Wish Upon A Star

My eyes search the sky outside my window, hoping to see a constellation behind the restless clouds. I spot a single twinkling star, barely visible through the cloudy haze. I haven’t wished upon a star since I was a little kid, but I feel an inexplicable urge to do so right now—as though the star, light-years away as it is, is looking at me. I stare at the star for a brief moment, concentrating on my wish: I wish I could travel to the Moon.

I wake up and stretch, yawning and checking my watch. It’s 8:15, so I should probably get up and make breakfast.

Suddenly, all of the wind is knocked out of me, and the familiar scene of my room is jerked away.

The world stops moving, and I gasp, but can’t breathe, as though my lungs are filled with cotton. I blink quickly, my eyes stinging and my vision blurry. I try to swallow, but my mouth is as cold as ice. With my next breath, the world fades away.

“Hello?” A voice says from above me. Their accent is reminiscent of the United States, but with an elegant softness around the vowels.

“What—” I begin.

“You’re awake!” I see a young woman above me, wearing a tight long-sleeve black shirt. She has numerous freckles and a mouth that looks used to smiling, and her brown hair is tied back in a low ponytail. I sit up and look around. The room I’m in is crowded, and space suits line the walls. I’m lying on a chair in the corner. People are hurriedly having their space suits put on to them by robots that buckle and attach each piece of the suit.

“Quick,” the woman says, “you’re just in time for the full Earth!”

“I don't understand,” I say, rubbing my eyes, expecting my bedroom to re-appear in front of me.

“The suits are over there,” the woman says, pointing to the wall with suits on it. “You look like you’re about an adult medium size, so take the suits with the blue trim, and then go over there—” she points at the opposite wall, where the robots are buckling space suits onto people— “then go out the airlock.” She points to the airlock, which I hadn’t noticed yet. People in space suits press the button on the side of the airlock, and I can see an all-white chamber through the open doors. It looks about the size of an elevator, and people are cramming into it.

“Quick!” The woman says again, walking toward the space suits, impatiently waving at me to follow “I’m Lumia, by the way.” She grabs a suit and then hands one to me, then hurries over to the robots. The suit is surprisingly light. Lumia rests her suit on the robot’s arms, then steps on to a short pedestal. I do the same, stepping onto a pedestal right next to her. My robot quickly begins putting on my suit. It holds the pieces to my body, then zips and ties and buckles them together. The robot uses a tube—like the thin vacuum tube that dentists use—to suction my suit together in order to make it an airtight seal.

“I don’t know what you were thinking, leaving the ship without a suit,” Lumia says lightly, “and honestly, I’m surprised the airlocks let you out. It’s a little scary too, because I thought the airlocks were super well programmed.” She smiles at me. I have no idea what she’s talking about, and I feel a desperate instinct to explain my situation to someone.

“Um…” I glance around nervously, “Um, I kinda…” I hesitate, my mind flailing. I barely know Lumia, and I barely know where I am. Lumia smiles interestedly. “...have a secret,” I finish, just loudly enough for Lumia to hear me over the clatter of the robots buckling our suits.

Lumia gasps and smiles conspiratorially. “What’s your secret?” She asks, her eyes twinkling.

“Uh…I don’t quite know how I got here.”

Lumia wrinkles her eyebrows, a small smile still remaining on her face. I don’t think Lumia ever stops smiling. “But you were on this trip before today…” she tilts her head at me, “do you need to see the medic?”

I laugh awkwardly. “No, no, it’s fine, never mind.”

Lumia’s robot finishes buckling her suit and dings brightly. Mine dings a second later. Lumia walks to the airlock and motions for me to follow.

I do, but I find that I can’t move nearly as gracefully as Lumia. I stumble after her, bouncing in an undignified manner. Lumia presses the glowing blue button, and the airlock opens. Everyone else has already left except for a person in a space suit who looks like he could be as young as eleven years old—so the three of us are the only ones in the airlock. The doors close.

“So,” Lumia says to me, “What happened? Why did you leave the ship?”

“I…” I trail off and shrug, not sure how to answer. Lumia looks at me curiously, but does not request a better answer. “It’s September 1st, 2054, a little past 8:15, right?”

Lumia checks her watch. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t leave the ship.”

I turn to look at the boy in the airlock with us.

“Hm?” Lumia asks politely.

“I remember you,” the boy says, addressing me, “I saw you appear outside without a spacesuit.”

I stare at the boy. The way he’s looking at me…he’s telling the truth. And I remember waking up; I know he’s right. I try to communicate that with my eyes, to let him know that I believe him, before laughing. “You must’ve seen me when I went outside.”

Lumia nods.

The boy starts to argue, but helmets are placed over our heads and attached to our suits by metal arms before he has the chance to say anything. A second later, the opposite wall of the airlock opens, revealing a ramp down to a cratered surface. I gasp. Lumia can’t hear me through my helmet, but she waves at me and bounces down the ramp, the boy hopping after her.

I slowly follow. 

I’m on the Moon. 

The surface is cratered and covered with thick dust. It’s somewhat dim, and I look up, wondering if the sun is in the sky. What I see takes my breath away. 

The full Earth. It’s huge, ten times as large as the full Moon viewed from Earth. It looks like a drop of water, painted on the sky and infused with color. I know I’m miles away from the Earth, but I feel like I could reach out and touch it. There is nothing between me and the Earth. Plain nothing, huge voids of empty space. I’m struck with a sense of vertigo, almost as if I could fall back to Earth. I can’t seem to pull my eyes away from the Earth, as though it is calling to me, pulling me in with the same gravitational force that keeps the Moon circling it month after month.

Something irrepressible is blooming from my chest, heavy and light at the same time, like a half-forgotten melody that runs deep in my bones and sings along with my blood. I don’t know how I got here, but I don’t care. This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. And it’s more than just beautiful. The view of the Earth is heavier than beautiful, heavy and real and full. This is the farthest I’ve ever been from anything I could call home, and yet, it is the closest I’ve ever felt to belonging. Me, us, the whole world—we all live on this tiny marble in the sky. We’re all alone, together, in the empty void of space.

As I stare at the Earth, I notice a star out of the corner of my eye, very close to the Earth’s edge. It glows brightly, but does not twinkle, like all the stars on the Moon. There’s something inexplicably familiar about this particular star. As it passes behind the Earth, I could swear that it winks at me.