Nora Counts Stars

Nora kept a notebook under her pillow. It was green, with a rubber band around it, and every single page had something important written on it.

Page one said: "Ants on the front sidewalk — 37 (Tuesday count)."

Page two said: "Rocks in the driveway that are perfectly round — 4. Rocks that are ALMOST round — 11."

Page three said: "Steps from my bedroom to the kitchen — 22. Steps from my bedroom to the kitchen while trying not to step on a crack — 27."

Nora investigated things. That was just what she did.

She investigated how many blue cars drove past her house before dinner (usually six). She investigated how many times her cat, Peanut, sneezed in a week (three, but once it was five, and she put a star next to that week because it was unusual). She investigated how many seconds it took for the bathroom faucet to drip exactly ten drips (forty-one seconds, except on cold days, when it was forty-four).

But her biggest investigation — the one that took up the most pages in her green notebook — was the stars.

Every night, after her mom said goodnight, after her dad said goodnight, after Peanut curled up on the end of her bed like a furry cinnamon roll, Nora pulled the curtain back from her window and looked up.

And she counted.

She had a system. She'd divided her window into sections, like a tic-tac-toe board — three across, three down. She started in the top left corner every single night, and she counted every star she could see in that section before moving to the next one.

The thing about stars is that they don't stay still. Well, they DO stay still, but the Earth doesn't, so sometimes a star that was in the top left section last night scoots into the top middle section tonight. Which means you have to be very careful not to count it twice.

Nora was very careful.

She kept track on a special page in her notebook. The page said:

"STAR COUNT — ONGOING."

And underneath, in her very best handwriting:

"Total so far: 214."

Two hundred and fourteen stars. It had taken her three weeks to get to two hundred and fourteen, because some nights were cloudy and she couldn't count at all, and some nights she could only get through two sections before her eyes got heavy and the stars started swimming together like glowing fish.

Tonight was a clear night. A perfectly, beautifully, absolutely clear night.

Nora pulled back the curtain and gasped a little, the way she always gasped, because no matter how many times she looked, the sky was always more than she remembered.

"Okay," she whispered. "Section one. Top left."

She squinted. She found where she'd left off — near a star she'd named "the bright one next to the almost-bright one" — and she started counting.

"Two fifteen," she whispered. "Two sixteen. Two seventeen."

Peanut opened one eye, then closed it again.

"Two eighteen. Two nineteen."

She wrote each number down, tiny and neat, in the margin of the page. Her pencil made a soft scratching sound.

"Two twenty."

She stopped. She put her pencil down. She looked out the window again.

There were so many. SO many. They went on and on, past her window, past the rooftop of the Hendersons' house across the street, past the big oak tree on the corner, past everything she could see — and then past THAT too, into parts of the sky she couldn't even look at from here.

Nora chewed on her lip.

She picked up her pencil and did some math at the bottom of the page. If she counted about five stars a night — and that was on a good night, a clear night, a night when she wasn't too sleepy — and there were maybe three or four clear nights a week... she carried the one... she scribbled and erased and scribbled again...

It was going to take a very, very, VERY long time.

Scientists said there were billions of stars. BILLIONS. Nora had looked up what a billion was at the library. A billion was a thousand millions. A million was a thousand thousands. She had tried to imagine it and her brain had made a fizzing sound, like a shaken-up soda can.

She looked at her notebook. 220.

She looked at the sky. Billions.

Nora felt something strange. A feeling like standing at the bottom of a very tall mountain, or opening a book and seeing that it had a thousand pages, or pouring out a puzzle and realizing there were a lot more pieces than the picture on the box had made it seem.

She felt small.

Not short-small. Not young-small. Just... small. Like maybe this was a thing that couldn't be done.

Peanut stretched, yawned enormously, and bonked his head against Nora's knee.

Nora scratched behind his ears. "There are billions of stars, Peanut," she said quietly.

Peanut purred. He did not seem worried about this.

Nora looked at the sky again. She looked for a long time. The stars blinked and shimmered, like they were breathing. Like they were patient and not in any kind of rush at all.

And then something happened, the way things sometimes happen when you're quiet and looking and not trying too hard to think.

Nora noticed a star she hadn't seen before. It was small and tucked between two brighter ones, like a shy kid standing between two tall friends. It had a bluish color. Just barely blue, like the edge of a soap bubble.

It was beautiful.

Nora stared at it. She picked up her pencil.

In her notebook, next to the number 221, she wrote: "Tiny blue one. Hiding between two bright ones. Very shy. Very pretty."

She'd never written a description before. Just numbers. But this felt right, so she kept going.

She looked back at the sky and found another one — a reddish star, low and steady, near the corner of her window.

Next to 222, she wrote: "Reddish. Doesn't twinkle as much. Looks serious."

And then 223: "Flickery one. Can't decide if it wants to be bright or not."

And 224: "Right above the Hendersons' chimney. I think it's been there every night but I only just really SAW it."

Nora's pencil moved faster now. Not because she was rushing, but because each star she looked at had something to say, and she wanted to get it all down.

225: "Part of a group. They make a lopsided triangle."

226: "Very faint. Had to look sideways to see it. Like it's whispering."

227: "SO bright. Show-off."

She smiled at that one.

She kept counting. She kept writing. The sky kept offering her stars, one by one, like someone handing her gifts they'd been saving.

When her eyes finally got heavy — really heavy, the kind of heavy where the stars left little trails when she blinked — she put her pencil down and read her last entry.

"Star 231. Golden. Straight up from my window, as high as I can look. Don't know why but this one feels like mine."

She closed her notebook and put the rubber band back around it. She pulled the curtain mostly shut, but left a gap — just a sliver — so a little bit of sky could get in.

Nora lay back on her pillow. Peanut repositioned himself on her feet. The house was quiet in that good way, the way it gets when everyone is safe and sleeping and the faucet is doing its slow drip in the bathroom — forty-one seconds between each set of ten, probably.

Two hundred and thirty-one stars.

Out of billions.

Nora smiled in the dark.

She was going to need a second notebook.

Maybe a third.

That was fine. She had time. She had her window. She had clear nights and cloudy nights and all the nights after that, stretching out ahead of her like a sky that doesn't end.

Tomorrow she'd start on section four.

And the stars — every single one of them, the shy ones and the bright ones and the serious ones and the show-offs — would be right there.

Waiting for Nora to find them.