Do stars ever align?

“Ok, first look through this one,” said Samara. 

She was a petite girl with deep dimples as she smiled. She pointed to what looked like a rifle scope attached to her telescope. She had frizzy brown hair in a ponytail and prominent eyebrows. 

“I guess I thought telescopes looked different than this. You know how they are in the movies, metal tubes. Big glass cap at the end. This is more like a bazooka,” said Jackson. He was a farm boy, Carhartt jacket over an athletic frame. He had a boxy face and gelled-up spiky hair with frosted tips. Jackson leaned over to look in the finder scope.

“It even has cross hairs!” He added.

“Right, now…” she put her hand on his shoulder, “compare that view with this one.”

She pointed to the eye pieces that angled into the tube itself. Jackson did as instructed.

“It’s the same thing but much bigger. Clearer.”

“Good, that means I adjusted it right.”

“What is that? Mars?”

“Jupiter.”

“Looks like an endless desert, dry and dusty as Nevada,” he said in his most National Geographic tone of voice.

“Actually, it’s a gas giant.”

“You’re a gas giant.”

She hit him. “I’m tiny. And you’ve never heard me fart.”

With an impeccable impression of Cockney English, Jackson said, “Well, not yet.” 

This was met with another slug on his shoulder.

“So, how often do you look at the stars?” he asked.

“Every Friday at 9pm. It’s been my ritual since 8th grade.”

“So, wait, Sam. Is that why you turned me down for Mission Impossible 2 last week?”

“Besides it being a terrible movie? I…” Samara exhaled through her nose, caught off guard. “Yes? I never miss a Friday. And it’s senior year, you know? AP Cal, astronomy club, track…”

“Yeah, I know.” 

The crickets chirped in the darkness from the foothills behind Samara’s back yard.

“Hey, so tell me, lady of astronomy, in all your viewing through the microscope—”

“Telescope.”

“—telescope, have the stars ever aligned?”

She sat up straight, closed her eyes and raised an eyebrow. “Well, not yet,” she said in a terrible British accent.

—

“Ok, tonight’s homework is page 117 in the workbook,” said Samara, now a young woman standing in front of a class of high school students. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and she wore a gray woolen skirt and jacket outfit. She eyed her students through bookish black rimmed glasses.

“Let’s nail these polynomials, am I right?” She half-punched the air while saying this.

“Ugh” and “C’mon, Miss Rubio” were all she could rouse from them.

The bell rang and the kids sprung to their feet gathering books and backpacks. Over the instant raucous of teenage chatter, Samara shouted, “Oh, almost forgot! You’re all invited to the Mathletes team. Informational meeting tomorrow at 3:15.”

She stood by the door to hand out flyers to each one as they left. Printed on it was “Mathletes” in a comic book font with a caped hero sporting an “M” on his chest. The room emptied. Samara gathered her briefcase and a pile of papers to be graded. She flicked off the lights. Walking down the hall, slips of paper were strewn on the floor, some crumpled, some blank, and others hero side up.

—

It was 10pm. Samara’s studio apartment was semi organized chaos: a kitchenette whose counters were covered in dirty dishes, a table that doubled as a desk on which a stack of red-inked pages rested. Beside them, three textbooks of her own. She was working on her Master’s in the evenings. On the wall above the table was a poster of astronaut Clay Anderson floating in the International Space Station. He had made his flight last year at the age of forty eight.

On the bed sat Samara in her pajamas, a tall glass of wine in hand. She raised it for a toast. “Well, Clay. Just you and me tonight. Cheers.”

—

Samara didn’t usually get nervous, not at school. But all afternoon a small knot tightened in her belly. Classes released at 2:55, and in a few minutes the informational meeting would start in her classroom. She had dreamed of go-getter adolescents piling into the seats closest to the front, wowing them with her leadership, maybe even practicing so hard and having so much fun they’d forget it was time to go. And the tournaments! Moscow High would crush it. Local papers might just print the name of coach Samara Rubio.

But there she stayed, half sitting, half leaning against her desk. One student walked by, looked in the door’s window, and scurried away. Twenty minutes scraped by. There would be no Mathlete team, no Mathlete coach.

Eleven o’clock rolled around. Samara’s hair disheveled and in full frizz mode, she sat cross-legged on her bed with a bowl of cereal. She remembered that conversation from a long time ago.

“So tell me, lady of astronomy, have the stars ever aligned?”

“Well, not yet.”

“And in your expert opinion, will…” Jackson inhaled. His smile loosened and the playfulness in his voice gave way. “Will they?”

“Jackson. We—I don’t—can’t sit around hoping. I’m going there.” Samara arched her neck upward swept her hand over the bejeweled night sky. “I’m getting out of here. I’m going to move to Moscow, go to U of I, get my BA in math and then even get a Master’s. Then they want three years of ‘related, progressively responsible, professional experience.’ I figure when I’m twenty five, I’ll apply for selection.”

“To NASA?” Jackson asked, incredulous. 

She may as well have been talking about Ghostbusters or the Men in Black. Orofino, population of three thousand, was a hamlet lost in the folds of Idaho’s western mountains. People form Orofino didn’t go on to be astronauts.

“Yes, NASA,” said Samara with an indignant edge, “And, I don’t know, you should dream big too.”

Samara shook her head and was back in the present, on her bed. Wow, she still remembered high school. She guessed that’s what late nights and cereal did to you. Jackson enlisted in the Marines, she recalled. Raising her bowl, she saluted Clay Anderson. He dreamed big—fifteen rejection letters before he was selected to astronautical training.

The next day was Samara’s birthday. She hadn’t told anyone or even hinted at it in the days leading up to it. Truthfully, it had slipped her mind in the daily grind. But still, she felt a needle’s prick at the end of each class and after each interaction with her colleagues. There were no cards, no chocolate, no candles, not even a cupcake. Her Master’s study load didn’t relent. Even the wine she uncorked that evening didn’t feel special; three of the same bottles were in the recycling bin beside her front door. It was Friday, but it may as well have been a Tuesday. She sighed and took a long sip.

Suddenly she sat up straight and looked over to her telescope. Today was the day! She took it outside and began the ritual: she aligned the tripod to North, adjusted the Right Ascension axis, rotated the scope to face South, and then calibrated the viewfinder. After setting it up, Samara opened her book of monthly star charts to choose a constellation to gaze upon. Another sip of cabernet sauvignon and she leaned over the eyepiece. 

Just then, the glass illuminated with a phosphorescent green. She pulled away and looked up. A firework? In March? The ephemeral light pollution gone, she leaned back in to the eyepiece. An augmented Canis Minor lay above her. As she reached for the knobs to adjust the focus, another firework exploded. She pulled back. Now another, bright white with streamers like a willow tree. Now a red flare. Samara wasn’t sure if she was irritated or intrigued. What do people celebrate in March? She got in her car to locate the launch site of the fireworks. Moscow, Idaho is a college town; you can cross it in 7 minutes. So she figured she might find the festival or party responsible. Saint Patrick’s Day? Was that it? She couldn’t remember if it had already happened. She wouldn’t have noticed Christmas come and go if it weren’t for the days off of school.

Another one went up. She turned down a street. Another one, and she adjusted her approach. As she rolled closer and closer to where it looked like they were coming from, she slowed down and looked around. Some people were standing on their front porches. There up ahead she saw one take off! It was at a church’s parking lot. There were no canopies or tiki torches, no music blasting on a PA system. There was just one person was squatting down in the amber light of a streetlamp. He was working on something. Her high beams washed over him and revealed a pallet with tubes pointed vertically. He shielded his eyes from the direct light.

“Hello?” Said Samara, now wondering if this was a mistake.

“Oh, hi there. You’re…you’re not the police, right?”

Samara didn’t answer. She knew the voice.

“Jackson?”

“Sam?”

“What are you doing here?”

He jogged over to her driver-side window. “Hey. Happy birthday.” He opened her door, and she stepped out. The two hugged briefly.

Samara stepped back. She was looking at a taller, stronger Jackson. His hair was cut close with a skin fade.

“How did you…?”

“Find you?”

“Well, yeah!”

“I figured you were turning twenty-five tonight, so maybe you hadn’t yet been selected. Maybe you were still in Moscow.”

“So you came here with fireworks?”

“I didn’t know where to look, but I did know it was a Friday night. I guess I just wondered if tonight was the night.”

“For what?”

“For the stars to align.”