Ad Astra

Theo always had trouble sleeping—

too many thoughts at too fast a speed for the elementary student to process. His inner monologue would only be halfway through a sentence before jumping to a new, seemingly unrelated topic.

It was okay for school; it’s not like he talked much with the other students; they had found him weird ever since the conversation with Lacy. They thought he didn't notice the secret whispers and judging glances. He did.

What the real problem was, though, was right now. 10:05 PM was what his space-themed clock read, a whole hour and five minutes past his bedtime. Theo wanted to get rid of that clock, but his parents would definitely get mad, especially since just a few weeks ago he was begging for one just like it.

But that was a few weeks ago, before the discovery of how not all things that go up come down, especially not the living ones. He didn’t want to die yet, not in space, not anywhere. Nobody knew what happened after you die, and that just—it was just so scary. Oceans are scary too, for the same reason. And space. Theo hated space.

He hated how so much was undiscovered, and he hated how people died up there. It just looked so empty and lonely from the window in his bedroom. Space was so large, yet somehow humans happened to be on the only planet with livable conditions. An entire species, floating around in the universe based on an astronomically small chance.

Though most of all, Theo hated feeling lonely. Like when he knew his parents were too tired to read him a bedtime story, so he told them that he didn't need one, even though the silence they left behind caused his imagination to fill it up with so many scary things.

But that’s what the window was for. Living in a small town, the only light illuminating his room was the stars in the sky, forming constellations that he felt more familiarity toward than any classmate. His mother had said once that the little freckles on his back formed almost the same constellations. She would trace each one while telling him their names until he could spot them in the sky as well.

“Meant for the stars,” she’d always say. Theo didn’t seem to think so, but the stars were pretty, and he loved his mom, so it was okay.

He checked the clock again before squirming out of bed and over to the windowsill: 10:36 PM. Theo really needed to sleep soon. His eyes drifted up to the glinting stars, silently tracing the constellations with the pupils of his eyes. The stars always looked so lonely, and Theo would do something about it, like become an astronaut, but if it was between his life and the stars,

he’d choose his life.

Maybe someone braver would choose to spend their life up there, but that person would not be Theo. He was shy and scared and selfish; at least, that’s what his classmates told him. The first two were undeniable; he never raised his hand in class even though he knew the answer, and he didn’t really approach anyone to talk to them. When someone did walk over and tried to talk to him, Theo would either be too quiet, or they’d get bored and leave.

But was Theo selfish? Lacy from the grade above him had called him that. She, like many others, had tried to start a conversation with him. Lacy asked questions, like how far away the sun was, and if he thought that in the future, humans would be able to land on it like they did the moon. Theo didn’t know why she would randomly come up to ask him, yet he answered both questions anyway: The sun was about 150 million kilometers away, and no, he didn’t think that was possible. Theo only found out later that it was because she somehow knew science was his favorite class.

Lacy got mad at him a few moments later, something about not putting in effort. He was selfish for not seeing that she was trying to talk to him; she had said. He didn’t know that she really wanted to; Theo just thought she had questions. Then Lacy told her class that Theo was weird and selfish, and then his classmates thought he was weird and selfish, and now no one would talk to him anymore. He hadn't decided if that was a good thing or not.

Sometimes Theo wanted to pretend that somewhere up in the sky, there was someone else just like him. Maybe not a human, maybe an alien, but they would be just like him: shy, quiet, selfish, and lonely. That thing would be watching the stars just like Theo was, and then, they could be lonely together.

The thing wouldn’t judge him, because they would know how hard it was to understand what the other side wanted from the interaction. They would also be into science so that the two of them could discuss it together. Theo would try his best to be interesting and not a “stupid nerd,” which, by the way, isn’t even accurate because a nerd is too smart, so it doesn’t make sense for nerds to be stupid too. He doubted his classmates cared, though; they still called Theo that nonetheless.

His vision blurred as his eyelids became heavier until all that he really saw was the glimmer of the stars through his eyelashes. It felt peaceful, inviting, like Sleep was coercing Theo to come with her, to be whisked away to the land of dreams.

Eventually, he gave in to the lull, eyes slowly blinking before staying closed. His tired brain had deemed climbing back into bed too much of a hassle, it seemed. Theo hadn’t moved from his spot on the windowsill, legs still on the ground, sitting in a “mermaid position.” The stars blinked back at him—Orion, Cassiopeia, Scorpius, and the rest—watching over the young elementary boy at a time when no one else would.