The Sun Is Also a Star: Prologue–"Natasha"

Local Teen Accepts Destiny, Agrees to Become Doctor

Under this unholy barrage of my parents’ confusion and shame and disappointment, even I almost feel bad for Charlie.

My mom says it’s time for me to give up now, and that what I’m doing is futile.

Today is my last chance to try to convince someone—or fate—to help me find a way to stay in America.
To be clear: I don’t believe in fate. But I’m desperate.

Before this epic and spectacular (and wholly delightful) failure at Harvard, he has been unrelentingly good at everything.

All this would be fine—an embarrassment of riches, to be sure; a tad too many treasures to be bestowed on a single human, certainly—if he were nice.

His misery is so much more abject than mine.

So she waylays each bin with a single gloved hand. The delay is long enough that the applicant is forced to look up and meet her eyes.

Instead, she looks back down at the bin and scrutinizes each object for clues, for some bit of information to store away and examine later.

But before that, before he becomes a politician and marries well, before he changes his name to Charles Bay, before he betrays his good wife and constituents at every turn, before too much money and success and much too much of getting everything that he wants, he will do a good and selfless thing for his brother.

I am dismissed. On any other day, I would be compliant.

“Your family’s last appeal was rejected. The deportation stands, Ms. Kingsley. You and your family will have to leave tonight at ten p.m.”

Bev’s always been relentlessly optimistic, even in the face of dire odds.

The anger I’ve suppressed rises from my belly and into my throat.

Maybe you've heard the word irie before. Maybe you’ve traveled to Jamaica and know that it has some roots in the Jamaican dialect, patois.

You know nothing of God or spirit or language. You know the present-day colloquial dictionary definition. To be irie is simply to be all right.

Sometimes if you look a word up in the dictionary, you’ll see some definitions marked as obsolete.

One day in the future, the meaning of irie will move on, and it will become just another word with a long list of archaic or obsolete definitions.

Neither of you will know about Abraham or the Rastafari religion or the Jamaican dialect. The word will be devoid of any history at all.

Anyone looking in at us from the outside would think things are copacetic.

I bet my dad berates him in between smiling at customers and answering questions about extensions and tea tree oils and treating chemically damaged hair.

Today’s her day off from the store, and I bet she’s looking forward to spending the day alone painting. Lately she’s been working on roaches, flies, and beetles. I’ve been teasing her, saying that she’s in her Gross Insect Period, but I like it even more than her Abstract Orchid Period from a few months ago.

Its carapace shimmers like spilled oil on water.

Checking myself in the mirror now, I have to say that the suit does make me look confident and debonair (yes, debonair).

My dad says he doesn’t know where my cynicism comes from, but I’m not a cynic. I am a realist. It’s better to see life as it is, not as you wish it to be.

I contemplate telling her about this latest development but then decide it’s not really a development.

After about a year, his voice changed. He had a funny new accent that was more lilt and twang than patois.

To be an actor you’re supposed to have thick skin, but Samuel’s skin was never thick enough. Rejection was like sandpaper. His skin sloughed away under its constant onslaught.

Resigned Local Takes Westbound 7 Train to Childhood's End

I’ll have a Point of View on serious subjects such as Immigration, the role of the Catholic Church in an increasingly secular society, the relative suckage of professional football teams.

The camera pans to show a rapt audience.

The conductor loves the notion that you can be made anew, free of sin and therefore worthy of love and salvation.

Since I’m letting the universe dictate my life on this Final Day of Childhood, I don’t bother waiting for another train to take me to Thirty-Fourth Street.

I look left and right. Still no Sign. I’m looking for something subtle, along the lines of a long-haired man turning water into wine and holding a placard proclaiming himself to be Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior.

She moves her backpack to one shoulder, and I see it: DEUS EX MACHINA is printed in big white letters on the back of her leather jacket. God from the machine.

Things happen for a reason, Tasha. I don’t believe that sentiment, but still, there has to be a logical explanation for the horribleness of this day.

“She’s just gonna steal that?” asks an equally incredulous voice beside me.

Red Tie shifts his attention back to the petty larceny. “Great pair, a cheater and a thief.”

Red Tie is righteous, and Rob even manages to look a little chastened.

I get a sudden sense of déjà vu. I’ve been here before. I’ve noticed those bright eyes and that smile. I’ve even had this conversation.