I’ve heard that if you go to Australia or Fiji or whatever, somewhere upside down from you on the globe, it’s really confusing to look at the sky for the first time because nothing is where it should be, and the patterns you do recognize are inverted. That could be a lie, but Nix and I think it’s cool. Nix once made a sketchbook of what they thought constellations really looked like in our sky: Aquarius was a woman in a cocktail dress reaching out to snag a glass of champagne off a tray; Canis Major was a grumpy old man waving his newspaper at the kids on his lawn; Cassiopeia had witch boobs; and Cygnus was the celestial emoji for “I give up.” Because we were thirteen at the time, Gemini was a penis.

Upside down, the same constellations became a potato on a string, someone stretching, a boring old M, and a squashed tripod. (Gemini remained a penis.) I like their northern counterparts better.

I can see the Big Dipper from here. But it’s hanging in a sky that isn’t mine.

I miss Nix. I miss Cheng. I miss Mom.

I miss my whole constellation.

A Date for Prom

A Date for Prom

First period on Wednesday, Ms. Silverthorn asks me to stay after, promising to write me a pass. We started Connecticut Yankee today, and I may have over-talked, and I bet she’s going to tell me to show off less and shut up more. My next period is chemistry, and I am happy to miss it, but she’s giving off a not-excellent vibe, so I think I’m in trouble. I just don’t know what kind.

She shuts the door after the last student. “How are you holding up?”

Somehow just the concern makes me a little teary, but I try to shrug it off. “I wrote my first dorm mail last night, so I’m already fitting in.”

“Good, good,” she murmurs, eyes dark.

“Did something happen?”

“No, no. Just …” I am not used to her being at a loss for words. It’s very disconcerting.

“We need to focus on your situation. I have compared seventeen books about time travel, three of them nonfiction, to see what I would glean.” She clocks the look on my face—seventeen books? Since she picked me up at the mall? “If I’m your English teacher, you can hardly be surprised that I read with alacrity!” A little frown, then she goes on.

“We have several things to consider. Some argue that Einstein’s special and general relativity theories allow for moving along the space-time continuum, but no one has figured out how exactly.”

“The Tesseract!”