Star Gazing

Chapter 1

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in Florida, I lay in my hammock reading a book. The breeze filled my nose with the sweet smell of spring. There was a bird twittering a cheerful tune somewhere, and the pages of my book were dotted with sunlight filtering through the trees above me.

It was the last week of summer break, and I had decided to spend the rest of it reading my book and doing absolutely nothing. Like, seriously, nothing at all. Besides, I had finished all of my holiday homework, and  ticked everything off of my bucket list:

Teach Mom how to order drinks at Starbucks to avoid embarrassment in future

Give bedroom makeover

Find a new hideout

Get a new laptop

Throw Mom a surprise birthday party

Do the ice bucket challenge

The surprise birthday party was fun. On the morning of her birthday, she came down the stairs and into the kitchen as if it were any old day.

Mom: "What should we have for breakfast? Cereal? Toast?"

Me: "Don't worry, it's already been made."

Mom: "Huh?..Why? Did you order pizza? Rachel, for the last time, you can't have pizza for breakfast." 

  I looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to catch up.

Me: "Mom, it's your birthday."

Mom: "It is? How old am I?" 

Me: *sigh* "You're fifty-five, Mom"

Mom: "FIFTY FIVE?!?! I HAVE THIRTY FIVE YEARS LEFT TO LIVE."

Me: "Guessing you live until ninety."

Mom: "PRECISELY. I might even die before that."

Me: "You might."

Mom: "Well then. We'd better start living."

Me: "Noooononono. You need to start living. I'm going to finish my book."

Mom: "Come on Rachel. It'll be fun. We could go to the Great Canyon. Or OH OH OH OH I know    we could go to Burning Man pleeaase it's only once a year and it's amazing and I just really want to go please please please."

  I sighed again. In our family, I was the parent and Mom was the teenager. I was more like a comfort-zone book-reading unenthusiastic kind of person, and Mom...she was a completely different story. She was a hippie, really. A twenty-four-hour hyper sixteen-year-old stuck in an adult's body. Sometimes it was annoying because she could be really unreasonable, but adventures with her were fun, as long as everything went right. One time, we were stranded in Ladakh in north India because we ran short on money after Mom decided to spend the rest of it on an Indian coffee table that she really liked. That was before realizing that she wouldn't be able to bring it home on the plane.

  So yeah, that was basically my life. I didn't hate it. I didn't hate it at all.