Page 30 of Starrily
“Or, if you find it more comforting, try the little moon pendant.”
She frowned as she pulled it out of her pocket. “This one?”
He nodded. “You like fidgeting with it. You can do the same during the talk—it’ll work like a stress ball.”
He’d noticed? Logic told her she should feel ashamed, but his tone was comforting and reassuring, and it made her wonder—what else about her had he noticed?
“Take two?” He gestured with his hand, offering her the stage.
She tried more approaches, and Simon continued to give her pointers—swallow theuhms, walk across the stage, have a bottle of water with you, and drink if you need a momentary break.
“Let’s say it’s been fifteen minutes, and there’s one particular jock in the back that’s getting restless,” he said.
“I doubt there will be jocks.”
“Imagine it. You have a student whose attention is slipping. Make sure you catch their glance.” Simon did so with her. “And you do this.” His look was a perfect mix of stern teacher and co-conspirator; something she’d see a school teacher do to get his students back in line, but not scare them off.
“How did you do that?”
He frowned, then shrugged. “Comes naturally, I guess.”
She slumped her shoulders. “Can I hire you to do the talk instead?” Hewasgood at it—from how he moved on stage to how he changed his intonations when necessary and pepperedin a few jokes to lighten the mood. As if he was born to transfer knowledge in this way.
Whereas she was only born to write it down.
“Besides me being entirely too dumb to understand your research,” Simon said, “I also don’t want to take your spotlight.” He scrunched his nose in pretend thinking. “Or your downfall, whichever it might be.”
“If I fail now, I only have you to blame.”
He smiled. “Then don’t fail, Phoenix.”
***
At the far end of the crowded auditorium, Simon hid in the shadows. Fine, the whole place was darkened—except for the stage where Calliope was giving her presentation—so he wasn’t hiding, technically. Calliope hadn’t invited him to the talk, but she didn’t forbid him from coming, either.
The large, arena-shaped room made Calliope appear small, a lone, distant blip on the horizon. It couldn’t have been easy for her, but so far, she was holding up well. She’d entered the stage confidently and walked to the podium stand, where a laptop and a bottle of water waited for her.
“Nice night we’re having, isn’t it?” she began, then pretended to check the time. “Oh, sorry. Astronomers, you know—occupational hazard.”
The students laughed, as did Simon.Well done, Phoenix.
From there on, it went smoothly as Calliope introduced her research, and various images and graphs flickered on the screen. “You’ll see we studied primarily elliptical galaxies, as those contain older stars …”
We know three types of galaxies: elliptical, spiral, and irregular. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a spiral galaxy.
There it was again—his voice from the past. Simon closed his eyes, not sure if he wanted to hang on to the memory or chase it away.
“We pulled that data and arranged it in a table …”
In his mind, he was in a room similar to this—only smaller, and the students much younger.“You’ll see two tables if you open your workbooks to page seventy-five.”
Simon shook himself out of his reverie and re-focused on Calliope.No—focus on something else. Anything else. Count the students. See how many are writing things down.
“We call this one a hierarchical model …”
Instead, his legs took charge, and he slowly moved towards Calliope, sticking to the side of the auditorium. Like a moth to a flame, closer and closer, until he was standing near the exit by the stage, still in shadow, but Calliope—the phoenix, the flame—was closer now, close enough that he could see her face shine in joy as she explained her work. She didn’t smile, but she must’ve pushed her nervousness aside and seemed to be enjoying herself.
“And now, to the crux of the issue.” Her voice echoed through the auditorium, confident and strong. “The default assumption—although we, as scientists, should be careful of defaulting to anything—is that the initial clouds of dust clumped up into stars, and those stars formed galaxies, eventually creating a black hole in the center as the stars went supernova. But what if …” She clicked on her laptop to display a new set of images. “The stars weren’t the first ones to form? What if the clouds of dust condensed directly into black holes?”
