Every Soul a Star Read online

  “Isn’t the point to see them, not find them?” Melanie asks. “It doesn’t really matter how you get there, does it?”

  “I guess you’re right,” she says. “It’s just like those comet-hunting machines Ryan’s grandfather told me about. I feel like I’m being left behind.”

  ”They’ll need someone to run the machines, right?” Melanie asks. “You could learn how to do that.”

  “You think so?”

  Melanie nods. “Why not?”

  I wish there was something I could add to make Ally feel better, but what little I know about astronomy I learned from her.

  “Since we’re just waiting around,” Bree says, leaving Ryan twisting dramatically on the ground, “I thought of some more tips for Kenny and Ally. You know, on how to survive in civilization.”

  “Oh, great,” Ally says, clearly suspicious.

  Bree smiles and pats her on the arm. “Now these might seem really basic to your average four-year-old, but living out here you might have forgotten them.”

  “Should I take notes?” Kenny asks, poised to reach into his backpack.

  I’m not sure, but I think he might be serious.

  Bree rolls her eyes and Kenny pulls back his hand. “First, look both ways before you cross the street. You’re not used to streets with lots of fast-moving cars and trucks and motorcycles. And most accidents happen within a block of the home.”

  “She’s right,” Kenny says when Ally groans.

  “Second, always make sure your sneakers are tied so you don’t trip in the hall and drop all your books. Nothing makes you look like a bigger dork than dropping your books.”

  Kenny looks down at his sneakers. “Mine are Velcro.”

  “Good move,” Bree says, nodding approvingly. “Third. Wash your hands before you eat. Strange kids, strange school, strange germs. You aren’t immune to the same things that most kids are. In fact,” she backs up a few feet, “maybe we shouldn’t get too close to you guys.”

  Ally narrows her eyes and then runs toward Bree with her arm outstretched. Bree screams playfully as Ally chases her across the hilltop, around the shed, past the scope, and over Ryan’s moaning form. Even though it’s rapidly getting darker, Bree’s startling blue eyes are brighter than I’ve seen them. I finally glimpse what Ryan saw that first day. When she’s happy, Bree’s really pretty. But Ally’s pretty all of the time.

  “What’s the last rule?” Kenny calls out when Bree’s path brings her close by.

  “Chew before you swallow,” she yells.

  “We do eat food out here in the boonies, you know!” Ally calls after her. “I’m pretty sure we know how to do it without choking.”

  Once they’ve exhausted themselves, we pass the time by pointing the telescope down at the camp. It’s too powerful to focus in on such relatively nearby objects, but we can see people everywhere, in the Star and Sun Gardens, in the Labyrinth, finishing dinner in the pavilion. It’s amazing how quickly these places have started to feel familiar. And in only four more days, it will all be over. I shake my head to rid myself of those kinds of thoughts. Focus on the moment, I tell myself. It’s all you have.

  Ally’s walkie-talkie beeps and she pulls it off her belt loop. She presses the button in response and then holds it up to her ear. “It’s my dad,” she announces a few seconds later. “We got an e-mail from one of Mr. Silver’s team members. From Scotland!”

  I can hear noises coming through the walkie-talkie but not the words. Ally holds it up to her ear again and cups her other hand over it to hear better. Then she says, “over and out,” and clips it back to her waist. By this point we’re all gathered around her, closing in like a pack of hungry wolves.

  Eyes gleaming, she says, “The guy in Scotland was able to rule out part of the transit window for sure! The other guy in Florida eliminated part of it, too. So tonight it comes down to us and a lady in Italy!”

  This stuff is actually starting to make sense to me. Maybe I’m not as bad at science as I thought. “Mr. Silver said that if we catch a transit, then others will start tracking it to see how long the orbit is. And then a huge telescope somewhere will be able to tell if it’s a real planet crossing in front of the star, or something else, like a smaller star.”

  “Not too much pressure,” Kenny says. “But that’s okay! We thrive on pressure, right, Team Exo?”

  “Right!” we all yell. But one by one, we pick up the pages that Kenny typed out for each of us to make sure we know what we’re supposed to do. No one wants to be the person who messes everything up. Least of all me.

  And then it’s all happening. The first stars come out, and Kenny immediately turns to the computer to align the “go-to” feature. He turns the scope to point at one star, waits to hear a dinging sound, then points it at another. “Coordinates found!” he calls out. Melanie records them, chewing so hard on her pen that I fear it’s going to burst in her mouth. Then he asks Ally for the coordinates of the star we’re assigned to monitor. She reads it from the logbook and he types it in.

  “Right ascension of twenty hours. Declination of forty degrees, eighteen minutes, twenty-three seconds.” She may as well have been speaking Klingon.

  At first nothing happens and my heart sinks.

  “Read me those again, Ally?” Kenny asks, his voice a little shaky. Ally rereads them, and Kenny retypes. He hits a few extra buttons, then steps back and crosses his fingers on both hands.

  This time the telescope starts moving on its own with a low whirring sound. We all jump out of the way. When it stops, Kenny steps forward and checks the message on the monitor. “Object found!”

  We all cheer, even though Mr. Silver warned me that that was going to be the easy part. “Okay, guys,” I say, checking that the camera is ready. I glance at my watch. “Now we wait.”

  We take turns looking into the viewfinder at the star. It looks like any other star, twinkling and really far away. The gears in the telescope are humming faintly. It’s starting to move again.

  “Is it broken?” I ask, worried.

  Kenny shakes his head. He’s read the manual cover to cover, so he should know. “It has to keep the star in the frame. The Earth is spinning so it has to keep compensating.”

  “Oh.” Just one more part of this whole thing that I don’t really understand.

  Ally points to the sky and says, “You know that Summer Triangle I showed everyone the other night?”

  We all look up, and I’m shocked to discover that I can find it by looking for a triangle of three bright stars.

  “Well,” she says, “not to get too technical, but Earth, which is rotating on its axis at a thousand miles per hour, goes around the sun at 66,000 miles per hour. And then our entire solar system is hurtling toward the Summer Triangle at 45,000 miles per hour.”

  I turn away from the stars to stare at her. “How is that possible? How can we not feel like we’re moving? How come we don’t get left behind?”

  Bree responds. “Ever hear of gravity?”

  I turn to her. “Why don’t you explain it, then.”

  Bree flips her hair at me and says nothing.

  Melanie says, “I hate to interrupt this episode of Who Knows Less About Science, but it’s almost time!”

  We quickly assume our positions. I take a deep breath. Here goes nothing. Following Kenny and Melanie’s careful instructions, I turn on the camera and pray it does what it’s supposed to do. Every few seconds I call out the temperature readings and Melanie, sitting cross-legged on the grass, types them into Mr. Silver’s computer. A cable from the camera to the computer sends more data at the same time. I keep calling out readings until my throat gets dry.

  Bree is manning the viewfinder. I ask her if anything looks different. She says, “Nope.”

  “Nothing’s supposed to look different,” Ally calls to me.

  “You mean we won’t actually be able to see it?”

  She shakes her head. “We can’t see it because the planet is too small and the