Short Story Competition - ‘The Fallen Star’

By Eli Brenig (Schools 6 to 7 - Runner-up)

The power went out five minutes before the first bell. 

At Beechridge Secondary, that should have meant chaos. Instead, the building held its breath. Emergency lights glowed along the corridor, and the usual noise of lockers and laughter faded into a cautious hush. 

Mina stood by reception, watching the front doors. Rain stitched the parking lot into a single shimmering sheet. The secretary had gone to check the generator, leaving Mina with one instruction: if anyone came in, tell them to wait. 

Someone did. 

He was small, maybe Year Seven, soaked through, holding a battered shoebox with both hands like it might crack. He paused on the mat, blinking as if the darkness had followed him inside. 

“Are we closed?” he asked. 

“Not closed,” Mina said. “Just quiet.” 

He nodded, then glanced down at the box. A faint sound came from it, not quite a scratch, not quite a squeak. 

“What’s in there?” Mina asked. 

He lifted the lid a finger’s width. Something pale shifted in the gap. 

“A star,” he said, solemn. 

Mina almost laughed. “A star.” 

“It fell,” he added. “By the back fence. Everyone walked past it. I couldn’t.” 

The emergency lights flickered. For a heartbeat, a soft thread of brightness slipped out of the shoebox, thin as breath, wandering upward like it was trying to remember the sky. The boy’s face warmed with it, and Mina felt a strange lift behind her ribs, the way you feel when a song begins in another room. 

Then the generator thumped alive. Fluorescents snapped on, loud and ordinary. The thread vanished. 

The boy closed the lid carefully. “It doesn’t like being watched,” he whispered. 

Mina lowered her voice too. “Then let’s get it somewhere safe.” 

They walked down the corridor toward the library, where the windows were high and the shelves were quiet. Mina held the door while he carried the shoebox inside, as careful as a promise. 

Judge’s Comments: A really special little story. The writer uses figurative expression to create a sense of wonder with the ‘building [holding] its breath and the ‘rain stitch[ing] the parking lot. The story begins with raucous noise which settles to a quiet hush when the protagonists begin to discuss the box and its contents. Magic is woven through the story through excellent use of punctuation, effective structural choices and dialogue that contributes to the sense of wonder.