rewrite the stars - jaywon

chapter 12

At the start of the week, Jungwon received a homework assignment that Jay, with all of his pre-programmed knowledge and his access to all published information on the Internet, couldn't have possibly helped him with.

Jungwon's Language Arts professor had announced to the class that they had until Friday to write a poem. It could be any format, any length, on any subject. The breadth of the assignment made it all the harder for Jungwon to start.

On Thursday night, he relented and asked for help. Jungwon's mother brainstormed themes with him as best as she was able.

"How about love, sweetie?" she asked, and that was no good. When Jungwon thought of love, he thought of conversations over sliced fruit. He thought of opalescent eyes, shining back at him.

"Ugh," He groaned, dropping his head into his hands, "Why can't I just write about wheelbarrows or something? We read a poem like that earlier in the year."

"Sweetie...," Jungwon's mother placed a light hand on his shoulder, "You know that poem wasn't really just about a wheelbarrow, right? Poems usually have deeper meanings behind the surface words."

"That's stupid. Words are words, they already have meanings. We shouldn't go around giving them any other meanings besides the ones they already have."

"Hear, hear!" Jungwon's father shouted, from the couch. He was watching some old TV show from his childhood-- from what Jungwon could tell, it was about a pair of girls from the 1980s who fell in love or something. Jungwon wasn't really paying attention to the show, too hung up on his Language Arts' professor's frustratingly vague assignment.

"Thanks, dad." He said, meekly, in the face of his mother's upset frown.

"Fine." She threw up her hands, bemused, "Write about the weather, for all I care. There'll be some deeper meaning there, whether you like it or not."

"The weather." Jungwon scoffed, but even as he did so, his eyes were drawn to the broad floor to ceiling windows that made up the wall of their living room.

It was night, dark enough outside that a few stars could be seen shining weakly despite the thorough light pollution of the suburbs.

Then again, Jungwon cocked his head, squinting at the small pinpricks of light, they might not have been stars at all. There were so few... they could just be planets, for all he knew.

Just then, Jay walked back in from the kitchen, carrying a cold bottle of beer for Jungwon's father.

Jungwon cleared his throat, "Hey, Jay."

Jay looked up at him, from all the way over by the couches. He was smiling. Of course he was.

Jungwon hadn't noticed the smile when he'd walked into the room, but it was there now, for Jungwon. He grinned back at Jay, automatically.

With a jerk of his head, Jungwon indicated the wide windows and the night sky beyond,

"Do you know what planets those are?"

Jay drew away from the couches, to the windows. He stared out of them, eyes narrowed. In the window's reflection, Jungwon could see that his eyes shone, in that odd way they did when Jay was processing information, all reflective and colorful like a koi fish's scales seen through the film of a murky pond.

Jay stepped back from the window and turned around.

"Those aren't planets. Those are stars, part of the constellation Felis."

"Felis?"

Jay nodded, "Yes. The name is Latin in origin. It's also known as the Cat."

"Oh," Jungwon looked out the window, beyond Jay, at the stars in the sky. He couldn't see how the scattered little lights formed a cat not at all. He sighed, wondering what was going through the minds of the ancients who'd named the formation of stars.