleted all the schematics for the filters. He threw the prototypes, the suction gloves, the overalls, and the diode components in the trash. Their ladder had been lost in the storm, and Naeto didn’t look for it.

And last of all, he took down the planetarium. It was of no use. He and Gozi could no longer see the same stars.

Naeto tried to reach Gozi every day. His father also helped, trying to contact Gozi’s parents. They did reach them, but Gozi was never disposed to talk, and when he was, he spoke very little. Over time, their interactions thinned out.

When the school year kicked off, the doctors recommended homeschooling until Naeto fully recovered. But Naeto’s body wasn’t the only broken thing. On one of those quiet, broken nights, he lay in bed staring at the starless ceiling. And it came, a light the shape of a moon. It refracted through his window and danced across his ceiling.

It was a farlight.

Naeto scampered out of bed to the window, flinging them ajar.

She looked exactly like she did that first night. Bushy eyebrows, wooly brown hair squashed under a baseball cap, and freckles scattered across her face. Her shirt was an alarming white. Her cargo dungarees were torn at the knees. One of the straps rested on her shoulder. The other fell free.

“River.”

She must have heard his voice sink. “Oh, I’m—I’m sorry.”

Naeto apologetically shook his head. He stepped back, making room for her as she climbed the ladder, briefly perching on his windowsill. She reminded him of a sparrow. No one had come in through the window, not in a while.

“You know you can use the front door.”

“I know,” River chuckled, squeezing through the window. His room had not heard a chuckle, not in a while.

Now inside the room, River hugged him, a little too tightly. And Naeto hugged his friend back.

“Thank you.”

“For what?” River let go.

“For being here.”

River shoved him. The way Gozi usually did, only a bit more tenderly. She hugged him again.

“So . . . I was thinking . . . we should restart the River Naetozi Tinker Operation,” she whispered.

“What?” Naeto pulled away.

“For Gozi.” River tried to reach back for him, and Naeto squirmed away. “He was right about the fireflies making a comeback in other places. They could come back here too.”

“River, that doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It mattered to Gozi.” Her voice went an octave higher. “And it mattered to me. And you.”

“I—I don’t think—” Naeto paused. He took off his glasses and cleaned them. They did not need cleaning. “I can’t climb again.”

River grabbed his shoulders and squeezed them. “You won’t have to. Not today.”

“Today?”

River inhaled before skipping giddily to the window. Naeto followed her. “I brought friends.” She pushed the window open.

And down below were all the kids from school—the ones River had been bringing to his house: Ugochi and his hawk call. Makua and her mismatched socks. Jide and his tree-shaped birthmark. Rafael and the clattering rainbow beads in his hair. Nnayeleugo whose laughter was the sound of hiccups. Mazi who spoke six languages. Barefoot Zobam and all her dreams. They all had on overalls, protective gears, and tool bags.

“Turns out they were listening while touching your stuff with unsanitary hands,” she mimicked him, lathering her voice with snobbery.

“I—I don’t sound like that.”

“You do.”

“River, it’s hardly midnight. People will see.”

“Let them see.”

The whole thing terrified Naeto. This debacle with the lights got them here in the first place—minus him not taking well to rejection. What if someone fell? Or got electrocuted? Or worse?

“It will be fine.” River squeezed his hand. “I promise.”

And Naeto nodded, letting go—of all the uncertainty, fear, and things he could not control.

“I doubt they know how to use those tools.” He looked down at the pack of chattering kids scattered on his lawn. Their tool bags and overalls were a few sizes too big.

“Oh, it’s mostly for the optics. We grabbed what we could from the school lab.” There was a tinge of prideful accomplishment in her voice.

“Of course those hideous overalls came from the school lab.”

“They are designed for practicality, not beauty.” River nudged his shoulder with hers, and Naeto covered his face with shy embarrassment.

“And you can change the name if you want to,” River offered. “It’s your lights after all.”

“Well, River Naetozi Tinker Lights has unfortunately grown on me,” Naeto flashed her a half-smile, one that built into laughter. And there they were, two giggling children in a bedroom that once held stars.

So, Naeto, River, and all the kids from their school went from streetlight to streetlight, recalibrating the lights, filtering their glow from a harsh brightness to something soft, something safe. As expected, parents and the sector’s security patrol flooded out, trying to stop them. That would have been possible when it was just Naeto and Gozi. Now, they were many. And what was once thirty-three recalibrated streetlights, became fifty.

---

“Did you know there were once winter fireflies up in Seattle?” River asked Naeto.

“No. No, I didn’t know that.”

River went quiet.

“My parents are moving again.”

“Oh.” That was all Naeto said.

“I heard it’s nice in Seattle. They have snow. I have never seen snow before.”

“River.” Naeto’s eyes welled up. It was happening again; he was losing another friend.

River’s eyes welled up too. It would be the last time Naeto would see her like that.

“Don’t you dare forget me, nerd!” She whacked his chest.

Naeto let out a shaky laugh—it was also a shaky sob. “You are impossible to forget. And you’re a nerd too.”

River thought about it for a minute and nodded in agreement. “I am.”

“And you can thank the flickering lights. You wouldn’t have seen us that night if not for them.”

“That wasn’t the first time I was seeing you.”

“Oh, really?”

“You’re like the least subtle person alive. I knew every flickering light was the both of you.”

“So, you’d been watching us?”

River blinked a nod.

“Why?”

“I liked watching you and Gozi.” She tucked a stray braid behind her ear. “I liked watching you.”

And under the River Naetozi Tinker Lights, River kissed Naeto. A gentle thing. This time, Naeto did not run away.

---

Twelve years later and Naeto was going home. Home had been a memory for a while. He wondered if the sector was the same. If the sun still trailed after running children, if the rains still fell like pebbles, and if the streetlights were still soft. He hoped they were. After what he, River, and the other kids had done, they had garnered quite the attention. Media outlets carried the story of schoolchildren culling light pollution in their home sector to save the fireflies. Government agencies and wildlife conservatory bodies followed, with a keen interest in the ecological benefits of the recalibration process. The offers came next: monetary offers from power corporations, partnership propositions from questionable tech founders, and scholarships from renowned institutions. Before long, Naeto was off to college, the youngest in his class. With a highly funded graduate research grant, he put together a team, further advancing the mechanics of the recalibration system. In time, the River Naetozi Tinker light was utilized worldwide in a conservation effort to decrease light pollution and restore the critically declining population of fireflies. Naeto’s groundbreaking innovation was life changing. When he graduated college, the job offers poured in. Despite River’s remarks about him being a “horrible” teacher, Naeto loved teaching. So, he took a position at the Namibian University of Science and Technology, the same institution he had graduated from, and he was content.

Now, sitting in the back of a haxi—the new hovering taxis everyone was obsessed with—Naeto was going home. Because Gozi was there.

They had reconnected a few years back. On a rainy afternoon, while Naeto was preparing for his third-year seminar, Gozi had sent him a congratulatory email for his many achievements. Naeto had stopped everything. That one-paragraph text was all that mattered. Only Gozi would rejoin society and send a text via email. The boys emailed every day, talking about the most random things: the first time they tried lasagna, and how toilet paper was getting softer. They talked about River. And when Gozi mentioned he had moved back home, Naeto went home too.

With his luggage and all, Naeto had his haxi hover straight to Gozi’s old house. The house was still there, though the compound looked different. Gozi’s moms had been farmers, and their home had been a haven for all growing and crawling things. Having returned a few months earlier, Gozi had taken things a step further. Their home was now a sanctuary. And there was the color, like the rains of April came and never left. Green moss, like green carpets, crawled over the house and barn in the most deliberate manner. Vines, branches, and foliage looped and weaved down the roof, down the wooden pillars. There were trees everywhere, and the breeze whistled through the leaves, and like a hall of children, they whispered. Surrounding the compound, fallow land stretched forth, dotted with wildflowers, and the sun danced on their petals. And what followed the color was the sound, the soft, gentle call of animals breathing. Every step Naeto took sent grasshoppers darting off the thigh-high grass. The rabbits followed, peeping cautiously before scurrying into the underbrush. Above, squirrels and sparrows chattered in the trees. A herd of sheep cut in front of him, their wool, a billowing black. In a corner laid a Great Pyrenees, a quiet sentry on guard.

Naeto followed the sound of wood being chopped. He followed it past some goats scaling the low walls. He followed it past gobbling turkeys and clucking hens. And he found Gozi. This Gozi was many things. He was bigger, taller. With each measured swing, his arms bulged like ukwa pods. His shoulders were as broad as doors. Sweat gleamed down his forehead, streaming onto the log below. Gozi was a big, bearded man chopping wood. His axe came down again, and steel met wood, and what was one log became two.

And Gozi saw him.

Of course Naeto wasn’t going to run away. He was not twelve anymore. Still, he considered it.

“Hey.” He waved with both his hands. Why did he do that? One hand would have been sufficient!

Gozi said nothing. He looked at Naeto like he was seeing him for the first time. The big man’s stare was steel. Then, in one motion, he dropped the axe, rushed up to Naeto, and embraced him, lifting him slightly off the floor. His sweat and dirt were now on Naeto like they had been there all along. Unsure but slowly, Naeto embraced his friend back. And for a moment, they were twelve again, tinkering with things they shouldn’t tinker with.

“You’re . . . ” Naeto gestured at all of him, “ . . . bigger.”

Gozi smiled, his cedar-brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “And you’re still you.”

But so was Gozi. He had tripled in size, morphed, and shifted in the passing years, but his face was still his face, and his eyes were still his. There were other things. Gozi had lost a leg after the accident, after they had found him unconscious by the lake. He now had a prosthetic one. Naeto knew about this.

“I—ehm—I wanted to say—” Naeto started.

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” Gozi softly shook his head.

And the two friends sat, and talked, and remembered everything. They remembered River. And as they remembered, it was like they had never been separated all those years ago. Like they were not reuniting twelve years later. Like they were just two friends hanging out like they did every other day.

“Will I see you again tomorrow?”

“Yes. Yes.”

They saw each other the next day, the day after that, and the day after. One evening, Gozi took Naeto down to the lake, and there it was—River’s canoe.

“All this time.” Naeto ran his hands along its rough exterior.

River completed it before she left their sector. Two years later, she built another canoe in Seattle and sailed into a river. It was the last time she was seen.

“I want to show you something.” Gozi climbed into the canoe and stretched his hand to Naeto.

Naeto took his hand.

The boys rowed River’s canoe into the lake, and it skimmed the waters like it belonged there. The reeds welcomed them, nodding in the delicate breeze. The water was more crystal than Naeto remembered. Through the floating flora, he could see the scales on the tilapia and the smooth corners of the pebbles at the bottom. The canoe’s paddles were mismatched pairs of oars. In their design was River’s impatience, but also her will. When the paddles parted the water, Naeto felt the lake in his arms. It was strong but not tethering, a gentle tug, like friends holding hands, like water finding water. Small pools of lake water gathered at their feet, but the vessel was not built to sink. A small current came, and the canoe creaked, the canoe bent. Naeto did not waver—for bending was not breaking. He knew River’s canoe would steady.

And the canoe sailed, like a dream half-realized, but a dream, nonetheless.

They reached the other side of the lake, to a field that stretched for miles. Naeto never knew about this field.

“Gozi, what are we doing here?”

“Just wait. You’ll see.”

The two friends sat in the tall, tall grass, waiting, watching the sunset. Then they laid in the grass. Soon, the sun lowered behind a forested hill, giving way to the moon.

“It’s time.” Gozi stood.

“Time for what?” Naeto came up too, trying to find his friend in the darkness.

Gozi took Naeto’s face in his cold palms, turning it away from his, and towards the empty distance. “Just wait.”

Naeto waited, his eyes finding the night, his feet sinking slightly into the mellow soil, his breathing clear in his ears. Gozi’s breathing found his, blending into his. And Naeto waited, and waited, and he saw.

It was one speck. Soft and aglow. Light becoming. It sailed, higher, higher. One firefly against the night. And what was one became two, and what was two became ten thousand, as waves of fireflies lifted from the grass like lanterns, their wings; silk whispering to silk. And all the fireflies reached for heaven, beginning where the stars ended.

Their glow, a thing unbroken, a thing afire, touched all the corners of Naeto’s face. They touched his glasses, and Naeto saw light.

Naeto held a gasp, soft laughter and tears escaping him. The fireflies were as farlights finding each other. Slowly, he reached out, his hand sailing higher, higher, pinpricks of light finding his skin, illuminating him, and Naeto touched infinity.

“When did they come back?”

“I don’t know. I came, and they were here.” Standing side by side, Gozi snuck his hand into Naeto’s, one shy finger at a time. “They are here because of you. Because of the River Naetozi Tinker lights. It worked, like you said it would.”

“I—I did it for you.”

It felt like they were back in Gozi’s bedroom all those years ago. Naeto looked away, reaching for his glasses. They did not need cleaning. And Gozi led his hands away from them. He took Naeto’s face, eyes finding eyes, and kissed him. A gentle thing. And Naeto did not run away.