How to Be a Stargazer

Word Count: 708

By: Ashley Anne Howard

You are a Christmas tree in your usual colorful clothes—a cotton shirt of a primary color, shiny leather boots, a pair of rectangular glasses that you sort of need but not really. You live in a square suburban house that is a twin to every other on its long, unfurlingdrive. Your bedroom whispers precision. The bed and walls and both your cats’ litter boxes area bubblegum-plastic pink. Your window has drapes adorned with scalloped lace, and you like to trace rosy fingertips across its edges when peeking through the glass. You spend weeknights reading books by Nicholas Sparks and Jodi Picoult, and you tell yourself that you really relate to the characters.

This won’t do. You will remove the glasses that you sort of need but not really, retiring them to the top drawer of your desk. You will wear only clothes of midnight black. You will keep your shiny leather boots. You will paint your bedroom black and really believe it looks like a star-scape. You will relocate both your cats and their bubblegum-plastic litterboxes.

You are productive during the daytime, so you will stop being productive during the daytime. Instead, you will spend your last daytime of productivity purchasing large golden telescopes with your parents’ money. You will buy a leather notebook which you will purposefully dunk in water, dry with a fan, spill coffee on, dry again with a fan, and distress with a hammer until it appears old and interesting.

You will stop attending school and stay awake for the next twenty-four hours. You will become a Galileo-owl-person. With the golden telescopes you bought with your parents’ money, and the notebook you ruined into perfection, you will begin sitting in the front grass of your suburban house and observing the stars. For two weeks, you will take tedious notes on what you believe to be the Milky Way, until you realize it is just a smudge on your lens. You will only be angry for thirty-two minutes, in which you will slam your bedroom door twice and wake up the rest of your family. They will leave furious notes on your door the next day. You won’t notice. You will be having a dream about a spaceship of a primary color.

You will have a constant pensive look on your face, and when your parents ask you why you stopped being normal, you will gaze off into the distance before replying, “The night sky is my canvas.” They will make fun of you for that.

One day, you will look through your telescope and wince. You will realize that your neck now has a permanent kink in it. You will decide to see a chiropractor, but will receive a disheartening note from her receptionist:

No, Dr. Roxbury can’t see patients at three a.m.

Instead, you will use duct tape and foam from your parents’ couch cushions to make a neck brace.

You will begin to long for daytime productivity. Your bedroom will remind you of a black hole, and of yourself a dying star. One night you will look up at the suburban sky and only see one star. You will realize it is a cellphone tower.

You will throw the golden telescopes you bought with your parents’ money in the garbage. You will spill water on your notebook and not dry it with a fan. You will stay awake for the next twenty-four hours, trying to be normal again. You will begin wearing cotton shirts of a primary color, and the glasses that you sort of need but not really. You will paint your bedroom a bubblegum pink and re-hang your ruffled drapes. You will find your cats and coax them back into liking you with tiny pieces of smoked salmon. You will return their litter boxes to your room. Before long, you will begin attending school again, and you will forget about the stars.

But after one terrible week of school, you will sit in the front yard of your suburban house and look up. You will lean back on your elbows and see one million stars. You won’t use golden telescopes that you bought with your parents’ money, or a notebook that you dried with a fan. You will realize you are happy.