Every Soul a Star: Chapter 4

I align the Golden Grahams box so that it blocks my view of the book.

We sit quietly and watch the waves of color cross the screen. It's almost hypnotic.

I'm startled out of my trance by a loud rumbling out front.

“Yes! Hi! We think we've found a signal. What do we do?"
The three of us beam at each other while we wait for a reply. A few seconds later: “You don't do anything. We get a large number of errant signals a month. When your work unit is complete, it will upload automatically. If we find a signal that merits looking into, we will contact you with the information we have on record."

I'm taken aback. No one has asked to see our house before. I don't know how to respond.

The door squeaks open behind me and Mom rushes in, sweaty and harried.

Her words are starting to sink in. My brain is whirling, my stomach is churning.

I take in the short, wavy skirt, the sandals, the hot pink tank top. Definitely not the usual camping attire.

I know I should cry, should be screaming to the rafters at the unfairness of it all, but I'm just numb.

Everything looks drab and ragged next to her clothes. I never noticed my clothes were so dull before.

It had taken a while to find something of Ally's that I could wear. Everything was so...bland. It looked like it had all been washed together so many times it had blended into one shade of grayish-blue.

If you were in the next town over, you wouldn't be able to see it. I mean, you'd see something, like a partial eclipse, but that's not any good because you can't even look at it directly. The path of the rest of the eclipse is all up in Canada.

"...They both have to change their minds or else it won't work since they have a written agreement."
"They do?" Ally asks, clearly not happy about this formality.
I nod. "My dad showed it to us back home. Full of boring lawyer-type clauses..."

"I wish I didn't have to think about real life right now," Ally says wistfully.

Even the air feels different here. Thinner or thicker or something. It's unnerving.

They are all dressed in their same shorts and t-shirts. Melanie is already scratching at her legs. They still have that same happy glint in their eyes, which drives me crazy. I refrain from suggesting they cover up.

"Sorry, but we've gotta be ruthless here. We're trying to make our parents feel guilty. Guilty and scared. And I'm thinking there are lots of things about your new life that we can scare them with."

I've gotta hand it to her, she might not have much experience being devious, but the girl has good ideas.

We're so engrossed in our plans that when a tray crashes to the ground in the center of the pavilion we both jump.

In fifth grade I saw a kid have a seizure in gym class, and at first I thought he was just trying to get out of climbing the rope. But the boy on the floor isn't shaking or anything like that, just lying there with his eyelids fluttering.

A few thoughts jockey for position in my head, in an order I'm not proud of.

I'm only half listening, because I'm thinking of more and more things that could befall a little old lady in a remote motel.

I let the dark thoughts dissipate from my mind as she catches sight of me and smiles.

The eclipse chasers are straggling out toward the bus.

"I doubt that," I say, but I say it cheerfully so it doesn't sound obnoxious.

The star is over a hundred light-years away, and we're going to detect if it dims by as little as two percent, and for how long. The other folks on my team will be doing the same thing, in different parts of the world. We're all at different longitudes and all our data will be combined to get the full picture.

"If the amount of light from our star suddenly decreases," he continues, his voice dropping like he's sharing some big secret, "then we'll know a planet, with an indeterminate mass, has just crossed in front of it. We can't see planets directly because they're incredibly dim in comparison to their parent star."

My palms are starting to sweat a bit. I am so out of my element.

His cabin is identical to mine, except strewn with exercise equipment and inside-out clothes.

Running faster than I ever have in my life, I race to the cabin, push open the door, grab the kit and the walkie-talkie (which I had also forgotten) and race back, ignoring the searing cramp in my side.