Hitch Your Wagon To A Star

e x t r a

Just a little scene I never put in the book. A little scene for those that hold Maya and Clark close to your heart, and you don't want to let them go. This is for you❤️

•••••

❝Silently, one-by-one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.❞
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

***

I know you heard my story. The story of me seeing my best friend through different lenses. How I gave her what was left of my broken soul among the hardest times of my life. I suffered loss, I found the greatest love, I suffered loss once more, but I found healing. I never thought I could become something more than Clark Jones from Woodstock, but I did. I became the engineer I always desired to be. However, I could've never worked for NASA if it weren't for that curly haired blonde girl that breathed life into me. From the first day I saw her, I knew she was special. Although you suffered loss with me before discovering Maya among the stars—or lost angels as Longfellow would say—there are moments I still ponder. Moments that never left me all these years later when she was no longer on earth with me. These moments find me as I gaze upon her star across the universe. Love never really dies, reader, it just creates a callous over your worn heart that eventually heals itself without ever going away. Here's one of those callouses. Let it bruise your heart like it burned my soul.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Maya laughed as her brown eyes focused on the carpet beneath her, before she placed a loose blonde ringlet behind her ear. It was the first day of summer—we just completed our junior year—and we were beginning summer the same way we always had in the past—together.

The truth was, I looked at her because she was the most phenomenal human to admire. There was an aura about her that haloed her as if she were an angel. She burned too bright for this damned world, and even I didn't deserve her. I didn't deserve to know a girl that belonged in classic literature when I didn't even belong on a post card.

"Because I want to," I shrugged. You see, I had this idea that everyone had a rainbow. This rainbow wasn't a bow in the sky, but it was something—anything, really—that you find after you endured a storm. The purpose of this rainbow was to breathe hope inside of you, hope that brought you out of the storm onto dry land. Maya knew that my rainbow idea was basically a religion to me, but she had yet to know she was my rainbow. I knew she probably suspected it, but I had yet to confess it to her. After all, I was only seventeen. Seventeen-year-old Clark was different than the Clark that lost his uncle. He had many more years to grow in this life, but for now, he could enjoy admiring his best friend. His best friend that he already loved, but he didn't know it yet. I didn't know it at the time, but I was looking at the person who owned my soul. In fact, she owned all of me since the first day I saw her in third grade. Dammit, I really loved her.

"You're weird," she laughed as she threw a checker piece at me. She was red, I was black, but neither of us had been playing in the last ten minutes. Instead, we were enjoying the silence between us as we inwardly pondered over the school year we just completed.

Well, Maya was pondering. I was just staring at her. Her golden hair really did appear to be a halo around her, and I couldn't help but wonder how she was real. It was then I believed in God, for how couldn't I? Only God could create something as magnificent as Maya Edwards.

"Let's play marriage," she suddenly requested before tossing another checker piece at my face.

This time, I caught it before it hit me.