Read Strange and Lovely (Part 1) for Free Online

who was absent.
    “Do you know what a dark star is, Aurora?” he asked without preamble. I shook my head. “It’s a kind of invisible star that astronomers believed we had before modern stars existed. They are different from the stars we have today because they had a high amount of dark matter. The dark matter would create heat by the particles destroying themselves. This heat actually made the star massively larger than the sun because it stopped nuclear fusion.”
    “That’s...interesting,” I said. He picked up a newspaper from his podium and handed it to me. On the front page, in large print, was the title Three More Beheadings, May Be Serial Killer . I skimmed through the article, and then looked back at him. “What do dark stars have to do with this?”
    “There has always been something dark in the universe,” he said. “Invisible to the naked eye, sustaining and flourishing through destruction. We have tried to combat against it, but it’s larger than our biggest source of light. Our only hope is that we can create enough small pieces of light to annihilate it.”
    I set the newspaper back on the podium. He tilted his head.
    “So, what?” I asked. “Are you saying we can make up for these murders through small acts of kindness? Because I don’t think that’s what the family members of these murder victims think.”
    “No,” Dr. Federov said. “That’s not what I’m saying, but that’s very philosophical of you to think. Have you heard of the myth about the daughter of the stars?”
    “No,” I said. I glanced behind me, and saw the lecture hall was empty now. It made the room feel foreboding.
    “The myth starts at a time when only night existed. They say that the guardian of the sky saw a woman one night. He fell in love with her, as powerful beings in myths often do. He wanted to impress her, so he arranged the stars into different formations—Ursa Major, Aquarius, Phoenix. She was amused, but she told him she was depressed by the darkness. She wanted the stars to shine brighter. The guardian could only move them, he couldn’t make them brighter, so he pushed a thousand stars together to create the moon. The woman became a little happier, but she was still sad that there was more darkness than light.
    The guardian knew he would do anything to please her. So, after making love to her, his ecstasy and his need to please her made the stars explode, and the explosion destroyed the darkness. Unfortunately, the guardian died from using so much energy, but his love for this woman transformed into the sun. The darkness began to fight back, and the guardian’s love—the sun—could only hold it off for half the day. Later, the woman found out she was pregnant. They say that a female child, born under the sign of Aquarius with a celestial name, with hair the color of night and eyes the color of the sky...will be able to destroy the darkness again.”
    I stared at him. “And...you think because I match the requirements of this daughter that I can catch this murderer?”
    He smirked. “It’s just a myth. I just find it interesting that you match it so well. I can only hope that if there was someone who could make the sky do whatever she wanted, she wouldn’t be hanging around at a college.”
    Rain, rain go away. Come again another day.
    I took a few steps back. “I have to go. I have another class to get to.”
    He nodded. “Of course, you do. You have ungodly errands to run.”
    I ran out of the classroom and out of the building. As soon as I was outside, the sun pierced down on me, burning my skin with light.
    ***
    W hen I took Declan to my dorm room, it’s nighttime. Kaylee had returned home to her parent’s house for the weekend. Declan couldn’t stop staring at the mass amount of pink on her side of the room.
    “I feel like I’m in a Pepto-Bismol bottle,” he said. “Except that I feel more sick looking at it instead of feeling better.”
    “Be nice,” I said. “She’s