To be a Star

My car, a little cobalt blue, 1986 Toyota broke down at 3:15 am, I had been inching along the deserted road for over an hour now, my engine grinding and coughing, slowly dying. Now I let my head drop forward and rested my forehead on the steering wheel and closed my eyes, willing myself not to think about being alone out here, nothing except the stars and the shadows of the stunted bushes that lined the Arizona highway to keep me company. 1

I pulled the latch of my door and slipped out into the moonless night, my tennis shoes crunching the gravel on the side of the road. I popped the trunk and retrieved the heavy metal flashlight my silly, worry filled mother had insisted I carry with me, then crunched back to the front of the car, lifted the hood, and directed the beam of the flashlight toward the engine. I checked the oil, which was fine, but that was where my knowledge of cars ended. I laughed aloud at myself, I was so hopelessly ignorant and helpless; it was almost amusing.2

I closed the hood and climbed on top of it, lay back in a rather uncomfortable position and gazed up at the stars. From horizon to horizon the velvet black and white pinpricks of the night sky surrounded me. This wasn’t that bad, I had not had the chance to star gaze forever, and it was almost like being reunited with old friends. 3

An old memory pushed itself to the front of my conscience. A strange story, it had happened to me almost five years ago when I was a freshman in high school, at the height of a star gazing obsession, and it was so strange, almost like a dream, well it had been a dream, I had been knocked unconscious at the time, but it had seemed so real, even now when I shut my eyes I could remember every detail of that long ago day.4

I was home alone, I forgot why, but I remember it had just grown dark, and I, bored with my surroundings decided to step outside and try to find my favorite star constellation, Pleiades. It was made up of seven (I could only see five due to light pollution) faint, twinkling; close set stars that looked a bit like a sparking stone.5

Outside, my arms folded against the early January chill, I stood on the lawn and scanned the sky. I spotted Orion and Eridanus right away, and after a while I found Pleiades, at the tip of the constellation Taurus. The stars were faint that night, even if it was the new moon. Really only four of the seven Pleiades stars were visible, a fifth twinkled in and out of focus, but the constellation was dull compared to its usual sparkling beauty. Between the light from the sports center across the street and the wispy clouds that lazily floated across the sky blocking my vision it was obviously not an ideal star gazing night, so I turned to go back inside. 6

As I walked back towards the house I happened to glance upward one last time, and that is when I saw it, it was a star, but not just a star, there was some thing about it. It looked normal; not even very bright, a faint, bluish white star, close to the constellation Gemini. There WAS something about it though, I could not help but be completely mesmerized by the tiny pinprick of blue-white light that lay suspended in the night sky. I had never noticed it in the past; whenever I had looked in that direction before I would have been concentrating on Gemini, there was no reason for me to pay attention to any of the other small, insignificant stars that were spotted around the main constellation. 7

As I looked at the star, which I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off of, I couldn’t help but realize that this tiny point of light, no bigger than the tip of a needle, was actually a giant sun billions of miles away. Maybe it was even more than a billion miles away, it was either very far or very small, I could barely see it! 8

I could see it though, I couldn’t look away. Something in the universe seemed to shift, all the other stars faded away until it was only that one, and it was no longer faint, it was so bright it was blinding me; drawing closer and closer, growing bigger and bigger until it filled the whole sky. Falling fast toward earth, it was going to hit me! It was no star after all; it was an asteroid, or a comet. I remember being terrified and falling to my knees in the middle of the lawn, then everything disappeared.9

The star, my house, the ground; all was gone. For a second I thought I had died, that I now resided in some sort of afterlife, a very dark, quiet afterlife. Then I heard something, a horrible noise that caused me to panic, I tried to run, to fight, to scream, but I couldn’t feel my body, I was paralyzed. As I calmed down I realized that the horrible noise was not noise, it was the opposite, the absence of noise, a complete and total silence. I can guarantee that you have never heard this before; you may think you have, but you haven’t, if you could hear no other noise you would hear yourself breathing, or your heart beating. Real silence is not peaceful and it’s not quiet, it is a roaring, unnatural void of nothing that causes you to panic as nothing else can. This horrible noise, or silence didn’t last long though. 10

After a while I became aware of another sound, the sound of a thousand campfires burning all around me, and the sense of feeling returned to me, but it wasn’t the same. I could feel myself breathing, but not air, I could feel my self growing and shrinking, shifting and consuming hydrogen and producing an awe aspiring amount of energy. I felt both impossibly old extraordinarily powerful. I still could not see, but with the range of feelings I had there was no time to ponder on the missing senses. 11

I could feel that I was moving, along a path that I had traveled many times before, and I could feel gentle tugs that threatened to lure me off course, but a greater force tugged me back every time, I was circling this greater force. There were other continuous pulls, they circled me, and I felt a great emotional bond with them. After a while I became conscious of a deep throbbing pain in my core. It felt as though I was bleeding to death, energy was painfully draining from me. 12

The pain was not great though, and at times I was not even aware of it, the feeling of great power and wisdom muted it out. I could sense time passing but I was not impatient as I would have been as a human, I seemed to fall in and out of conscience and when ever I came to I could tell that great stretches of time had passed, exactly how long I can not be sure, but at a guess I would say 2 or 3 years. I cannot say how long I was stuck like this, ten years? A hundred years? I don’t know. I could feel myself changing though; I could tell that I was very old. Older than I could even understand, let alone explain. I could feel that I was something great, something huge and alive but not the same way people are.13

Awareness came to me very quickly one day, I was dying; I knew it, and I could feel it. The pain, which had once been almost unconceivable, grew as time went on, the horrible draining sensation filling me until I could scarcely feel anything else. The great power that I had first felt dwindled until I felt weak and pointless. Then, with much pain and noise, I felt myself collapse, my outer layers falling inward towards my core. I was reaching the end of my fuel, all hydrogen was gone and I was now living off of helium. I don’t know how I knew this, but at the time it seemed obvious that I would know.14

After I was completely collapsed I felt myself swell, and with pangs of horror I ingested the closest of my poor planets, their mass being converted to energy that would keep me alive a little longer. As this nightmare continued I grew numb to the pain, I could feel my insides changing drastically. For a while I seemed to be stabilizing, and then I felt myself collapse. Pressure built within me until I thought I would explode, then, I did explode, in my last moments of conciseness I could feel bits of me being forced outward at amazing speeds into space, some of the bits of me slammed into my remaining planets, peppering them with craters, and blowing one into tiny bits, the rest continued into space, to fly forever until they come in contact with something. Slowly, blackness filled my conscience as I died.15


“Lenae! Lenae! Wake up!”
My brother’s voice brought me back to conscience. I was lying in my lawn, and the dead grass was making me itchy.
“Kyle?” I whispered.
“Shh shh, it’s OK, I’m going to call the ambulance, an asteroid or something landed in our yard and caused an earthquake, you must have fallen down and hit your head; do you feel alright?
“Yes I think so, did you say asteroid? I think was a star just now.”
“Your OK, don’t talk, you might have a concussion I’m going to go inside and call the ambulance, then I’m going to call mom and dad, Ok?
“What?” I asked
You’ll be Ok, I’ll be back in a minuet, don’t get up.16

I watched my brother go back to the house, then I got up, I didn’t think I had a concussion, my head didn’t hurt, but my hip felt bruised. I saw what Kyle meant by an asteroid right away, about ten feet away there was a crater about five feet wide and deep. I walked up to it and looked into the bottom, there, half buried, was a black stone about the size of a ping pong ball. I looked from the hole to the place where I had fallen, it had barely missed me! I looked for the star that I had seen before I fainted, but couldn’t find it. I turned back to the crater and started to climb into it. 17

“Lenae! Where are you?” called my brother.
“I’m here, wait, I want to get this.” My brother appeared above the hole, which went up to my neck.
“Get out!” He snapped “The ambulance will get here right away, you’re Ok, Right? I told you not to get up.”
“I’m fine; you didn’t have to call anyone” I reached down and picked up the stone, it was smooth and very black, and very heavy, as heavy as I would imagine a rock many times bigger would be, and it felt very familiar. In the distance I could hear sirens coming closer. 18


At the hospital I learned that I did not even have a bump on my head, much less a concussion, why I fainted was a mystery, though they guessed it had something to do with the giant fire ball that plunged into the ground right next to me. 19

I never told anyone about what I felt, it seemed so personal somehow, it was almost as if when I saw that asteroid falling, that tiny rock that had once been a huge star shooting toward earth I experienced, for a split second what that star had been, what it felt and knew. After all people claim that stars can die, and for something to die, doesn’t it have to be first alive? 20

As for the tiny black stone, my father took it up to the University of Arizona to have someone study it; a number of astronomers informed me that is was a very rare type of meteorite, made of entirely of metal and almost 5 times heavier that a normal chunk of metal that size would be, they strongly advised me to donate the rock to science, and told me they were sure a great number of astronomers and other scientists would be eager to examine it.21

After a brief argument, as I felt a strange connection with the little stone and wanted to keep it, but the researchers were adamant, and I finally agreed to temporarily loan the meteorite to them, for research purposes only and only if they kept me updated on what they found out and what they did with it.22

After that night, whenever I look at the night sky I look for the star that I saw that night, but, even though I study every star next to the constellation Gemini I can never find it. Did I only witness a meteor falling, and have a funny dream after fainting from fear? Or did something else happen to me, and if it did, what? 23

I jumped as a car swooshed around a turn in the road, its headlights and engine blinding and deafening me momentarily. I gaped for a moment, then jumped off the hood of my car and gestured madly to the approaching vehicle and watched it pull over next to my Toyota. I was hoping desperately that I had not just invited a serial killer or rapist over, when I recognized the car as my parents old Chevy. My parents! Oh god, I hadn’t even thought of them, they must have been worried sick when I didn’t show up or call and went looking for me.24