I knew a girl who spoke five languages. One of the languages was just a variant of English, yet tinged with such yearning and admiration and poetry that I am sure it was something else. She used it to talk about the stars.

"Moon," the first word her maladroit baby lips formed, a mispronunciation of mom, so her father said. Before long, her face had slimmed, she had learned to sprint with the best of them, and she was shouting "nebula" and kicking up dust on the playground. She named her bruises after interstellar clouds. She liked to poke her stubby fingers at them and rattle off the names to me. She named my injuries too. Her kindergarten teacher had named her a linguist; her fifth-grade teacher had called her pretentious.

She used to drag me out to the yard by the wrist at two am, three am, and guide our conjoined hands above her head and point out stars.

She would name them. I knew the names, too, yet I can't point them out now. I always watched our hands rather than the night sky.

I would trip a little as she walked us back down our street after she had shown me the ones she thought I would like. The blue dark, heavy with summer's heat, would solidify underfoot in just the right places to knock me off balance.

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She had maps and maps, some of which were hand-drawn with remarkable skill, some of which I still have tucked away somewhere in the recesses of my attic. They were just as dusty then, and she always got to coughing when she spread them open over the plush rug of her childhood bedroom. She sorted through them and rearranged them like puzzle pieces or sudoku tiles. We sat cross-legged for hours over her little masterpieces, and she babbled on and on in her foreign language until, like the calming sound of water lapping at docks or the soft murmuring of a stream, the sound lulled me to sleep.

I don't have any recollection of what I dreamt of then, and part of me wants to tell you I dreamt of the cosmos. Though, knowing myself, I probably didn't dream at all. She dreamt enough for the two of us, and would always be sure to tell me my dream in the morning.

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She always left before breakfast. I think she was afraid of taking up space at the table. The table at my house was much too small for a household of six, and my siblings glared the very few times she had stayed.

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I used to bring her coffee. Now that I think about it, I must have walked quite far during winter to deliver it. She always told me she liked my brew better than her parents'. My 'brew' cost 50 cents a packet. For a long while I thought she couldn't tell, that was until I started finding twin pairs of quarters in my jacket pockets.

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My siblings called her 'alien.' Because she was thin probably, or because she was always talking about going home or going to space. My siblings had made the brilliant association. To be fair, it was low hanging fruit for a gaggle of grade-school boys. I would shoo them out to the yard when they got too cruel.

I don’t believe she ever looked any of them in the eye.

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I remember the winter she started wearing hats distinctly. I must have teased her about it. She would regularly struggle with them trying to fit her hair—longer than it had been in middle school—within the strict confines of that knitted woolen prison. The night of that winter walk the crisp air stung my skin, and the wet snow seeped into my boots and soaked my socks.

She took my hand as she always had. Yes, it was cold out, but somehow her hands were always a little stiffer and more thoroughly cooled than mine. As I watched her raise our entwined fingers to the sky, I noticed how her pointer finger quivered.

I pulled that reaching hand away from the sky and shoved it into the pocket of my dark jacket. She didn't stop me.

"See, that was Orion. He was a hunter, the best hunter. Unfortunately for him, he knew how good he was. The gods hated his hubris. Scorpion sting is what got him in the end." She chuckled.

Something about her laugh rang false, but she had already moved onto the next constellation.

"Poor, poor Leda," she muttered, her breath forming little clouds.

"What happened to her?"

"So many unpleasant things." Another visible huff evaporated into the night air.

"Why?" I asked and squeezed her still icy hand.

“Because she was beautiful.”

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I was with her for hours on the last day. I noticed nothing, nothing at all. We laughed, we watched awful documentaries. She ate. I lit the fireplace while we were home alone, and we breathed in wood fire smell and said horrible things about the chain smokers that hung around the school's bathroom.

She even pulled out a map.

Her hand traced along dots and lines in patterns still not clear to me.

I remember so much from those few golden hours. Her chipped blue nail polish. Her unevenly done lipstick. The chip on her left incisor she won after a wrestling match with some boy in second grade. Her split ends. The little red indents on the soft skin of her wrists she sported after hours of wearing rubber bands. The little bits of chocolate stuck under her nails.

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She joined the stars that day; her heart gave out.

My first thought when I learned the news: I wish I had forced more sweets on her only a few hours ago.

They held a service for her; they offered food and refreshments after. I left, walked as far enough away as I knew I could return from, and screamed.

I couldn’t talk for three days after the funeral.

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Every time I see the moon I think of her mother and how none of the other moms can look her in the eye come Mother's Day. And every night I close my eyes so tight it hurts until I can gather my own stars behind my eyelids. I name them.

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I know she is all right, though. She was clever, always outdid me by three points on every exam. She'll navigate the stars just fine. She speaks their language well; it was her first.

One day I'll join her, and she'll teach me their names again.