The Brightest Star in a Constellation

32: Passing Strangers

☆ Evan ☆

The cursor of my phone screen blinks at me like the flash of a turn signal. The white screen taunts me with its endless emptiness. I finished my worksheet for English class ten minutes ago, and since then I've been trying to catch up on lost time.

I start with my message history, and once that is over, I categorize my contact names and switch them back to normal. It doesn't take long, so I move to scroll through the website where Peter posts for his blog.

The sign-up screen is blank, the same way my mind is blank. Fog blankets the classroom windows, stretching across the sky like a mountain range. I try to come up with a decent username.

Never, I type. Like my name backwards. Never odd or even. I hit backspace over the final word and replace it with my name. There we go. That's more like it.

With my account created, I send a follow request to a couple of blogs before I land back on Peter's. While logged in, I have the option to access more of his posts that weren't available to me before. I scroll back in time to the recently published entry for facts at midnight: L'arbre de Ténéré (Téréré tree) once considered the most isolated tree on Earth, as it was the only one for 400 kilometres, and the last of a group of trees that grew in the desert, was knocked down by a truck driver in 1973 presumed to be drunk.

A suggestion of related tags pops up when I hover over his username, so I click on those too. My homepage fills with information, and over the course of the class, I search for all the unfamiliar terms. I learn about what the pin Lexa was wearing means—a gender identity that is not defined by traditional roles—among other words I've never seen before, like asexual and bisexual.

My phone lights up. It's the group chat, (now including Dina, who was added while I was away) which Nicole has renamed for the third time this week.

[AC Group Chat: "Houston we have a problem" except it's the lesser-known Canadian version where they say "Calgary we have a difficulty"]

Nicole:
ok
what do we think of AC t-shirts

Jay:
How much of a nerd do you think I am

Nicole:
what if I made one especially for you?

Pierre:
Big word for Nickel.

Nicole:
oh my god, he made a typo.
I love you very much please never stop being yourself <3

Pierre:
Oh my god, she's using punctuation. I am shocked.

Nicole:
Try me. (-:
This is my idea

She sends the group chat a PNG file. It's a t-shirt coloured in dusky blue, designed with the words Astronomy Club around Saturn's rings. Jay's specialized shirt has a different phrase; Local Loser.

Jay:
You're not making me wear that

Evan:
I would

Nicole:
yeah because you're cool
this is for my final project btw

Lexa:
How dare you remind me about exams