You're in the Stars

It was a starry night, where the twinkling lights in the sky ranged in colors from blue to yellow to red to white, all dazzling and bright. I sighed, looking to my best friend sitting to my right. She had long brown hair that was mostly wavy near the tops and curled on the tips, blue eyes that shined like sapphires, and tan skin dotted with moles. She had always been so much prettier than me, which made her well liked among thirsty boys and girls seeking attention. Luckily, she never gave in.

I pointed to the sky, my eyes lingering on a small star, burning out in the distance. It must have been someone who was forgotten, the people that knew of them slowly dying out too. Once a person died, they became a star in the sky, for everyone to see, so that they could live on for a while longer, just in a different form. They weren't really alive, just there so their loved ones could believe they were always with them. However, once everyone who had loved that person and known of them died too, the star would burn out, slowly disappearing and making room for the new stars to come. Magically and beautifully, every night the stars would change. A hundred years from now, the stars I looked at would be completely different.

"I wonder what kind of lives they lived. How old they grew to be, what kind of person they were," I said softly, focusing on that one star as it every so slowly grew darker and darker.

Clementine shrugged. "One can only imagine. What if all the red stars are girls and the blue stars are boys? Or vice versa? And what if how big your star is not how long you've been dead for, but how long you lived when you were alive?"

I shook my head. "No, that wouldn't be possible. Stars get smaller as more people forget them. That's the idea of it all."

"That's only what everyone believes. It might be the truth, it might not be."

Clementine and I had been friends for years, starting when we were five years old and in kindergarten and sitting next to each other, lonely and quiet and afraid. We were both the biggest introverts, even at age five, and neither of us really knew how to socialize. Somehow, she spoke first. I remember what she said that day, like most young children in need of friends say. "You're my friend, okay?" And for some reason, I just agreed.

Ever since then, we've been practically inseparable. Like two peas in a pod, we did everything together. Sleepovers, field trips, lunches in the cafeteria - you name it, we did it. 

As the years went on, we had a little falling out once. A big fight that resulted in us separating into different friend groups and talking maybe once a month for school projects and whatnot. Then we made up and decided our fight was stupid and that you shouldn't let go of a best friend for silly little things.

Something I realized when we entered high school was that everyone thought we were a couple. It made sense, to be honest. Two girls that were very attached to each other, touchy with each other, and hung out with basically only each other did seem like they were dating, but we weren't. We didn't even date anyone, and had crushes once every five years, so that only added to it. But once again, our friendship was entirely platonic, no romance at all. At least not for a while. 

When I was ten years old, my dad packed his bags and head out. He decided my family wasn't worth being a part of anymore, and that he had better things to do with his time. My mom and I cried a lot, and we spent a couple years being ruined, poor, and alone. Dad worked while Mom figured things out with me, picking up little shifts at her old part time job every once and while, so when Dad left, Mom needed a job. All she had was a high school diploma and no college degree, so she landed a job in a call center and had been working there for as long as I can remember.

Clementine helped a lot during those tough times. On days when Mom had to go into work interviews early in the morning her father would drive us to school via carpool. We had a lot of sleepovers at her house, and when Mom couldn't afford to get me birthday presents or have a birthday party, we had one at her house. From ages ten to twelve, I was a part of Clementine's family. I had always been, and I continued to be, but Clementine's home life fell just after mine picked itself back up.

She found out her dad, the one she grew up with, wasn't her biological father, and that her whole life had pretty much been a lie. Her mom was having another affair, which is how everything got exposed, and her parents got a divorce. She spent weekends with her mom and weekdays with her dad, and I got used to not being able to see her on Saturdays and Sundays because she was two hours away from where I lived. 

I didn't really understand divorce until it happened to Clementine. Mom and Dad supposedly loved each other, but they never actually got married and were definitely only staying together for me. They never really fought, it was more of just not talking to each other when they didn't have to, and when they did, it was about work, money, or me. It wasn't really a shock when he left, especially when I think about it now, but it hurt a lot back then because both Mom and I thought he loved us. I often reminisce about her saying, "I knew we weren't perfect, but we were making it work!"

Mom and I don't talk about what happened when I was ten, but we know it happened, and we know she was a mess. I'm just glad she didn't pick up drinking as a hobby and let our lives go down a pit straight to hell. 

In seventh grade, around the time Clementine's family shit went down, we found out one of our friends had passed away. Her name was Neha Raj, and she was a Hindi girl in our class that sat next to us at lunch. She was a bubbly girl that loved makeup and wearing big hoop earrings and making sure all the boys had a crush on her at least once. As you can imagine, her beliefs were very contrary to mine in the terms of middle school drama. I didn't care if I had a boyfriend or if I was a popular kid, I just cared about my grades and that I still had friends, most importantly Clementine.

Neha's passing was a toll on all of us, especially because she died two weeks after her birthday, and I was invited to her party of exclusively ten of her closest friends (Clementine went as well). The year the two of us grew close, after knowing each other for seven, was the year she died.

It took a while for us to get over it, and we eventually did. Returning to school, it was a big topic about her death, about what had happened, about who she cared about most and what she thought about in her last moments. I thought it was an invasion of her privacy to wonder such things, but clearly some kids didn't care. I didn't mind if she didn't think about her friends at school, although I'm sure a lot of them popped into her head, since she seemed to care about that a lot. 

A couple days after the news of her death, it was revealed she had died in a house fire that had taken the lives of her entire family of eight people, except for her mother and youngest sister. I cried so much after hearing that.

Clementine and I spent a certain sleepover outside, sleeping in sleeping bags in her backyard or lying on her trampoline, staring at the sky and wondering where Neha fit into the stars in the sky. Would she be the brightest one, since she recently died? Would she be the pinkest one, since that was her favorite color? Would she be the smallest one, because she died when she was twelve years old? We talked about it, but just decided on one random star and called it Neha. Sometimes I would try to find Neha among the stars, but I never seemed to find her again.

"Olive, have you ever thought about liking girls?" Clementine asked me one day during lunch.

I wasn't really sure how to respond to the question. Being gay had never been something on my mind, as liking anyone had never been as well. "I don't know. Not really. I don't like anyone," I said, and we laughed a little. "You?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. I think I might. I think to me, it doesn't matter. It could be anyone I could fall in love with, it just depends on how I feel about them emotionally."

I nodded. I liked her answer. I didn't know how I felt about it myself, because the thought never occurred to me. Clementine seemed like someone who would like girls, though. She liked to flip through magazines and point out celebrities and say, "she's hot" randomly. She always rolled up her jeans and wore sweaters every day during fall and liked a lot of "gay" music. She also liked rainbows during summer and had this one rainbow flag in her pencil cup at home. I'm surprised I never realized it before she brought it up. "That makes sense," I decided to say.

"I found out my dad hates gay people. He said it's a sin and that it goes against the bible," Clementine told me. Her dad was very religious, and I think that added to the list of reasons as to why her dad and her mom got a divorce. When one person cares so little about sinning and religion, and the other does, it doesn't mix, especially not when they have three kids and can't choose whether to raise them Christian or not.

My eyes widened and I didn't know how to respond. "Oh. I'm sorry, Clem."

She sighed, spooning spaghetti into her mouth and swallowing intensely. I giggled slightly. "It's alright. I just won't tell him, and if I marry a girl, it's his choice whether he wants to come to our wedding or not. I love my dad, but I lost so much respect for him. He cares about God so much that God comes before family and his own daughter, and that he's ready to disown me even if he loves me just because of this."

"How do you know he feels this way?"

"Because he talks about it often. About how the words of God should come before anything else, and that if a loved one is committing a sin, we have to make sure they either stop or let go of them completely. I'm not going to fucking conversion therapy, so I guess I'll just continue living the rest of my life without a father. Oh wait, I've already kinda been doing that, since he isn't even my real dad. That will only make him care about me less."

"Don't worry, being dad-less isn't as bad as you think it is. You get over it soon."

"Ha, I guess you're right."

Clementine wanted two things when she went into high school - getting into an ivy league college and finding her real father. She said she wanted to meet him to ask him things, just to know who impregnated her mother who later birthed her. And the ivy league was self explanatory. She was a good student and naturally smart, and she had big dreams, especially career wise. I was never so lucky, and having not a lot of money only helped. My dream college was ASU or some shit, and luckily, the acceptance rate is way higher than Harvard.

I just never thought she'd be so sad if she didn't make it into those.

I got a call from Clementine. I was chilling at home, scrolling endlessly on my phone and preparing myself mentally for my upcoming job interview. Senior year of high school had just ended a month ago, meaning summer began. In order to stack up some money before college I was taking a gap year, getting a part time job so I could pay Mom off for my car and pay for school tuition. None of it was remotely easy.

Clementine had unfortunately not gotten into any college of her choice. No ivy league, and no college that was good enough to be ivy league but not ivy league. She wasn't even sure what she was going to do, because every university she applied to rejected her. I could understand why she was basically depressed. It mattered so much to her and she basically failed, not to mention her parents were very disappointed in her and she was figuring personal shit out too.

I picked up the phone. "Hey, Clem, what's up?"

"I... I just want to tell you that I love you. I always have, way more than a friend. And I know you probably aren't expecting this but I just needed to tell you before I go," she said.

I gulped. "What's going on? Where are you going?"

"I'm sorry that I can't do this anymore. My dad read my diary, he knows that I'm gay, that I'm in love with you and now he hates me. He kicked me out, and my mom doesn't want me because she's too busy with her newfangled family and two little sons who are my half brothers, and I'm scared no one cares about me anymore because I ruined our friendship and I basically don't have family. I can't go to my real dad because I don't even know who he is or where he is, and I can't just escape to university and restart my life because I didn't get into any. I don't have a car, I don't have a job, I have nowhere to go. I don't have a life anymore, Olive. So wouldn't it just be better to quit now before things can get worse?"

"What are you saying?!" I cried, my voice breaking out of fear of what she was going to tell me.

"I... I'm saying that I love you. I have and always will. And I hope that when you look at the stars at night, you can find me, and wonder what would have been if I-" She sobbed, not finishing her sentence. I was crying too, getting out of bed and pulling on my jacket. I threw shoes on and started to run outside, standing underneath the moonlight and the night sky. "I wish things could get better, but they just can't. I'm so sorry, Olive. I love you so much. I just never knew how to tell you. I never knew if you felt the same way, and I didn't think you did, so I never told you. I still think you don't."

"Please! Clementine! Please don't do this!"

Then she hung up.

The stars are a beautiful but cruel thing. Each star represents someone who has died. At least one person loves each star in the sky. I never had a star I really cared about. Sure, there was my grandmother who passed away when I was six, but I didn't really know her. Neha Raj died, and yes, I did care about her, but I didn't love her. I barely knew her. 

When I was eighteen, a star bloomed in the sky. Bright and glowing, illuminating the night sky more than any other star there. I stared for ages trying to find it, trying to find Clementine's star.

And now, I think I've found it.

"I miss you so much," I whisper, her name forming on my lips, but I can't push it out. It hurts too much to. I knew one day she'd be a star in the sky, but I didn't know which one of us would come first. I prayed it would be me, even if it sounds selfish. I didn't want to go through the pain of losing her and knowing she was somewhere out there without me. But it's not so bad, is it?

I point to a star, tinted pink, a little shape sitting next to a planet. I smile, thinking of her bright and big eyes and long hair that I would brush out every day at recess, her soft pink lips that I wanted so badly to kiss, but never realized it.

"I love you. I have and always will."