stardust.

When I was in fourth grade, I learned that all people are made from stardust.

Sure, it wasn't exactly the truth. To me, stars were made of shiny materials that I could hold in my small hands, not gas that would burn me to ash. That didn't mean there wasn't a tiny bit of truth hiding in the myth.

When stars die, explode, go supernova, they expel the elements they've made during their lifespan. These elements don't die. They stay out in space.

The atoms that make up humans, that make up me, were made in a long-dead star.

I didn't know those specifics when I was ten. I pictured my insides as a mass of sparkling dust and nothing my science teacher told me about bones would ever stop me.

We were all young then, but we were the oldest we'd ever been, talking like everything we said was perfectly correct and true. Our teachers wouldn't let us walk down the hallways unless we were in lines. I found myself looking up and over the fence at the edge of our playground, wondering if I was tall enough to climb over, wondering whether I'd get in trouble or if they'd even find me if I ran for the hills.

I can't remember if I had a group of friends or just one. If it was just one, that one was enough. She had another name, but I just called her Auri, a nickname for Aurora. We'd been Aurora and Gracie in second grade even though those names weren't anything close to our real ones, and two years later, we were equally embarrassed by our past selves and too attached to those names to let them go.

Auri and Grace. Names that weren't ours. People made of borrowed materials from stars gone supernova. I always was drawn to her, and I thought it meant our souls had something in common, but maybe it was just carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur, and luck.

hydrogen.

When I was in sixth grade, I learned about hydrogen bonds. Weak bonds that hold atoms together. They were as easily broken as the friendship of two twelve-year-olds who didn't have a single class together anymore.

Adults lectured me weekly about growing up and growing apart and how friendships just didn't stick sometimes, and while I never told them, on the inside I protested because if Auri and Gracie could last from first grade to fifth, why couldn't we make it through middle school?

Nothing had happened between us. That was the painful thing. We just drifted apart, and we were held together by hydrogen bonds, not ionic or covalent. People weren't set on elastic bands. It wasn't like I could make her spring back if she floated too far away.

School was easy. School, I could handle. I could study for every test and do every last bit of homework and get straight a's, and people told me to calm down, it's only sixth grade, it doesn't count for anything, but if it didn't count for anything, why was I still there? Why couldn't I leave? What was the point of the teachers giving us slight freedoms, walking down the halls in clumps and choosing who to sit with at lunch, if I couldn't do anything without someone's eyes on my back?

I was good at math. I was good at science. I wasn't good at keeping my best friend by my side.

How was I supposed to enjoy choosing my lunch table if she wasn't seated by my side? How was I supposed to endure walking by her in the hallway and feeling our hydrogen bond snap together for half a second of eye contact only for it to break again?

I fell down a flight of stairs and broke my radius. My bones healed and I was forced to confront the fact that I wasn't made completely of stardust.

wanderlust.

When I was in eighth grade, my school took an overnight trip to an educational camp in a rural town. My parents looked like they were about to cry when I handed over my phone and went completely off the grid.

To me, it was just about the best thing that could've happened at age fourteen.

My brother called me a flight risk. My father called me impulsive. My mother called me a free spirit. My English teacher said I had wanderlust. Whatever it was, it filled me up and spread across the bones that I knew for sure I had after breaking at least five of them, leaving me aching to run somewhere. The irony was that I wasn't even a good runner.

My English teacher defined wanderlust as a strong longing for or impulse toward traveling. I did travel to attend the trip; I sat on a bus for what they said would only be two hours but what ended up being five. If the definition had been correct, just the act of going on this trip should've been enough to heal my wanderlust.

It didn't help. It made it worse. 

All those impulses to run away, to hop that fourth-grade fence, had built up to a crescendo. Before I knew it, I'd wandered off the path our class had been tasked with taking. Maybe it had been an accident. Maybe I'd run as soon as my teacher's back had turned. 

Whatever it had been, it led me up a hill to a tiny hut with a roof infested with wasps, and it was a miracle they hadn't decided to sting me.

The hut had two benches in front of it. One of them was occupied. I took the one that wasn't.

The girl on the other bench looked at me. She smiled. She stood up.

Auri took one step toward me.

mira, astraea.

Auri's real name was Astraea. Mine was Mira. 

Mira meant ocean or sea. 

Astraea was a Greek goddess of justice and innocence. 

Astraea meant star.

A long time ago, ships used to navigate vast oceans with just the stars as their guide. The Titanic probably had a more advanced system of navigation, but that didn't stop it from sinking.

When Astraea and I were in third grade, we played a game called Titanic in PE class. The objective was simple: get across the gym to the mat on the other side using only materials set out without touching the floor. Otherwise, your entire class would get sent back to the beginning.

The way the games went didn't stick with me. I did remember that Astraea and I had a habit of working together and disregarding everyone else. I didn't remember the name given to the mat on the other side of the gym that represented the ship that rescued some of those who made it off the real Titanic. Not until I heard it again in eleventh grade.

carpathia.

It must've either been luck or stardust that brought Astraea to that tiny building that day. I didn't know it at the time, but she, too, was afflicted by wanderlust. It wasn't like my eighth-grade self to spill out all my feelings to anyone, no matter what our history was, but Astraea and I ended up recounting the events of our three years of distance until our teachers finally showed up and screamed at us for wandering off the path.

It was true that I could've gotten dangerously lost without Astraea's presence. Two missing students were more noticeable than one, especially since she was a much bigger influence at the school than I was. She was louder, more enthusiastic. I was still buried in schoolwork.

I was buried so far in everything that I was sinking, unaware of what was happening. Like the Titanic.

Aurora, Auri, Astraea was my Carpathia.

covalent.

I learned in ninth grade that covalent bonds were the product of two atoms sharing an electron. I'd learned it before, in sixth grade, but my teacher hadn't called it two atoms holding hands.

I am not an atom. I'm a product of many atoms. I'm a person, named Gracie, Grace, Mira, and I am not bound to Astraea by a hydrogen bond.

For lack of a better word, we are covalent. We are two atoms holding hands. We are the ocean and the stars. We are two people who can't hold up against wanderlust. We are ships passing in the night that happen to lock eyes. 

Because some friendships do last. They don't go supernova after burning too brightly.