Stargazing
There's a gentle roll to the ship, and I'm moving with it unconsciously. Nearly a week out, and I've finally got my sea legs. We're moving quicker now; the engines sped up last night, and we send a big, white streak after us. I'm getting some of the terminology down--I'm standing at the stern, looking out at our wake and where the black water meets the black sky. We're in a bowl, the stars bending in the sky overhead and reflecting in the water beneath. My back hurts from sitting in the cramped quarters below decks all day, so I lean up on the railing--the rain's just let up, and the clouds have all but disappeared.
The wet salt air smells good, better than the stale sheets of the cot they gave me. It's fresh and real, and I'm just now getting to like it. We don't have oceans in Minnesota, so I never had the time to get acquainted in the first place. Laying face down in a pillow and shutting out the world is only interesting for so long. Listening to Miles talk to himself, pacing the passenger quarters like a dog in a cage, gets old quick. There are only so many theorems and equations to run in the back of my head while I wait for the nausea to sink away and the boat to stop rocking in the choppy waters. Never boats. Never again.
But the sea at calm isn't so bad, staring out at the night sky and listening to the sounds of everything but not hearing any of them. That's why I don't hear the footsteps until she's leaned up on the railing beside me. When I turn, she's staring off at the sea, at the stars, and she sighs.
She smells like the underbelly of the ship--steel and grease and sweat, like she's been working all day with the boys and not afraid to show it off. She's got a black smear under one eye, and when she wipes a curl away from her face, she leaves another long streak across her forehead.
"Long day," I offer bleakly.
Charlotte looks up like she hasn't seen me yet, stretches her shoulders to hide a yawn and nods. She falls with her back against the railing, her head tilting to look at the bowl of the sky. I'm back to looking at the water, how it boils behind us.
"Working hard?" I'm not sure why I want to talk. Maybe she looks like she needs it. She'll not get a word out of Naomi--she hides herself away from us, up in the bridge and even the head when she particularly wants to avoid us. She only looks at me when she has to, when she's telling me how to use a gun and what cords to pull on a parachute if I ever need it. She's got a dead stare, like someone sucked all the life out of her a long time ago. Maybe that's just how I make her feel. She calls me a head-case when she thinks I can't hear her.
Charlotte breaks in with a light smile, tilting her eyes away from the stars. "Yeah. Definitely a hard day."
I want to ask where she's been, how she got so dirty and why she hasn't cleaned up yet. She's got her red hair hidden under an old bandanna, which is a shame. But I don't ask. I just lean further forward into the railing and watch the waves.
"How many of them do you suppose there are?"
The comment comes from out of nowhere, and I finally look up. Charlotte's tilted her head almost all the way back, staring straight up with her eyes wide to take in the dark sky with as much of them as she can. I glance up to follow her eyes, finding only the stars hovering above us.
"What, stars?" I look back down to see her staring across at me. I've said something stupid again, and I'm quick to hide behind my hand. "Right. Of course. Sorry."
She's always quick to reassure. She doesn't ever have to say anything--it's a look more than anything. Maybe she's not even sure she's doing it. She tilts her head to one side, her eyebrows get close together but she smiles to set it off. It's a balancing act, but she pulls it off. She has a way of looking at me that digs in under my skin and sits there. It's not always uncomfortable. I look away anyway.
"Well--" I don't sound confident, but when do I ever? "No one really knows how many there are out there, I guess. It could keep going on forever, always expanding, for all we know. I mean, one little objective piece of rock in the universe isn't a great vantage point for guessing the number of stars." I'm moving my hands too fast, and I only realize when it's too late.
"Piece of rock, huh?" She's not looking at me anymore. Sometimes, she feels like she's trying to set me on fire with her eyes. Not the bad kind of fire. Not Miles' fire, the kind that turns me into ash and lets me blow away in the wind. Charlotte's got a different kind of fire, one that gets at my insides but doesn't ruin anything at all. A clean fire, one that's hot and violent but wonderful. "Well, that puts me into perspective."
"I didn't mean--" I'm shaking my head, stupid stupid, but she cuts me off quick.
"No, I know what you mean." And it's kind, and forgiving. But she's looking at the stars. "There's a lot more than we get to thinking about. Well... than I get to thinking about, anyhow."
I know what she doesn't say. Normal people don't get to thinking about the distances between heavenly objects, planets and stars, how the physics of the universe keep us all from slipping into that black nothing of space, keep us from teetering off the edge and into the unexplained. I do. All those invisible pieces of string connecting us to everything, no matter how long and thin and intangible. Normal people like Charlotte don't think about those kinds of things. They keep me up at night.
"Yeah." It sounds stupid, and I hate myself for it immediately. I sound smarter when I'm not on a boat in the middle of the Pacific, when I'm not surrounded by strangers with guns, when Charlotte's not pinning me under those eyes of hers. Blue fire burns hotter, surrounded by her flame-red hair. That's conjuring all kinds of images, so I lock it away. I'm glad that she laughs, because it lets me smile back. The breeze is cool with the night, and it tugs at our hair as I turn my smile on her instead of the waves.
She's staring at the stars again. Is it possible to feel jealous if she's staring at something an impossible distance away? I feel it anyway, no matter how long I try to ignore it. "Hydrogen. Burning balls of hydrogen, a giant fusion machine."
She looks back at me, her eyebrows up in her hair.
I stutter through an explanation. "The stars, I mean. They're... They're..." I'm gesturing, waving my arms to help the words come, and I end up cradling my head nervously in one of my hands. "Hydrogen and helium, all the scattered light makes them look red and yellow and white. They're just burning balls of gas."
She doesn't look mad, and I'm waiting for it to come. "That's what they're made of," she says, and something in me turns sick when she shakes her head. "That's not what they are."
When she takes the step forward, I go still and quiet, and my spine jumps straight up and freezes. She's nearly right up against me, and everything about her is suddenly intense and real. I can see all her freckles, trying to hide under the smears of grease and grime she's collected through the day. Each little wave and curl her hair takes, the flecks in her blue eyes. But she's looking at the stars. My eyes follow the line of her arm, leading me up to the sky and a trio of stars that she traces with one finger against the blackness.
"That," she said, something clipped and professional, almost mockingly so, "is a couple of balls of gas hanging in space billions of trillions of miles away. But from here, it's Orion. His belt, anyway." She traces the stars even further from the first three, up to form a more complete picture. From Orion's belt up to his arms and down to his sandaled feet. "The Hunter," she continues, lowering her arm. But my eyes are stuck in the sky now, just where she wants them. Her voice is close; I'm breathing her in. "He's out hunting in the skies, with his dogs--" She traces another group of stars, "--Canis Major and Canis Minor."
And for a moment, I can see them. A tall Greek with a club in his hand, stalking the stars with his black dogs barking and braying at a running hare. I blink and they're gone, back to white flecks in the black sky. I shake my head with a whistle--it must've come from me, though the expression is strange.
"Wow," I manage. It comes out in a breath, and I turn my eyes on her with a smile I haven't used in a long time. I'm fifteen again, looking up through my father's telescope at the craters on the moon, at the gray shapes of stars unseen by my naked eyes. "That's... That's pretty cool."
Her lips pull back to show her teeth. She's smiling back, and for this moment, we aren't stuck on a freighter in the middle of an ocean. We're not a part of this whole messy Island business, and we're not being taught to handle guns and disassemble complex computer networking systems. I'm not a head-case and she's not an anthropologist. I'm Dan and she's Charlotte, and we're stargazing.
And she doesn't move away. I like that. I don't know how much she knows about me, how much she's heard from the ones spreading all the rumors, but I like that she isn't afraid of me. She doesn't expect me to explode at any given moment, or break down into a fit at the drop of a hat. I might, but it doesn't seem to bother her. It's unexpected, but I like it.
She just stands right up next to me, and we stare up at the stars overhead. I point and I ask, and she traces with her finger and explains. I might know what they're made of and how far we are in space, but she knows what they are. She lets me smile. It's unplanned and unguarded, and I'm not sure why looking at the stars has me feeling like I'm stuffing cotton down my chest. But I like it.
We stare upwards until Naomi calls us back inside. She talks to Charlotte and tries not to look at me. It doesn't bother me much. It never has. When we turn away from the railing, the stars behind and above us and the churning water beneath, I meet her elbow with mine, a soft sideways jab to catch her attention. She looks up, her blue-fire eyes scrunched in half-laughter.
"Same time tomorrow?" I ask. There's a catch in my throat, and I stutter my way through it, but I manage. I clear my throat again and hate the burning under my skin. "It's a big sky..."
She takes her time, but she's nodding. Naomi says something I don't hear, but Charlotte leans slightly in to tell me: "Sure thing, Daniel."
Naomi shoots me an awkward sideways glance at the skip in my step as I follow Charlotte inside. I'm sure I'm grinning like an idiot, mostly because it's stretching my cheeks and making my face ache. But I like it.
AN: It's me again! I can't get Dan out of my head, and I have to give major props to the writers who came up with him--he's a fantastic character, and I can't wait to see where the series takes him. I've been watching on iTunes over and over, and I'm sooo jazzed for Thursday. Anyway, the idea came to me right as I was going to sleep and I had to fall out of bed to scribble the idea down. My roomie laughed at me, but it was worth it, IMO. My Dan stories are getting longer. Is that good or bad? Anyway, tell me what you think, if I've lost the Daniness or just leave some love. Thanks so much for reading guys, it really is encouraging to hear from all of you!! Thanks again, and stay awesome!