Blog Post #5 – Astrophysics

The afternoon sun shines through the window of your physics classroom as you walk in. You don’t particularly care where you sit, and there’s no arranged seating plan either, so you choose the table in the front and center of the room, close enough to the whiteboard that you don’t have to strain your eyes to see. Your backpack lands on the chair beside you with a fwump, though you know it won’t deter them.

Sure enough, it happens again today.

A boy walks over—calm, carefree, confident—but not to keep you company. Instead, without looking at you, he yanks a chair from your table, carrying it off like it’s nothing. Like you’re nothing.

A group of girls follow suit, laughing among themselves as they drag another chair away. As they leave, the fragrance their perfume trailing them like a comet, you catch snippets of whispered conversation.

“Are you sure it’s okay to just take a chair without asking?” one girl asks.

“It’s fine, no one’s coming anyways,” a second girl replies.

“May I take this?” You’re startled out of your eavesdropping by the voice behind you. You turn. A classmate gestures to the chair with your backpack on it, smiling sheepishly. You’re half tempted to say no for the sake of it, but it’s like that girl said, you’re not waiting for anyone. So you nod reluctantly as you take your backpack from the chair and place it on the ground next to you, ignoring the way your chest caves in like a black hole.

By the time class starts, your four-person table is left with only one person sitting there. You.

The teacher walks up to the front of the room to start the lesson. Gravity isn’t just a force, it’s a relationship. Two objects pulling on each other, balanced-

The table to your front right has six people. From this distance, you can see them all clustered together, elbows bumping, voices overlapping. A constellation, each star bright on its own, yet always together. You wonder what it feels like to be so important, so needed, so loved that space itself bends to accommodate your presence.

You tear your eyes away from the sickeningly saccharine scene, focusing instead on your notes. You tell yourself that it’s okay to orbit alone. It’s more space for you anyways.

***

When the teacher announces the new seating plans going forward, you freeze.

Randomized. Stars scattered. Constellations rearranged.

The room buzzes with complaints as the teacher deals out slips of paper with names onto the tables. You make your way around the room, walking until you find yours. Your seat for today is right next to the teacher’s desk.

You sit down, and for the first time this class, there’s someone across from you. And beside you. They’re uncomfortable—you can feel it in the way they fidget, in the way their eyes dart around, looking for their friends. But the teacher rejects every seat change request with ruthless efficiency. You notice some of your classmates look longingly at each other from opposite sides of the room, like—you snicker—star-crossed lovers.

For a moment, you feel… lighter. Which is odd, because you don’t belong. You’ve never belonged. But now, neither does anyone else. You don’t want to call it satisfaction, but it tastes close. Is it wrong to feel this way? To think that maybe, just maybe, if everyone is thrown out of orbit, they’ll finally understand how it feels? Are you a bad person for liking it, the way everyone shifts uncomfortably, avoiding each others’ gaze?

The teacher’s voice breaks through the tension. “I noticed that some people are squeezing around tables and distracting each other, so this is how it will be for the rest of the term. A new arrangement every day.”

You glance at the person across from you. They don’t meet your eyes. You’re still alone. You’ve always been alone. It’s just that, at least for a while, so is everyone else. As the class settles into its new configuration, a small, shameful part of you feels vindicated. Equal, even.

You’re alone.

And you’re not alone in that.