Chapter 1

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DEDICATION For every kid who has ever looked up — and felt something infinite looking back.

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Omar loved stars the way some kids loved dinosaurs or trucks or soccer — completely, passionately, and with an enthusiasm that most adults found slightly overwhelming.

He knew the names of all eighty-eight constellations. He could find Polaris in four seconds. He had a telescope in his bedroom that he'd saved for by recycling cans for nine months. And every Friday night, rain or shine (well, mostly clear skies), he sat on the roof of his apartment building and looked up.

"Why do you like stars so much?" his little sister Fatima asked. She was five and she liked worms, which Omar found puzzling but respected.

"Because they're always there," Omar said. "Even when you can't see them. Even during the day, the stars are still there. You just can't see them because the sun is too bright."

"That's like God," Fatima said.

Omar was seven years old and this was the most profound thing anyone had ever said to him.

He thought about it while he ate his cereal. He thought about it at school. He thought about it so hard that Mrs. Patterson asked him if he was feeling okay, and he said, "My sister said stars are like God," and Mrs. Patterson said, "Your sister is very wise."

NIGHT SKY CLUB FRIDAY NIGHTS, 8 PM BRING A BLANKET. BRING QUESTIONS. STARS PROVIDED FREE OF CHARGE.

He posted it in his apartment building, at school, and at the community center. He expected maybe two or three kids to show up.

Eleven kids showed up.

They brought blankets. They brought questions. They brought popcorn, which Omar hadn't asked for but accepted gratefully.

They lay on their backs on the roof of the apartment building — eleven kids from seven different countries, speaking three different languages, united by the simple act of looking up — and Omar pointed out Orion, and Cassiopeia, and the Big Dipper, and the North Star.

"The North Star doesn't move," he explained. "Everything else in the sky rotates around it. It's always in the same place."

"Like God," said Fatima, who had insisted on coming even though she was technically too young.

Everyone laughed. But it was the kind of laugh that means someone has said something true and funny at the same time.

"Yeah," said Omar. "Like God."

The Night Sky Club met every Friday after that.

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Three weeks into the Night Sky Club, something amazing happened.

Mrs. Kim, the science teacher at Omar's school, told the class that a meteor shower was coming. The Perseids — one of the best meteor showers of the year — would peak on a Friday night.

"You can see up to a hundred shooting stars per hour," Mrs. Kim said.

Omar's mind exploded.

He immediately began planning the greatest Night Sky Club meeting in history. He made new flyers. He borrowed extra blankets from the laundry room. He asked his mother to make hot chocolate. He even talked to Mr. Abebe, the building manager, about turning off the rooftop lights to reduce light pollution.

"You want me to turn off the lights," Mr. Abebe said, "so children can see rocks burning up in the atmosphere."

"Meteors," Omar corrected. "And yes."

Mr. Abebe looked at him for a long time. Then he said, "I'll bring the cookies."

On Friday night, twenty-three kids showed up. Word had spread. There were kids from Omar's building, from the building next door, from two blocks over. There were kids who had never looked through a telescope. There were kids who had never stayed up past 9 PM. There were kids who had never lain on their backs and looked at the sky without a screen in their hands.

They spread blankets across the entire rooftop. Mr. Abebe turned off the lights. Omar's mother set up a table with hot chocolate and Mr. Abebe's cookies.

And then they waited.

"THERE!" seventeen kids yelled simultaneously.

The second came thirty seconds later. Then two more. Then a bright one that left a green trail that hung in the air for a full second.

The kids cheered. They pointed. They gasped. And then, gradually, they got quiet. Because the meteors kept coming — five, ten, twenty — and the sky was putting on a show that no screen could match, and the only appropriate response was awe.

"Omar?" whispered Soo-jin, the girl from the apartment below his.

"Yeah?"

"When the meteors burn up, where do they go?"

"They turn into dust. Tiny particles that float down to Earth. Some of the dust on the ground is actually made of star stuff."

Soo-jin was quiet for a moment. "So the stars are part of us?"

"Yeah. We're made of star stuff. Literally."

"That means we're all connected. Through the stars."

Omar felt that thing again — the Fatima thing — where a kid says something so true that it vibrates in your chest.

"Yeah," he said. "We're all connected through the stars."

And every single one of them came back the next Friday.

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By the end of summer, the Night Sky Club had changed Omar's building — and Omar.

The Friday meetings had become the thing that everyone looked forward to. Parents started coming. Mr. Abebe became the unofficial co-host, providing cookies and star charts he printed from the internet. Mrs. Kim offered to bring her professional telescope for a special event.

But the biggest change was invisible.

The building where Omar lived had always been a place where people kept to themselves. Doors stayed closed. Neighbors nodded in hallways but rarely spoke. The families from Somalia and the families from Korea and the families from Mexico and the families from everywhere else occupied the same building without really sharing it.

The stars changed that.

Because when you lie on your back next to someone and look at the same sky, something happens. The distance between you shrinks. The silence becomes shared, not separate. And when a meteor streaks across the sky and you both gasp — that gasp is a bridge.

"I started a club."

"You started a community."

"The stars don't belong to anyone," he said. "They're not American stars or Nigerian stars or Korean stars. They're everyone's stars. And I think that's the point. When we look up, we're all seeing the same sky. We're all part of the same universe. We're all — I know this sounds weird, but — we're all star catchers."

Nobody thought it was weird. They thought it was true.

Everyone laughed. Some people cried.

The Night Sky Club met every Friday from then on — through fall, through winter (with extra blankets and Mr. Abebe's space heater), through spring, and into the next summer, when a new batch of kids joined and the cycle started again.

And every Friday night, from a rooftop in a mid-sized city, a group of people from seven different countries looked up at the same sky and remembered that they were made of the same stuff as the stars.

Connected. Luminous. Part of a pattern too big to see from below.

But beautiful to be part of.

THE END

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Crimson Ark Publishing creates stories about the wonder of creation and the connections that unite us all.