by Kit Frick
“You hurt me too,” I say to the empty air. “You took Matthias, and you expected me to thank you for it. And you know what? You were right.” I laugh, and it feels good. Really good. “He really was terrible for me. But you lied to me, Ret. You thought I’d give in, like I always gave in to you. And then you went and died on me, and I couldn’t even hate you, I was so busy hating myself.”
I sink back against the side of the stone. My voice is quiet this time. “I am going to live with your death every single day, and it’s never going to get easier or better or go away. I am going to miss you and mourn you, and some days I’m still going to be mad at you. But I’m finally ready to say goodbye. I forgive you. I forgive us.”
No one responds because there’s no one else here.
My Ret. Reckless and brash and full of light. The star around which the rest of us were in constant orbit.
You have to get used to living with it. I can hear Dr. Marsha’s voice ringing in my ears. You can’t go back, Ellory. You have to find a way forward.
The air around me is completely silent. I feel like I should be declaring some kind of victory. But there is no victory, right? There’s only living, only moving on.
I’m ready to leave now. I walk back to the Subaru, slowly, daring my past to take shape again in front of me, follow me home. But nothing comes. I open the door and slide into the sunbaked car. I could come back here again, and it would be okay. It’s just grass and stones and trees and sky. Maybe I’ll come back again in a few weeks. Maybe I’ll draw her a picture and leave it by her grave. The four of us standing together at graduation, the way it could have been, tossing our caps and tassels into the air. Me, Bex, Jenni, Ret. I take one last look around, but Ret is nowhere to be found. Fake-Ret. Ghost-Ret. Guilt-Ret. Gone.
All I feel is sadness. Regular, healthy sadness. I shift the car into drive and turn around on the road. Then I head forward, toward the gates that will take me home.
Three Months Later
SEPTEMBER
(NOW)
The sky is wide and clear above me. The air is cool, but it’s restless, shifting, bound to explode into late summer heat come midafternoon. I can feel the grass pressing against my cheek through the scarf we’ve been using as a blanket on the lawn. The air smells like long, lazy days and pool parties and third grade. Like childhood. Like a new start.
“Elle, don’t fall asleep on me! I’ve got three chapters to get through before we occupy Waterstein, and I need the moral support.”
I click my phone on to check the time. “I actually have to get to the studio if I’m going to make it there by one. You can do it. I have all the faith.”
Gina groans and shifts around to grab her backpack, which she’s been using as a pillow on the lawn. The bag is weighed down by a brain trust worth of bio texts, and she sways a little under its weight.
“In that case, I’m off to the library. I’m going to fall asleep out here without you to keep me on track.”
I smile. It is seriously hard to separate my roommate from her books, and it’s only the third week of classes. I’ve never met someone so dedicated to biology. Gina stands up and pulls a thick mass of curls back into a ponytail, securing her hair in a striped band.
“Meet me at twelve forty-five?” she asks.
“You’ve got it.”
I have exactly an hour and a half to get to the art studio, make some headway on my project, and get over to our dining hall for the protest against wage cuts that just took effect for the food service employees across campus. I have a pretty sweet OCCUPY WATERSTEIN banner that I designed for the occasion folded up in my bag.
Gina waves, and I walk down the gravel path toward the art building feeling driven, inspired. For weeks, I kept his notes in a box in my room. One for each week of fall semester, until I made them stop. Then last night, I got one more note—an email, the one he waited until I was all the way across the country to send. The one that begins, I needed you to hate me so you’d really go to Portland, and ends, I looked up that copper and stone guy, and he’d be lucky to have you in class. All year, I had let his words pile up, a mystery I couldn’t unravel. But now the words won’t weigh me down anymore because I’ve found a way to put them to work.
I don’t know exactly where the project’s going yet, but that’s okay. I have plenty of time to figure it out. The important thing is that I’m doing something. At the end of this tunnel of confusion and grief and pain and regret is some sort of meaning. I don’t know what it is yet. But there’s something in the words that have been lying fallow in my room all year, and the new words in my inbox now. In time, I’ll make some sense of them.
Inside the art building, I’m greeted by a blast of cold air and a group of students staging a photo shoot in the entryway. I duck around them and down the hall, past the elevators and coffee kiosk, and then up the stairs.
I push open the door at the top and step out onto the fourth floor. The hallways are lined with flyers advertising openings around town, on-campus shows, and calls for models. I make my way to the second door from the end—the first year studio. My own little piece of Portland State. I share the space with fifteen other first-years, but they’re mostly night owls. Before noon, I’m pretty much guaranteed to have the studio to myself.
Inside, I rest my bag on a worktable and pull a note from Lissette out of my cubby. It’s an idea about the assignment we’re collaborating on. She’s seriously smart, a fierce graphic designer. But we’re working on basic drawing techniques these first few weeks, and she’s a little out of her digital comfort zone. I jot a response on the back of the paper and place it in her cubby before pulling my laptop out of my bag and connecting to the spotty campus wi-fi.
When my email loads, I connect my laptop to the studio printer. One sheet of paper drops into the tray, and I check to make sure the entire email is there. It is. I disconnect my laptop and press a few keys. Are you sure you want to delete? Yes, I’m sure. With one copy saved on paper, I send the email to its electronic graveyard. Permanently delete? Yes, please.
I open my bag and remove the folder that holds all of Matthias’s notes. I spread them out on the worktable. Ten unfolded triangles covered with yellow highlighter lines and question marks. I add the email to the end of the row. Eleven.
I let my eyes drift across the worktable. The pages are filled with reasonings and offerings, pretty words and ugly words infused with a charred-up, burned-out aching that I know so well. Before I came to Portland, I almost left the box under my bed to collect dust. Part of me would have been happy to leave it behind. But another part of me couldn’t ignore the pain shimmering across each of those pages. I knew it; it was part of me.
I started coming to the studio in the mornings, spreading the notes out on the table, highlighting passages like evidence, like clues. Taking my own notes in the margins. At first, I was looking for answers. But then, I stopped. There are no answers here. There is no magic solution that’s going to poof the last year and a half into oblivion. But there’s something in the words, something calling out, demanding my focus. I might never write back to Matthias, but I am ready to make something out of all this guilt and loss.
I lean over the email and highlight two passages, then a third. I click the cap back onto the highlighter and stand back, taking in all eleven sheets, letting the words glowing yellow stand out.
I get lost in the pages, and the minutes melt away. I read each passage again and again, but it doesn’t add up to one simple answer. This is not a package tied off with a big, shiny bow. These are fragments, thoughts, apologies. Just snippets of truth, strands of the shimmering, fragile web that will always connect me to Matthias and Ret and the West Shore.
I’m not looking for answers anymore. I’m looking for a way to create something meaningful out of these threads. Ret’s and Matthias’s and mine. I have ideas for a mural project or maybe something silk-screened. I pack up the papers and return the folder to my bag. I don’t need to figure it o
ut today. In fact, I have all the time in the world to create something from this sadness—something new and filled with life. I need to take my time, get things right. I owe myself that much.
I shrug my bag over my shoulder and stare straight ahead for a moment, out of the streaked studio windows and down onto the courtyard in front of the science labs. Outside, kids are gathered at the patio tables and on the grass, reading, talking, listening to music. Existing. For a moment, I am overwhelmed by how lucky I am. I get to be here. I am alive.
On my way out of the art building, I take the stairs two at a time. I have a sudden urge to be outside, to feel the sun on my skin, to feel the gravel path beneath my feet. When I push through the doors into the early afternoon light, I can feel the universe expanding just a little. It’s like everything’s zooming out and zooming in all at once. I am sad and lucky and alive.
The past is with me, and it will always be with me. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I never could have known how far apart they’d take us, but how close you’d always stay. I will make something worthwhile out of everything we destroyed. It won’t be perfect, and it will never be enough to bring you back. But it is what I can do.
I look up at the art building and then across the lawn, toward Waterstein. For a moment, the whole campus shimmers in the sun’s bright light, and the sky looks like magic, a dance of sun spots and glittering stars. But there’s nothing magical here. This is the future catching up to the past, twirling me around, urging me forward. The light changes, and the moment is gone. A girl whirrs past me on a blue bicycle, and I take off running down the path. Gina is waiting. The whole day is in front of me.
Acknowledgments
They say it only takes one “yes,” but here’s the truth: putting a debut novel into the world takes a whole chorus of encouragement, affirmation, and faith. Without any one of these “yesses,” there would be no See All the Stars.
Yes: my brilliant editor, Ruta Rimas, whose expert vision and confidence in this story helped me shape See All the Stars into the book it is today. Without you, Ellory would still be floating through the entire first half of senior year. I’m so thankful for your keen insights and avid support throughout the publication process. Thank you also to Justin Chanda, Nicole Fiorica, Audrey Gibbons, Michael McCartney, Bridget Madsen, Elizabeth Blake-Linn, Ellen Winkler, Ellia Bisker, Natascha Morris, the fantastic sales and marketing teams, and everyone at McElderry Books, present and past, who has played an indispensable part in turning this manuscript into a real, live book and ushering it into the world.
Yes: my passionate agent, Erin Harris, who saw the potential in a much earlier draft and took a leap of faith on the manuscript and on me. I couldn’t ask for a better literary partner, and I’m so glad you’re on this journey along with me. Your editorial acumen, industry savvy, and unflagging enthusiasm mean the world. Thank you also to Melissa Sarver White, Bobby O’Neil, and the entire team at Folio Literary Management/Folio Jr. for your support and dedication.
Yes: my husband, Osvaldo, who encourages me daily to put my writing first, even when it means letting more practical things slide. Thank you for being my biggest fan, a sharp and engaged reader, and for always being by my side. Te amo.
Yes: my parents, Pat and Tony, who encouraged my writing from the time I could hold a pencil. Thank you for never second-guessing my creative path through life and for celebrating this milestone with me.
An enormous debt of gratitude is owed as well to the manuscript’s early readers and advocates. I’m fiercely grateful to the beta readers and critique partners who helped me level up my writing and Ellory’s story at various stages of the process: Nora Fussner, Rachel Lynn Solomon, Bri Cavallaro, Carlyn Greenwald, and Allison Augustyn. Thank you also to Elle Jauffret and Lynda Locke for your specialized insights. And a heartfelt thanks to my heroes Stephanie Kuehn, Karen M. McManus, Kara Thomas, and Jeff Zentner for championing Ellory’s story.
It is with absolute certainty that I say that this book would never have been written, let alone published, without the wisdom, guidance, and solace of the various literary communities of which I’m proud and so thankful to be a part: the Electric Eighteens; the YA Binders; the Pitch Wars family, in particular my fellow mentors and my wonderful mentees; my colleagues and authors at Black Lawrence Press, Author Accelerator, and Copper Lantern Studio; my cohorts and the faculty at the Syracuse University MFA program and the Sarah Lawrence College writing program, from whom I learned an immeasurable amount; and finally the members of the NYU Department of Comparative Literature, who graciously let me leave to pursue the writing life full-time. I’m also enormously grateful to the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, NE, where part of See All the Stars was written, and to the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH, where I received the life-changing news that it would be published.
Last, but by no means least, thank you to the numerous family members and friends who have supported me, been excited for me, and told anyone who would listen about my book. I appreciate you deeply, and I’m so lucky to have each and every one of you in my life. Particular gratitude is owed to Sally, Sonia, Lissette, Angel, all the LSWC ladies, Debra, and Diane.
Finally, finally, thank you—you—for reading. This is your story now.
About the Author
Author photograph © 2018 by Carly Gaebe/Steadfast Studio
KIT FRICK is a novelist, poet, and MacDowell Colony fellow. Originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she studied creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA from Syracuse University. When she isn’t putting complicated characters in impossible situations, Kit edits poetry and literary fiction for a small press, edits for private clients, and mentors emerging writers through Pitch Wars. See All the Stars is her first novel. Visit Kit online at kitfrick.com and follow her on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest @kitfrick.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Kristin S. Frick
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CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-5344-0437-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-534
4-0439-7 (eBook)
