In school they tell you that you’re “special.” You’re not special. Maybe you’re funny, friendly, independent, smart. If you’re really lucky, maybe you’re funny AND independent, or friendly AND smart. But you’re not “special.” And chances are you’re not even close.

I’m close. I know I’m close to being special. I don’t need anyone to tell me that, and that’s good, because no one is ever going to walk up to me and say, “Wow, Jimmy, you sure are special!” It’s not happening, and that’s fine. I know I’m different, that I’ve always been different. I know that I am 14 years old. I know my name: Jimmy McStellar. That’s all you need to know about me…it’s all I know about me.

Oh, there’s one more thing you should know: I live in the stars.


I’ve lived in the stars for as long as I can remember. It gets cold sometimes, but mostly the stars keep me warm. The stars are nice to look at, too. But concrete jungles replace the stars with fake lights and a busy life. Plenty of people never even get to see the stars. They’re cut off and I feel sorry for them. There are stars all around me. I don’t even have to look in any particular direction.

I’ve lived up here for as long as I can remember. I don’t know where I was born. Maybe my mom brought me up to the stars, so I could be closer to them, to learn from them and maybe emulate them. If that’s why I’m here, it hasn’t really helped. I probably shone brighter back home.

Maybe I was born among the stars. Maybe I don’t have a mom, or a dad for that matter. I guess I could have come out of nowhere, brought randomly into existence, or from a spark or flare of energy from a star. That wouldn’t surprise me: there are stars everywhere here, constantly eating the cold and slowly expanding, the heat building and building until the star collapses in on itself.
I’ve seen it happen.

Centuries having passes in seconds, thoughts come and go but take their time, slow and weighty as glaciers. A trickle of thought works its way into my mind. It changes from a trickle to a steady stream, and before I know it, tidal waves of memories are crashing through my head. It’s as disorienting as anything. Memories lead to more memories, and suddenly I plunge beneath the surface of the waves, immersed in revelations about what I used to be – hindsight gives me the perspective I need to really understand what I was.I was a boulder at the top of a hill, poised to act but never doing much; I was a pebble, a tree, a lake, I was the sun and I was the sunshine. The world was mine.
So what happened? Was I thrown from the earth, ostracized from nature, from the very confines of my soul? Was it arbitrarily decided that I no longer belonged? I wouldn’t be surprised if that were so. The earth is a cold, harsh place.
Now, I watch the stars gather in a circle around me, each one heating to a million times its normal temperature, expanding, getting ready to take me in. I guess it had to end somewhere, somehow. I guess this isn’t really bad way for it to happen.
I guess I’m ready.