“What do you think that is?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “A really huge star?”
“That’s what it looks like, but it’s a cluster of stars. Not just one. And do you know how far away they are from you right now?”
“A thousand miles?”
“No. More like millions of miles. We’re not even looking at stars. We’re looking at the light from stars so far away it takes the light from the nearest star about two million years to travel from that star to your eye. And that light is going at 186,000 miles a second.”
She felt dizzy when she put her eye to the eyepiece again. How could she believe what he was saying? It wasn’t stars she was seeing at all—just the light of stars zooming like fury to get to the earth but taking forever because it was so far to go.
She stepped back, moving her eye from the eyepiece and the overwhelming thought of light streaming down from fiery worlds whirling in space beyond all human view. “It’s scary,” she said.
“What’s scary?”
“How big everything is—how far away. I’d just be like an ant to that star.”
“Nah. Not nearly that big,” he said. “The whole world isn’t that big.”
“You mean we’re like nothing? The whole world is like nothing?” It frightened her to think of herself—her whole world—like less than a speck in the gigantic sky, like nothing at all.
“Yeah, we’re small, but we aren’t nothing,” he said. “Want to know a secret?”
“What?”
He reached over and pinched her arm.
“Ow,” she said. It didn’t hurt so much as surprise her. “See this?” he said, lifting her arm up where he’d pinched it. “See this stuff here? This is the stuff of stars.”
“What do you mean?”
“The same elements, the same materials that make those stars up there is what makes you. You’re made from star stuff.”
It didn’t make sense. “They’re burning in the sky, and I’m just standing here, not shining at all.”
“Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean you’re made from different stuff. Just that something different is happening to those same elements. You’re still close kin to the stars.” She was trembling out there in the August night in nothing but her pajamas, but it wasn’t because of the cold. “I better go in,” she said. “Bernie might wake up and miss me.” She started picking her way back toward the house, turning only when she got to the cluttered safety of the yard. She could see the tall shadowed form standing there, watching her, like a person from a strange dream.
EIGHT
Treasure Hunt
When she woke, the sun was streaming through the small window. For a minute Angel couldn’t remember where she was. Stars. There was something about stars, a dream of stars and a strange man who knew them all by name. A little thrill went through her body, and then she looked down at the patchwork cover, and the crazy quilt of a day that had brought her to this house and to this bed came rushing to mind. She sat up and craned her neck, trying to see into the room across the hall, but she couldn’t see well enough to tell for sure whether someone was in the bed or not.
She made her way around Bernie, gently snoring in his bed, and crossed to the room that was meant to be Verna’s. The door hung slightly open. Was that the way Angel had left it last night? She was sure she had shut it, which would mean...She pushed it gently with her fingertips. It creaked. She held her breath. There was no one in the bed. It had not been slept in. She lifted the quilt. Verna hadn’t even put sheets on the bed. No use trying to fool herself. Verna had not returned last night.
She went back into her bedroom—she would have to get used to thinking of it as hers, hers and Bernie’s—and pulled on her clothes, all the while keeping an eye on Bernie’s curled-up hump. Grizzle had fallen onto the floor and was staring up at her with his big button eyes, as though asking what in the world had happened that he should suffer so. She picked him up, dusted him with her hand, and then tucked him under the cover beside Bernie. The boy shifted slightly, as though making room.
From down in the kitchen came the sound of heavy footsteps. Grandma was up and about. Good. She hated to think that the old woman spent her entire life in that rocker. With her sneakers in her hand, she crept down the stairs. At the bottom she paused long e
nough to shove her sockless feet into the loosely tied sneakers. She wiped her hands on the back of her jeans.
Grandma turned from the stove as Angel came into the room. “You’re up, eh?”
She nodded.
“Well, make yourself useful.”
She wanted to, she really did, but she had no idea what the old woman would want her to do. She was scared to ask questions like “Where is the cereal?” There probably wasn’t any.