When she was little, her father had taught her the position of the stars.Â
They werenât all stars, of course. There was Venus and Mercury, Mars and Saturn and Jupiter. Some were visible to the naked eye, others they spied through her great grandfatherâs telescope, an awkward contraption Garrett Jacob Hobbs wheeled out from its cobweb-covered position in the garage.Â
He didnât believe it meant anything, of course. The movement of the planets, progrades and retrogrades, the placement of the stars at the moment of your birth--nonsense, he said. Meaningless. But that was the point: to contemplate your insignificance. To look up at the heavens and feel dwarfed.
Now, from the window of her hospital room, Abigail pressed her forehead to the glass, stared up at the dense night sky. There was a wind tonight, something bitter blowing in from the Eastern Bay, and the clouds marched across the sky with chilling precision leaving little room for stargazing. The only visible landmark was a sliver of moon, curved like a sickle, like a ritual instrument.
Abigail thought of blades. Of the way they shone in the muted light of a motel bathroom.Â
Behind here, in the dark of the bedroom, machinery whirred. Machines to measure her blood pressure, her heart rate, her vital signs. Machines she hadnât needed for several weeks, though they remained here, calculating her existence, trying to position in her space, the same way astrologers tried to position the stars. What did it mean, if she remained unplugged? If her heart rate remained unmeasured, if there was no data to ground her in the moment?
Abigail thought of bullets. Of the finality of shotgun shells piercing skin. She thought of her father, collapsed against kitchen cabinets.
She thought of Will Graham, his staccato panic, the bloodspatter on his glasses causing him to stumble as he moved across the room to her.
People believed the position of the stars when you were born meant something. They believed you could calculate the trajectory of your life that way, your likes and dislikes, your triumphs and your pitfalls.
Abigail wiped the fogged-up window with the curve of her wrist. The patch of clarity revealed a break in the clouds, just as the moon emerged into view. Sharp edges. A glow. A stain in the sky.
Long ago, Abigail had made up her mind that the stars had no bearing on her existence. Life was unpredictable and chaotic, scary, almost, in its refusal to adhere to a plan. And here she was, barefoot and robed, prisoner in an institution designed to keep her safe from the outside world.Â
And here she was, a speck, a dust mote. And here she was, with her keloid scar and her empty heart.
She turned from the window and back toward the bed. There had never been anything out there for her--why should that change now? Her father had been right: it was meaningless, all of it. Barren and cold until you worked out how to bend it all to you--how to make the brightest planet in the sky shine solely on The Work.
The hospital bed was warm but somehow uninviting. She burrowed under the covers, stretched her toes until the joints clicked. The moon remained outside her window, taunting her wordlessly. Think of what she could do with all that sharp. Think of the sky, flooded with crimson.
Abigail fell asleep in the milky beam of light cascading through the hospital window. And this time, despite her best efforts, she did not dream.Â
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