Polaris, the North Star, is the most reliable star in our sky. It keeps its position as the entire sky rotates around it, a guide to lost travelers and tiny fingers making nighttime wishes. Polaris burns approximately twenty five hundred times brighter than our own sun. At the speed of light, it would take over four hundred years for us to know that the North Star was gone.

 

      It’s too cramped in our apartment. The air is stale. Housing rules state that we can’t prop our doors open. No escape. I’m abundantly aware of the sound of the air conditioner as I try to focus on the paper sitting in my lap. My fingers twirl a red pen. I can feel the tension pressing down onto my chest, the feeling of being trapped. I have no idea of what’s trapping me, but I know I need out. It’s maybe forty degrees outside and I am just getting over the flu. My conscience reminds me that I still have homework to do, that there’s no reason I should even think about leaving my spot.

 

      “Want to go outside?” I ask.

 

      Shelby gathers blankets, I slip on flip-flops, and together, we head outside onto the back balcony. It only takes a few moments before I feel calmer. My nose burns with the cold wind and I can feel the goosebump shiver settling into the base of my spine. It’s wonderful.

 

      I lean over the balcony walls, staring up at the murky black of a stormy sky. It’s only the second floor, not far from the ground. I want to be higher, but that’s not an option on campus. I settle for sitting on the steps with Shelby, leaning my back against the cool stone. I try not to allow my eyes to focus on the spider webbing hidden in the recessed lights. Each time I think about not looking, my eyes find their way there.

 

      It’s quiet for a moment, or as quiet as a college campus can be. I can hear the sounds of boys near another dorm as they whoop and scream. I imitate them into my blankets, exaggerated grunts and moans. Shelby shoves me, but I can hear her laughter.

 

      “If they come over here, I will never forgive you,” she tells me. I laugh and make another call. It’s like imitating strange animals, making this noise. I imagine, for a wild moment, someone holding a duck call, using it with all seriousness and only getting my wild wail. The giggles get worse.

 

      The boys eventually get bored and leave. It takes a bit longer for Shelby and me to calm our giggles, but we do succeed. Small victories. I close my eyes and rest my head on the step behind me, my temple nestled in my elbow, and listen to the sprinklers water the cracked concrete. From next to me, Shelby sighs. I imagine my stress leaving my body, every exhale a step towards heaven and freedom, a silent call.

 

      “Do you ever feel like your life means nothing?” I ask. She looks over to me, and I know there’s concern there. It’s not a bad night tonight. Shelby’s seen a bad night. She’s held me at three in the morning as I gasped through my tears, broken apologies for keeping her up late with my stupid, minor problems. Sorry I’m broken. Sorry I’m not good enough. Sorry you ended up with a roommate who can’t get her shit together no matter how hard she tries. She’s shoved chocolate in my face and covered me in every blanket in the apartment. She knows what a bad night looks like, knows it looks like wet hair and bloodshot eyes and a voice that won’t steady no matter how hard I try. This isn’t a bad night. I continue speaking.

 

      “Not nothing, nothing. More like… I just want to be somewhere.”

 

      Shelby sighs and leans back. I peek an eye out from behind my wild curls to see her.

 

      “I know what you mean,” she says. I sit up to listen to whatever she’s going to say. Shelby’s a year older and a year smarter. She’s seen so many things. She’s supposed to have the answers. If my life was a Lifetime movie event, this is the moment where she’d offer me the advice that changes my existence and my montage would begin.

 

      Instead, she just looks out at the empty parking garage. I sigh and do the same. I want to tell her that I’m disappointed with how my college experience is turning out. I want to tell her that I want to do everything. I want to tell her about the night I cried on the floor of the shower for two hours. I want to tell her that I felt so alone that night that I’d put my phone inside a plastic bag so I could chatroom talk to a friend who lives four hours away. I want to tell her that I only spoke to Olivia because she’s so much younger and so far away that I won’t have to confront the fact that I feel like I’ll never make anything of my life and all my friends will become bigger and better and leave me in the dust.

 

      I can’t tell her. I’m not allowed to be the weak one, not allowed to show weakness. She knows it exists, knows that my emotions sometimes clamp their slimy fingers around my throat and squeeze until I can’t breathe. But I’ve spent too many nights ignored by my parents, being told it’s all in my head. It’s my job to be the strong one. I’m not allowed to come apart. None of my friends can know how much I need them, can know how weak I am.

 

      “I miss the stars,” I say instead, my eyes focused on murky blackness. My eyes hunt for the tiny light that might break through the clouds. I wonder in that moment if I missed the stars themselves or if I missed home, where I could see them. I learned to identify the North Star in the back of a dirty pickup truck, where my father told me stories about the stars. I learned much later that Polaris is actually believed to be three different stars, supporting each other and helping the star system be so bright. I could pick the North Star out of any sky. In that Now I don’t even get to see it.

 

      “I miss them too.”

 

      I lean into Shelby a bit. My toes are icy cold now. I can’t imagine how Shelby feels, barefoot as she is. The discomfort grounds me, in a way. I try to pull my toes underneath my already crowded blanket anyway.

 

      “Let’s go somewhere,” I say to her. I have no idea where, no concept of when or how, but right now all I know is that I need out of here. I have friends about to graduate and I’m exhausted; my muscles scream as I force myself to tread violent waters for just a bit longer. I’m spluttering on the sour taste of failure and confusion and I don’t know which way is up anymore and I need to do something before I drown.

 

      Shelby laughs softly but doesn’t brush me off. “Like where?”

 

      I don’t know. Anywhere. Anywhere but here, where my future feels as far from me as the invisible stars in the sky.

 

      “Let’s go on a road trip. You, me, Kayla, Hannah, Ariel. We can go cross-country. We can go to New York. We’ll visit Washington, see Nintendo of America. Go touch the Pacific Ocean. Stop in Austin for RTX. We can take all summer.”

 

      She and I both know we can’t. We couldn’t keep her medicine cold. My mother would never, ever let me do this. I’m taking eight credit hours this summer. Hannah, Kayla, and Ariel all work. But for that shining moment, I can taste freedom on my tongue as we joke about going to visit Ellis Island, about staying with her family in New York and mine in Chicago, eating and driving and laughing our way across state lines. Freedom tastes like icy Florida air.

 

      I see it in my head. Music blasting, wind in my hair. I’d borrow my grandfather’s convertible maybe, if I could trust it not to break down in the middle of a desert highway, or we’d take my reliable SUV. Hannah would bring her iPod and her CDs, enough Legend of Zelda and Kingdom Hearts music to get us from here to Washington and back with a dozen stops between. We’d take turns driving, everyone but Shelby who’s never lived in one place long enough to get her license. I’d make picnic lunches that we could eat in state parks. We’d drive all day and stop at night to lie on our backs and look up at country stars, five heads together like a quintessential teen movie.

 

      They might forget homemade pancakes and customized card games. Our lives together might blend together into a purée of laughter and tears and late nights and video games. But a whole summer together… they could never forget me after an experience like that.

 

      We plan the whole trip, using fingers and toes to calculate mileage. Her aunt’s in Texas; she’ll take us for a while. My brother’s godparents will house us and feed us besides. We’ll be able to bathe and sleep and have time to see everything. We plan until my phone dies, and I only set it on the step above me. Lack of power isn’t going to stop me now. The warmth of adrenaline chases away the bite of the cold until I want nothing more than to grab my keys and go bang on the door to Hannah and Ariel’s apartment door. It’s time for us to get on the road.

 

      We’re halfway through our plans for Texas when Shelby yawns, covering her open mouth with her blanket. I have no intention of stopping.

 

      “It’s getting late,” Shelby says quietly.

 

      Like a balloon with a tiny hole pricked in it, my excitement slowly deflated and I’m left with a hollow, thick feeling in my chest. I look up instead of meeting her eyes. Four hundred years of light speed travel are nothing compared to how far away my future feels. I nod silently, swallowing back the burning lump in my throat as I gather my blankets up. Just this once, just for tonight, I allow Shelby to see my tears come. I trust her to let her see the beginning and the aftermath both.

 

      Stars aren’t diamonds, or genies, or wishes. Stars burn and live and die and they are so very alone. To accept this truth is to accept that the metaphor is stupid and meaningless because the stars are just balls of hot gas that don’t give a shit about my tiny life on this tiny chunk of rock hurtling through space. Yes, stars are hot gas. Yes, stars will die and we’ll never even know it. I don’t care. Stars are nuclear reactions, fusing protons and electrons and making energy and light in the process. But that hasn’t stopped children from wishing on them, from hanging their dreams on them. It won’t stop me either. Polaris is three stars, a group working together to guide travelers and wishes in the void of space. One supergiant and two dwarves, but they need each other.

 

      And if Polaris, the great North Star, can allow others to help… then maybe I can too.