Read Online The Same Stuff as Stars by Katherine Paterson - Free Book Online Page B

telescope.”
    So that was what the bazooka was: a telescope. She
was
tempted, but no kid with any sense would let someone she didn’t know—“I gotta go in,” she said again, but she was no longer moving in that direction.
    â€œYou don’t remember me, do you, Angel?” How did he know her name? “When you were just a tiny thing, I held you up so you could look at the stars through my telescope. That was my old telescope. I’ve got a better one now.”
    Something stirred inside Angel. Was that the good thing that had happened to her here? There had been a fight, and she had run out—out of the trailer and into the field. Someone had been there who picked her up and took her to see the stars. She remembered it as a dream with an angel sent from God when she was small and frightened.
    â€œYes, I do. I remember,” she said.
    She followed the tall man out into the middle of the pasture. There were no trees, no buildings, no animals or people there—only the earth and the sky. He put the telescope down on its long skinny legs and twisted little screws until he had it standing firm. Then he put his eye to a little short tube on top and moved the long tube slowly until he said, “Okay, here she is. In all her splendor, Angel. I think she wants to show off for you tonight.” He stepped back. “Now, put your eye right here.” He indicated the end of the long tube. “That’s it. Do you see it?”
    She didn’t see anything but black. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
    He bent his own eye to the tube and twisted a knob on the side. “Now try,” he said.
    â€œOh,” she breathed, “ooh. It’s got four babies!”
    He laughed. “Those ‘babies’ are really moons. Poor old earth only has one, but Jupiter has a whole string of them and a lot of dust as well. My ’scope isn’t powerful enough to show more than those four.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “You see that great big splotch of light over there?”
    She hated to take her eye away from the telescope to look, but she did because he asked her to. “Yeah?”
    â€œWhat do you think that is?”
    â€œI don’t know,” she said. “A really huge star?”
    â€œThat’s what it looks like, but it’s a cluster of stars. Not just one. And do you know how far away they are from you right now?”
    â€œA thousand miles?”
    â€œNo. More like millions of miles. We’re not even looking at stars. We’re looking at the light from stars so far away it takes the light from the nearest star about two million years to travel from that star to your eye. And that light is going at 186,000 miles a second.”
    She felt dizzy when she put her eye to the eyepiece again. How could she believe what he was saying? It wasn’t stars she was seeing at all—just the light of stars zooming like fury to get to the earth but taking forever because it was so far to go.
    She stepped back, moving her eye from the eyepiece and the overwhelming thought of light streaming down from fiery worlds whirling in space beyond all human view. “It’s scary,” she said.
    â€œWhat’s scary?”
    â€œHow big everything is—how far away. I’d just be like an ant to that star.”
    â€œNah. Not nearly that big,” he said. “The whole world isn’t that big.”
    â€œYou mean we’re like nothing? The whole world is like nothing?” It frightened her to think of herself—her whole world—like less than a speck in the gigantic sky, like nothing at all.
    â€œYeah, we’re small, but we aren’t nothing,” he said. “Want to know a secret?”
    â€œWhat?”
    He reached over and pinched her arm.
    â€œOw,” she said. It didn’t hurt so much as surprise her. “See this?” he said, lifting her arm up where he’d pinched