On the eve of my seventeenth birthday I counted my nine thousand, seven hundred and fifty-third star. This meant that my life, at that very moment had reached its own, all-time low. The way I see it, star-counting is a metaphor for life. No matter how long you sit there and count the billons of stars in the galaxy you'll never quite manage to count all of them, and then at the end of the day you'll just be a box of decomposing flesh whose life was wasted on a totally pointless and futile endeavour that did nothing to improve the world in any way. So upon breaking my own personal record I had officially become more pathetic and like my father than ever before.

When I was eight my dad took me on a father/son bonding trip; we hiked up some stupid mountain where he sat me down and told me not to do anything spectacular with my life because in the end it would be pointless, stupid and would eventually amount to nothing. So I spent my childhood with my father telling me that love was a waste of time, wealth was a waste of time and life in general was a waste of time, so I should instead count stars because at least then I was accepting my fate. In his opinion we were running a constant race with survival trying to be the best and have the best only to die and leave everything we had achieved behind to be wasted, until we're only a name, birth and death on a crumpled old family tree.

Unfortunately my dad didn't even get to be on our family tree. My mum crossed him off it after they got divorced, so now all he has to be remembered by is a series of furious scribbles and the word 'asshole' written under it in my mother's neat cursive writing. I think life felt bad for giving me such a crap dad so it decided to let me live two houses, three fences, fourteen metres and one single pane of glass away from Aubrey A. Hemming instead.

The event that spurred the great change in my life happened painfully as I lay on the dying grass of my backyard. Something heavy and hard was dropped directly onto my delicates and I cried out in pain, shoving the unknown object off me. I rolled over onto my knees, my head resting on the ground. Another loud thump landed to my right but I was in too much pain to care. I was debating in my mind which objects were more likely to prevent me having future children and whether any of those had just landed on me, that was when I was kicked forcefully in the side of my head.

A string of curse words decorated the air as I clutched the side of my face and rolled back over onto my back, my genitals briefly forgotten.

"Oh my god, are you okay? I didn't kill you did I? Oh shit, shit, shit... my dad is going to be so mad if I've killed someone..."

I groaned and opened my eyes slowly. "You're not dead! Hey are you okay? Look I'm so sorry about tripping over your head, and for my bag." She added.

"What the hell is in that bag?!" I groaned again, sitting up slightly.

That's when I realised who I was talking to, Aubrey A. Hemming. My heart raced, and combined with the throbbing in my head and the pain in my regions, I worried about the possibility of a stroke. She let out a startling laugh.

"Only the essentials".

"Does that include boulders and small countries?"

"Only one or two. Here let me help you." She laughed offering her hand.

Her hands were cool and smooth and why I was noticing this confused me. I'd held plenty of hands and never before had I noticed the way they curved around my own. Or the way her fingers felt pressed against my wrist the blood pounding beneath her fingertips.

"What were you doing lying on the ground?" She asked, tilting her head slightly with curiosity and sliding her hand out of my own.

"What were you doing jumping my back fence?"

"I snuck out." She shrugged. "Dad would have seen me if I had gone waltzing down the street. So I jumped a couple of fences. But I asked first!"

I had pretty much dreamed of the day when I would speak more than three sentences to Aubrey A. Hemming and now that the day was here I was barely giving it a thought. She was one of those types of people though. The moment you see her you just feel like you'll confess all of your deepest secrets to her. And here she was standing in my backyard, clad in her white and gold-glittered dress, shoes in hand, asking only for me to reveal the secret that I have kept hidden my entire life, and yet I find myself opening my mouth to tell her because my heart is screaming for me to let someone know and also because my heart is undeviating and perfectly in love with her.

"I was counting the stars."

She stared at me blankly and I wished I could tear those five words from the air and swallow them. That was when my breath began to quicken, my hands started to shake. I could feel my mouth opening to explain, to repent for the words that should have been left unspoken.

"Oh that's really cool, my mum was into all that astronomy stuff. I still have a heap of her stuff, you can have it if you want?" She said with a smile.

I stopped completely. I even stopped breathing. Every atom in my body stilled and called attention to Aubrey A. Hemming. Here she was, not only accepting my strange and shameful obsession but was offering to give me her dead mothers astronomy junk. I couldn't believe it.

"It's no trouble, it's all just boxed up in her old study. No one's using it."

I felt bad for her. Corinda Hemming passed away with Breast cancer when Aubrey was just ten. She was a science teacher at the local college, and from what I can remember was a really nice person. And now Aubrey was offering me her stuff. I didn't want it, because I hated the stars. But I couldn't refuse.

Slowly regaining my powers of speech I pushed out a pathetic 'Yeah okay'. She gave me one of her dazzling smiles. I thought I was going to die. Everything she did had me captivated like charmed snake. Her golden hair moved slightly with cool breeze. She was wearing eyeliner, only a little, just enough to make her blue eyes look bigger and brighter. There were two thin tan lines on the tops of her feet from the flip-flops she'd been wearing all summer. Her white painted toes curled slightly in the dead grass of my yard. I noticed everything. It was like my eyes were zeroed in on every atom she had and I couldn't stop them.

I panicked, I probably looked like a creep staring at her like this.

"I'm going to go, see you at school." I mumbled and hurried towards the back door of the house.

I'd almost gotten there, just a few more feet and my hand would be on the handle. But that was when-

"Parker! Wait!"

I turned, and there she was. Aubrey A. Hemming, running after me.

"I'm going out, do you want to come?" She said, tilting her head in that way makes my knees weak.

And stupid, foolish, inconceivable me, said; "Yeah okay."