"...you see it?" Maddie was saying as I pushed open the clubroom door.

"Yes! I'm definitely going!" Natalie's declaration was followed by a short applause.

"Let's go together!"

"I can't wait!"

They giggled in excitement as I closed the door.

"Hey guys," I greeted as I made my way over to them. "What are you talking about?"

"Our school's astronomy club is holding an event open to all students this coming Friday," Natalie said, her light blue eyes practically sparkling. "They're having a meteor shower viewing on the school field."

"Can you believe it?" Maddie gushed. "Shooting stars! It's going to be so romantic!"

Okay, that I could admit. There was a certain quality of romanticism to stargazing at night.

Mildly skeptical at their enthusiasm, I hummed as Natalie fished out a crumpled flyer from her messenger bag and handed it to me.

"Hi, everybody! Having a lively discussion already?" Olivia's voice traveled into the room as the door opened again.

Olivia strode in with an armful of thick books. Her dark eyes stared at us questioningly as she made her way over to our circle of chairs.

"Hey, Olivia!" Maddie said, patting the chair next to her. "We're talking about the astronomy club's open event on Friday night."

"They'll be watching meteor showers. 'All non-members can attend—although registration is required,'" I read from the flyer. "'Free cookies will be provided!' Wow, that's a great way to get me to sign up."

"And look! 'If you're interested in learning more about constellations, our friendly members would be happy to help you.' That's so nice of them," Natalie said, pointing to the spot on the flyer that emphasized it.

"They're trying to pull in more members with this event, obviously," Olivia said, taking the flyer from me to look at it. "It does look enticing."

I grinned at her. "It's the perfect excuse to stay out late, especially since we'll have permission."

"Natalie and I are definitely going. We should all go together!" Maddie looked hopefully between the two of us.

"I've always been interested in astronomy," Olivia admitted, giving the flyer back to Natalie. "I didn't even know that our school had a club like that."

"Me neither. It's probably a pretty new club, right?" Maddie tapped her finger against her chin.

Natalie looked impressed. "Maybe that's why they're doing this. We should go and support them!"

"Alright, let's go together," Olivia said, cracking a smile at her. "Chelsea, are you in?"

I considered it. We rarely got to bond together outside of our weekly club meetings. This was a good opportunity to get to know them better. It wasn't like I had plans this Friday, anyway.

"Yeah," I said, nodding. "Count me in!"

----------------------------------------------------------------

"No. You're wrong."

I stared Cody down.

He narrowed his eyes at me. "That's an opinion, not a fact."

"Percy would never help out with the joke shop, no matter if Fred died, and that's a fact," I said, stabbing my pen into my notebook page in an attempt to be intimidating.

Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to retract the pen nib, and it poked a significantly unaesthetic hole into the page. I mourned my beautiful notebook as I looked away from Cody to inspect the damage.

We had been arguing about canon for an hour now, and we were getting absolutely nowhere.

After we had started getting used to each other's company and gotten increasingly comfortable with sharing our opinions, we started expressing our thoughts about each other's writing with greater honesty. That was to say, nitpicking about the liberties we each took with canon in our writing.

"You don't know that," Cody said, shrugging.

Someone who passed by us in the corridor saw Cody and waved. He nodded back at her. Shaking my head, I rested my forearm on the study table we were seated at.

"I'm getting a headache. Let's drop this."

"Okay." He laughed. "We'll probably never come to an agreement on this one."

I sighed and stretched both my arms across the table. "This is tiring. Do you really think this chapter worked? I really wanted to make the Giant Squid eat Dean."

"No unnecessary deaths," he said firmly. "It works just fine without that scene. And it'd ruin the mystery of the lake you'd built up so far. It's too soon."

I groaned and shut my notebook. "You're right. Thank you."

"No problem," he said, closing his own. "Do you want to study together today?"

"I should be the one asking you that!" I snickered. "I'm always relying on your help."

"It's fine, I don't really have any other arrangements today," Cody said, but the corners of his mouth curled upwards slightly.

"Let me ask Ashley if she wants to join us," I said, pulling out my phone.

"I'm just curious, but why don't Derek or Melissa ever seem to join you two?" he asked.

I sent her a text. "Well, they're honestly kind of ... lazy when it comes to schoolwork. Our teachers are fortunate if Melissa comes into class with an assignment that's not half-done. Derek's only a little better than her."

He pulled out his chemistry textbook and binder. "Oh ... yeah, I have a couple of friends like that, too. They're always getting yelled at by Miss Wheeler."

I snorted. "Miss Wheeler yells at everyone. It's honestly a good thing they're both smart; or they'd be in way more trouble than they already get into on a regular basis. They study half as much as we do, but their grades are only a little lower than ours."

I had to snicker at the envious expression on his face.

"Trust me, if I could study just half the amount I'm doing now and still get the same grades, I wouldn't be here right now."

I frowned at my still sleeping phone screen. "Why isn't Ashley replying to me?"

Her replies were normally instantaneous.

Cody shrugged as he highlighted a line in yellow on his textbook. "I guess she's still talking to Mr. McMillan."

Huh? I raised my head to stare at him in astonishment. "Why is she with Mr. McMillan?"

"Oh, she's consulting him about an extra credit assignment," he said, as if he hadn't just dropped a massive bomb on me.

Working diligently to pick my jaw up from the floor, I forced out, "How do you know that?"

How did he know when I, her best friend, didn't?

Immediately, he flushed and turned his head away.

"Oh, uh, we text sometimes." The forced nonchalance in his voice was so striking I almost choked trying not to burst out into laughter.

They were interested in each other! Or at least, he was definitely interested in her. I wanted to squeal and prod him for more details, but I knew that I would have to leave that behavior for Ashley. I couldn't afford to scare away her potential boyfriend.

They'd been texting regularly enough for Cody to know about her daily plans. Their friendship was progressing far quicker than I had anticipated. And soon it would tip over into romance. I was sure of it.

"Well, that's nice," I said, unable to help the teasing tone that had entered my voice. "You two are sure getting along, huh?"

Cody highlighted another line in his textbook, quite obviously pretending to be engrossed in it. "Yeah, sure, she's really easy to talk to."

Feeling just a tad contrite for making him squirm, I decided to change the subject. "Yep, she totally is. Hey, can you help me with this question?"

----------------------------------------------------------------

I hid my hands in the giant pocket on the front of my favorite peach-colored thick hoodie.

"It's freezing," Maddie complained, tugging her woolen cap over her ears.

As I watched her ears get swallowed up by the fluffy material, I suddenly wished that I'd thought to bring my own cap too. My ears were really suffering the icy sensation of the cold evening air.

"Yeah," Olivia muttered, cupping her hands to her mouth.

Natalie hugged her rolled-up fleece blanket closer to her chest. Why hadn't I at least brought my blanket? The flyer had even recommended us to bring one, but I had thought they were exaggerating ...

Maddie stopped in her tracks when we reached the field. "Whoa, look at that!"

Olivia whistled. "Huge turnout tonight."

There were tarps all over the school field. Everyone was spread out in their small social clusters, and it seemed like they had all brought their own blankets.

There were several students, who were probably club members, running about handing out small packets—cookies, maybe? I really wanted one right now—to the people who were already sitting on the ground waiting for the event to start.

The cozy atmosphere made this feel like some kind of giant sleepover.

Olivia jerked her head in the direction of a white booth that was a short distance away. "Hey, there's the registration booth."

After we confirmed our registration and received UV ink stamps from the guy manning the booth, another student led us to our 'reserved' spot on one of the tarps.

"I'll have someone bring over your cookies soon," the friendly-looking girl said. "Go ahead and lie down—remember to keep an eye on the sky! We might be able to see the meteor showers any time now."

We thanked her as she sped off, almost plowing down a poor startled teacher in the process. I noticed for the first time that there were several teachers were strolling around the area as well.

"They're probably on patrol," Maddie said when she saw me looking at them.

"Is ... is that Mr. Jameson?" Natalie whispered to me.

Oh, right. We shared the same English class. Pleased to find a comrade, I beamed at her.

"Where?" I asked, trying to rein in my gasp that was desperately trying to tumble out of my mouth.

Olivia rolled her eyes and pointed—with her arm outstretched in the most unsubtle manner ever—at someone who was striding around in a large brown winter coat. "He's there."

"The moonlight's falling on his face at just the right angle," Natalie said, sighing.

"You're so right." I swooned along with her.

"Stop," Olivia groaned, putting her head into her hands. "I listen to enough talk like this from my best friend on a regular basis. I thought I was free from it tonight!"

Maddie laughed. "We can lie down and watch the stars. I don't think any teachers will be in the sky for them to ogle."

"Yes, I'm going to do that." Olivia unzipped her gigantic backpack and pulled out a very fluffy looking blanket that was folded up.

She unfolded most of it and placed it on the tarp.

"You can lie on my blanket too, if you want," she offered.

Maddie cheered and lay down next to her.

"Chelsea, you didn't bring one?" Natalie said, setting her own blanket up.

"No, I didn't think I'd need one," I said, still resisting the urge to hit myself over the head.

"You can share with me!" She patted it. "Mine's huge!"

I had never wanted to hug her so much before. "Thank you!"

The inky night sky was really clear tonight. Stars twinkled in soft glows, gathering in beautiful clusters that splattered across the dark, vast canvas.

"It's so pretty," Natalie spoke softly.

Equally quietly, Maddie said, "I don't think I've ever had the chance to stargaze like this before."

"Even when you were a child?" I asked.

Memories of sneaking up to my house's rooftop with my older brother in the dead of the night and lying down just to admire the stars flashed across my mind. Ryan loved teaching me about the different constellations, although I had the tendency to fall asleep whenever he entered into encyclopedia mode.

Although I could admire the sparkling of the untouchable astral bodies like any other normal person, I'd never taken an obsession to stargazing like he had; Ryan was the only reason I knew how to use a pair of binoculars.

"Never," she said, letting out a sigh. "This is so beautiful."

Normally, I would have laughed at the way every single one of us was whispering for no visible reason. Tonight, though, I felt that it just added even more depth to the wistful mood that had fallen over entirety of the field. All the hushed chatter that reached my ears had a softer, gentler quality to them than I usually heard on a frequent basis in the school hallways.

"I'm so tempted to join this club," Maddie said.

Giggling lightly, Natalie replied, "Me, too. Maybe we should talk to one of the members and find out when their meetings are held."

"If it doesn't clash with our club, we should consider it!"

"You can ask when one of them comes with our cookies," Olivia said.

Moments later, a guy came and handed us each a cookie in a small paper bag. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maddie sit up and engage in a quiet conversation with him about membership registration.

"Hey! Did you see that?" Olivia's words came out in an urgent rush.

"Yeah!" I responded, feeling my eyes widen in wonder.

A single shooting star had slid gracefully across the portion of the sky that I'd been admiring. As I watched, another one radiated in another direction. I lay there, enveloped by Natalie's warm blanket, feeling like this moment had frozen in place for me as gleaming stars sporadically streaked across the beautiful vastness of the sky.