Chapter One
I met her at a Halloween party in 2008.
I was late getting to the party, having stopped to pick up my costume on the way there. It was a last minute choice to go - I'd only decided to show up at all because there was this girl I was actively trying to prove I was over and the guy throwing the party had told my friend Chris that she was gonna be there. But twenty minutes after I arrived, dressed as Indiana Jones, I'd done my rounds of the floor and discovered that she hadn't shown up and I was stuck in that awkward obligatory time you have to spend at a party before you can leave without looking like a tool. So I was standing by the refreshments table, watching people take punch and get wasted because it was spiked, waiting for enough time to pass that I could ditch the party and go to a club or something.
A girl that was dressed like a cow stepped up to the table and ladled some punch into a cup. As she looked down, concentrating on what she was doing, being careful not to spill, she was biting the very tip of her tongue. She had a small spattering of freckles on her nose, though not very many. I watched her. Suddenly, she dropped the cup and the punch hit the table and sprayed - miraculously not getting on her cow costume somehow. She started cleaning up the table with a napkin. I grabbed a handful of other napkins from down the table and handed them to her. "You probably didn't want that anyways," I confessed to her as she started spreading the paper towels around on the table. "It's spiked. Everyone who's been drinking it is dancing terribly but thinking they're old pros just moments after they drink it."
She laughed, "Thanks. But I think they were doing that before they drank the punch, too."
She grabbed up the napkins and turned, shoving the gooey, spiked-punch-soaked mass into a trash bin under the table. I pointed. "Nice udders," I said. She turned back to me, her hands slipping over her chest. She looked down at the costume, then back up at me. "Whichever ones you'd find less offensive," I laughed, answering the question in her eyes.
She flushed, "Thanks. They're too big."
"Not from my vantage point," I said.
"Try driving in them."
"Oh so you're talking about the costume now. Got it."
"Well I could be driving like this..." she hunched over and stuck her chest out and held onto an imaginary wheel. "You can't imagine the chaffing I get." She shook her head.
"So if the udders are too big, why did you stick with coming as a cow?" I asked, laughing. We stepped away from the table, until we were leaning against a hallway wall. Music and noise were going on all around us.
"Because I'm More Cowbell," she answered.
I looked her over, "You don't even have a bell on."
"Yeah but my name is Belle," she explained. "You have to know me to get the joke, I guess."
"So you must always leave everyone beggin' for more then," I guessed.
"Always." She looked me over. "And you didn't feel like dressing up?"
I pulled the whip I'd bought on the way over out of my pocket. "I'm Indiana Jones," I answered.
She smirked at the whip. "Or you're just looking to have a good time." She winked.
I laughed. "Exactly."
Belle studied me a moment, "So Indiana, I have a feeling I know your real name but I'm gonna ask to be polite and also just in case I'm mistaken so I don't look like an asshole."
"My name is Nick."
"Carter, right?" I nodded. "Of the Backstreet Boys." I nodded again. "Hey that's pretty cool," she said, "What're you doing slumming it with us lowly folk?"
I shrugged, "Friend of mine is friends with the party-thrower," I said. I didn't feel like telling her I was there primarily to show an ex-girlfriend that I was over her.
She smirked, "I heard your ex was supposed to be here," she said. She glanced around.
"She's not here," I said too quickly. Belle's smirk grew deeper. "Not that I looked or anything. I didn't even know she was supposed to be here 'til I got here. Just a coincidence."
"Coincidence my udders," she laughed.
I flushed. "Well I ain't here for her now at any rate," I said.
"Stuck in the obligatory period, are you?" she asked.
"Yep, pretty much," I answered.
"Me, too." She looked around, then leaned closer, "You know, there's an exception to get us out of the obligatory period if you're interested...."
"Whats that?"
"Leaving with a one night stand you picked up at the party," she said.
"Yeah?"
"You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Of course we don't really do the one-night-stand part..."
"That was my favorite part of the plan," I joked.
Belle pointed at the whip that I was holding now at my side. "I'm not into that type stuff, Indiana."
I laughed.
"So... You wanna get away?"
I did.
And that's how I ended up in my car, the top down, driving along the California coastline at two thirty in the morning with CowBelle standing on the passenger side, arms above her head, shrieking as the wind blew back her costume hood, her sandy blonde hair flying back behind her. The sunlight illuminated her in a bath of blue and we had my 80s rock iPod mix blaring; at the moment, Bruce Springsteen was Dancing in the Dark.
Suddenly she lowered herself, "Oh my God, stop up here for a second!"
I pulled aside and she leaped out of the car excitedly, beckoning me over, "I wanna show you something!"
I parked and climbed out and walked over to the ledge of the street where the ground ended sharply, diving down into the ocean. I glanced down at the jetty of rocks below, the ocean tide breaking against them.
"This is gonna be good. The atmosphere is so dense in the city you can never see this stuff... See that star right there?"
I looked over. She'd turned back-to the ocean and had pulled out a green laser pointer from God knows where. I followed the beam of light into the sky and nodded, "I see it."
"That is the star Bellatrix."
"As in Lestrange?" I joked.
"Yeah, J K Rowling named the character for the Latin, which means Female Warrior. Not particularly after the star, though. I, however, was named after the star." She smiled.
"Really?"
"Yup. Belle is short for Bellatrix. I used to go by Bella -- then, you know, Twilight happened."
"Right."
"It's pretty," I said, looking up at the sky.
Belle nodded. "She's almost eight and a half times bigger than the sun. She's part of the constellation Orion, but she's not really in any group, there isn't any other bodies that share a proper motion with her. She's just out there, floating around the galaxy." She stared up into the sky at the star. After a long pause she said, "I fucking love space stuff."
"I do, too," I said.
"Yeah?"
"Yep. I ain't really smart enough to know it all, but I like looking up and thinking about it, you know?" I said.
Belle nodded. "So you like Harry Potter?"
"Sure," I answered.
"Okay then... check this out. See this star here...?" she moved a little ways down toward the ground from Bellatrix. "That really bright one."
"Yeah."
"That's Sirius."
"Black."
"Right." She smiled. "The ancients named it Sirius because in Greek that means glowing or scorcher. It's the brightest star in the night sky from Earth's point of view because it's the closest, other than the sun. He's one of the stars in the constellation Canis Major... You can't really see the whole of the constellation, it's not over the horizon yet this time of year here." She chewed her lip.
"Incredible," I muttered.
"You know the phrase 'dog days of summer'?"
"Yeah."
"That originates from ancient Egypt when they used the Canis Major constellation - which is in the shape of a dog - to tell them when the Nile was going to flood. They used Sirius to tell them when to prepare. That's where the phrase comes from."
"Damn," I whispered. I looked over at her. "Are you like an astrologist or something?"
"Astronomer," she corrected. "And yeah, but I'm not practicing. Technically."
"Why not?"
"I'm teaching at an art college for the time being while I work on a personal project."
"Your students must love your class."
Belle laughed, "Uhhh -- yeah, no, not really. Half the time they show up stoned or fall asleep. My class is one of the most commonly failed courses at the school. I get lots of thumbs down on RateMyProfessor.com."
"Why would they take it if they aren't interested in it?"
"A science is required and most people mistakenly believe Astronomy will be an easy one to pass, like it's just naming the planets or something. There's a lot of math and philosophy and logic that goes into it all that they don't even think about." She stared off at the stars again. She shook her head, "And there's so much out there that they don't think about... There's more out there than I could ever teach them about."
"There's a lot of space out there," I agreed.
"Hold up your pinky finger. Like this." She held her arm up, her baby finger extended. I did the same. We were staring up at the sky, our fingers aloft. "See the amount of space your baby finger covers up?" I nodded. "That's how much we've seen of the known universe. And the known universe isn't even that big compared to the universe itself. There's no measurement. It never ends. It just goes on and on and on full of Bellatrixes and Siriuses and Suns and Earths and moons and stars..." she shook her head. "We're crazy to think we're all alone in all that."
"I've thought that for years," I muttered.
Whitenoise by Pengi
