By the time Kason and I walked back to the RV, the sunlight had already strengthened with a hazy intensity that hinted at a hot day. The world was awake once more—camper doors slamming, people laughing and talking in the tent sites, a truck crunching over the gravel and raising a cloud of dust. The new day was rushing in, far faster than I was ready for.
Jaz raised her eyebrows when we came in the RV. “Where’ve both of you been?”
“The Arietids.” Kason said it matter-of-factly.
To my surprise, Jaz nodded in sudden comprehension. “Oh, yeah. See any meteors?”
“One.” I thought about the fruit cereal but decided against it. My stomach was already flipping around itself.
“No.” Kason glanced meaningfully at my necklace. “Two.”
I touched my necklace, that warmth rising again, but before I could respond, Blake came from the back of the RV. “Okay, guys, here’s the plan for today. Magdalena is an hour and a half south of here, so I’m thinking we should head out after lunch. This morning, we need to grab supplies. Groceries, toiletries, whatever we’re running low on. And I need a couple little things for the RV.” He pointed out the window. “The stores are within walking distance, so what do you say we all head out and just meet back here around one o’clock or so?”
Talk about falling into place. Everyone was going to be scattered around the city, and I’d have four hours to do all the investigating I needed to.
“Sounds good.” Jaz bounced up, ready for action, as always. “Jenna, there’s a cool little mall a few blocks over. Wanna go shopping with me and Kason? And there’s a Whole Foods next door. We could grab some groceries too. Maybe get lunch at that little taco place I saw while we were driving in last night.”
I should have realized that shaking off Jaz would be the hardest obstacle to my plan. “Um—” I couldn’t lie. Gran hated lying. “No, you go ahead without me. I don’t think I’ll leave right now. My stomach’s hurting.” That at least was definitely not a lie.
Jaz’s expression creased into concern. “Oh no, really?”
Kason stepped up. “Hey, we can stay here until you’re ready to go.”
“That’s okay.” It was ridiculous to feel this guilty. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. “You guys go on. Really. I’m fine.”
Jaz slid me an unconvinced glance. “Will you promise to call me if you start feeling worse?”
“Yes.” I could feel Kason watching me, trying to peer beneath my words. I kept my eyes on Jaz. “I promise.”
She and Kason took their time getting out the door—I think they both sensed that something else was going on—but ultimately they left with the rest of the group. I watched until they turned out of the gates of the RV park. Then I waited fifteen more minutes. Once I was sure the coast was clear, I tucked the envelope into my bag, rubbed the meteorite around my neck, and walked out into a morning that was already as hot as the sand in my dreams. I was sweating by the time I reached the RV park gate, my hair damp against my neck.
I glanced at the navigation on my phone again and turned east, squinting into the tunnel of the morning sun. Becker Street. 689 Becker Street. Three miles from here, according to my phone navigation. I could walk there in an hour and a half.
At first, the city exuded charm with a southwestern flair—cacti potted in terracotta planters, dazzling wildflowers along the edges of the roads, adobe villas sprawling on unrolling land. But the longer I walked, the more it seemed to collapse into any other big, grimy city. The landscaped streets and regal estates gave way to fast-food places and gas stations and little motels where people sat in plastic lawn chairs and smoked cigarettes. The traffic was worse too, an unending stream of cars whipping by. Nothing about this seemed like a good idea. Also, I was getting thirsty. Really thirsty. Who knew how fast the days heat up in the southwest? The sun hadn’t been up two hours, and it already felt as if my shoe soles would melt to the asphalt.
Just as I was starting to forget why I had ever attempted this crazy thing in the first place, I saw it. The sign on the stoplight in front of me.
BECKER STREET.
I scrambled down into the overgrown ditch to avoid the congestion at the intersection. Spiky brush scratched my legs, but I kept going, around the corner onto the street I’d pinned in my mind six weeks ago. And there it was. The little strip mall that now held a nail salon, a video game store, a pet supply outlet, and a clothing shop but which, at one time, had hosted the First Baptist Church of Albuquerque. Right where the nail salon was now.
This early, the parking lot was all but deserted. I ran a hand over my hair and tried to slow my breathing, then opened the salon door. The odor inside was sharply chemical, even with the limp ceiling fans stirring the air around above the fake leather salon chairs.
“Can I help you?” A bored-looking Brooklyn lookalike glanced up from her phone.
“I, uh—” Why was it so hard to begin? “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” Her tone was anything but eager.
“There used to be a church here.”
“Really.” The girl’s eyes drifted past me, as if she were already moving on from the conversation.
“The First Baptist Church of Albuquerque. Do you know what happened to it?”
“Never heard of it.” The girl cracked her gum and glanced back at her phone, then refocused. “But I didn’t start here till last year. Let me ask Amber. She’s the owner.”
Without waiting for a reply, she sauntered into a little room behind the counter. I waited, trying not to sneeze from the pungent air.
“You’re asking about the church that was here?” A heavyset woman with hair bleached nearly white bustled out of the doorway.
“Yes, ma’am.” I gripped the edge of the counter. “Do you know anything about that?”
“Sure do.” The woman smelled of perfume and acetone. “They were in here when I rented this place, back—fifteen years ago? No, sixteen. I’d just finalized my divorce. That’s how I remember. Anyway, yeah, there was some church in here. They didn’t exactly vacate on time, either. I’d signed the lease papers two weeks before they finally got all their junk out. Something about no one to move the piano.”
Listening to her talk was like panning for gold. Sifting the valuable from the worthless. “So—do you know what happened to the church?”
“Yeah, they moved to a place over on Carlon Street.” She flicked a terrifyingly long acrylic nail toward the window. “Three blocks that way. Across the road from a liquor joint, which was always kinda funny to me.”
Three blocks from all the answers I needed? My palms were sweating on the edge of the counter. “And the church is still there?”
“Oh, yeah. Keeps getting bigger too. My cousin goes there, as a matter of fact. She keeps inviting me to go too. Thing is, I keep this place open six days a week, right? Sundays are my only day off. My day to sleep in. And ask any beauty expert. If you don’t sleep, it shows up in your nails. Makes those lines on them.”
“Okay.” I backed away from the counter. “Thank you very much, ma’am.”
“Sure thing. Can I interest you in our manicure special? Half off this week.”
I had backed all the way to the door. “No, thanks. Have a good day.”
Even clouded with the odors of exhaust and restaurant grease, the air outside was much better than that inside the salon. I took a deep breath and gripped the woman’s words like a promise. Carlon Street. Three blocks that way.
I started running.
Down the streets of Albuquerque, feet slapping the asphalt, past the shady motels and the cars inching along in the drive-thrus and the back alleys where pigeons investigated dumpsters and air conditioners rattled away. I ran, counting the blocks like chances—one, two, three—until I saw a neon sign with a purple light-up star moving jerkily over the lettering. SHINER’S. Under that in smaller, crowded writing: BEST DRINKS IN TOWN. Even at nine o’clock on a Monday morning, the parking lot was already filling.
Across the street from a liquor joint…
I turned. And there it was. A squatty brick building with a shiny metal roof. FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF ALBUQUERQUE.
Another sign was in front of the parking lot, surrounded by some wilted-looking marigolds.
SERVICE TIMES:
SUNDAYS 9:30 & 10:45.
SUNDAY NIGHTS 6:30.
WEDNESDAY NIGHTS 6:30.
PRAYER MEETING 10:00 SAT. MORNING.
So this, like Gran’s church at home, was one of those where people were not to neglect the assembling of themselves together.
BROTHER T. A. JOHNSON.
T. A. Johnson.
Thad.
TJ.
My heartbeat throbbed like a fist inside my chest. The pastor now? My dad?
I jogged up the three stone steps. The glass doors opened easily into a typical church foyer. Fake plants in the corners. Some wall hanging about the love of God. A table fanned with brochures. I picked one up to see a man with thinning white hair above hawk eyes, smiling with teeth that seemed suspiciously perfect. PREACH THE WORD, LIVE THE TRUTH.
“Can I help you, hon?” A lady with glasses looped on a beaded chain and a haircut like Gran’s poked her head out of a door to the left.
“Uh—yes, ma’am.” The sign on the door said OFFICE. Perfect. Church secretaries always knew everything. “Is the pastor here named—”
“Tom Johnson, hon.” She gestured to the brochure I held. “Such a good man.”
Tom. Disappointment sloshed over me like cold water. This man was far too old to be my dad, anyway. But still— “I’m—I’m looking for someone who used to go to this church. Actually, his parents started it.”
“Oh!” Her eyebrows arched. “When it was still over on Becker Street?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, my memory is not what it once was, but I do recall that. Nice family, they were. A lovely couple and their son from—oh, where were they from? Indiana, I think.”
“Ohio.” My hands were sweating onto the brochure.
“Ohio? Well, I knew it was somewhere around there. Such a nice family. The boy was a bit wild, as I recall. But kids will be that way sometimes.”
“What were their names?”
“Oh—” She sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Gracious, I thought I’d never forget that. The man was Robert. Or Richard. Something like that. The boy was something unique. Chad, I think.”
I didn’t bother to correct her. “Do you remember their last name?”
“I think it was Howard? No, that’s not quite right. But it was something that started with an H.” Her lips turned down. “Seems I’m forgetting more than I’m remembering these days.”
Howard? I stared at her. “Are you sure it wasn’t a J name?”
“Oh no, I’m positive. It was definitely an H. Now, why can’t I think of it? I’d check the registry for you, but all those files got lost somehow when we moved to this building. We never did know what happened.”
So the J in TJ must have been a middle name. Which meant I had even less to go on than I thought.
Unless…
“Are they still here?”
Her face sank apologetically. “No, hon. They were church planters. They’d come to a community, get a church started, and move on. They only stayed here—oh, about two years, probably. They were already gone by the time we moved over here.”
A hole was opening around me, but I refused to look at it yet. “Where did they go?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head regretfully. “Seems that they had received another assignment from the mission board. Only thing I do remember hearing, a few years later, is they had transferred to international missions. They’re overseas now, most likely.”
Overseas. Overseas.
My father was gone. He’d disappeared from the life of this church as easily as he’d disappeared from mine.
I gripped the meteorite. So all of it was for nothing. All the stars and mysteries and miles and stories had led me to this dead end. Once again I was standing in a Baptist church and finding nothing I was looking for.
“Was it someone you knew, hon?” The woman was watching me with concern.
“No.” The word choked me bitter. I laid the brochure down and backed toward the door. “Just someone who should have known me.”
#
Dead end.
Those were the words that kept circling me, mocking me.
Three miles seemed a lot farther going back. Every step felt like an admission of defeat. Like another irrevocable inch farther and farther and farther from any story I’d hoped to find.
Dead end.
The noise of the city went on blurring around me. Traffic and car horns and people and a jet overhead, but I couldn’t focus on any of it. What had I thought? Had I really expected to find my dad that easily? Why had I let myself hope? Why had I let myself believe that I could find my story here? The meteor had burned itself out long ago. And I was left with nothing but the blank darkness of space.
I wanted to cry, wanted to break or wail or crumble. Anything to get the weight off my chest. But no tears would come. Not as I turned back onto the main highway, not as I walked past all the landmarks I’d noticed that morning, not even when I saw the RV…with Jaz and Kason standing in front of it.
Oh no. I glanced at my watch. 1:15. I was late.
“Jenna!” Jaz looked more concerned than I’d ever seen her. “Oh my goodness, we’ve been worried. I tried to call you.”
My phone had been on silent in my pocket since the nail salon. “I’m sorry. I didn’t look at my phone.”
“That’s okay. We were just scared for you.” Jaz was still studying me, no doubt trying to complete this story.
Kason’s worried look matched his sister’s. “We looked around the RV park, and we were just getting ready to call the others. They’re not back yet.” He studied me. “Jenna, are you okay?”
“Uh huh.” I tried to infuse some convincing casualness into my voice, but neither of the twins seemed to be buying it.
“You said you were going to stay here because you didn’t feel well.” Jaz was giving me that seeing-deeper look.
“I did. I mean, for a few minutes. Then I went for a walk.” Again, none of that was a lie.
“A walk? In this heat?”
I glanced down at my damp T-shirt.
“Jenna.” Kason stepped closer, but I couldn’t look at him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” Okay, that was a lie. Well, who cared at this point? All my good behavior so far certainly hadn’t opened doors for me.
“You’re not fine.” Concern tightened Jaz’s face. She gripped my shoulder. “Come on, what’s wrong? You can talk to us.”
No, I couldn’t tell either of them the whole stupid story. “I—I still don’t feel great. I’m going inside and get some water.”
I ducked past both of the twins, into the RV. That weight was still inside my chest, pressing the air from my lungs, steamrolling my soul. I gulped half of an ice-cold bottle of water and then laid down on the couch and closed my eyes. Dead end.
The door opened, a crowd of voices and footsteps swirling in. The others must have returned. In a minute someone touched my shoulder, and I opened my eyes just enough to see Jaz.
“Jenna? You still feeling bad?”
I nodded.
“Do you need to go to the doctor? Do you think you’re sick?”
No doctor could fix this. “I’m not sick.” Dead end. Dead end. Dead end.
Jaz held the back of her hand against my temple for a moment, then nodded. “You don’t have a fever. Maybe you’re just tired from the traveling, do you think?”
I shrugged.
“Okay, let’s go!” Blake’s voice. The RV shuddered to life.
Jaz straightened, hovering hesitantly. “Can I get you anything?”
I shook my head and closed my eyes again. The next time I opened them, she was sitting at the table across from Kason and Adam.
I kept my eyes closed for the rest of the trip, drifting in and out of sleep. I was so tired of it all. Tired of the motion of traveling and the chattering of the others and the smell of Brooklyn’s perfume and the false promise of the meteorite around my neck. I should have never come on the trip. Never left Mount Victory. Definitely never started looking for my dad.
Water under the bridge. Well, I’d drowned in it.
The next time I opened my eyes, the RV was stopped, and Jaz was leaning over me. “Jenna?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re here at the—what’s it called again, Kason?”
“The Very Large Array.” Kason sounded as if he were already on his way out the door.
The what? I didn’t have the energy to ask.
“It’s these giant antennas for astronomy.” Jaz shrugged. “I don’t really understand how they work, but anyway, it’s a big deal to him. Want to walk around with us?”
I pressed myself deeper into the couch cushions. “No.”
Concern wrote itself a little deeper into her forehead, but she nodded. “Okay. If you change your mind, we’ll be just out there.”
“All right.”
The RV door open and shut, and I was alone. I rubbed my eyes and sat up just enough to look out the window. A weird dystopian scene met my eyes. Marching across the flatlands, like a giant row of ungainly aliens, were bigger-than-a-house structures of wheels and ladders and domes. I could see the others filing like ants around the base of the closest one.
I remembered, now, Kason talking about this. Something about how these assemblies of antennas reached into outer space and pulled back signals from the stars.
The sky was flat today. Hazy and hopeless. There was nothing up there to hear from.
I laid back down and dozed off again. Somewhere behind my sleep, I could hear the other kids coming back, the RV starting, the voice of someone at a drive-thru. But next thing I knew, Jaz was nudging me awake again. “Jenna? We’ve made it to Magdalena, and it’s time for the star party.”
Slowly I rose back to reality. “The what?” When I opened my eyes, I realized I must have slept longer than I’d thought. The coach was dark, Jaz’s face only a shadow above me.
“The star party.” She gestured outside. “So, when we got to the observatory, they apparently don’t let the public tour it—Kason is still fuming—but they told us about this giant star-watching thing on the university campus, so we grabbed some Arby’s, and here we are.”
I sat up, still reaching for my bearings. We were in a big parking lot crisscrossed with vehicles and swarming with people all looking up. Red light from headlamps and flashlights glinted off binoculars and cameras and telescopes even more official-looking than Kason’s. The sky was already cobalt, the pines at the edge of the open lot spearing darkly against the blue.
“What is this?”
“Basically, it’s like a big star nerd bash.” Jaz laughed. “Kason’s already out there. This is his tribe. Wanna come? It’s only four days past new moon. The sky will still be dark enough to see a lot.”
My chest twisted. Somewhere in that crowd, Kason was with people who actually spoke his language, who could look at the sky and see the same wonder he did. But I was too tired. Tired of trying to feel what hung just beyond my grasp. Tired of looking up and seeing nothing but night.
I shook my head. “I’ll wait here.”
“Oh, Jenna.” Disappointment clouded Jaz’s voice. “You don’t want to miss this. Come on.”
“No.” I laid back down. “I still don’t feel good.”
Jaz sighed. “I have my phone. If you change your mind, text me, okay?”
“Okay.”
She left, and the darkness seemed to grow heavier, denser. I’d lain there about ten minutes when the door opened again. I should have known she wouldn’t give up that easily.
“Jenna?”
Not Jaz’s voice. I sat up. “Kason? What are you doing?”
“Just came back in for a minute.” He moved like a shadow through the dark RV, sat on the dinette bench across from me.
I studied him, but I couldn’t make out his face in the dimness. “Why aren’t you at the party? This is your thing.”
“Because.” He shifted.
“Because why?”
He made a motion that even in the shadows I could recognize as a shrug. “Because I don’t think you’re okay.” He leaned forward. “I think something happened this morning while we were gone. And you don’t have to tell me about it, but—but I think you should look at the stars. Because that helps me.”
And it was then, in the darkness of the RV, with Kason next to me, that the tears I’d wanted to cry since the Baptist church finally released.
Kason didn’t try to say anything or stop me or even move, except to quietly slip back to the bathroom and return with a handful of tissues for me. He just sat there. Being there. Strong and steady and safe.
And finally, when the sadness had spent itself and I took my first deep breath, he stood and held out his hand. “Come on. Let me show you the stars.”
#
“Don’t look at the sky yet.” Kason slung his telescope bag over his shoulder and closed the RV door behind us.
“Why?”
“Just trust me.”
My eyes were adjusted to the dark, enough to get an idea of our surroundings. The parking lot was a thronging mass of shadowy figures, snippets of voices and conversations hanging among them and more of those dull red lights glowing like campfire embers. Kason switched on his own red-toned flashlight and took my hand, guiding me toward the edge of the crowd.
“What’s with the red light?”
“Maintains better night vision. White light will constrict the pupils, and to see the stars, you want your eyes as wide as possible.”
He led me to the edge of the lot, where the asphalt blurred into a brushy area of grass and pine trees. Then he switched off the flashlight and squeezed my hand. “Now. Look up.”
You know something? I’ve never forgotten that moment. Never will. I stood there in the dark, clinging to Kason’s hand with my pockets full of pain, and I looked up into a sky much bigger than I’d known. It was a whole unrolling explosion of night sky, stars crammed into every corner and flung like fireworks into the darkness. It was what I’d seen through Kason’s telescope, but it was real, close enough to breathe in, beautiful and terrible and overwhelming and vastly, vastly other.
“Kason. It’s—it’s beautiful.” But again I had that feeling of too much, too close. How huge, after all, was this story in which I found myself? In all the enormity of the universe, in the hundreds of billions of uncountable stars—who and where was I?
And what hope did I ever have of untangling my own mystery?
Kason was setting up his telescope. “See that cloudy spot right there, right between those two pine trees? That’s the Eagle Nebula.” He adjusted some setting on his scope. “A nebula is the remains of a star, you know.”
I hadn’t known. “Really?”
“Yeah. Stars have life cycles just like people. When they’re gone, they leave the nebulae behind.”
So many things disappearing, losing themselves in nothingness, and I was powerless to stop it. “I hate that.” The words flew out with an intensity that startled me.
Kason glanced up. “What?”
“I hate that.” The tears were perilously close again. “I want—” What did I want? “I want things to not be lost. I want stars to not die and people—” The way my voice was shaking made me angry at myself. “I’m going back to the RV.”
I turned away, but Kason’s voice was gentle enough to stop me. “Jenna…wait.”
I bit my lip. I could feel him walking up behind me, but I wouldn’t look at him. And then he spoke. Calm as ever, even after my outburst. “You know what C. S. Lewis said in Out of the Silent Planet?”
“What?” I muttered the word.
“‘A world is not meant to last forever.’” He was standing close, enough that I could feel his warmth.
“You said—” The stars smeared behind my tears. “You said all stories were remembered.”
“And I still believe that. But that doesn’t mean we live them forever. Some are kept because their time has ended. Some are kept to be restored to us later. And some—some are only what could have been.”
“I never knew my dad.” The words jerked out before I was ready, but Kason didn’t seem surprised.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I brushed my hands over my cheeks. “I—at graduation—it’s a long story, but I got a letter he’d written my mom, before I was born. He told her his family had moved to Albuquerque and started a church here.” I touched the meteorite. “He sent her this.”
“That’s why you came on the trip?” Kason’s voice was still even, thoughtful. He was moving through my words, connecting the loose ends of my thoughts.
“Yes.” I all but whispered the word. “This morning—I went to the church. It was a dead end. They’re gone.”
He was silent. Thinking what? That this had been a crazy thing for me to do? That I wasn’t nearly as grounded and smart as he and Jaz were? That I had no reason to be so upset?
“I always wanted to find my dad. Always.” The words were coming and coming, unspooling from someplace deep within me. “My mom never loved me. I always hoped my dad did. Like, he was out there somewhere looking for me, and one day he’d find me and—” All the wishes and dreams sliced with their sharp edges. “And he would love me, and I would—belong.”
Still nothing. And then suddenly, Kason’s hands were on my shoulders, and he was pulling me into a hug. He was warm and solid and reassuringly safe. He smelled like the pine trees, but with a hint of something I couldn’t recognize. Something as mysterious as the night sky.
“You do belong, Jenna.” He whispered the words near my ear. “You don’t have to know to belong.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Look here.” He stepped back but kept his arm around my shoulders and pointed at the sky. “You see all of this?”
All of it looked overwhelmingly chaotic to me, but I nodded.
“None of these stars are random. They make the constellations. The pictures. The patterns.”
“I’ve never been good with constellations.”
“No, look here.” His voice was gentle, but urgent at the same time. Begging me to see what he could see, what he thought I needed to see. “See that W there? Those five bright stars?”
“Yeah…”
“That’s Cassiopeia. The queen on her throne.”
Whoever had seen a queen had more imagination than I did.
“And over there—the Big Dipper. See that? The handle is upside down.”
“Yeah. I can.” That was a more familiar shape.
“And check out Canis Major.” He was excited now, the words rolling off his tongue. “See the bright stars that make his head, and—” He broke off suddenly, laughed. “I could show you these all night. But—my point is—well, have you heard of Madeleine L’Engle?”
“Didn’t she write A Wrinkle in Time?”
“And a bunch of other stuff. But she believed that God draws lines. Lines of light between the stars, and across the land, and even between people.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Yes.” The stars reflected in his glasses for just a moment. “I definitely do.”
Lines of light.
Hadn’t I seen that? The lines that drew the stars into stories, all these pictures Kason could see? The lines between me and all the people in my story—Gran and Jaz and Kason, even my mom and dad? The lines between the stars and me—well, hadn’t I felt that pull? Hadn’t I known all along that something bigger than myself was drawing me forward?
I’d fought the lines. Resisted that pull. But maybe I should let the pattern play out.
I looked up the way Kason did. Ready to drink in the night sky. And suddenly, I could see it. Not all of it, but enough. The stars in their stories, all the millions of billions of them, right where they were supposed to be. Not one overlooked. Not one unnoticed. Not one left out.
The faintest flicker of faith stirred in my heart. Could I believe that? The way Jaz and Kason did? Could I still belong even if I never knew?
“Promise me something, Jenna.”
“Okay…” I let the word trail into a question, keeping my eyes on the stars.
“Promise me—” His voice was as intense as I’d ever heard it—“promise me you won’t miss the eclipse. Whatever happens.”
“Well—yeah, but, I mean—why?”
“Because.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked sheepish for a moment. “There’s this—legend, I guess you’d call it. At the moment of an eclipse, you receive your greatest answer.”
I cocked my head at him. “Huh?”
“I know, it sounds crazy, but that’s the rumor. An eclipse brings the answer to whatever your biggest question is. So don’t miss the eclipse.” He looked at me pleadingly. “Please, Jenna.”
“Okay.” I rubbed my thumb over the meteorite. “I promise.”
He nodded once. “Good.”
I don’t know how long we stood there, looking at all the stars that held the stories. I do know that when we finally went back to the RV, I still felt as if I were walking in darkness. But I was starting to believe that the darkness held something I hadn’t known to hope for.
The lines of light.