Every Soul a Star

by Wendy Mass

  “Isn’t the point to see them, not find them?” Melanie asks. “It doesn’t really matter how you get there, does it?”

  “I guess you’re right,” she says. “It’s just like those comet-hunting machines Ryan’s grandfather told me about. I feel like I’m being left behind.”

  ”They’ll need someone to run the machines, right?” Melanie asks. “You could learn how to do that.”

  “You think so?”

  Melanie nods. “Why not?”

  I wish there was something I could add to make Ally feel better, but what little I know about astronomy I learned from her.

  “Since we’re just waiting around,” Bree says, leaving Ryan twisting dramatically on the ground, “I thought of some more tips for Kenny and Ally. You know, on how to survive in civilization.”

  “Oh, great,” Ally says, clearly suspicious.

  Bree smiles and pats her on the arm. “Now these might seem really basic to your average four-year-old, but living out here you might have forgotten them.”

  “Should I take notes?” Kenny asks, poised to reach into his backpack.

  I’m not sure, but I think he might be serious.

  Bree rolls her eyes and Kenny pulls back his hand. “First, look both ways before you cross the street. You’re not used to streets with lots of fast-moving cars and trucks and motorcycles. And most accidents happen within a block of the home.”

  “She’s right,” Kenny says when Ally groans.

  “Second, always make sure your sneakers are tied so you don’t trip in the hall and drop all your books. Nothing makes you look like a bigger dork than dropping your books.”

  Kenny looks down at his sneakers. “Mine are Velcro.”

  “Good move,” Bree says, nodding approvingly. “Third. Wash your hands before you eat. Strange kids, strange school, strange germs. You aren’t immune to the same things that most kids are. In fact,” she backs up a few feet, “maybe we shouldn’t get too close to you guys.”

  Ally narrows her eyes and then runs toward Bree with her arm outstretched. Bree screams playfully as Ally chases her across the hilltop, around the shed, past the scope, and over Ryan’s moaning form. Even though it’s rapidly getting darker, Bree’s startling blue eyes are brighter than I’ve seen them. I finally glimpse what Ryan saw that first day. When she’s happy, Bree’s really pretty. But Ally’s pretty all of the time.

  “What’s the last rule?” Kenny calls out when Bree’s path brings her close by.

  “Chew before you swallow,” she yells.

  “We do eat food out here in the boonies, you know!” Ally calls after her. “I’m pretty sure we know how to do it without choking.”

  Once they’ve exhausted themselves, we pass the time by pointing the telescope down at the camp. It’s too powerful to focus in on such relatively nearby objects, but we can see people everywhere, in the Star and Sun Gardens, in the Labyrinth, finishing dinner in the pavilion. It’s amazing how quickly these places have started to feel familiar. And in only four more days, it will all be over. I shake my head to rid myself of those kinds of thoughts. Focus on the moment, I tell myself. It’s all you have.

  Ally’s walkie-talkie beeps and she pulls it off her belt loop. She presses the button in response and then holds it up to her ear. “It’s my dad,” she announces a few seconds later. “We got an e-mail from one of Mr. Silver’s team members. From Scotland!”

  I can hear noises coming through the walkie-talkie but not the words. Ally holds it up to her ear again and cups her other hand over it to hear better. Then she says, “over and out,” and clips it back to her waist. By this point we’re all gathered around her, closing in like a pack of hungry wolves.

  Eyes gleaming, she says, “The guy in Scotland was able to rule out part of the transit window for sure! The other guy in Florida eliminated part of it, too. So tonight it comes down to us and a lady in Italy!”

  This stuff is actually starting to make sense to me. Maybe I’m not as bad at science as I thought. “Mr. Silver said that if we catch a transit, then others will start tracking it to see how long the orbit is. And then a huge telescope somewhere will be able to tell if it’s a real planet crossing in front of the star, or something else, like a smaller star.”

  “Not too much pressure,” Kenny says. “But that’s okay! We thrive on pressure, right, Team Exo?”

  “Right!” we all yell. But one by one, we pick up the pages that Kenny typed out for each of us to make sure we know what we’re supposed to do. No one wants to be the person who messes everything up. Least of all me.

  And then it’s all happening. The first stars come out, and Kenny immediately turns to the computer to align the “go-to” feature. He turns the scope to point at one star, waits to hear a dinging sound, then points it at another. “Coordinates found!” he calls out. Melanie records them, chewing so hard on her pen that I fear it’s going to burst in her mouth. Then he asks Ally for the coordinates of the star we’re assigned to monitor. She reads it from the logbook and he types it in.

  “Right ascension of twenty hours. Declination of forty degrees, eighteen minutes, twenty-three seconds.” She may as well have been speaking Klingon.

  At first nothing happens and my heart sinks.

  “Read me those again, Ally?” Kenny asks, his voice a little shaky. Ally rereads them, and Kenny retypes. He hits a few extra buttons, then steps back and crosses his fingers on both hands.

  This time the telescope starts moving on its own with a low whirring sound. We all jump out of the way. When it stops, Kenny steps forward and checks the message on the monitor. “Object found!”

  We all cheer, even though Mr. Silver warned me that that was going to be the easy part. “Okay, guys,” I say, checking that the camera is ready. I glance at my watch. “Now we wait.”

  We take turns looking into the viewfinder at the star. It looks like any other star, twinkling and really far away. The gears in the telescope are humming faintly. It’s starting to move again.

  “Is it broken?” I ask, worried.

  Kenny shakes his head. He’s read the manual cover to cover, so he should know. “It has to keep the star in the frame. The Earth is spinning so it has to keep compensating.”

  “Oh.” Just one more part of this whole thing that I don’t really understand.

  Ally points to the sky and says, “You know that Summer Triangle I showed everyone the other night?”

  We all look up, and I’m shocked to discover that I can find it by looking for a triangle of three bright stars.

  “Well,” she says, “not to get too technical, but Earth, which is rotating on its axis at a thousand miles per hour, goes around the sun at 66,000 miles per hour. And then our entire solar system is hurtling toward the Summer Triangle at 45,000 miles per hour.”

  I turn away from the stars to stare at her. “How is that possible? How can we not feel like we’re moving? How come we don’t get left behind?”

  Bree responds. “Ever hear of gravity?”

  I turn to her. “Why don’t you explain it, then.”

  Bree flips her hair at me and says nothing.

  Melanie says, “I hate to interrupt this episode of Who Knows Less About Science, but it’s almost time!”

  We quickly assume our positions. I take a deep breath. Here goes nothing. Following Kenny and Melanie’s careful instructions, I turn on the camera and pray it does what it’s supposed to do. Every few seconds I call out the temperature readings and Melanie, sitting cross-legged on the grass, types them into Mr. Silver’s computer. A cable from the camera to the computer sends more data at the same time. I keep calling out readings until my throat gets dry.

  Bree is manning the viewfinder. I ask her if anything looks different. She says, “Nope.”

  “Nothing’s supposed to look different,” Ally calls to me.

  “You mean we won’t actually be able to see it?”

  She shakes her head. “We can’t see it because the planet is too small and the
star too bright. But once the images are processed by the computer, we’ll be able to see the light curve.”

  Melanie holds up the laptop, which shows a graph of the light curve. “Check this out! It looks like the star’s getting fainter!”

  We all crowd over her shoulder, even Ryan, who has finally gotten himself to a standing position. She points to a spot on the graph where a bunch of dots form a fairly straight line. Then she shows us how they’re starting to go down, at a sloping angle. “Keep reading off the temperatures, Jack!” she says. “Let’s see what happens to the pattern.”

  I return to my post. After another half hour of reading the numbers off the tiny screen, I’m getting delirious. I turn the position over to Ally, who later drags Bree up there to take her place. After more than two hours since we started, Melanie finally says, “Okay, you can stop.” She jumps to her feet and turns the screen toward us. Then she clutches it to her chest and says, “Do you realize that what we just witnessed actually happened back when Napoleon was ruling France?”

  We all stare at her. My brain is too stuffed right now to compute the whole thing about time and how long it takes light to travel. I’d find it interesting if there wasn’t so much at stake here.

  “Melanie,” Bree warns. Melanie quickly turns the glowing screen around and holds it up triumphantly. The dots form a clear upside-down bell shape and then start to go across in that same straight line as before.

  “That’s amazing!” Kenny shouts. “We did it! We really found a planet!”

  We jump up and down and high-five each other until Ryan says, “We found something. We won’t know if it’s a planet for sure until the data is verified.”

  This quiets us all for a minute. Then we start screaming again. Ally suggests we celebrate our success Moon Shadow style. This turns out to be eating s’mores in the hot spring behind her house.

  An hour later, once we’ve moved all the equipment safely into the shed and e-mailed the data to the addresses Mr. Silver left us, I find myself sitting with five other kids, none of whom I knew ten days ago, in what amounts to a really hot outdoor bathtub. This is the first time I’ve seen Ally without the pouch around her neck. It’s such a part of her that it feels weird seeing her without it. Even though my clothes are getting looser these days, I’m still wearing my t-shirt while everyone else is in their bathing suits.

  I wipe off the thin line of chocolate dripping down my chin and lean back. A zillion stars shine overhead. They no longer feel threatening. I silently pick out the Big Dipper, and then Polaris.

  “Sometimes you can see the Space Station,” Ally says dreamily, “but it would have passed by here already. It looks like a shooting star but it moves a lot slower.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a shooting star,” I admit. “I didn’t even know a star could move.”

  She points east. “Wait.” In less than a minute, we collectively yell, “There’s one!” Ally explains that a shooting star isn’t a star at all. It’s a meteor, a speck of dust from a comet or asteroid lighting up as it hits our atmosphere. I see another before she’s done talking.

  I listen lazily as she tells Bree and Melanie that if they sit in the hot springs in the winter they can watch the colors of the Northern Lights flow like a river in the sky while the drops of water turn their hair into tiny icicles.

  Bree frowns. Melanie says, “Cool!” Ally wipes a tear from her eye.

  “Will we see it tonight?” I ask. “The Northern Lights?”

  “Probably not. The summer’s not a great time to look for them.”

  The conversation turns to the eclipse and I tune it out. The sooner the eclipse comes, the sooner I have to go back home. And when I go back home, I’ll lose this feeling of belonging to something. Kenny says it’s crazy how a single cloud can ruin an entire eclipse if it’s right in front of the sun. I think about that for a minute, about how all these people came from all over the world to see it, and they might miss it through no fault of their own. A crazy thought flits across my mind. If I miss it, then it will be like it didn’t happen, like this whole experience doesn’t have an endpoint.

  I tune back in to hear Melanie talking about a report she did in school about a Native American dance that you’re supposed to do to guarantee clear skies. It’s like the opposite of a rain dance. She says you have to do it every morning up till the day you need it to be sunny. She stands upright in the water and does a sort of whooping, bending, twisting dance. Everyone promises to do it first thing when they wake up.

  No one notices that I haven’t agreed.

  ALLY

  7

  My bedroom is full of empty boxes and I am doing my best to ignore them. It’s actually been pretty easy to do that since the last two days have been the busiest of my entire life. The Moon Shadow now has over a thousand guests. It is totally unreal. I’ve heard people are camping out on the main road, extending all the forty miles into town. Anyone that far away will only see a partial eclipse though. That’s how narrow the path is. People camping on the other side of the lake will still see a total, but it will be much shorter. That’s why our spot is so ideal. We’re right in the centerline. My parents didn’t want to turn anyone away, but we’re already overbooked. People are crowded eight to a cabin. The RV park is full to capacity. Tents have popped up on nearly every plot of dry land. My parents’ strictest rule is that the roads and paths are kept clear, and if anyone is seen throwing trash on the ground, they get one warning before they are kicked out. The pavilion has run out of food twice, and my dad had to call in a favor from a guy who works at a food distribution plant a few hours away. There is no hot water anymore, but so far we haven’t had too many complaints. Eclipse chasers are used to being in remote locations.

  I haven’t seen much of the other Team Exo members after our middle-of-the-night dip in the hot springs. Kenny and I have been so busy running around the campground putting out fires (twice in the literal sense!) that I haven’t had time to do anything even remotely social. I haven’t been able to get near any of the telescopes in the Star Garden except to show the guests how to use them. I’ve had to say good night to Eta, Glenn, and Peggy with my binoculars, which isn’t really the same thing.

  Now, in five hours, barring the end of the world, the moon will obliterate the sun. On one hand I am so excited I can barely think straight. On the other, the eclipse means that everything will start happening really quickly. The guests will leave, including Jack and Ryan. Bree’s family will move into our house. I can’t see past that point. I read in a book once that if you can’t picture something happening, that means it won’t happen. But no matter what, the eclipse will be happening. Even if Alpha Girl had the power of X-ray vision, of flight, of turning lead into gold, the eclipse would still happen. I’ve done the clear-skies dance each morning, and that’s all I can do.

  Right now the clouds are of the fluffy white variety. But if they darken and get lower, it won’t matter much if the eclipse happens or not, because we won’t be able to see it. The sky will darken and it will get colder, but other than that, nothing. Good thing my parents have a no-money-back policy!

  I hurry along the path, mentally wishing the clouds away and trying not to crash into anyone. It’s so weird sharing the campground with all these strangers. And they’re all so happy and excited. Sure, that’s easy when they’re not the ones whose lives will be turned upside down and inside out afterward. Kenny breaks through the crowd on the path and grabs onto my sleeve.

  “C’mere, Ally! You’ve got to see this! Someone built a shrine in the field!”

  I let him pull me over to the clearing behind the pavilion. This is where most people will view the eclipse. The huge projection screens are already set up and a crew is testing the sound system. This is what it must feel like before a concert.

  “Look!” Kenny says, pointing to a crowd at the far side of the clearing. When we get closer, I see they are standing around a large cardboard box with a thin red blanket laid
across it. On the top is a small oil painting resting against a wooden easel. I step closer. The painting shows two Asian men, in togas, standing next to an old-fashioned telescope. In front of the painting is a little printed sign that reads ho and hsi, royal chinese astronomers, circa 2000 b.c. if only you had warned the king about the eclipse. rest in peace. All over the makeshift shrine people have left small gifts. A melting Twinkie still in the wrapper. A stick of Juicy Fruit gum. Two marbles. A yellow pencil. A book predicting eclipses for the next century. A green stuffed dragon.

  I turn to Kenny. “Let me guess. The dragon was your contribution?”

  “Yup! You know, ’cause the ancient Chinese thought an eclipse was a dragon eating the sun.”

  “And do you really think they ate Twinkies four thousand years ago?”

  “If they were lucky,” Kenny says, grinning.

  I take a last glance at the painting. “Doesn’t seem like luck was on their side.”

  “True. Can you imagine what it would have been like to live back then?”

  I step away from the crowd and Kenny follows. We head toward my original destination, the labyrinth. “Well, even if they couldn’t predict an eclipse accurately, they could see so much farther than we can now, even out here. Every night they would see the Milky Way streaming across the sky. Not blotted out like now. That I would have liked to see.”

  “Yeah,” Kenny says. “But they didn’t have indoor plumbing. I don’t know if I’d trade that for being able to see the edge of the galaxy.”

  I shrug. “I would. I prefer the hot springs to a shower any day.”

  “Hate to say it, but you’re gonna have to get used to the shower.”

  He’s right of course, but I hadn’t thought of it before this minute. Wherever we wind up, one thing there won’t be is a hot spring in the backyard. Yet another item to add to the endless list of things I’ll be giv-ing up.

  Kenny goes off to finish photocopying the eclipse schedule brochures, a job that he actually volunteered for. He says he likes the sound the copy machine makes. I keep going till I reach the labyrinth. As I should have expected, I’m not the only visitor. In fact, there are at least ten people inside it and many more waiting their turn. I do a quick scan of the ground to make sure it’s still smooth from last night. I’ve always thought of the labyrinth as a solitary thing. I can’t imagine walking it with other people. You’d always be worrying about going too fast and bumping into the person in front of you, or going too slow and holding up the people behind you.