Soda Bottle Stars

Questions sometimes lead to more questions than answers...

“Where do you think all the stars come from, Beth?”

Peering over my Calculus book, I see Anne lying on the bed looking at the ceiling. “Anne, we are supposed to be studying math now. We have a huge test tomorrow.”

“I know,” she wines, stretching her hands back behind her. She points to her ceiling. “I am just curious " they’re just so pretty. I’d love to focus on them instead of math.”

I raise my eyebrow and look to where she is pointing. Attached to her ceiling are almost a hundred glow-in-the-dark stars of various shapes and colors. I recognize a few of the constellations hiding amongst the pattern. “Impressive. You know, if you wanted to go into astronomy math is crucial. You should come study.”

She huffs and rolls onto her stomach to face me. “You are so boring. C’mon, you’ve been taking science longer than me. Where do stars come from?”

I frown. “If you have such interest in stars, why have you never researched them?”

“I was afraid it would ruin them for me. You know, to know the actual science behind it.” She rolls over to face me. “Not knowing makes them so mysterious.”

“Then do you really want me to tell you?” I smile. Anne has always been something of a romantic about things. It is one of the things I love/hate about her.

She smiles at me. “I think so. I’ve been wondering for so long.”

“If I tell you, will you finally come study? You need to do well tomorrow.”

Nodding furiously, she re-positions herself to be sitting cross-legged on the bed.

“Ok. So, all the stars and planets in all the universes originally came to be with an event called the “big bang”. What happened was that all of the matter was concentrated in a small area. It was incredibly unstable and all the matter began to expand outward exponentially. This generated intense heat causing shifts in the makeup of the atoms. As cooling began, the basis of the elements known today began to form. Dense pockets of matter that were scattered about attracted other nearby matter and condensed into the planets, galaxies, and stars we know today. Some of the stars we see in the sky no longer exist, but it takes so long for its light to reach us that we just don’t know it yet.”

She is quiet for a few moments. She frowns, looking as if she is about to say something, but instead rises and joins me over at the table. I resume going through the practice problems, stealing glances now and then at her. I know the conversation is not over. I can tell by the way she is tapping her pencil against her textbook.

“Is that really what happened?”

I knew it. “What the big bang? That is the prevailing theory, but it is almost impossible to prove how everything happened since we couldn’t see it.”

“I don’t think that’s what happened,” she declares, getting up and walking over to her desk.

I put my pencil down and look at her. “What do you think happened then?”

She stops for a moment, looking through items and drawers on her desk. Apparently not seeing anything she likes, Anne walks towards her bookshelf. Amongst the many books on romance and delicate figurines she pulls out a soda bottle filled with glitter.

“What is that?”

She walks towards me, holding it up. “Well, if all of that matter was concentrated somewhere, what was holding it in? Why not a glass bottle?”

“A glass bottle?”

“Yes. And something knocked it over.” She swings the bottle in an arc, causing glitter to fly everywhere. At first I want to yell, that is going to make such a huge mess. But seeing the light catching the different colors of the glitter and seeing the air shimmer silenced me. I can see individual specs of glitter amongst the cloud. Some of them make it over to the table where I am sitting. My notes get covered in blues and greens and dotted with reds.

“That is what I am going to picture. The glitter expanded through the air, no? The only thing it didn’t do was condense into balls of glitter.”

Everything has a fine shimmer to it thanks to the sunlight coming through the window. The area around her bed is mostly reds and yellows while her desk has turned blue. “Actually there do seem to be gatherings of like colors around the room. Anyway, we should start cleaning this up Anne. It’s going to take forever and we still have to study.”

She scowls. “That’s all you have to say?”

“It’s beautiful. I wish I could see the world like you do.”

“This is a start,” She says, gesturing to the room. “There is more to life than school you know.”

“I know,” I sigh, resting my head on my book. “I just want to be able to get into a great science school in the future and that means doing well now.”

She reaches down and picks up a handful of glitter. “You will. You are the smartest person I know.”

I smile and stand to help her start cleaning. As I kneel down and scoop my first handful of glitter, I look up to see her still staring at me holding glitter. I feel a blush rising up my neck from the look.

“What are you looking at? If we don’t clean this your mother will kill you!”

She walks over to me and dumps the glitter on my head. Before I can protest, she is grabbing my hand and smirking. “Dance with me.”

My jaw drops. “Anne, what are you"“

“Dance with me.”

She pulls me up and reaches for my other hand. I’m too shocked to do anything except offer it. We twirl through the pockets of glitter, our long skirts kicking it up into the air. I gasp as she laughs, spinning us faster. The glitter she put on my head fans out with my hair. The colors blur together yet seem more intense the faster we go. It feels as if we are really dancing in the stars.

“Look Beth! We are making our own galaxy!” She exclaims, looking around as we go.

I laugh as I answer. “Our own star system born from a soda bottle.”

We spin and twirl until the light is no longer shining into the room.

The two of us begin gathering up the glitter in silence. I go to put a handful into a bin when Anne calls out to stop me.

“No! We have to save it. We put all our energy into creating this galaxy and now we will preserve it.”

“I don’t think you can collapse a galaxy once you create it and have it be the same,” I respond as I drop the glitter back into the glass. She sulks, coming over with her own handful.

“We can. We created the chaos and now we are establishing order pulling them into orbits.” She drops the glitter in. “We were the supernova that reclaimed the stars.”

I don’t know what is wrong with me. I can’t stop myself. “There is usually heat and an explosion involved in a supernova.”

She rolls her eyes, then grins wildly and leans close. “Is there now? I think I know how to create that.”

“How"“

I don’t have a chance to vocalize the thought before her lips are on mine.

I think I need to start paying more attention to the stars. 

Author's Note

What does everyone think? If you have any suggestions/comments feel free to leave them.