Astronaut.

Jupiter Anne Davis didn’t want the dust to make her sneeze. It ruined the moment. She would be sitting there with her legs folded beneath her body, flipping through the photos she kept in that little cardboard box. It had been too long since she had opened the album. The attic had sort of become a hidden chapter of her life, one she only visited when the occasion suited her. Today, it was the anniversary of Noah’s departure.

How long had it been? Three years? Four? However long, she had gotten past missing him. At least, that’s what she always told herself. Especially when she was trying to sleep. She’d lie there and stare at the ceiling, missing the warmth of his body and the sound of his voice. It was one of those sultry voices, one that hummed in your bones and made you listen. Dear Lord, she missed him.

Jupiter sighed and bowed her head so that the small beams of sunlight streaming in through the attic’s single window landed gently on the pale picture in her hand. There was her sister, perched like a bird on the fence that was currently outside. The white paint was chipped and peeling, but that didn’t bother her. She was the cutest little thing… Jupiter missed her, too.

She sneezed again, this time accompanying the body function by spitting a sour curse. There weren’t enough good things – ice cream, kisses, sunny days – to erase the terrible feeling of her nose trying to remove itself from her face. Not to mention the fact that each sneeze blew away some dust, let fly another memory… a reminder of how long it had been.

Just then, she heard the dull sound of the door’s knocker, echoing up through the floor beneath her. She sighed and set down the photos. It better not be that damned baker again,she thought as she stood. Her hands brushed down the dingy cloth of her pants, sending little dancing clouds of dust around her bare feet. She listened to the melody of the knocker, rap-tapping away. She decided that it was, in fact, not the baker (whom had been trying to get her to accept flowers for the past month), but the neighbor who had moved in the week before. She was a sweet old woman who had deemed Jupiter worthy of her never-ending life story. She must have remembered something while making her heavenly peach pies and come to tell her all about it.

She practically slid down the ladder, almost ashamed of how easily she had scaled it in the first place. For a woman who never went into her attic, she sure knew how to do it. It was like a dog knowing how to swim as soon as it his water; what was instinct – in this case, falling into memories – came naturally. The knocking continued while she walked through the hall leading past her bedroom (the one she wished – sometimes – that she had never shared with a certain someone) and into the main room. The wallpaper had long ago faded to a dull gray, but she didn’t mind too much. She was planning on replacing it, actually, the next week. If she could just get to the department store and buy a new pattern, one that didn’t remind her of him.

When she reached the front area of the house, she took one last moment to look in the full-body mirror which hung on the wall. Her long, absurdly shining dark brown hair was curling in all the right places. She never tied it back for fear of being unable to get the tie out. Then she would have to cut it all off and her heart would positively stop and – Jupiter chuckled to herself. That had never happened. Her long nose led a nice trail from the corners of her almond-shaped, incredibly blue eyes. If she wore a yellow shirt, they looked almost green. Noah always said they looked like Neptune.

Jupiter straightened the collar of her white button-down shirt and turned to the door, which was still rumbling like a drum. The neighbor-lady must have really wanted to tell her something. Smiling slightly, she took hold of the rusty knob and gave it a good turn. It hardly budged.

“Hold on, Miss, the door’s stuck. I’ll be out in just a second!” She jiggled the golden handle for a minute, muttering under her breath about how she would need to replace the darn thing. Once she finally got it open, she sighed and stepped back so she could open it. “Okay, so what did you wa –”

Her breath stuck in her throat when she lifted her head. There wasn’t a little old lady standing there. Far from it.

A man – whom she remembered being quite pale and detached – stood before her, dark ringlets framing his beautiful face. His skin was a golden brown, something she wasn’t familiar with but felt was right nonetheless. His golden eyes stared straight back at her, as if to ask her what she was looking at. But of course, she could never read that gaze. It was like staring into a pool of melted amber, with a ring of burnt brown. She felt her heart stop as she let her eyes move over his arms. There were tattoos there; one, it seemed, for every star in the sky. Not a single one of them matched another. There was one of a skull, one of a dancing fire, and one with a heart and a ribbon going around it. When Jupiter peered closer at this one, her curiosity a burning fire in her stomach, she saw that there was a name. Madeline.

She felt such a painful jealousy that she had to stand up straighter and incline her chin as she looked on him.

“Hello, Noah,” she said calmly, though inside she was trembling. “You look very different.”