A New Constellation

Maxi consulted her star chart. “I don’t believe these stars are on here.” She turned to Lainey, who was picking her nails and trying not to seem interested. 

“So what?”

“So there’s a new constellation.”

“Oh yeah? What number is this?”

“I don’t—I’m not keeping track. And not every one gets reported. I’m amazed we’re able to see this one at all, the stars must be extremely bright for it to appear with this amount of light pollution.”

“I don’t get why it matters. Some poor sucker got a little bit too into stargazing, or maybe they got involved with some sky god or another. We’ll probably never know who. Hell, we’ll probably never even know what the constellation is supposed to be.”

“So why’d you come out here?”

“I’m babysitting you.”

“I’m thirteen, I’m fine.”

“Tell that to Mom.”

The two were silent. Maxi began adding to her star chart.

“Watch out, Max,” Lainey snipped at her. “You don’t want to get sucked up.”

“I don’t know why I should watch out for that. Sounds fun.”

“Well, Mom would pitch a fit at me for one thing.”

“And you wouldn’t get paid?”

“She doesn’t pay me.”

“Wow, sucks to be you, I guess. I bet you’d just be happy to have the room to yourself.” Maxi finished mapping the new stars and traced the line between them onto another sheet of paper.

“Believe me, I’d love being able to go out and actually do shit on weekends instead of following you out to this field for the hundredth time.”

“Doesn’t it look like a heart?” Maxi asked. She held up the pattern.

“A lumpy heart.”

“Do you ever think we get too into categorizing the stars?” Maxi continued. “Right now, some astronomers over in Hawaii are probably busy giving all of these new stars numbers and designations.”

“I don’t think much about this on my own time, personally.”

“Well, I think that in the rush to embrace scien—”

“Maxine, I literally do not care.”

They sat in silence as Maxi cross-checked some more quadrants of the sky against her star charts.

“Don't you ever feel mystical? At all?” she asked Lainey.

“What does that mean?”

“Like, do you ever think about how the stars are up there so we can look at them. Like they’re more than just balls of gas. They’re deliberately placed.”

“Literally everybody knows they’re deliberately placed.”

“I just think now that we’re able to measure stuff properly we’ve gotten too hung up on the what and not so much on the why. You know?”

“I don’t.”

“Like, we can spend all our time coming up with the exact place in space these stars appeared and their heats and colors and stuff but the fact is that none of that matters, because they were placed in a way that when we look at it we see a heart. That’s literally the only thing that is relevant to humans, and probably to the god that made the constellation. Or the universe or whatever, if it wasn’t a god.”

“We have people who care about that shit, and we have people who care about the science.”

“I just feel like people have started caring more about the science.”

“Well from what I’ve heard, dealing with gods kinda sucks. That’s why there’s so few career priests now.”

Maxi thought for a bit. “Do you think I’d make a good priest?”

“Probably, given the shit you talk about whenever we’re out here. You’ll probably go to college when you’re like fifteen and graduate with a degree in astronomy and uraneotheism or whatever you were talking about—”

“Urantheology, the study of religion as it pertains to the sky.”

“Yeah, sure, that. Then you’ll open a temple or something next door to that big telescope in Hawaii and try to convert the scientists there.”

“Fun times. What’s your life plan?”

“You know what, right now I’m just trying to get through high school.”

“Fair enough.”

Maxi put her star chart away and started packing up her bag. Lainey stood up too. “Great, let’s go.”

“We’re going out to the state park next week, right? That’s what you said.”

“We’ll see.”

“No lights there. You promised.”

“I’ll keep you posted." Lainey might have smiled, but it was hard to discern in the darkness. “We’ll swing by the thrift shop on the way home to get something heart-shaped for your shrine, okay?”

“Sounds like a plan.”