14I couldn’t wait for Mom to fall asleep, so that I could get Skye’s journal from her backpack.
I tried to study my astronomy, to make the time pass. I had lugged along the textbook, knowing I had an extraordinary advantage that my schoolmates couldn’t match – a view of the stars and planets, unpolluted by city lights.
But on the long plane ride to Nepal, I had reluctantly read the first few chapters and realized that astronomy was more than peering at the stars. It was full of math.
I stared at the mind-boggling numbers. One light-year is five trillion, eight-hundred-billion miles. As if I was supposed to learn to work with figures that humongous, calculating the speed and distance between various stars and planets.
I hoped I could get away with writing a paper that was so brilliant w
