As Far as the Stars. Virginia Macgregor
I feel a thud in my chest. And it comes back to me, the reason we’re here, in this service station that smells of oil and grease, drinking bitter coffee from a machine. And that it’s way more serious than anything I’m worried about. A plane’s crashed. And though he seems to be in denial about it, Christopher’s dad was on that plane.
‘Well I think it’s cool, the things you make,’ I say. ‘That you’re artistic.’
His eyes go wide. ‘Artistic?’
‘I can’t even draw a stick-man.’ I can’t even sing, I think. But that, more likely than not, is what I’m going to have to do – in just over twenty-four hours. To cover Blake’s ass. To make sure Jude’s wedding goes to plan. ‘So, I think that it’s amazing – that you can make all that stuff, just out of paper. More than that – it’s not even special paper like from an art shop or something. You use scraps, right? Stuff you find around the place.’
He nods.
‘Well, it’s awesome.’ I smile. ‘Eco-Art – that’s trendy, right?’
‘Trendy?’
‘Yeah.’
He laughs. ‘Maybe.’
‘Well, I think your models are amazing.’
The tops of his cheeks blush. ‘Thanks.’
A guy comes into the store. He grabs a coffee from the machine beside us and a burger from the oven. Then, he bashes into the back of my chair and my telescope falls to the floor.
‘Watch out!’ I say.
But the guy keeps walking, without even apologising.
Christopher leans over and picks it up.
‘What’s this?’
‘My telescope.’
‘For the eclipse?’
‘Yeah – for the eclipse. But for other stuff too.’
‘Other stuff?’
‘I like looking at the night sky. I want to do it – professionally.’
‘Professionally?’
‘Yeah. Sort of.’
My cheeks get hot like they do every time I have to explain my thing about the stars and the universe and what I want to do with my life. Besides Dad, most people I tell don’t get it. That what’s up there is like the most important thing a human being could do. That it’s the only way we’re ever going to understand how we got here and why we’re here now and what’s going to happen next.
‘I want to be an astronaut,’ I say.
‘Really?’ He looks surprised but not a patronising only-ten-year-old-boys-want-to-be-astronauts look. It’s a kind of impressed look. Really impressed. Like he understands – how wanting to go into space is the most awesome thing anyone could ever want to do.
I feel a rush of pride.
I nod. ‘Yep, really.’
He looks up at me, his pale, grey eyes wide and shiny. ‘That’s meant to be really hard – isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, it’s really hard. Only a tiny percentage of those trained ever go up into space. I did an internship this summer, at the Smithsonian to help my chances of getting into MIT. NASA recruits from MIT,’ I explain.
‘So, you’re going to study engineering?’
‘Yep. One more year of school—’
‘One more year of school?’
‘What?’
‘You look – I don’t know – kind of—’ he stalls.
‘Young?’
He nods. His face goes red.
‘I skipped a grade. That’s why this internship was really important. I have to prove that I’m ready.’
‘Skipped a year? So you must be, what—’
‘Seventeen. Just. My birthday was last week.’
Mom usually makes a fuss about birthdays but this year, mine got kind of lost in all the wedding preparations and I was busy doing my internship and Blake was in London. I didn’t mind. I don’t like the fuss. Dad took me out for red velvet cake at my favourite bakery in town and then we talked for hours, until it was nearly dark and the owner of the bakery had to kick us out. It was probably the best birthday I’ve ever had.
Christopher shakes his head. ‘God, you must be really clever – skipping a grade. I can barely keep up with my own year.’
‘I work hard. And starting young has advantages. If you want to be an astronaut, I mean.’
‘So, when you get to MIT—’
‘I’m going to do a BA in Physical Science – majoring in Astronomy. I want to understand the skies before I get into the mechanical stuff. Then I’ll do a Masters in Aerospace Engineering. And after that a doctorate.’
‘Wow, you’ve really got it all worked out.’
I nod. ‘If you want to be an astronaut, you basically have to start planning from when you’re born.’
‘Won’t it be kind of lonely – I mean, all those years of studying and then going off into space?’
‘Besides my immediate family, I’m not into personal relationships, so I’ll be fine. And I quite like being on my own.’
Those bushy eyebrows of his knit together. ‘You’re not into personal relationships?’
‘Getting married and stuff,’ I explain.
‘Oh – right.’
‘I mean, if it’s a toss-up between finding the man of my dreams and having his babies or getting to land on some undiscovered planet, the choice is easy.’
‘It is?’
‘Definitely. And anyway, break-ups are distracting, right? I can’t afford to be distracted, not when I’m planning a space mission.’
‘Why would there be a break-up?’
‘There are always break-ups. It’s like a thing for astronauts: break-up statistics are high. So, it’s better to be single.’ I pause. ‘Especially if you’re a woman.’
His eyes look wider and paler than ever. Maybe I’ve told him too much. But then he was the one who asked all the questions.
‘You’d get on with my mum.’ He makes it sound like a sad thing.
‘As in Atlanta Mom?’ I ask. And then I feel stupid. It’s not like he’s got any other moms.
‘Yeah, Atlanta Mum. She’s a scientist. A marine biologist – sea rather than sky. But she wanted to study too – rather than having a kid, I mean. Which is why Dad looked after me.’ He pauses. ‘I guess that, like you, she didn’t want any distractions.’
‘Oh…’ I don’t really know what to say. I think he’s just compared me to the mom who walked out on him.
‘I’m sorry.’ I say. ‘That you didn’t get to have both of your parents.’
Mom and Dad had us all pretty young. Dad was still doing his doctoral thesis at Oxford when they had Jude. Mom was finishing her legal practice course. They would never have considered giving her up though. Mom jokes about putting her down for naps in her filing cabinet at work and Dad says that she’d sit in her stroller at the back of his lectures, good as gold, and that having her around made the students like him more. I guess they worked it out. Then, one year later, they had Blake. They were so close in age people thought they were twins. And then, four years