Excerpt: Me & My Wave Equation, Collapsing

“Ain't no double star!” shouted the homeless man, startling all four of us, and a few people farther away.
“Uh, yeah it is, my man,” said the shorter man.
“Nuh-uh. I seen it. In the pictures in my head. And it ain't no double star.”
Jamal gasped, then slapped a hand over his mouth.
The short guy was about to say something back, but his friend glanced our way and decided to intervene. “C'mon man, who cares.”
“Not no double-star,” insisted the man, wobbling a little as his certainty distracted him from keeping his balance on weary legs.
“Blue star,” Jamal said. “That's the one you saw, right?”
“That's the troof, little brother,” he said, nodding triumphantly. “Bright blue sapphire of a star. Turns even the greenest waters of the oceans glowy blue.”
Jamal swallowed in a throat suddenly very dry. He thought of Gruud standing up on the ship and staring back at that very blue star. He could almost picture how Gruud had stood atop his mountain and seen that glowy blue over the ocean. But he'd had a mission. He'd had an insane, impossible mission. That comet could be the end of the Amphibs, or it could be the beginning of something new. “Maybe it started as one star and they built the second,” Jamal said.
The homeless man tested that thought out, playing it against the visions in his head, his bloodshot eyes going vacant for a moment. “Okay.” He nodded. “Okay, yeah, maybe.” He nodded more vigorously, as if to a beat, the song quick-tempo'd, hip, and happ'nin'. “Okay, yeah maybe, I can dig it. Yes. Yes, that's how it was. You can keep your double-star.” The eyes refocused on the short man. “But can I have a quarter?”