“Feiyan! You’re still wearing your pajamas!”

Feiyan didn’t stop typing. “That’s because I’m not going.”

She could hear her roommate’s annoyed huff. “You don’t want to miss the haunted house. It’s supposed to be all new this year.”

“I have to work on this paper. It’s due Monday morning. Besides, it’s too cold outside.”

Another huff. “You Floridians are wimps.”

“Whatever. Have fun, Jessica. You can tell me all about it when you get home. If I’m impressed, I’ll go with you before it closes. It’s still a couple of weeks until Halloween.”

“You ‘re no fun, Feiyan.”

Feiyan could hear Jessica’s boots stomping out of her room. Now I’ve lost my train of thought. Swiveling her chair around, she stood up and stretched. I’m no fun. Right. Jessica had it easy. Her parents paid for her education, while Feiyan had to work hard for hers.

Her mother and father both had lucrative careers, but they were adamant that their daughters pay their own college tuition. That way, they would be more inclined to study and less prone to partying their lives away. Both sets of her grandparents were Korean immigrants and they had struggled to make ends meet. Her parents had worked their way through college and saw no reason that their children should not do the same.

From the beginning of her life, Feiyan was been fascinated by flight. At the age of three, she started taking gymnastics, ballet, and lyrical dancing lessons. Flipping through the air and swinging on the uneven bars was as close as she could come to actual flying. They lived in Melbourne, Florida, close to the Kennedy Space Center, and her parents sent her to Space Camp every year. She was so fascinated that she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she wanted to be an astronaut when she grew up.

Because of her acrobatic skills, she became a cheerleader in middle school and high school. Feiyan was also on the student council and in the math club, the science club, the robotics club, the chess club, and the drama club. Determined to get a full scholarship to Princeton to study astrophysics, she knew that extracurricular activities would look good on her application. She didn’t have much of a social life, but one didn’t miss what one had never had. In high school, she took college classes and when she graduated (third in her class), she also earned an associates degree.

She obtained that scholarship she had been working toward, and was looking forward to starting her first year at Princeton. However when she heard that the Cirque du Soleil were holding auditions in Melbourne, she decided to try out just to see if she was good enough. Feiyan was surprised when she made the cut and decided to put her education on hold for a three years to perform with them.

She traveled all over the world with the circus in those three years, and then went to Princeton to work toward her. And here she was now, working toward her master’s degree, and writing a popular blog, ‘Learning How To Fly,’ which chronicled her years with the Cirque du Soleil and her ongoing journey to become an astronaut.  It was accompanied by videos of her dancing and tumbling. The blog made enough money for her to live off campus with her friend Jessica.

Moving to the center of the room, Feiyan did a few gymnastic stretches. She had been sitting for far too long. Maybe I should have gone to the haunted house, she thought. No, afterwards they would go to a nightclub and she had to get up early in the morning for her flight lesson. She was about halfway to getting her pilot’s license, which was one of many requirements to get into the space program. Scuba diving was another prerequisite. She already had her scuba license but she went diving a lot in the summers when she returned to Florida to visit her parents.

Looking back at her computer, she sighed. I need a break, even if it’s just a brief one. Feiyan went into the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea. After wrapping herself in a warm blanket, she took her steaming cup out to the balcony and gazed up at the stars. Assuming NASA accepted her, she would probably be around the age of thirty when she met all the qualifications. Nine years seemed like forever.

Her sister had taken a different path. After two years of college, Lihua had married her high school sweetheart and they now had two children with another on the way. She kept urging Feiyan to do the same. According to her, there was nothing more rewarding than being a mother. If she chose a career over a family, Lihua claimed, she would regret it for the rest of her life. Would she? Feiyan liked playing with her little nephews but after about half an hour, she got annoyed with them. They were loud, energetic, and asked far too many questions.

Lihua was meant for motherhood and I was meant for the sky. Maybe by the time she achieved her goal, technology would have advanced enough that they could travel farther from Earth and explore other planets. There was a one-way mission planned for Mars in a few years, but she would never be ready by then. Feiyan wasn’t sure if she wanted to leave her family forever, never to return. In nine years, though, it might be possible to come and go.

Maybe we will even discover alien civilizations. That would be the most exciting thing of all. Feiyan didn’t believe in all those urban legends about aliens, but they could be out there somewhere. They wouldn’t be gray and have big heads, huge eyes, and long arms like the stereotypical movie aliens. They would not look human at all. Nor would they resemble any animals from this world. They would be completely new in appearance and of course, they wouldn’t speak English or any other language on Earth. That was one reason Feiyan was also studying linguistics, so she could figure out how to communicate with them. If they existed.

Now my imagination is running away with me. She took a sip of rapidly cooling tea and then returned her gaze to the sky. I wish I was up there now, she thought, soaring among the stars.