Stepping into a Black Hole

In a mind-numbing geography class, M. stops listening and draws the Orion constellation on a page of her squared notebook. She scribbles a question, shows it to me: Name the stars in the Orion constellation. I grab her notebook and write, Easy. Orion’s belt: Alnitak,  Alnilam, and Mintaka. The right shoulder is Bellatrix. The left shoulder is Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse shines red. Meissa marks its head. The right knee is Rigel, the left is Saiph. The center of his sword, The Orion Nebula. She nods, smiling slightly. In which constellation Aldebaran is? I write. Taurus, of course, she writes back. I confirm, and M. writes another question. We keep testing each other until the end of class. Some time ago, M. and I decided to become astronauts, so this is our way to motivate ourselves to study hard for the upcoming high school entrance exams. Our ultimate dream is to travel to space, find a black hole, and enter: we’d happily sacrifice our lives discovering the unknown. At the schoolyard, “Maybe we won't die,” I say, chewing the straw of my chocolate milk. “We may very well come out of it somehow, and end up in a different universe.” M. nods enthusiastically as she agrees with me. “We'll be the first humans to discover another universe,” she says, drinking her banana milk smugly. I see the boy who has rejected me a week ago and started to date another girl. He stands not ten meters away, laughing. I silently watch him, envying the long, blonde hair and big blue eyes of his new girlfriend. I know the girl. She once told me in the girl's bathroom that she was going to name her future daughter Asia. I may never have a daughter in the future. Nor a son. I'm preparing to sacrifice myself in the name of science after all. Maybe he'll read my name in the newspapers years later, and regret his current choice of girlfriend because her only aspiration is to find Asia, but I seek another universe. Everything I don't have, she has, but I could show him the constellations in the night sky and name the stars. I could kiss him under the light of Venus. He wouldn't know blue eyes from the hazel ones then, nor blonde hair from chestnut. He puts an arm around her shoulder. A ball of lava burns in my stomach. I wonder if they’ll have a daughter in the future. If I’ll have a girl, I’ll name her Europa. “That’s enough,” M. says, taking my arm and leading me away, “Let’s go somewhere we can't see them.” But where, I want to say, to space? Doesn’t M. know that now those two are everywhere? M. snaps her fingers in front of my eyes. I look at her. “Count me the stars in the Cassiopeia constellation,” she says.