Free Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass

a hug and slips five twenty-dollar bills in my hand. “For emergencies,” she says. “And snacks.”
    I wave goodbye to them as I follow Mr. Silver to the bus. He tosses my duffel into the open compartment underneath. Good thing I don’t have anything breakable in there. He’s still checking people in, and tells me to go find a seat anywhere I like. I step onto the bus and feel a blast of air conditioning hit my face. The aisle isn’t very wide, and I have to be careful not to jostle anyone on my way down. Whacking an old guy with my elbow wouldn’t be a good start to the trip. I catch bits and pieces of words that make no sense to me. Words like
Baily’s Beads, Corona, Shadow Bands, Diamond Ring.
Is someone proposing on the trip? I look where the voice is coming from, but it’s an old man in thick glasses. He doesn’t seem like a likely candidate to get married any time soon.
    Most of the back of the bus is empty. I settle into the window seat in the very last row and flip open the folder. I only get two paragraphs into the first article when I sense movement toward my end of the bus. An old woman in a pink sweat suit is heading determinedly down the aisle.
Please don’t sit here,
I silently beg. I’m sure she’s a nice enough lady, but I really don’t want to have to make small talk with a stranger for fourteen hours.
Please be heading for the bathroom.
    So of course she sits down next to me. She looks even older than the rest, with the brightest white hair I’ve ever seen. You could see her hair from space, I bet. I can’t imagine why she would have walked all the way down the aisle when there were plenty of open seats up front. She smiles at me, so I smile back. I hope she can’t sense my disappointment at not getting to sit alone. She settles into her seat, lifts a huge container of red licorice out of her enormous pocketbook, and offers me a piece.
    “Um, thanks,” I say, peeling one off the top.
    “What’s that you’re reading?” she asks, tilting her head toward my folder.
    I glance down at my lap. “Some articles about eclipses. I’m, uh, trying to learn stuff before we get there.”
    She nibbles at her licorice and says, “You don’t need to read any articles. You got a living, breathing eclipse expert right here.”
    I nod. “I know. He’s my science teacher at school.”
    She laughs and then starts coughing. It goes on so long I start to worry. I wonder if resuscitating old people is on my list of official responsibilities. I move my licorice to the other side of me so she doesn’t cough on it.
    “Not Silver,” she says. “Me! This is my sixth eclipse. I’ve traveled the world for ’em. Saved all my money to do it, too. Worth every penny and then some. I’ve got almost half an hour of totality—that’s total darkness, you know—under my belt. If I
wore
a belt, that is. Never could understand the fascination with belts. Let’s tie something really tight around our waists. Cut off our circulation. That’s smart! The things people do for fashion. Doesn’t make any kind of sense.”
    When I’m pretty sure she’s done ranting about belts, I say, “Well, I don’t know why women wear belts, but guys need them or else our pants would fall down.”
    Her brows rise under her white hair. “Is that so? I never knew that.”
    I nod.
    “So what can I tell you about eclipses in exchange for that tidbit of knowledge?”
    The bus is starting to pull out of the lot now, and I can see Mom and Mike standing by the car, watching. The windows are tinted and I know they can’t see me, but my hand goes up to wave anyway. Yesterday if someone had told me I’d be here now, talking about belts and eclipses with a little old lady in a pink sweat suit while eating licorice, I’d have thought they were crazy. But here I am.
    “Well,” I say, swallowing the last bit of licorice, “I’ve only read a little bit so far, so I don’t really know what to ask.” She looks disappointed, so I think