The next few days had passed by peacefully, with me devouring the books that had fallen into my backlog at the quickest pace possible and having video call conversations with Ashley averaged an hour each.

However, my mind kept wandering to what Nolan was doing as I enjoyed my break from school. No matter how hard I pulled at it to return to my task at hand, its attention kept drifting back to him again.

By the third day, my fingers were itching to text him, but I had no idea what to say.

I stared down at my phone helplessly for the fifth time that day, my thumbs poised over my keyboard.

What was I supposed to say?

‘Hey’? Was that all I should send?

What if he asked me what it was that I texted him for?

Nolan loved saying ‘what?’

Sending back a ‘nothing’ would definitely make the conversation fizzle out immediately, and I banished the idea.

With a sigh, I tossed my phone back onto my bed.

At the back of my head, a tiny voice asked why I was working myself up this much over a single text.

It’s not like you ever cared how you started your messages with Ashley. You just did it.

That was true. Then again, I rarely sent Ashley greetings. We both usually delved right into the topic we wanted to talk about, like how her first message to me yesterday was regarding her bratty younger brother who had planted a spider on her bed.

Picking up my phone again, I scrolled through the chain of text messages Ashley and I shared.

My own conversation starter was how Ryan had gone into the kitchen at four last night for a glass of water, but spilled it while walking, and then slipped and fell on it. He had slammed into a chair as he slid across the floor, and it had been sent flying into the nearby wall.

The crash had instantly woken up everyone in the house.

Thankfully, he was physically alright. Although he obviously didn’t have a curfew, he was still up far too late in the night for it to be healthy, and Mom made sure he knew it by giving him a well-intentioned but rather long-winded lecture.

Ryan was obviously losing his touch as a ninja of the night, which was kind of sad because I’d looked up to him so much for his adept skills back then.

Could I send something similar to Nolan? Would he be receptive to it, or would he ask why I sent him that?

I shook my head vigorously.

Why was I even overthinking this?

It was just a text!

As I sat there, still pondering the choices before me, a new message came in and my phone rang.

It was from Nolan, and it read, ‘Hey. How’s your break going?’

My heart soared right out of my body and into the sky, and I abruptly found myself grinning stupidly at my phone. He sent the first text, and it was such a simple line. It wasn’t to discuss anything in particular. It was a conversation for the sake of having a conversation. He wanted to just have a conversation with me.

I was so excited, I wanted to use my bed as a trampoline.

Another thought occurred to me right then—he was thinking of me. He had to have been thinking of me to send this to me.

Still holding my phone with both hands, I rolled around on my bed, holding myself back from squealing.

---

It was freezing on the roof, and I had no clue why I was even up here in the first place.

The sky was so clear tonight that the numerous stars in it were doing more than twinkling—they were sparkling.

I smiled at the beautiful sight.

Okay, maybe I did kind of have a clue.

My gloves and my coat were thick, but my face was still exposed to the almost frigid night air. I pulled my muffler up to my nose, sighing at the temporary relief that was its delicious warmth.

It had been a while since the last time I came up here, and I’d forgotten that the rooftiles were a little uncomfortable to sit on.

I pulled out my phone from my pocket. It was time to snap some photos. I’d have an excuse to text Nolan if I took them, too.

Not, the tiny voice at the back of my mind reminded me, that he needed any excuse to text you.

That thought brought a smile to my face.

Something creaked. I turned around at the sound to see the trapdoor on the roof open. Immediately, I recognized the light brown hair the moment a head popped up from the opening.

Ryan raised his eyebrows when he saw me. “Hey. You’re still awake?”

“Yup,” I said. “So are you, you know. You don’t have to look so shocked.”

“It’s normal for me to be up this late,” he said, shutting the trapdoor behind him. “I’ve never seen you out of bed after one.”

I snorted but said nothing.

Beyond astonished would be an understatement to describe him if I told him that I was now capable of staying up until five in the morning.

“What brought you up here, then?” he said, settling down on a spot beside me. “I used to have to drag you up here, but now you’re actually here on your own volition.”

Now that he was sitting here right next to me, I could see the pair of binoculars slung around his neck.

“Don’t start crying tears of happiness now,” I said, lifting my own pair for him to see, “but I’ve actually been using your binoculars at school.”

As expected, Ryan totally ignored my jab at him when he heard the second half of my sentence. “You have? You’ve finally started nurturing an appreciation for stargazing. To think I was almost about to disown you. You really are my little sister after all!”

Yeah, despite going away to college, Ryan still hadn’t changed. He always got this enthusiastic whenever we started talking about this topic. Even as I rolled my eyes, I could feel my mouth curving upwards.

“I made this new friend at school who is really into astronomy like you,” I started, turning on my phone camera. “I ended up stargazing a lot more, too.”

It definitely helped that there wasn’t much else to do, apart from admiring the trees around us, when Nolan and I were in the forest. Ryan didn’t need to know that, though. Also, it wasn’t like I ever disliked observing the stars. It was just that I had grown to appreciate them much more after spending so many peaceful nights under them.

“Wow,” he said, raising his own binoculars to his eyes. “I really need to thank this friend of yours for helping to refine your tastes.”

“Hey! Your hobby isn’t superior to all other hobbies, okay!”

“You can have your own opinion, of course. I just want you to know that your opinion is wrong.”

“Now that opinion of yours is really wrong!”

We bickered for a while, arguing with each other over why our own respective hobbies of reading and stargazing were better. Eventually, we ran out of steam like we usually did in these petty and meaningless squabbles and quieted down.

A comfortable silence blanketed us as we stared up at the stars, lying on our backs.

After several minutes, I broke it with as soft a tone as I could. “Ryan?”

“Hmm?”

“How’s college? Is everything okay?”

We updated each other on how we were doing about once a month, but they were never really long messages. I’d never expected him to tell me if he was experiencing problems, mostly because I wouldn’t be of much help anyway, and I rarely ever shared my own issues with him over text too. I didn’t really know the details of his life in college.

“It’s college,” he said. “I think I mentioned to you before that it’s more stressful than high school, but in a different way. I’m dealing with things better now that I’m in my second year, though.”

“More stressful?”

“When I was in Fairwood, the teachers were basically my academic nannies. If I didn’t hand in my homework, I was nagged at over and over. Now that I’m in college, nobody really cares what you do.” He sighed. “I’m the only one who will motivate myself now.”

I nodded in sympathy. “Yeah, that must be really hard.”

Ryan’s head turned slightly towards me. “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“What?” I said defensively. “You know that I know that you’re lazy deep down.”

He dropped his glare after a second and shook his head. “You’re not wrong, but you didn’t have to say that out loud. I’m working on it!”

Suppressing a chortle, I said, “That’s good to hear.”

“How are you? I know you did well for your exams, but how is everything else at school?” he said.

“I’m doing great,” I said. “I told you I made a new friend, right? He’s also really good at math, so he helped me with a lot of the stuff I couldn’t understand.”

“That’s nice,” he said. “Why didn’t you mention that in your texts?”

“I forgot.”

Additionally, it was near the end of the semester when Nolan really started studying with us. Before that, most of the time I’d spent with Nolan getting to know him as a friend was when we were sneaking out of school in the middle of the night.

Ryan wasn’t a model student back when he was still in Fairwood, but even I was sure that he never entered the forest at one in the morning.

“And yet you remembered to tell me about the surprise kidnapping your friends did for your birthday.”

“Well, you have to admit that it was really eventful,” I said.

“Fair. So, what’s his name?”

“Nolan.”

A chilly breeze danced over my face. I shuddered at the freezing contact.

“I really have to thank him for getting you into stargazing. How are your other friends? Do you still hang out with Ashley, Melissa, and Derek?”

“Yeah, we have a lot of fun at school! Don’t tell Mom and Dad, but we sneaked out into the forest for a morning hike once.”

“Really?” He sounded impressed.

“Yeah! We all came back safely, of course. Derek said that a lot of students have done it before. Can you believe that?”

“Actually, I did that when I was still in Fairwood.”

“What?! You did?” Ryan wasn’t exactly the super adventurous kind, so if he’d gone too, it must really have been something that was commonly done by the people around him.

“Yeah, most people I knew in my grade did it at least once. As long as you guys were careful, I think it’s okay.”

Just then, I saw something small and white float down through the air from the sky. It stood out because everything was so dark at this time of the night.

I blinked. “Hey, is that snow?”

It was cold enough for it now, so it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. What I hadn’t been expecting was that I was actually seeing the first snow in this area. I’d never seen it before, and if I hadn’t crept up here to take pictures for Nolan, I wouldn’t have seen it tonight either.

“Where?”

Right when I pointed to it, I saw another tiny white piece gently drop down from the sky in our direction. It was unmistakably a snowflake.

“Oh, it is,” Ryan said, sounding startled. “We should start going indoors soon.”

“In a bit,” I said, getting my phone out.

I wanted to take a video for Nolan. The soft way in which the snowflakes were falling from the sky was pretty, and I wanted him to see it too.

Was it snowing where he was, too?

I turned around after taking a short clip to see that Ryan was staring at me. “I didn’t know you cared about the snow. You never wanted to come outdoors when it was snowing in the past.”

To my horror, my cheeks instantly heated up. He was right. When we were children, I never really saw the point in playing with the snow since it was so cold.

This was different, because I just wanted to share the sight of it with Nolan this time. He liked to look at the sky a lot, and I thought that he would appreciate watching this. The white snowflakes contrasted so beautifully with the inky backdrop that was the night sky.

I snapped a few shots for good measure.

“I think it’s pretty,” I offered.

“You’re not wrong,” he said, getting up from where he was lying. “I’m just surprised.”

We made our way down the trapdoor and reentered the house. While we were walking back to our respective rooms, I composed a caption message for the video I was about to send to Nolan.

‘It just started snowing here! It looks pretty, doesn’t it? Is it snowing over there for you too? By the way, here’s what the stars look like from my rooftop.’

Then I sent the other photos that I’d taken as well.

By the time I got back to my own room, I’d already received a reply from Nolan. I knew he would still be awake at this time.

‘Thanks for sharing the video with me. It’s really cool. There’s no snow here yet.’

I literally took the video for him, so all I could do was grin at his message.

‘No problem!’ I sent.

His reply came almost instantly. ‘I thought you’d be asleep by now.’

It was true that I could’ve gone up to the roof after 11:00 p.m., once Mom and Dad had retreated to their room. They probably wouldn’t have noticed.

For some reason, though, I just wanted to view the stars at a time close to when we usually went to the school forest together.

I gazed out my bedroom window, where the snowfall was slowly growing in quantity.

‘But I’m not! What are you doing now, anyway?’

‘I’m looking up at the stars, too.’

Yeah, I kind of figured he’d say something like that.

He sent me a picture which he’d clearly just taken of the sky from his side.

Compared to mine, there were very few stars in his part of the sky that were visible.

‘Is it quiet over there? It’s always super peaceful here at night!’

‘Yeah, it’s usually quiet. I like it.’

‘Me too!’

We were both looking up at the sky right now. I beamed at it.

Even though we were in different places, it almost felt like he was right here next to me.