A Conversation Under the Stars

First Draft 7-6-09

“Eddie, is that you?” she asked incredulously in the supermarket.

 

I was lying on the floor, surrounded by bruised apples, left speechless. I scrambled to my feet, looking around at several customers now staring in my direction. A little girl was pointing and laughing. Her mother quickly pulled her away, stating that it was impolite to stare. From across the store, the manager was giving me his notorious “I’m this close to firing you” look.

 

My eyes quickly found her face. “Sam,” I said breathlessly. I hurriedly began gathering the permanently disfigured Galas into my employee smock, dumping them on the fruit display as the manager strode towards us.

 

“Edgar!” he barked. “What’s going on?” He surveyed the wreckage, muttering to himself. “This is the second time this week,” he said to me. “What have I told you about staying focused?”

 

I had been staying focused, intently stacking apples one by one to form a perfectly equilateral pyramid. Suddenly, I’d seen a flash, a single strand really, of unmistakable strawberry blond hair. The owner of the hair was ambling through the produce section aimlessly a mere few feet from me, and I’d stood with my mouth open, confounded. What would she be doing here? That couldn’t be her. But it was. That hair was too inimitable to belong to anyone else. She turned unexpectedly, and I whipped around so she wouldn’t recognize me, or notice my blatant ogling. I pretended to be busy looking for flaws in the fruit, pulling a particularly yellow apple from my perfectly constructed display. Unfortunately, this erratic movement had upset the entire fruit stand, sending my pyramid tumbling and crashing to the floor, taking me down with it.

 

My boss was now looking at me expectantly. “Sorry, Mr. Feeley,” I told him apologetically.

 

Mr. Feeley rubbed his temples and closed his eyes. I began a noisy endeavor to rearrange the apples. They wouldn’t stop rolling away from me, and several more fell to the tiled flooring. “Sorry,” I repeated.

 

He looked at me resignedly. Mr. Feeley could never fire me, as much as he wanted to. I think it’s because he thinks I’m pathetic and wouldn’t be able to get a job anywhere else. This may or may not be true. But Mr. Feeley is a good guy, the kind of manager who would give you a second—or third—chance. He patted me on the shoulder instead with a trace of awkwardness.

 

“Why don’t you take your break now?” he suggested. “In a little while, you can take over register four. Okay?”

 

I nodded, and Mr. Feeley smiled in the direction of Sam, who had been standing mutely between us the whole time. “Hello there, miss. Don’t forget to check out our buy-one-get-one-free deal on all cereal. Aisle eight.” Sam smiled in acknowledgement and waited for him to walk away. She stooped down and retrieved a fallen apple, handing it to me. I decided to hold onto it instead of putting it down and risking another calamity.

 

“So,” she asked, “What’ve you been up to, Eddie?”

-

 

Up until that moment, I hadn’t seen Samantha Bettle once since we were eighteen—which was seven years ago. Seven long years of wondering what she was doing, where she was, or if she ever thought of me. Six years of waiting. Months and months of being jobless. Weeks of being too afraid to find out where she was, if she was across the city or across the country. Three years since I’d sold my camera.

 

As I took in her beauty after seven agonizing years, it was like seeing her for the first time again. It was like recognizing someone from a very vague dream you’d had a very long time ago. She was striking.

 

Her iridescent hair, the most unique blend of a subdued fiery red and burnt orange, stopped just below her chin, with many layers from the top of her head to her jaw line. Her skin was evenly tanned. She was thin but muscled; wiry. An inch of midriff peeked out below the white tank top she wore. Her midsection was flat, toned, and smooth. My eyes glided down her body. Her legs were stick-like. Her knees were knobby, and her skin stretched tightly over them. As I reached her flip flop adorned feet, I saw dark blue nail polish on her toes.

 

I blinked. More accurately, I briefly closed my eyes, remembering in a burst of visual imagery my stored away version of how Sam looked seven years ago. I heard my breath escape as a sigh, relishing the memory of her flowing hair that used to cascade freely down her back.

 

I remembered the fullness and natural curvature of her thighs in a pair of jeans with holes in the knees. I relived the vivid but distant recollection of her softer hourglass torso pressing against me in an intimate embrace. As I reminisced, I longed and ached for the eighteen year old Samantha Bettle. Perhaps paler and with a less athletic physique, I missed the old Sam.

 

To anyone else, these changes in appearance were minor and perhaps only added to her sex appeal. But as I stood there dubiously, I got this odd, tightening sensation in my stomach. I felt anxiety, from being so close to her again. I felt the shock of seeing the last person you expected to see. And finally, I felt fear, that these slight alterations were devastating me so easily. That Sam’s presence could cause me so much rejoice and heartbreak all at once.

 

“Eddie?” Sam brought me down from the automated thoughts to my current reality, which was standing in a supermarket with a girl—no, now she was a woman—I’d known very, very briefly in high school.

 

“Yeah?” my voice came out as an over-eager squeak. Pull it together, man, I told myself. Come on.

 

“What’ve you been up to?” she repeated. “God, I haven’t seen you in ages!”

 

I was nodding my head rhythmically, robotically. “I’ve been, uh…well, I’ve done some…” I trailed off. I put my hand up to the back of my head, scratching my scalp where it didn’t even itch.

 

I took a deep breath. “You wanna go for a walk?” I suggested. “My breaks are usually thirty minutes, but I can probably get forty five out of it since more seems to get done when I’m-- not working.” I laughed hollowly.

 

She just said “sure” and nodded. I led her out the sliding glass doors, glancing back at her placid face. We walked outside into the humid air, covered in a blanket of grey clouds, as always.

 

We were side by side on the sidewalk. The plaza held a variety of different stores. There was a pizza place, a coffee shop, a video rental store, a Payless, and various other specialty stores and buildings sprinkled in the area.

 

“So how—?”

“What are you--?” we both asked questions at the same time. “You first,” I said. She considered. “No, you.”

“Okay. My question is… what are you doing here?”

 

She looked at me. “Me and my roommates came up for a beach trip. We always spend some time at the ocean after classes let out—that reminds me, they’re probably wondering where I am.” She scanned the sea of parked cars, biting her lip, then shrugged. “Mel’s probably just in the car making out with Chase, anyway,” she said dismissively, as though I possibly knew who these Mel and Chase people were. “I was in charge of getting food and sun block,” she added, gesturing back towards the grocery store.

“So…you went to college, then?”

“Yep. And in a couple years I’ll be a certified pharmacist.”

“ Pharmacist?”

“Yeah,” she said, as if it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. I stared at our feet as we walked, her flip flops slapping her heels. I was thinking of Sam’s father. Apparently she’d taken his advice to go to University, after all.

“So how did you end up here, of all places?” she asked me inquisitively. I stared at her for a moment, wondering if she was serious. I thought it would have been quite obvious.

 

She looked at me expectantly. “Oh, you know…just working. Saving money, I guess.” She nodded appreciatively. “That’s nice.” A short silence followed, swallowing up space between us.

 

When she spoke, she spoke quietly. “I can’t believe it’s been so long since we’ve been together.” Together bounced around the walls of my brain for a bit. “The time goes by so fast, doesn’t it?”

 

I stuck my hands in my pockets and lied. “Yeah, it does.”

-

 

Fifteen minutes later we were inside the coffee shop, having sought shelter from the sporadic bursts of rain that residents are used to but visitors are so inconvenienced by. Sam had ordered herself a latte, and I got myself a cup of water to have something to do besides twiddle my thumbs.

 

“You know, Sam, you’re really--” I couldn’t find the right word to express myself truly.

“What?” she asked.

I clicked my teeth together once. “Different. I guess.” I looked her in the eye when I said it, stupidly hoping that something would change in her expression.

 

“Really? You haven’t changed at all,” she countered, seemingly oblivious. “How is your photography going?” she added as an afterthought.

 

I put both hands around my plastic cup, gazing at it intently. “Oh, it’s been...just okay.” What would Sam think of me if she knew I sold my camera just to pay rent one month?

 

She was looking absently out the window. It was dark, and the rain pelted the parking lot, coming down in big, full droplets at an angle with the wind.

 

“Those pictures you sent me were great,” she said unexpectedly, in a way that reminded me of the old Sam. “You could always capture the beauty that wasn’t there for anyone else. The beauty only you could see.” She smiled faintly, sadly. I was sad with her.

 

“Sam, what happened?”

 

“What do you mean?” Her eyebrows inched down her forehead.

 

“Whatever happened to all those things you said that night?”

 

“What things? You mean after graduation?” She looked scornfully at the floor.

 

 “Yeah. You know, I almost thought, for a second, that maybe…maybe you meant what you said… about Seattle, and everything.”

 

“Seattle? What are you--?” she looked thoroughly perplexed.

 

“Come on, Sam, don’t you remember?” I felt unexplainable warmth, hovering under my cheeks.

 

Something registered in the features of her face. “You mean…oh, Eddie.” She reached for my hand across the table. Against my better judgment, I let her take it. To be touched by her skin was like letting bolts of lightening hit every one of my nerves.

 

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?  You were waiting for me.” Sam whispered.

 

“All this time?” She looked with a certain amount of guilt at my martyred face. I nodded solemnly, looking away from her. This time it was my turn to stare absently out the window of the coffee shop.

 

“I was eighteen. I didn’t know what I wanted back then. I never knew you would… Eddie, look at me. Please.”

 

Reluctantly, I did, if only for an instant. Then I watched the granite table fixedly for a while. “I’ve really come to like living here. I don’t mind the clouds so much anymore. I actually like the rain.”

 

More silence. In the short space of time between meeting Sam and saying goodbye, there had been fewer silences.

 

“Remember that promise we made?”  She remembered, I knew she did. But she didn’t want to, not with her new life in which she was a soon-to-be pharmacist with roommates and a pedicure.

 

 “I can’t believe I ever said that. I was so stupid..” She tried to laugh but it didn’t sound humorous, and a hint of nostalgia was in her voice.

 

I was struck with an idea that raised my hopes to an unnaturally high level. I motioned my head towards the other side of the window. “It’s never too late. How about it? Let’s go.”

 

“Eddie.”

 

 “What?”

 

“That was such a-- childish thing for me to say. I was…distraught that night. I said a lot of meaningless things.”

 

“And?”

 

“And it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve moved on. I’ve grown up.” She spoke with finality. I looked down at the tabletop again for a while as quiet settled around us.

 

Suddenly I stood up, my chair scraping against the floor noisily. I headed for the door. Sam sat in her chair. “Where are you going?” she asked, but I was across the room and out the door.  I walked briskly into the rain, eyeing her through the glass. She eventually left the shelter of the cafe, but stopped under the awning.

 

I stepped from the asphalt to the concrete. “Come with me.” I didn’t mean to plead with her, but I knew that I was, with my eyes at least.

 

“No. This is ridiculous.”

 

“Please?”

 

“Why? What do you want me to say? That things haven’t changed? That I’ve done nothing but pine away for you in the last what, six, seven years? Well, sorry Eddie, but I haven’t.”

 

“You promised,” I said simply.

 

“We’re not kids anymore. Besides, what difference does it make?”

 

I jumped out into the middle of the street.  In the middle of the rain, I spun recklessly, looking at the sky till it was no more than a grey and black vastness.

 

I stopped moving and watched her dizzily. “Don’t you see? It makes all the difference. Let’s go back, Sam. We’ll go to Kedalwing. We’ll go to our place and we’ll look at the stars and you’ll remember. You’ll be you again.”

 

“This is who I am! This is who I’ve always been. Going back to Kedalwing isn’t going to solve anything. We’re not seniors in high school anymore. For God’s sake, you’re twenty five years old! Why don’t you start acting like it?” she said angrily.

 

Rain dripped off the end of my nose and rolled off the top of my upper lip, landing in my mouth. My hair clung to my forehead. The world around me was blurred by deep disillusionment in the form of rain drops collecting on my eyelashes. For a few minutes, all we heard was the sound of rain pattering on the ground and cars driving through puddles.

 

“You told me you needed to search for something, that night,” I said.

 

“So?”

 

“So….I guess you’re telling me…that this is what you found?”

 

Sam stood beneath the canopy, arms hanging limp at her sides. She shrugged. “I guess.” I stared at her for a very, very long time, unabashedly, and she avoided my gaze. Without looking at me she said, “Sometimes you have to know when it’s time to let go. Sometimes you just have to grow up.”

 

She walked towards me slowly, put a palm on my cheek. It was light and timid and futile.

 

“I should go. But it was nice seeing you again, Edgar.” She embraced me, and her bony elbows dug into my sides. I smelled her hair, briefly. She’d changed her shampoo. “Sorry.” She scoured my eyes for sense, for commonality, maybe. She found nothing, nothing but an unrecognizable but familiar feeling, one she could no longer understand. “Bye.”

 

She walked away from me then, trying in vain to protect herself from the rain with her arms. She cut across the parking lot, running until a blue car door opened to let her in, to provide her shelter from the mounting storm. I turned away. I never did say goodbye.

 

I sat on the sidewalk and put my face in my knees, and I cried for the first time in quite a long time.

 

And of all the thoughts that passed through my mind at that time, the one that struck me the most was the notion that Samantha Bettle never had, and never would dance in the rain.

-

 

The first thing I did was quit my job. I don’t know why I did that.

 

The second thing I did was walk home in the rain, even though I could have easily taken the bus. I was still wearing my employee smock. I didn’t even think about giving it back to Mr. Feeley. I don’t know why I did that, either.

 

When I got home, I set up a darkroom in my cramped bathroom. Then I turned my bedroom upside down to find an old roll of negatives and some blank photo paper. I treated the film like it was hazardous material, positioning it circumspectly inside the enlarger, adjusting the size of the projection so it would fit on five by seven photo paper. I hesitated while standing in front of the “on” button of the enlarger light bulb. I almost stopped to ask myself what I was doing, but my finger depressed the button and the paper was exposed. I dipped it into the tray of developer, counting the minutes as the latent image began to appear. I didn’t look at it properly, not yet. The picture went through each bath of chemicals before I hung it up to dry. I took off my employee smock while I was waiting and took a shower in the dark.

 

I got on a bus and went back to the town where we grew up. My sense of direction is useless, so I know only my rapidly beating heart led me to the spot, with its overgrown oaks, untamed grasses and uneven terrain. I sat on a stump, holding back my emotions, not thinking, straight spined and stoic. It was quiet save for the birds that nested in the trees. Everything looked the same but the atmosphere was different. The magic was gone. It was nothing but blue, clear skies in Kedalwing. No rain, no clouds.

 

I closed my eyes and went back in time.

-

 

I arrived, panting, on the night of my high school graduation. Wrapped in the arms of the trees and concealed grassy fields, I felt like I could breathe again. So I did. For a long time, all I focused on was breathing, slowly, in and out. I inhaled oxygen and expelled carbon dioxide while the trees did the opposite. I felt the harmony occurring between us, the trees and I, breathing together in our mutual relationship. This was why people had never got along well. We all breathed oxygen. We all were looking for the same thing, and so we had nothing to give each other. Our relationship was mutually unbeneficial.

 

I had the urge to approach the nearest plant life and embrace it. I kind of wished I was a plant myself. I just wanted things to be simpler. Half-sitting, half-falling to the ground, I thought about the past few hours and how I’d gotten here.

 

I thought briefly of my graduation, all-American and completely unremarkable in its clichés. We wore blue and golden robes and itched in them. There was at least one crying person in every square foot of space in the gym. Families and extended families sat in the bleachers, sneaking in blow horns and clapping loudly even though they had been asked to remain courteous and hold their applause until all the graduates’ names had been called.

 

Principal Hanley talked about the future using metaphors. The salutatorian thanked their family, friends, and teachers. The valedictorian talked about the past four years and all its hard work., and the salutatorian looked bitter when the valedictorian got a standing ovation.

 

Meanwhile, I’d felt apathetic. Okay, maybe not apathetic—just uninvolved. I felt more like I belonged up in the bleachers, watching someone else’s graduation unfold. Nothing felt real and no one’s speeches seemed to pertain to me at all. As I walked across the stage after shaking several administrators’ hands, my diploma felt like just a piece of paper in my hand, nothing more, nothing less.

 

Now I was here, sitting in the damp grass, reflecting and wishing that I was a tree. Things felt odd.

 

People were talking about the future, and I wasn’t ready for it. The time for college applications had come and gone. Everyone was moving away from home or soaking up their last bit of childhood freedom before fall came and a new part of their lives began.

 

And I was here, sitting in the damp grass, reflecting and wishing that I was a tree.

 

I really wasn’t surprised, per se, to find myself sitting in this patch of damp grass. It had long been a place of refuge, a place for thinking and mulling things over. My perverse desire to be rooted to in the earth just so I wouldn’t have to live my life wasn’t exactly normal, by most standards, but it was the kind of thing I’d think about here.

 

I took my camera on its strap from around my neck and adjusted the aperture opening and shutter speed. There wasn’t much light left, but I figured I might be able to get a few shots of the summer leaves in shadow, or the sunset peaking from behind a break in the densely grown oaks. I twisted the focusing ring so that everything was sharp. I was playing with the zoom when something moved in the viewfinder.

 

It stumbled through the trees and tripped and that’s when I stopped looking at it through my camera lens. I heard it let out a little sob and decided it was a girl. I also decided that I was afraid of girls, crying ones especially, and hid behind the nearest tree, hoping she might go away. But she didn’t. She did eventually stop crying, though, and sat up.

 

 I took my chances and backed away slowly. Unfortunately, this is when my sneakered shoes betrayed me and came down on a miniscule twig in just the right manner so that a resounding snap echoed across the vicinity.

 

I froze.

 

She looked up, through the trees, and right at me. I suddenly recognized her from earlier that day. I’d noticed her detached and emotionless expression fairly easily among the other crying faces of our peers.

 

“Uh, sorry.” I said quickly, turning to leave.

 

“No, don’t leave…on account of me, or anything. I didn’t know you were there.” She stood. “Um…how much of that did you see?” she asked, biting her lip.

 

This was when I properly saw her for the first time. Though it was dark, her hair shone in the light of the emerging moon. Was it red? Was it orange? Was it even natural? It coursed to her elbows. She was round and soft in various places on her body. All the right places.

 

“I—I didn’t see, er, I didn’t really try to notice…” I turned a little more in the opposite direction.

 

She nodded. “Oh.”

 

“Sorry I invaded your privacy,” I said meekly, inching away.

 

“No, it’s fine. I just—I didn’t know anyone else ever came here. It’s kind of like a sanctuary, for me. I’ve been coming here since I was ten.” This seemed to invite conversation, but I decided resolutely that getting out of here was my only chance of survival.

 

“Twelve,” I said, pointing to myself. “I didn’t know anyone else came here, either. Sometimes I come here every day.”

 

“Really?”

 

I nodded fervently, wondering why I had just shared this deeply personal fact with a (rather beautiful) stranger.

 

“That’s weird…you’d think we would have run into each other by now. I spent most of high school under that tree.” She pointed to an oak normally undistinguishable among the others.

 

“Yeah…weird.” Silence.  “I’ll just…go now,” I wanted to get away, and fast.

 

“No! I was the one who barged in. Stay.” I stopped, frozen again.“Come out of there, so I can see you.”

 

I emerged from behind the trees, and she surveyed me from head to toe. She seemed to be thinking about whether or not to say something. “I came here because I had a fight with my dad. I always come here when I’m upset.” She looked at me with piercing eyes, challenging me.

 

“I…come here when I need to think. I needed to think tonight.” Briefly I wondered what had possessed me to say such a thing, and then I met her gaze again, and knew immediately what had possessed me to say such a thing.

 

She nodded, looking down at her bare toes. “My dad wants me to go to college. He thinks I should be an accountant. He’s been bugging me for months, and tonight he brought it up again.” She laughed. “I threw my plate across the dinner table.”

 

What do you say to a person who tells that kind of a story?

 

“I’m Edgar Tavera. Or Eddie, whichever.” I ventured, bridging the gap between us so we could talk more quietly.

 

“Samantha Bettle. You can just call me Sam.” She looked around. “So, what are you doing here? What’s your story?”

 

I shrugged. “Dunno.” At least it was honest. Sam seemed to recognize this.

 

“Do you want to sit down?”

 

“Okay.”

 

We sat under the oak tree next to each other and I stared at her dirt and grass-stained knees. When I looked up, she was staring at my face, and we stared at each other’s faces for some amount of time that I couldn’t measure appropriately. Then we looked away.

 

“What’s with the camera?” she inquired, contemplating the piece of equipment hanging around my neck. I had forgotten it was there.

 

“Oh yeah. I’m a photographer.” I fiddled with a few buttons. “Not officially, or anything, but I want to be, eventually.” She contemplated it some more. “I’m not going to college, either,” I added bravely.

 

Sam looked surprised, and then not surprised. “When did you start taking pictures?” she pursued.

 

I had to think. The truth was that I couldn’t really remember. “I’m not sure. It feels like I’ve been taking pictures my whole life. But I got a camera when I was fourteen.”

 

“What do you like to photograph?”

 

“Everything.” I shrugged, looking down at her knees again. “You know, sometimes I feel like it’s more than just capturing the moment. It’s like finding the moment when you couldn’t see it before. It’s sorting out what makes sense and what doesn’t. It’s weird, I know, but…why am I telling you all this?”

 

“I don’t know. Why am I sitting next to you?”

 

“Because you asked me to.” I looked at her quizzically.

 

She glanced up. “How often do you look at the stars, Eddie?”

 

“Well…sparingly, to be honest.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because they’re so far away. What’s the point?”

 

Sam shrugged.

 

 “You know, some of the stars are already gone. We just don’t know it, because it takes that long for light to travel.” I glanced in her direction pointedly. “It just seems cruel, to look at and long for something that beautiful when it’s not even there anymore.”

 

“But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s beautiful, does it?” She glanced at me, equally pointedly. She suddenly readjusted herself to lie on the ground, hands supporting her head and elbows facing outward. She looked at me playfully, patting the grassy, cold earth. “I dare you.”

 

With mounting befuddlement, I tentatively lay beside her. The ground was not as cold as I thought it would be.

 

“Now, look up, and don’t say anything.” she instructed. So I did. I looked up, and one by one the darkened sky filled with sparkling, teasing circles of radiance, winking at me from afar. “Isn’t that awe-inspiring? Doesn’t it just…make you want to do something?” she asked after a while.

 

“Like what?” I said skeptically.

 

“Anything. Anything you’ve never done before or never thought you could do.”

 

“You sound like a motivational speaker.”

 

“And you sound like a cynical old man,” she said matter-of-factly. “Just admit that you like looking. Everyone does.”

 

“Fine. I like looking at the stars. They’re very… bright. What do you like about them so much, anyway?”

 

Sam spoke quietly. “What don’t I like about them?” she shook her head. “They give me hope. They make me look at the big picture, and I don’t even know what the big picture is. I think it’s more of the night sky that I love. Especially when it’s cloudy.”

 

“Why? You can’t see anything when it’s cloudy.”

 

“It’s not just the stars. The night…I don’t know, it reveals something about people. It exposes us in a way that the sun can’t.”

 

I felt a lump rise in my throat. I suddenly felt hot lying on my back so close to her body.

 

“What does it reveal about me?” I asked jokingly, only it didn’t end up sounding like a joke.

 

She didn’t look away from the sky. “Hmm.”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“I’m thinking.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“You’re looking for something beautiful, like in your photos, but maybe you haven’t seen anything worth taking a picture of in a while. You’re looking too hard, maybe.”

 

I listened as my soul was verbally exposed. “And what does the sky say about you?”

 

“Me? I don’t know. I guess it says I’m…disenchanted with the world. I always want to be where I’ m not. I never want to be where I am.”

 

“Disenchanted with the world?”

 

 “I don’t know,” she repeated, “Maybe I’m just being stupid.” There was an obvious need for a subject change.

 

 “Eddie,” she said abruptly, earnestly. “Do you believe in God?”

 

I hated it when people asked me this question. Mostly because the answer always felt like it was changing. “No. I mean, sometimes. Kind of….well, I used to.”

 

“Did something happen to you?” she asked.

 

“No,” I said indifferently.

 

“Well, then why don’t believe in God?”

 

“Because…” I trailed off. I really, really hated this question in conversations. Sam didn’t say anything, but the air was paused, and I knew she wouldn’t pursue any further until I gave my answer. I took a deep breath and looked her in the face.

 

“I could ask you the same thing about why you believe in God,” I pointed out.

 

“Aha—but I never told you I believe in God, did I? I just asked you.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

 

“Well, it’s a lot of things, really. I mean, look at what religion has done to us. It’s brought more wars than peace. It’s made people elitist and discouraged diversity and oneness, you know? I mean, everyone believes that they’re special and that all other religions are going to hell. How can they all be the only word of God? It just doesn’t make sense. How could we have all the answers, anyway? It’s totally illogical. Besides, what kind of God would let so many innocent people die and so many b******s go free? Sorry for ranting, I just--”

 

Sam put her hand over mine briefly and drew it away just as quickly.  My skin burned and I had the urge to look down at it.

 

“No. It’s okay.”

 

I looked at her tentatively. “What about you? Do you believe in God?”

 

She clapped her hands on her thighs. “That’s just it. I have absolutely no clue. But strangely…I’m okay with that. With not ever knowing if there’s a God.” She glanced down at her hands. “I just always like to see what other people think. It’s interesting.”

 

I thought about this. “When I was little, we used to read little verses in Sunday school. I always got in trouble for asking too many questions.” I picked at a stray thread on my jeans. “I figured that if there was a God, he’d want us to ask questions. He’d want us to find out things for ourselves.”

 

She nodded. “That makes a lot of sense.”

 

“That’s about as much sense as I can make of it.”

 

“I know.”

 

“How do you know? How long have I known you, anyway? A minute? An hour?”

 

“I don’t know—I don’t know how late it is. But I already feel like you know me better than anyone else.”

 

 “I like mountains,” I said idiotically after a few minutes.

 

“What?”

 

“Mountains. The same way you like stars, I like mountains. That’s probably kinda stupid, too. But it’s true.”

 

 “Why do you like mountains?”

 

I shrugged. “They’re big.”

 

“You like mountains…because they’re big?”

 

 “Well…I mean, it’s not just that. I’ve always been drawn to them. Maybe it’s their sheer distance from us, taunting, kind of like your stars…but also, the magnitude of their closeness, intruding on our small little lives every day, just by being there. It’s like, they’ve existed for billions of years, and they’ll still be there when I die, for billions more years. I don’t know. It gives me a little perspective on things.”

 

There was silence next to me and I wondered if I’d just made things awkward. But then she said something.

 

“Wow. That was very deep.”

 

“To be honest, I have no idea where it came from.” I turned to face her, propping my head on my elbow. She did, too. “Would it be okay…” I began, ruffling a few blades of grass with my fingers, “..Can I take your picture?” Surprise, followed by hesitation crossed her face.

 

“Um, sure, why not?”

 

The light wasn’t perfect. I knew the exposure would be bad, her face draped in shadows like that. She didn’t fidget as I looked through the lens, didn’t try to rearrange her limbs or her hair. She just looked into the camera, unsmiling and ambiguous. The shutter closed and opened in a fraction of a second, light penetrating the film and preserving a single moment in time. I shivered involuntarily.

 

“You are really, very beautiful. This picture is going to be amazing.”

 

She shrugged nonchalantly. “You’re the one who found the beauty. You took the picture.” Her gaze wandered back up to the sky, and my palms broke out in a mid-June sweat.

 

“Sam, I have to say this. I’m very attracted to you. I don’t know what it is. I mean, I must have seen you at school before. I recognized you today, even. But I never saw you like this until now. I can’t explain it. I don’t even have words…”

 

“I know.” she said, smiling up at the stars. “It’s like I’ve known you all my life, or something. Trust me, I was attracted to you the first moment I noticed you hiding behind a tree.” Her laugh echoed into the night air, but her smile faded. “But I can’t let myself fall for you, not right now, anyway.” She looked at me apologetically.

 

I chewed on the inside of my cheeks mutely.

 

“Eddie, if I could run away with you right now I think I would, but I can’t. I need some time to be out in the world…on my own. Thing is, I’m still searching for something. I don’t even really know what it is, but I need to know that I can be independent. You know?”

 

I nodded furtively, even though I didn’t know. All I knew was that I wanted to hold her close to me. “Well, you know, I’ll wait for you, if you want.”

 

“Thanks,” she said simply. She extended her palm, face up, and put it in my hand, wrapping it around hers tightly. We looked at the sky a while. Then she spoke. “What do you want to do with your life?”

 

“Oh I don’t know. Live it, I suppose.”

 

“No, really.”

 

“Really, that’s what I wanna do. Live. The rest doesn’t matter yet.”

 

“Really?”

 

“I think so,” I said. “Where do you think you’ll go, I mean, now that school is over?”

 

She smiled to herself. “Well, I have this crazy dream, actually. You ever been to Washington state?”

 

I shook my head. “No. Doesn’t it rain a lot there?”

 

“Exactly. It’s overcast 250 days a year. One day, I want to go there.  I want to go to the ocean and go to Seattle and….” her voice faded out.

 

“And what?”

 

“I don’t know. Get my own little apartment…. dance in the rain.”

 

“Dance in the rain?”

 

“I told you it was crazy. It’s silly, I know, but--”

 

“Can I dance with you? In the rain, I mean.”

 

She was taken aback, but then she just put her lips together and smiled. “Of course. We’ll get head colds together.”

 

“Promise?”

 

“Promise.”

 

“It’s a deal, then.” Her fingers melded into mine until I couldn’t tell whose hands were whose.

 

“I swear, Eddie, once I’ve figured out who I am, I’ll find you. You’ll probably be some legendary photographer by then and won’t even remember me, but I’ll find you.”

 

“I highly doubt ever forgetting you, Sam.”

 

“Who knows? All I know is I want to see you again. Someday.”

 

“How long do you think--?” I started, but she shushed me.

 

“I don’t know. All we have right now is, well, now. We should make the best of it.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess we should.”

 

For a really long time after that we lay side by side with our hands entwined, and we did absolutely nothing but stare up at the stars. I don’t know how long we were there, just that it could never be long enough.

 

We lay beneath the starlight on our backs, and the stars revealed us to each other. They stripped us down to our naked souls. And when that happened, I came to realize how similar two souls can be. How two souls can become one. How maybe, just maybe, humans really did have something to give to each other. That night, at least, I was happy to be a human and not a tree.

 

A million different, possibly extinct stars looked down upon us that night. They twinkled and they taunted, but Sam was right. No matter how many millions of light years separated us from the stars, they were still beautiful. And even though I was aware that night that I may not see Sam for a very long time, I knew the many miles that would separate us would not make her any less beautiful.

 

We fell asleep that night in each other’s arms, with only the oaks and the moon to bear witness. We fell asleep with nothing but a promise between us, in the little crevice between my chest and hers.

-

 

I opened my eyes, seven years later.

 

Getting to my feet slowly, I pulled a black and white photograph out of my pocket. It was a little crinkly. Without looking at the unreadable face on the photo paper, I laid it down on the old tree stump. It wouldn’t lay flat and would probably blow away as soon as the breeze picked up. But I didn’t really care.

 

I shoved my hands in my pockets and walked away. I left Kedalwing with nothing but what was left of an old promise and the intangible memory of one deep and unforgettable

 

conversation under the stars.