photo by Casey Horner
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This story by Giulia Socolof earned a Scholastic Regional Gold Key in Fiction. Enjoy!
Stars
Johns Hopkins was a hectic and demanding place, so it was a miracle that Will and I met at all—it happened in the library one Sunday afternoon in April. He was struggling through his Calc II class, and when he looked over at my math notebook and saw I hardly even used numbers, he tapped me on the shoulder and asked for my help.
We grew closer, and soon began a tentative relationship, just testing the waters. But by the end of freshman year, in late May, Will and I were still casual, so I wondered if we’d fizzle out over summer. I lived outside Philadelphia, and he was from New York. In theory, the gap was bridgeable, but Google map it—the drive from my house to his apartment was two hours and thirteen minutes long, and driving alone sucks. The first week or so, we texted, about summer plans, about school, about our friends. But then he went away for two weeks, hiking the Colorado Rockies, with no wi-fi, no cell service, not even so much as a homing pigeon. I was interning at a lab that summer, and I poured my thoughts into that instead—yet I could never forget him completely.
Two weeks later, at 1:30 in the morning, my phone started blasting “Stayin’ Alive”. I picked up, not even bothering to check the caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Cat! I just landed,” came Will’s voice on the other end of the line.
I grinned. His voice was low and hoarse with fatigue. “I’m surprised you’re so cheerful, at this time of night. How was hiking?”
“I haven’t showered in two weeks. I’m disgusting.”
“Gross.”
“I know. It was fun, though. Tiring, too—the hiking was intense.”
“You should get a massage. That’ll fix you right up.”
“Man, I could totally go for a massage right now. I’m having trouble standing.”
“Mm. Your very muscles have turned to Jell-O.”
“Exactly. Muscle tissue, bone, blood vessels—all gone. Just Jell-O. You know Jell-O is made from horse hooves or something?”
“No way. That can’t be true.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s a thing. So basically, my legs are, like, ground up horse hooves.”
“That’s a scary thought.”
“No kidding.” He paused. “Hold on, the cab’s waiting for me outside. Gimme a sec.”
I heard the background noise of the airport, shuffling feet and muted conversations, probably because he pulled his cellphone away from his ear. A few minutes later, his voice came again.
“So anyway, what are you up to?”
“Netflix. What else?”
“It’s almost two AM. Should you really be up watching Buffy?”
“You know I’m a raging insomniac.”
“But you have a job.”
“Internship.”
“Right, right. What if you’re so tired that you accidentally blow something up or something?”
“I’m an intern, Will. The most I could do is blow up the coffee machine.”
“Funny,” he said through a laugh.
I smirked, even though he couldn’t see it. “I know.”
“Does that take up a lot of your time? The internship?”
“It’s four days a week. I’m off Friday-Saturday-Sunday. So it’s not too bad.”
“Oh, cool. Because I was thinking—we’re not too far from each other. We could hang out.”
“Uh, yeah, alright. When?”
“My roommate’s out of town next weekend. Want to come up? You could spend Friday night, and that way you wouldn’t have to find a hotel or anything.”
I was wary. At school, we’d hung out in each other’s dorms often, talking or watching TV or doing homework, but even though we were across campus from each other, I’d never slept over. But somehow, I found, “Sure, sounds good,” coming out of my mouth.
“Cool! Hey, I should go now, ‘cause I’ve got to drive home.”
“‘Kay. See ya.”
“Bye.”
I put my phone facedown on my stomach, closed my eyes, and smiled. Then I resumed my episode.
The next weekend, I drove into Philadelphia, parked my car, and hopped on the early morning train to Grand Central. Grand Central Station felt more like a cathedral than a train station. The ceiling arced high over my head, and the bustling people were the congregation—commuters in sharp suits, friends, families, a community of strangers. The hymns they sang were out of tune and arrhythmic, but their conversations blended in one low, continuous hum, and I was reminded of a line from a Tennyson poem I’d read in high school English—“murmuring of innumerable bees”.
I searched for Will in the crowd, my eyes darting from face to face. I felt two light taps on my left shoulder and whirled around, and there he was, smiling. “Hey,” he said. He opened his arms to give me a hug, and I accepted, wrapping my arms around his midsection.
“I’m not going to get the plague from something you picked up on your trip, right?” I mumbled into his t-shirt.
“As a pre-med student, I can promise that if you do, I can maybe cure you.”
I laughed, and let him go. “Good to see you.”
“You too. You want to go get lunch?”
“Sure.”
We had lunch at a café, then walked around the city for a few hours. There was little space between us, but he didn’t try to hold my hand. Casual. Around five, we were back at his apartment, having decided to cook dinner rather than eating out. (Well, we boiled water for instant mac n’ cheese.) “You know,” he said, “We’ve been social all day. I think we deserve to watch a movie without having to talk for two hours.”
“Great idea. I’m dead.”
His laptop was in his room, and we collapsed on his bed. He sat close to me and looked at me for a second, his head tilted to one side, mouth half-open, and his arm twitched—but he turned back to the screen. I wanted to scream at him to stop holding back, because it wasn’t as if we’d never kissed before. I was beginning to wonder what we even were anymore.
“Cat?” Will said, about halfway through the movie. “You okay? You seem a little on edge.”
“On edge? No, I’m fine. Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“You sure? You look tense. What’s wrong?”
I sighed. “I don’t—“ I stopped. “You’re acting different.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. You’re giving me mixed signals.”
“What mixed signals? I’m acting the same, Cat.” He frowned, concerned and confused at the same time.
“It’s just. Dammit. This is awkward.”
“What?”
“Fuck it. I don’t know. Just kiss me already.”
He took one look at me, and he did.
My head was on his chest now, and he was running his fingers through my short hair. Earlier, we’d turned the lights off to watch the movie, and the laptop’s screen had illuminated the room. Now, though the laptop was turned off, the room was still not as dark as it should’ve been. Hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars dotted the ceiling, ones that you’d find in a little kid’s bedroom.
“When I was little,” Will began, having seen me studying the stars, “I watched that Mars rover Spirit launch on TV. From then on, I wanted to be an astronaut.”
“That’s cool,” I said.
“Yeah, it is. But when I was eleven, I had an accident. I was in science class at school, working with some chemicals—ammonia, I think. Somehow, some got in my eye. I’m legally blind in my left eye now.
“So there went my dream. In the fall semester though, I took a class in astronomy and I fell right back in love with space. I took that Calc II class because I wanted to change my major from pre-med to astronomy.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“My parents are both doctors, and anyway, I didn’t quite have the math skills.” He chuckled. “You know firsthand how bad I am.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got these stars,” he said, looking up at the ceiling, “And that’s good enough for me. At least with medicine I know where I’m going after college. It’s nice to know what I’m doing with my life.”
We lay there, listening to the not-silence of New York: a chorus of honking taxis and ambulance sirens, the percussive growling of cars’ exhaust pipes, the thrumming bass line of the building’s AC system.
“What am I doing?” I said, out loud. “Where am I going?”
“Wherever you want to,” he replied after a minute.
“Can you come with me?”
“Cat, this is…this is casual.”
“Well, can it be more?”
My words dissipated in the air, overtaken by the unforgiving city of people whose destinations were far more definite and far more important than mine.
Will shifted, and sat up, letting my head fall to the mattress. “I-dammit Cat. I should’ve told you. Now I’ve gone and screwed everything up, and—“
“Told me what?”
“I have a girlfriend. She’s at Cal Berkeley, and it’s long distance, and I was so fucking lonely but I couldn’t bring myself to end it with her, and I guess I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I thought it would work, but I feel so damn guilty.”
I should have been outraged, or sad, or something, but my brain was blank, and my only thoughts were static, were white noise. “Do you still love her?” I blurted out.
“I think so. I do. But it’s so different not being around her all the time like it was in high school, and you’re right here. And I thought there was no way I could fall for you when I still loved her, but Cat, I really like you a lot.”
“Will—“ I started. “I can’t—“
“If you’ll still have me,” he said, cutting me off, “I’ll come with you.”
“I can’t do that. I think I could love you, Will. But—”
“Then why not?”
“Because it’s not good enough. I want commitment. I want to know. But I can’t know, not for sure, not now.
“You can, though,” he protested. He gripped my arm, and the street glare coming in through the window reflected off his pleading eyes.
“End things with your girlfriend. It’s not fair to her.”
“But I—okay. I will,” he said, nodding his head. “Please stay, Cat.”
“I shouldn’t.” I got up, and put on my shoes. “You’re a good guy, alright? You just did a pretty shitty thing. I’ll see you at school.”
I reached the door, and glanced back over my shoulder one last time. Will was flat on his back, hands clasped under his head, ankles crossed. I followed his gaze up to the ceiling, where those curious stars glowed dimly. It’s funny the way things work out sometimes.
He was a dreamer—still is. It’s okay for me to be one, too.