Shooting Stars

We arrived up North just as the May sunset was starting to set in. It was our last real chance we were going to have before senior year was over to just hang out, considering AP tests were coming up soon for Quinn. We hadn’t been expecting to get there until after dark, so the light was a pleasant addition to the unpacking process. The car ride was when I was hoping to talk to him, just establish what I should expect for a year from now, after we’ve both completed a year of college. Will we be the same people? Will we have the same friends? Will we still even be friends? We had more of a jam sesh in the car than a deep emotional talk, but I figured at some point that week I could get around to breaching the topic.

We were unloading our stuff, making sure that everything was put into its spot for the week to come, when Quinn shouted, “Hey, Felix, come look at this!” He was standing at the door to the back porch, looking across the small lake with a forest on the other side that comprised the backyard of the cabin. There were some clouds in the sky, but instead of breaking the beautiful picture, they made the scene even more perfect. As the sun was setting, it had turned the sky a gorgeous shade of pink, highlighting the undersides of the clouds, making them look even more like cotton balls than the flat grey puffs that they usually appear as, as though drawn onto a page instead of into the sky. There was one ray of light that was a deep shade of pink that looked kind of like an alien beam, cutting over the trees, illuminating just the tops to look as though fire was spreading across the canopy of the northern woods that surrounded us. We stood there until the brilliant colors of the sunset faded, giving way to the more muted hues of twilight.

Quinn looked back down from the sky towards me. “Dude, that was amazing. Like, that was a special thing nature did right there with that sunset and we witnessed it. Like, there are so many people who just missed that because they were at work, or on the other side of the world. But like we just saw it, and there are probably a bunch of other people who paused their lives for like two minutes to watch that awesome sunset. Doesn’t that make you feel like you did something cool and important today?”

I looked away from where the now set sun was turning the clouds purple, straining to keep a few snarky quips inside about the comment on seeing things from different places, knowing he would just ignore the start of that conversation entirely. He didn’t want to talk about next year, but I was going to make him. “Q. Dude. Did you pack some shit you didn’t tell me about and now you’re not sharing? Lighten up. We’ve got plenty of time for all that life shit later. Alright? Now help me unpack the food, ‘cause I am starving.”

----

“Dude. Look at that star. It creates like a zigzag pattern with those other stars. God, they are so amazing out here,” he said, startling me from the beginnings of sleep that had begun to overtake me. We were laying out on the soft fabric of an old quilt, staring straight up, eyes wide open with fascination.

I looked up at the summer night sky, but felt as though the stars looked the same as they did in the city, even if there might be a few more filling the empty spaces that there weren’t before. “Yeah man, sure. If you say so.” I never understood why he was always Mr. Space or whatever, always trying to know everything about the latest thing happening up in the universe, but I guess everyone has their plans for life. I just don’t get how people get paid for looking up at the stars and saying ‘Yup, stars. They glow,’ or whatever they do. But, if that’s really all astronomers do, then Quinn was really gonna rake in the cash in the future. But then again, isn’t that what smart people who go to good colleges are supposed to do? Rake in the cash? Cause that sure as hell wasn’t gonna be me.

I felt the quilt shift as he propped himself up on his side to look at me. “Seriously, man? Are you still that ignorant? Okay, lie down and don’t fall asleep for once. I’m serious. Actually look at the sky, not the backs of your eyelids.” I layed down, and actually tried to do what he said for once. There was no point starting out the week at the cabin on a bad note. He scooted a little closer to me so I could see what stars he was actually pointing at. “Okay, now look over there. See that blueish one, that’s kinda bigger than the rest? Yeah, now look just below it.”

I looked at the star he was pointing at, and then looked below it to see that a clump of much smaller stars was positioned right below that larger star. They created what kind of looked like the five-point star you would draw versus the actual stars that looked more like dots that were lighting up the sky above us. “They look like a star. Like, the five-point kind you draw when you’re grading someone’s paper in class and they get the question right.”

He was silent for a moment, so I looked over at him. He seemed to be thinking, but I couldn’t tell what exactly. Probably that I was a complete idiot, maybe that he should never have tried to show me this, maybe that I would never understand the complexities of stargazing. If not those, then probably something like ‘Why am I friends with such a fucking idiot, Jesus Christ.’ “You’re right.” It took me a second to realize he was referencing what I had said about the stars creating a star, not simply declaring the obvious. He looked at me and said, “The stars create a star. I never really noticed that before, and those are some of my favorite stars.”

“Ha ha, look who’s the smart one now, Mr Yale. How are those your favorite stars? How do you even have favorite stars?” I interrupted, figuring all stars are kind of the same when you get down to it, all just space matter and light.

He ignored my college comment, but sat up and looked down to show me a face that was filled with shock and astonishment, and I could tell that I was in for some sort of deep speech about the nature of the universe, and laid my head back down, just looking up instead of looking at him. “How do you not have favorite stars? Each star is different. So I like to think of them all as people. Now don’t interrupt me, just hear me out. And no, I’m not high, but also if you wanna check later I think I still have a stash in my room from last summer. But think about it.” He layed back down on the quilt, so he too was staring straight up at the stars. “There are billions of different stars out there in the universe. New stars are being created all the time, we just can’t see them. In the same way, stars are dying all the time, just like people. We just don’t know about it - or frankly even care - until it impacts us, because since these stars are so far away, it takes years for us to even know that they’re dead.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah but I said don’t interrupt. I think I read somewhere - so this totally could be wrong - that like 60% of the stars we see have already died. And I mean, if you think about like what we learn on the news and stuff, a lot of it is about dead people. Everything kind of has to do with people and things that are already dead. The planet is dying, people are dying, ya know? Now the thing about the stars is that the normal person doesn’t actually know which ones are dead and which ones are still burning. Now, I think people are pretty often the same way. Just because they are walking around and moving and breathing doesn’t mean they’re really living, it just means they existed at least some point. Whether they’re still alive is very dependent on how the person approaches things. Like people are alive kind of if they want. If you just kind of float around and never actually do anything at all with your life and your time on this planet, how can a person truly define that as living? But like also, you can try as hard as you want and still make no effect on the world. Those tiny little stars are all people. So like in the city-"

"Okay, let's review before you keep going. People are stars. So I think what you're gonna say is that in the city, we don't see as many stars because less people have distinct lives that you can see over everyone else. People are just a blur, you don’t know everyone but they’re still there. But when you leave the hustle and bustle of the city, you begin to appreciate how many different stars there are, because you can see more of them. Because there are more people that have different jobs and without a variety of jobs our lives wouldn’t exist, and so it’s the same thing about stars. Right?" I figured if I let him ramble without interruption for too long, he'd end up talking about something else equally obscure and unrelated, and then he’d lose me completely, at least when talking about stars. I still knew that this week was the week I was going to have to bring college up to him. It was a miracle I was still understanding the gist of what he was even saying, considering his big brain vocab and my…. Not. I’d never admit it to him, but it was times like this that I knew I was going to miss once we left for college. Times where I could just let the words happen, and even if I didn’t understand them all - or at all - it was nice to just hear him talk about something where he was just so knowledgeable.

"Exactly! So everyone has like their own little representation, but without any of them, there would be pieces missing from the giant mural that is the sky. But also, new stars fade in and out all the time. And that’s how life goes on all around us. The sky is changing all the time, and so are the people around us. By the time we get really old, the earth will be filled with all sorts of people who aren’t here yet. And like we can’t do shit in the face of life to change that. We’re super fragile and that’s how the universe decided to make it.”

“You know, that’s kinda morbid. And depressing. And pessimistic,” I interjected again, trying to keep him on topic but failing miserably.

“It’s like that one Disney song or Hannah Montana or someone sang. ‘Life’s what you make it, so let’s make it right.’” He was never going to make it onto Broadway with singing like that. “Like literally if you wanna become the North Star - who is like, Obama, or Tim Burton, or the Dalai Lama, or someone else ridiculously famous - you have to try. I mean, that’s not how stars work in the sky, but that’s how it works with people. Try really damn hard and you go from the tiny little stars I pointed out earlier to the North Star.”

We sat there for a little while in the near silence, only the noises of the woods and our breathing to remind us that time hadn't stopped, staring up into the vast expanse of space, thinking about what Quinn had just said. It wasn’t the first time he had rambled on like this either. That was how we’d even become friends a couple years ago, at the beginning of high school. I sat down in astronomy class in the only open seat that was left, next to this random guy who showed up to the first day of class wearing a space sweatshirt, like who even does that. We were both freshmen, so neither of us really knew what was going on, but we both pretended that we did. Or at least, I pretended. As the class went on I realized how smart the guy I had sat next to really was. Like, ‘everyone else wanted to cheat off of his tests but I was the one who actually sat next to him so he’s really the only reason I passed the class’ kind of smart. And yet he never even acted like it. And when our teacher had asked if anyone had ever been up north to see the northern lights, he shared some story about how his parents had taken him on a trip to Alaska in eighth grade so that they could see the northern lights, and he pulled out some pictures that his parents had taken, and that was just after I had started hanging out at his house after school sometimes, and I realized that maybe I had found the cool person to actually hang out with. Or the way he had gone on about his acceptance to Yale, talking about how that had always been his dream school, when I was slated to go to the U of M if I was lucky. We’d been best friends ever since that first day of high school, but now it seemed as if our time together was almost like a dying star, with college pressing down on us. Or maybe a shooting star? What would a shooting star be?

After a little while, he stood up and stretched. “Well, I think that’s enough stargazing for tonight. We still have the rest of the week, right? Let’s go inside before it gets cold.”

I looked up at him, still reeling from our earlier conversation about the nature of stars and the universe and how each of us is really just a tiny star in a clump. “Hold on, when you said -”

“Inside? Come on. If we’re going biking tomorrow, we want to have had enough sleep,” he interrupted, sticking his hand out and pulling me up from the quilt before grabbing it off the ground. I was still giving him a look, confused as to how he could recover so quickly from such a crazy conversation. “Felix, if you want to keep talking about this, great. I honestly love it. There’s a first time for everything and I guess that includes your best friend actually being interested in what you have to say every once in a while. You know what else I love? Sleep. Let’s go.”

I took one last look up at the sky, just in time to see a star dart its way in front of the others. ‘Shooting stars must be pretty lonely’ was the thought that jumped into my head as we went inside.

----

Once we got inside, Quinn put on some water to make some hot cocoa while I searched for the packets in the plethora of food that we brought. As if two 18 year old guys were gonna be able to survive off of whatever his parents had left up here for us the weekend before. It was honestly shocking enough that they were even willing to let the two of us come up here on our own, but Quinn’s parents were the kind of borderline-hippie, all around cool parents who let their kid do whatever and go wherever.

“Alright. So. If stars are regular people, and really bright stars are really famous people, then what are shooting stars?”

“What?”

“If we’re going for this whole ‘society in space’ metaphor, then what are shooting stars? How do they fit into everything?”

Quinn looked over at the breakfast bar where I was spreading out various packages of chips, granola, macaroni, cookies, and all other required snacking items for a week up at the cabin. “So like, what kind of people are shooting stars?”

I threw the box of hot chocolate at him. “Yeah. You’re the one with all the deep insights tonight. Lay it on me, bro.”

He was quiet, thinking while he found mugs to put the hot cocoa in, and poured the powder and then the hot water into them. He dug out the spoons from the drawer on the other side of the bar from me, and leaned on the bar across from me. “It’s a good question. I’d say missed opportunities.”

I looked at him. Weren’t we still talking about people? “That’s not a person.”

“You can have people who are missed opportunities. Like people you should’ve been friends with, or the people where you realize way later that they were flirting with you the entire time and you just never noticed, even though you liked them back. Or it could be a job you should’ve taken but didn’t. A trip with friends you thought about but never did. All sorts of missed opportunities.”

I realized that some of his statements - if not all of them - were already talking about us and our friends, so I figured I might as well just keep the insult-to-injury ball rolling. “You mean like not getting into the school you really wanted to get into?” I asked, knowing that the question was a tough one, but he was stuck with me for the rest of the week. We had to talk about it at some point. “Is going to a different school than your friends sort of like the end of the star trail? Where it ends up being nothing?”

“Look, dude, do we-”

“Yes, we do. We’ve got what, a month left? And then you’re going out to the East coast, and I’m gonna just be stuck here in fuckin Minnesota. What if you end up becoming a totally different person?” I knew these were the low blows. He had been avoiding talking to me about college for a couple months now, nothing after he had been accepted to Yale, but it was a point that had to be made. “I’m not mad at you because you’re smart. And I’m not mad at you because you’re leaving. Well, no, I am mad at you because you’re leaving. I’m more mad about what happens if my best friend leaves but a different person comes back? I’m worried about where we’ll be a year from now.”

Quinn looked down at the cooling off, now-drinkable mugs of hot cocoa, and slid one across to me wordlessly. “I don’t know, Felix. What if you change while I’m gone? And I come back, hoping to find my best friend, and he’s just, completely gone as well?”

It was my turn to stare down at the hot cocoa mug. “I don’t know, man.”

I heard him gasp, and then felt him hitting my shoulder from across the way, making me look up, and then behind me towards the glass doors to the back porch. At first I couldn’t tell what he was talking about, but then I looked through, up into the sky, spotting tiny flashes of light making their arcs through space. “Shooting stars,” he said, almost under his breath. “I completely forgot there was a shower tonight, oh my god. That’s half the reason I wanted to come up this weekend.” I laughed as he grabbed my arm lightly to tug me over towards the window. He started pushing the couch, which confused me for a moment, before I realized that he was pushing it to be in front of the back porch door so we could sit and still watch. I helped him push it, then went back over to the cluttered countertop to grab our mugs of hot cocoa. I grabbed the quilt from the stool where we had tossed it earlier after we had come back in from the front yard. It was plenty big enough for the two of us, and glass never did much to keep out the cold.

“Here,” as I handed him both of the mugs of hot cocoa, throwing the quilt down before hopping over the back of the couch and wrapping the quilt around us. “I’ll take mine back.”

“Hey Felix,” he asked, settling back into the couch, the late hour visibly coming over him, his eyelids drooping despite his excitement over the events in the sky.

“What?”

“What do you think it means? That we were talking about shooting stars, and now there are shooting stars in the sky?”

I didn’t say that I had already looked up whether there were any meteor showers scheduled for while we were here. He was always so meticulous about planning, I knew he had as well. But he had no clue that I may have been looking for a last ditch effort to make sure my best friend was going to stay my best friend. “I don’t really know, Quinn. I hope we aren’t shooting stars though. You know? Quinn?”

I looked over to see that his eyes were closed. He quietly murmured “I hope not,” as he passed out. I took his mug out of his hand and placed it on the table behind us, next to where I had placed mine. I took a moment to wrap the blanket up around his shoulders. I got up as gently as I could, grabbing another blanket from a chest next to where the couch belonged. I brought it back to the couch, again trying not to disrupt my sleeping friend, and leaned against the other arm of the couch, watching the stars until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore, just hoping that this wouldn’t be the last time I could do so without missing my best friend.