“You will pay attention, you will sit still, and you will do your homework!”

I flinch at the last part as my teacher’s voice rises ever higher. She seems angry, but it’s not really directed at me - I sneak a glance at the poor kid behind me in the ISS classroom and try to give him an empathetic glance, but he’s not really paying attention to me.

Mostly to the monster staring him down, but I can’t tell for sure. He’s got his eyes mostly closed and his face is in a grimace, but there’s not much else going on, whether it’s upstairs or on his desk.

Poor guy. He’s had three days to do that paper and he still hasn’t written a single line on it. I swear, he’s either ADHD or dyslexic, or maybe both, but the poor guy just can’t catch a break here.

I should probably mention that that poor guy also happens to be my best friend, and his name is Evan Bronze Eagle. He has both ADHD and dyslexia. I should know. I did his last paper for him.

“And just what are you looking at, Mr. Dead-Eye!?”

I should take this brief moment to explain my last name. You see, Lakota last names generally consist of an adjective or verb and a noun - This is because, once upon a time, many many years ago, my last name was someone’s only name.

Cool, right? So I know for sure there was some badass man or woman in my lineage named Dead-Eye. Although this could mean they were blind in one eye, or maybe that they were a really good marksman. I have no idea.

Anyway. Back to the old hag’s need to yell at high school sophomores.

“As far as I remember, you’re in here because you cheated for Mr. Bronze Eagle, am I correct?”

I nod slowly, remembering something about no sudden movements in front of a snake. Mrs. Ophidian reminds me enough of one, what with her flat nose, white eyes, and enough dandruff to make her own snowglobe.

She should really get that looked at.

Turning back to yell more at my friend, she decides the best way forward is more of the same.

“You had a three-day weekend to write this paper, and you still couldn’t manage it!”

I sighed. Evan needs to figure his own problems out, because I am not willing to sit here in ISS doing homework for an old woman who has enough dandruff to make it snow. It’s almost like she’s preparing to shed her old, wrinkly skin.

Whatever it is, it’s gross.

The bell rings, saving Evan and I from more of her spittle yelling. I grab my backpack and make a beeline out the door before Mrs. Ophidian can say anything else.

“Jeeze,” Evan says in my ear as he catches up, his breathing huffy. “You’d think I personally killed her snake with how he won’t stop yelling at me.”

“Snake?” I say, only partially paying attention as I walk to the exit. School day’s over. I wanna go home.

“Yeah, didn’t you see it? Empty snake aquarium, back of the classroom. I swear, only interesting thing in there.” He jabs a thumb back at the classroom to further his point.

“What kind of snake, d’ya think?”

He looks thoughtful for a bit, but then just shrugs. “No idea. But it looked big. That was a, what, easily eighty gallon tank?”

“How’d I miss that?” I wonder aloud.

He snorts. “You miss everything, dork. You missed Riley getting reamed by a dodgeball, you missed the owl in the football field for a whole week, you missed the massive storm system across the entire country last summer… like, jeeze, Seth. Do you actually see anything in the first place?” He snaps a finger in front of my face to make a point.

“Oh, shut up,” I brush away his hand, smiling. I can’t help it. “Find. You’re right. Just tell me more about snakes so I can figure out what kind of snake she has.”

“Speaking of, where did she come from?” Evan wonders as we walk out the school’s double doors. No security. Thank the high spirits, I’ve had enough of the security guards setting up at every entrance.

“What’d’ya mean?” I ask, only semi-curious.

“Well, last week that classroom was occupied by… what, Mr. Hodge? Less than a week later, whole new teacher and setup.”

I frown. “Wait, really? I thought we’d had her all year.”

He stops, but I don’t notice until I’ve walked a few steps past him. I turn around. “What?”

“No, we had Mr. Hodge last week. How could you forget?”

“Huh?”

“He was your favorite teacher, dork.” Evan elbows me with a look of suspicion on his face as he catches back up. “What’d’ya mean you don’t remember him?”

I spread my hands, lost. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

“Hmm,” is all he says, and we continue our walk home in silence.

Good thing about living three blocks from school - I can walk home, so I don’t have to worry about trying to drive through a high school parking lot during rush hour.

Bad thing about living three blocks from school - I can walk home, so my parents didn’t think I needed a car to get anywhere.

With Evan living next door with his dad, his mom long-gone, that means neither Evan nor I have access to any sort of car. Which means our ways to entertain ourselves after school and on the weekends is limited to visiting the DQ down the street, the park across the street, and video games.

Being teenage boys, we naturally pick video games most of the time.

“Not fair! Cheater.” Evan leans back and sulks as I whoop his behind for the fifth time in a row at Mario Kart Wii. (We’re old-school, so what? Neither of us like shooter games.) I play nothing but Princess Peach and no matter how many times he plays the Kongs or the plumber brothers, he can’t get ahead of my fruitiness.

“How would I cheat? Does the Wii version even have cheats?” I laugh at him as he sulks to his loss.

“We need to find more games,” he says. “I can only get squashed so many times before I give up.”

“Five times, apparently,” I tell him. “Then you give up.”

He pushes me. I push back, and before we know it, we’re wrestling on the living room floor again.

“Boys!” I hear my mom admonish us from the kitchen, where she’s oh-so-helpfully making us snacks. “Go outside. Goodness knows you two could use sunlight…”

She trails off, rolling her eyes. She’s not wrong. Auntie called me the palest Native I done ever laid eyes on. Made me and mom laugh, but she’s not wrong.

“Come on,” I grab Evan’s hand.

Or I try. I look away and blush at the last moment, choosing instead to make it look like I was just grabbing the couch to pull myself up. He notices nothing.

“What’re we gonna do out there? Park?”

I shrug. “Why not? Park’s fun. We can throw food at the ducks.”

“Hell yeah,” is Evan’s agreement.

As we head out the door, Mom thrusts two cold cans of Dr. Pepper into my hands, and both of us smile widely at that. Nothing better on a hot summer day than cold Dr. Pepper.

Oh yeah. Did I mention we’re in summer school? Yep, we’re just that dumb. June 16th, it’s the first of three summer school sessions. We’re in all day for a single class, and we failed that spectacularly enough to get ISS afterwards.

We’re just that good.

Unfortunately for me, I am not that good when it comes to avoiding rocks getting beamed at me from directly above.

“OWW!” I go down in a tangle of legs and arms as I collapse into Evan on our way out the door. While, thankfully, neither of us had opened our cans yet, they did nothing to help the throbbing pain on my forehead.

“What the-!” Evan’s words disappear into a wordless shout as I push us both off the front step. At least the grass is only a step below that, and we haven’t mowed in at least a week, so our landing is soft.

Well, my landing is soft. Evan makes a good body pillow.

My vision swirls as I lay on the ground, my head on his stomach. He groans as we lay there, but I don’t pay him much attention.

“Boys?” The front door opens and my mom pokes her head out, looking around for a moment before catching sight of us below her.

The mom-ness of how she immediately retreats into the house and reappears less than a heartbeat later with two cold towers and two more cans of Dr. Pepper is almost goddess-worthy.

She kneels down next to the two of us, not bothering to try and untangle us. She wraps the Dr. Peppers up in the towels, one for each of us, then hands one off to Evan. She doesn’t give me my own, but instead presses the towel up against my forehead for me.

“What happened?” She asks, her voice incredulous. “I know you’re clumsy, but wow. You didn’t even make it a step out of the house!”

I look around, then point into the grass. I barely want to look at it.

On the other hand, Mom decides to grab the item in question and inspect it.

“This is what hit you?” Mom’s voice is astonished. “It’s beautiful!” 

“I… what?” I hold the can for Mom and sit up. I feel Evan do the same behind me, his hand on my shoulder.

“What is that?” Evan’s voice from behind me asks.

“I… I have no idea.” I say. I think. Mom repeats me, though, so I might not have said anything at all.

I look at it deeply, and I have to say - Mom was right. It is beautiful.

Mom is holding a small, round… rock? Crystal? Something like that. It’s perfectly round, but foggy twilight in color. Inside, I can see an expertly-crafted hologram of the night sky in it. At the center, one star in particular glows extra bright…

“What star is that?” Evan scrunches his face as I glance over at it., pointing towards the brightest, central star.

Mom shakes her head. “That… it can’t be.” She doesn’t answer Evan’s question.

“Mom?” I ask, hopeful. “What is it?”

Her voices shakes slightly as she answers, but it’s clear the presence of the star is making her nervous. “It’s the… the missing star. The dead star. The eighth star.”

“Wait… that star?” I ask, surprised. “Like, nobody even knows that story in the first place, how would they know to put a star there on this?”

“What story?” Evan’s confused voice doesn’t come as a surprise to me.

Mom explains. “In the oldest stories of the Lakota… the ones that don’t get written down anywhere, there was a woman who ascended to the heavens. She fell in love with the north star - Polaris, I suppose - and he honored her by bringing her to him.”
“Her name was Red Cheek. She was happy, for the most part, for most of her life up there. She had everything she could ever want, but she realized over time that she missed her old life, her family down here.”

“One of the first things Red Cheek had been told upon reaching the stars is that she was never to gather timpsila, prairie turnips, from the land of the star people. But over time, she got curious, so she picked one and looked into the hole it left, curious what was there.”

“What she saw was the world far below her - the timpsila on the prairie of the star people are the stars we see in the sky, and when she picked one, she removed it from the sky. That is the star here, the star that hasn’t been seen for thousands of years.”

“But this action led to her demise - She fell from the land of the star people back down here, back to earth.” Mom’s voice took a sad turn at this. “But the star was never replaced, so the eight stars of the big dipper were reduced to seven.”

“Oh,” is all Evan has to say to that.

“So who made this ball?” I ask, still holding a cold can of Dr. Pepper to my head.

Mom shrugs. “Are you alright?” She asks me.

“Peachy,” I say, wincing. “But I’ll be fine in a bit.”

“Then here,” she hands the small rock back to me. “It hit you, so I guess it’s yours. Go on, though. No worse than when you took a line drive to the face back in seventh grade.”

I wince as I remember that memory. Luck would have it, it was Evan who was at bat that hit the line drive straight into my face. I haven’t touched a baseball since.

“I’m making some snacks for you, two,” she calls back to us as she goes back in. “Be back in a half hour or so, they’ll be done then.”

“Sweet,” Evan smiles broadly. I can’t help but smile in return as I watch him.

“Let’s go,” Evan grabs my hand. I turn bright red, but I don’t think he notices.

We go to the park.