The Echo of Starlight

BY MAYANKADITYA LOHIYA

Chapter 1: Staring at the Impossible
Oakhollow was the kind of town where dreams died before they had the chance to bloom. It was a place of rusted fences, tired men, and a sky that rarely looked blue. The steel mill owned most of the land, most of the homes, and most of the people who lived there. Jonah Price was supposed to be one of them.

But Jonah had always been different.

At eight years old, he would lie on the roof of his family’s tiny house, eyes fixed on the stars. His mother, Eleanor, would sometimes sit beside him, humming softly as she traced constellations with her finger.

“Someday,” Jonah whispered, “I’m going to touch the stars.”

His mother smiled, her warm brown eyes reflecting the moonlight. “Then you’ll have to hold on tight, sweetheart. Stars don’t like to be caught.”

His father, Sam, had a different perspective. He was a man of hard work and few words, a steel mill veteran with hands like worn leather. “Dreams don’t put food on the table, son,” he would say. “Keep your feet on the ground.”

But Jonah didn’t want the ground. He wanted the sky.

Chapter 2: The Girl with the Green Notebook
Jonah first met Sophie Carter when he was ten, and she was the only person in Oakhollow who didn’t laugh when he told her he wanted to be an astronaut.

They sat together in the library, a dusty little room that smelled of old paper and forgotten ambition. Jonah buried himself in books about astronomy; Sophie sketched planets in her green notebook.

“Why do you want to go to space so bad?” she asked one day, chewing on the end of her pencil.

Jonah thought about it. “Because it’s bigger than this place. Bigger than anything.”

Sophie smiled. “Then you should go.”

He frowned. “Everyone else thinks it’s stupid.”

“I’m not everyone else,” she said simply.

From that day on, she was his best friend, the one who believed in him when no one else did. She read every article about space she could find and quizzed him on physics formulas. When kids at school mocked him for being “the space boy,” Sophie stood beside him, daring them to say it again.

As they grew older, their friendship deepened into something else—something neither of them spoke about, but both felt in every glance, every shared moment.

But Oakhollow had a way of keeping people grounded.

Chapter 3: The Gravity of Reality
By the time Jonah turned eighteen, his dream felt further away than ever. College wasn’t in the budget. His father’s lungs were failing from years of steel dust, and his mother worked double shifts at the diner just to keep food on the table.

“You’re not seriously still thinking about space, are you?” his father asked one night, coughing into his handkerchief.

Jonah clenched his fists. “I have to try.”

His father sighed. “You’ve got responsibilities, Jonah. Sophie’s going to art school in the fall. You could go with her. Settle down. Live a real life.”

A real life. That was what everyone expected.

Sophie was leaving. His father was sick. The weight of staying felt unbearable, but the weight of leaving was just as heavy.

One night, he sat on Sophie’s porch, staring at the sky.

“I got into a program,” he admitted. “A scholarship. Full ride. Mechanical Engineering.”

Her breath caught. “That’s incredible, Jonah.”

“But…” He hesitated. “It’s far. And my dad needs me. And you…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

Sophie looked at him for a long time. Then she took his hands in hers. “You have to go.”

“But—”

“No. Listen to me,” she whispered. “You were never meant to stay here. If you don’t go now, you never will.”

He swallowed hard. “What if I lose you?”

Sophie smiled, a little sadly. “You’ll never lose me, Jonah. No matter how far you go.”

And so, he left.

Chapter 4: Lost in Orbit
College was a warzone. Jonah was the poor kid in a sea of privilege, struggling to keep up. While others had grown up with tutors and STEM camps, he had learned physics from borrowed books. But he worked harder than anyone, pushing himself to exhaustion, driven by the whisper of a promise—to touch the stars.

Letters from home were scarce. His father’s health worsened. Sophie’s messages became fewer, shorter.

Then, one night, the call came.

His mother, voice shaking: “Jonah… your father’s gone.”

He booked the first bus back to Oakhollow. But when he arrived, the town felt smaller, suffocating.

At the funeral, Sophie stood beside him, fingers laced with his, silent and steady. But something had changed.

“I missed you,” he admitted later, sitting on the old library steps.

She looked away. “You left.”

“I had to.”

“I know.” She sighed. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”

Jonah wanted to tell her that it had hurt him too. That every night away felt like drifting in space with no tether. But instead, they sat in silence, both knowing that some things couldn’t be undone.

Chapter 5: Reaching for the Impossible
Jonah threw himself back into his studies, determined to make something of himself. He applied for NASA’s astronaut training program.

Rejection.

He applied again.

More rejection.

He trained harder. Earned his pilot’s license. Studied longer. Applied again.

On his fourth attempt, the letter came.

NASA. Accepted.

The dream was real. But as he stared at the acceptance letter, he felt a strange hollowness. Because the first person he wanted to tell wasn’t there.

Sophie had moved on. She was in New York, painting murals on city walls, her name whispered in the art world. They hadn’t spoken in years.

But the night before his first spaceflight, sitting alone in the astronaut quarters, he found himself dialing her number.

She answered on the third ring.

“Jonah?”

“Hey,” he breathed. “I… I’m leaving for space tomorrow.”

A pause. Then, soft laughter. “Of course you are.”

“I just… I wanted you to know.”

Silence. Then, quietly: “I never stopped believing in you, Jonah.”

The call ended. But her words stayed with him.

Chapter 6: The Echo of Starlight
As Jonah strapped into the rocket, staring at the vast sky above, he thought of Oakhollow. Of his father’s rough hands, his mother’s lullabies, the girl with the green notebook who had once told him to chase the impossible.

The countdown began.

10… 9… 8…

He closed his eyes.

3… 2… 1…

The engines roared. The sky opened.

And finally, finally, Jonah Price—who had once traced constellations in the dirt—touched the stars.