How Does It Work

The nebula poster went up on a different wall every time we moved. Ontario first, then Alberta, then Oregon, California, Beijing. I taped it flat over the fresh paint before I unpacked a single box, corners pressed down with my thumb until the tape held. It was the first thing up and the last thing down.

My parents homeschooled me, which meant home was wherever the boxes ended up. I got good at forgetting the layout of one house the second I learned the next. Friends I made in one place turned into names I couldn't quite picture a year later, faces first, then voices, then just the name going fuzzy at the edges. Each time, a little of me stayed behind in a room I'd never see again. The poster came with me. Purple and gold, a cloud of gas somebody photographed millions of miles away, given to me for my seventh birthday when all I wanted was to fly a rocket up past the clouds.

I don't think I understood then that everything else was replaceable and that thing wasn't.

Whenever we traveled, I asked to go to the local astronomy museum. What started as one visit became the thing we did in every city, before the food, before the parks, before anything. In Oregon I stood in front of a wall of star charts until my dad came back to find me. In Beijing I read the same constellation names in a different script and traced them anyway with my finger a few inches off the glass, the way you do when you're not supposed to touch. Nobody asked me to memorize any of it. I just did. I lost whole afternoons to displays my brother walked past in under a minute, and I never noticed the time going until the lights dimmed and someone announced they were closing.

When it came time to pick a high school in Vancouver, I chose University-Hill myself. It sits close to UBC, ringed by museums and botanical gardens, parks on one side and the shore on the other. I read that and something in my chest tightened, because I knew exactly what I was doing. I was betting on staying. My hand was actually unsteady when I told my parents this was the one, because every time before, wanting a place had cost me something when we left it. Choosing it out loud felt like daring the next move to come. If we packed up again, this would be the goodbye that hurt most. And I picked it anyway.

My mom said something to me once, in a kitchen I couldn't name now if I tried. "Eddie, look at that kettle on the stove. Even when its base is burned red hot, it still whistles with glee." I thought it was just a thing to say at the time. Just something moms say. But I kept coming back to it, months later, then years. All that moving, all that heat under me, and the thing that came out was still the same sound. I want to be a researcher because I can't stop looking up, and it turns out the sky doesn't change when the address does. Orion in Alberta is Orion in Beijing. The one constant I had was the one thing I'd want to spend my life on anyway, and I don't think that's an accident.

The restlessness didn't wear the interest down. It fed it. Every new window I ever slept under had a different view of the ground and the exact same view of the stars, and that was the part I could count on.

The poster is still taped to a wall here, in Vancouver, its corners soft and dented from six sets of old thumbtack holes. The purple has faded a little near the top where the sun hits it in the afternoon. I keep meaning to reprint it and I keep not doing it. This time I haven't left it behind.