Aurora and Elijah's Guide to The Stars

chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

As he sits in the almost empty coffee shop, cold and tired and lonely, with music blaring from his headphones, Elijah Anderson plays back his first encounter in Wyoming, and tries to remember word by word what he said, when he first met her.

He remembers how angry he actually was, leaving his fast-paced life in the rush of New York to move to what he thought was the quietest town in Wyoming. Elijah had tried convincing his parents to just leave him be, and keep roaming around the world like they did since he was born, leaving him to nannies and babysitters and the coolest aunt he could ever ask for.

But his aunt died, and Elijah's parents, albeit rather ignorant of everything concerning their son, actually cared for him; they just cared to fulfill their wanderlust a bit more.

So, they ended up moving him to Rock Springs, where his paternal grandmother, a silent woman who collected ancient teacups and who probably never left her house, which made him even angrier, because if he had stayed in New York, he would have only cared for himself, and maybe his pet dog (rest his soul) Snicker, but now he also had to care for a woman he'd never met.

Elijah was selfish, he'll give you that.

When the van carrying their (mostly Elijah's) stuff stopped in front of his grandmother's apartment building, he let out a long sigh and stared at this giant mess of houses and buildings and coffee shops and he became even angrier. He was fourteen years old, a tall gawky guy, with a weird obsession over Disney movies, and some confusion about his sexuality. And when he got down, shoving his brand new IPod in his backpack, he looked around.

At first, he didn't notice her, but he remembers now, she sat there, fiddling with a few loose threads on her jeans, sitting on the few first stairs to her house, opposite his apartment building, engrossed in thought, a striped pencil in her right hand, and a notebook on her lap.

And as he stood there, on the sidewalk, gaping at her, watching her fall asleep, he found his aesthetic: Esmeralda Quimby.

Elijah thought Esmeralda was the most beautiful being he has ever seen. Her afro was loose, dyed blonde in the ends and dark brown in the front, and her skin was dark, like a starry night (oh, and Elijah loved stars).

He went up to her, eventually, called her 'miss' and 'please wake up' and she finally did, rubbing her eyes, which widened the same moment they landed on Elijah's face, and for some reason he felt fire.

"I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry. It's just my mom told me to bring up these boxes and I'm not really fit enough to carry them all and I just—"

And he was interrupted by her laugh; while her hands went up to go through her hair, entangled, and her other one went up to pat his shoulder. "It's okay; you don't have to be this flustered. I'll be happy to help."

She stopped, bringing her right hand from her hair to shake his outstretched hands. Smiling, she tilted her head and introduced herself. "Esmeralda Denise Quimby, but you could call me either Esmie or Em – whatever suits you."

Elijah replied, "I can just call you Esmeralda; it's a beautiful name," to which she let out another laugh. "I'm Elijah, I'm new here."

"Yeah," she said, chuckling. "I figured. It's a pretty well knitted community, this neighborhood, I mean, you'll get used to it eventually."

And he really hoped for it to be true.

It wasn't, though.

Elijah asked her what she was writing and apologized again if he was crossing his boundaries. She smirked slightly and told him she's trying to find the meaning for eternal happiness.

"The meaning for eternal happiness?" he echoed, while she proudly nodded, showing him a Mickey Mouse sketched messily across the first page of her notebook.

"Today, I found my Mickey Mouse teddy bear shoved under some boxes in the attic," she started and he listened to every single word she had to say, because Esmeralda seemed like the girl you'd want to listen to. She was undeniably beautiful, but she seemed undeniably adventurous, and that was what Elijah craved in life.

She went on to tell him that seven-year-old Esmeralda's eternal wish was to meet Mickey Mouse, and it came true when she was about nine and three quarters, when her dad took her to Disneyland to break the news that he was marrying his girlfriend (to which Esmeralda didn't mind at all because Samira was a very nice woman, and at a young age, she realized her parents were better off apart).

She kept going about how she needed another eternal wish, this time more... mature? Or maybe more action-packed, more adventurous? He didn't remember. She wanted, he recalled, to go with a bang. And maybe he hadn't, at the time, realized what that meant.

He does now, though.

She taught him about music, and helped him figure out what suits him, she helped him discover almost everything about himself, and although Elijah hated to depend on someone, Esmeralda was an exception. Assuming Elijah couldn't walk, Esmeralda wasn't a walking stick he leaned on, Esmeralda was the one he was happy to stop walking for a bit and sit down and listen to.

She was the pattern of stars on a cloudless night, and he had never loved anything more than tangled constellations.

As he tries to remember Esmeralda's features, now a far memory, he sees a girl—another girl, sitting in the coffee shop fiddling with the loose threads in her jeans, and although she looks absolutely nothing like the dark-skinned girl he used to know, his heart aches.

He sees her staring at what he loves most, the sky.

And he closes his eyes, imagining Esmeralda, looking at the stars and teaching him their names and laughing about how they're so messy, and thinks that maybe, just maybe, life has given him another chance.

A cute Asian chance, with a messenger bag, a beige coat, and a curiosity for space.

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