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Forever Stargazing

Kassandra Heit

    Two days before I turned eighteen, when I longed for the freedom of officially being an adult, I discovered this place. It’s a spot deep in the forest where the brush is thick and only the rustle of animals can be heard. Most of the trees here seem to shed needles in the fall every year before the snowy weather blows in and creates a winter wonderland. A mother fox uses the cover to her advantage each year when she delivers a litter of pups in her den.
    It’s quiet here, far different from where I was raised.
    My three-floor walk-up in the middle of the city left little privacy. The neighbors above usually played classical music, and they lived with a small dog whose claws would tap against the hardwood floors in the silence. The elderly lady across the hall would knock on our door every Friday at four to bring over a batch of whatever she decided to bake that day. At least once a month, she would arrive with a plate of sugar cookies. I told her they were my favorite once as a child, and she made them for me the last Friday I was home.
    Most often, Mom arrived home just as she was coming with the warm desserts. The plastic bag containing their dinner for that night would hang from between her teeth. One hand held onto her briefcase and a number of files while the other jiggled with her keys. Dad would walk through the door soon after, when our neighbor was still standing in the kitchen. He’d pop in to say a quick hello to them before stopping by my room to ask how school was.
    It was just routine.
    That next Monday was when I was introduced to this place of silence, of nature. Mom stood with her cup of coffee watching the news before she left for work, and Dad walked with me down the three floors to the bus stop. With his hard helmet in hand, I watched him walk away as the city bus left the curb. I’d taken this route since my parents let me go to school by myself. There were three stops before mine. I’d walk through the park and hurry the last two blocks before reaching the front doors to my school.
    But, I didn’t make it to the doors that Monday. I didn’t even make it through the park. I’m not exactly sure why it happened on that particular day. The last pair of eyes I saw in the park were ones I had seen every day. With a newspaper in hand and dressed in a blue blazer, he always sat on the same bench with reading glasses perched at the end of his nose. Maybe I gave him a look he didn’t like. Normally, I would just walk by him. That day, I met his eyes for a second and nodded just to acknowledge him. Maybe that did it for him. Maybe it didn’t matter at all what I did or didn’t do.
    After all, he didn’t just decide to leave me here without planning it.
    It’s been a long time since that day. It no longer terrorizes me. I don’t know what’s become of the man on the park bench, and I’ve found a few more souls in these hills that have similar stories as to how they got here. I don’t know if the couple upstairs still has their dog that pads through their apartment in the silence. I don’t know what’s happened to my neighbor with the sugar cookies or if she still comes over at four on Fridays. I don’t know what Mom brought home for dinner that night or what Dad did when he saw my empty room.
    What I do know is that the mother fox in her den had six pups this past spring. She often sits on the ground next to me each evening before she goes out hunting. It could be a kinship of sorts. My remains kept her alive during my first winter here. I enjoy seeing her though. She’s the mother I never got to be. The needles are beginning to fall and frost covers the ground every morning. The first snow won’t be long now. Even the animals that pass through here know that as they scavenge for more food to store away.
    The brush is thicker than it was when I first arrived here, and I know that I will probably never be found out here. I’ve been two days away from my eighteenth birthday for five years now. I have the freedom I so desperately wanted then, being forever lost in the sea of trees. Now, I long for the sound of my front door when Mom or Dad come home or the smell of fresh sugar cookies.
    We always want something we can’t have, don’t we?
    But, I’ve come to terms with what I am here. During the day, I keep watch over my mother fox in her den and rustle the branches above her when danger is near. At night when the crickets chirp and the owls hoo, I do what the city would never allow me to. I stare up at the twinkling lights that dance around the moon. Each night the pattern changes and the constellations I imagined the night before become brand new ones. Sometimes another soul joins me, but most nights they let me be. They’ll always know where to find me.
    Forever lost like them.
    Forever two days from eighteen.
    Forever next to this den, stargazing.

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