Page 8 - My FlipBook

T h e w o r l d o n E i t h e r S i d e

My legs buckled, and I sank to my knees in the snow-dappled
March grass. I looked like I was praying, but I wasn’t. I was
railing.
Later, at home, I vowed I would never go back to the
place where Amir—beautiful, strong, fast, funny, sweet,
warm Amir—lies rotting under a layer of dirt. When I want to
remember Amir, I’ll lie on the grass and squint at the sun as it

glints through the oak trees in my backyard.
Amir loved the sun. He loved all stars. After high school,
he wanted to go to the University of Waterloo and study
physics and astronomy. He was a geek and a jock, the only
hybrid in our grade. He was full of fun facts about football and
baseball, especially the Toronto Blue Jays, and the universe,
especially stars.

There are ten thousand stars for every grain of sand on
earth. Neutron stars are stars that tried to die but couldn’t. If you
could fold a piece of paper in half fifty times, it would reach the
sun. As impossible as this seems, it’s true. I’ve seen the math.
We are fifty folds from the sun. Now, every time I fold paper
I think about stars. And Amir.

☙

One night last summer we lay on Cherry Beach, looking up at
the sky, and Amir asked me if I knew we were made of stars.
“Is this some kind of metaphor?”
“No. It’s a hard fact.”
“Are there soft facts? Facts you can snuggle with?”

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