Chapter 4
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to kick you out soon,” Mr. Kovacs is saying. “As much as I do enjoy your passion for after-hours study.”
My eyes tear away from the Galileoscope as the real world floods through my retinas. I tap the screen on my phone. Eight thirty. I’ve been here for over two hours. It’s not like me to lose track of time.
“Sorry,” I say, that nap-drunk feeling fading from the edges of my brain. The one that nestles into your soul when you’re immersed in something for too long. “I didn’t realize.”
The astronomy lab feels like a second home.
Comfort is in the beige walls plastered in posters that reveal distant spiral and elliptical galaxies.
Desks stretch long enough for two, with blue plastic chairs neatly tucked into them.
Lifelike models of our planetary system drip down from the ceiling, suspended by invisible threads.
There’s the sharp smell of Expo markers and a lingering lemongrass scent left over from the school’s weekly cleaning.
Classrooms are sometimes painted as cold and uninviting, but not this one.
I’ve missed it.
This is the room my dad taught in twenty years ago.
If I close my eyes, I can picture him here.
His footsteps pacing across the linoleum as the grandeur of his lesson spills from his lips.
Warm eyes wide when he’d slow the speed of his words to allow the full impact to settle, unveiling the world’s splendor.
We lived in off-campus accommodations until I was seven and Jared was eight.
Madelene was a toddler, but my parents soon realized they’d need more space for us all.
So when my mother was offered a library director position near her hometown in Pennsylvania, my dad agreed it was time for a change.
We came back to visit a lot, mostly in the summer but sometimes during winter break.
I often wonder if his invisible pull draws me here.
Mr. Kovacs continues flipping through the latest copy of Spaceport Magazine. “Quite an exciting evening,” he says, “as we enter into the solar maximum.”
“Everything looks the same,” I say. “I don’t know what I expected.”
“Hmm, fascinating, isn’t it? The changes we detect, the ones we can’t. The cosmos never truly pauses, even if, as you say, everything appears the same. It happens whether we bear witness or not.”
The night sky is a poised canvas outside the arched window.
My dad used to say if you looked out into the universe toward other galaxies, you’d observe them millions of years in the past. Trillions of galaxies.
Billions of stars. Infinities of unknowns.
It makes me wish I could relive my own past. Memories I hadn’t known we were making, time slipping away too soon.
I never asked him if he wished he’d done anything differently. It seemed too heavy of a question. But I wonder if the life he made for himself was enough.
He studied principles and concepts and ideas that felt too large and all-encompassing to process in one go, consumed by the unknowable.
Before his cancer worsened, he read research articles and jotted down theories.
Solar phenomena predictions were some of the many analyses found in his pocket journals.
He suspected, like others, we would see an increase in solar activity throughout the end of this year.
Maybe even geomagnetic storms large enough to generate auroras.
It’s why I’d found myself signing into the lab tonight.
I slide my dad’s journal into the pocket of my cardigan and cap the end of the Galileoscope. “Thanks,” I say, then add, “for letting me overstay my welcome.”
“The classroom always welcomes you,” Mr. Kovacs says as he folds one sunspotted hand over the other. “But it does us no good to live without experiencing. Remember that, Miss Carmichael.”
With a grateful wave, I slip from the quiet and into the chaos. Booming baritones and excited screeches echo down the hall. The student lounge in the academics building is a popular choice when the commons are overcrowded, so it’s not surprising students are hanging around before wish night.
The grass whispers beneath my loafers as I cut across the quad.
The giant square is surrounded by impressive neo-Gothic-style buildings made up of picturesque windows, elaborate carvings, and larger-than-life arches.
Ivernia School has always felt grand and sweeping and romantic, which is why it captured my heart so quickly.
It’s like stepping into another time and place.
Once I reach my room, I kick off my shoes and sink into my desk chair.
Hyde House has single dorms with a shared communal bathroom down the hall, and I’ve made sure to breathe life into every square inch of tight space.
A twin bed blanketed in a green velvet comforter sits in the right corner, jewel-toned throw pillows and a chunky knit blanket piled on top.
From the ceiling, a twinkling disco ball reflects glimmers of light emitted by my sun-shaped LED sign I’ve hung above my bookshelves.
It’s an intentional explosion of personality in here.
Brightness and color occupy physical space while my mind bleeds gray.
I remove my phone and my dad’s journal from my pockets and set them on my desk.
When I was home over the summer, I’d bring my dad’s musings to the back porch so I could read and stare at the night sky in silence.
Our house could get so loud. Madelene running lines from a theater camp play with Mom.
Jared’s and Sumner’s thunderous stomps over creaking floorboards, the sound competing with their overlapping chatter.
The thumping chug of laundry drowned out by the TV someone never turned off.
Outside, it was just me and the crickets and occasional wind rustling the bougainvillea.
Habits aren’t easily broken. I’ve brought Dad’s journals to school with me; it’s soothing to flip through his extensive notes scratched down in slanted capitals.
Dates, formulas, planetary alignments, predictions.
Scribbles in the margins for no reason other than he wanted to remember.
Today Delaney asked me to explain binary stars, one reads.
And another, Madelene says celestial is a main character name.
How can something so tangible still exist when he cannot?
My phone bleats a melodic ringtone. I look down and find my brother’s name across the home screen. Huh. That’s odd. I must be on the receiving end of a butt-dial.
I answer anyway. “Jared?”
“Why do you sound so shocked?” he says. “Did you lose my number?”
“Of course not,” I say. “You okay?”
His tone shifts to defense. “Do I have to not be okay to call you?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I say through a sigh. “But you are calling on a Friday night during your first week of college, so you can’t blame me for asking.”
“It’s wish night. Wanted to see if you were going.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
It’s a rhetorical question. I know why. After Dad died in April, I’d become a more subdued version of myself.
I retreated to the overbearing thoughts inside my head.
The ones that said, You can do all the right things—work hard, earn exceptional grades—and you still can’t control when the universe wants to take someone away from you.
The world hasn’t felt right without him.
It was around then that I realized loss isn’t a lesson.
Grief isn’t a moral. Death isn’t a grand design to teach us something about ourselves.
Instead, it’s a reminder that we’re all tiny specks on a massive planet within a vast galaxy.
I’ve never felt as small as I do now without him.
He used to scrawl a saying across his whiteboard every lesson. Grounded feet. Open mind. Maintain curiosity. It was how he approached everything in life. With profound gusto.
“You’re fine with never getting concrete answers?” I’d asked him once.
“What are we here for,” he’d responded, “if not to try and understand?”
Before, I used to trust in the universe. Because he did. But not anymore.
Jared’s checking up on me. That’s what this is. He wants to make sure I’m not wallowing alone in my room at the end of my first week of senior year. Which is exactly what I’m doing.
He clears his throat. I’m certain he’s hoping I won’t make him say it.
“I’m going,” I assure him. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Just, uh, heading to this party,” he says. “Hey, how’s Sumner?”
I roll my eyes. “The absolute worst, as always.”
Back in April, Jared and I left school and returned to Pennsylvania when it was time to say our final goodbyes.
The diagnosis felt fast. Eighteen months prior, our dad had complained of migraines, then forgetfulness, then larger holes in short-term memory.
Then came the absence seizures, which led to doctors’ appointments and testing.
That was when they found an aggressive tumor.
Glioblastoma. It was inoperable, but radiation might help minimize its severity.
When it didn’t, there was a new drug expected to delay progression, and would he like to try it? So he did. But it hadn’t helped.
Not long after, we’d run out of options. Hospice arrived, our uncles came to help out, and then our entire world changed overnight.
Three months later, Sumner arrived. He didn’t get along with his mother, that much I knew, and when our mom learned about this, she invited him to stay for the summer.
She worried about Jared, how he suppressed his mourning to try to step into a parental role for us, and she couldn’t allow that burden to fall on him.
Jared needed support, and Sumner’s presence gave him someone outside of our family to lean on.