Aster woke to sunlight streaming through her window. She tossed a bit before finally wrenching her eyes open.

The digital clock by her bedside read ten-oh-nine. They had arrived late last night, so she’d slept in since it was the weekend.

She sat up. Her bedroom was… a mess, to be frank. Not dirty, but cluttered. Several notebooks and loose papers lay stacked on her desk, filled with assorted notes and sketches. On top of one of the stacks was an academic computer science work on writing interpreters. A piece of folded paper stuck out about a fourth in to mark her place. Her laptop lay open on in between the stacks, a modest-sized drawing pad still plugged into it. Around the room, jackets of various colors were littered across the room on top of furniture. Boots and sneakers lied neatly in random places around the room where she had taken them off, ready for a regular game of hide-and-seek as soon as Aster tried leaving the room. Posters and decorations were heaped neatly in another corner, waiting to be put up. The metorite from last night was still in her bag, propped up in another corner. Yeah, she should probably clean that today.

Aster swung herself off her bed, grabbed a random T-shirt and shorts, and wobbled over to the bathroom to get ready for the day. A quarter of an hour later she returned and stared around her room for a moment. Several ideas for what to do with her day zipped around her head as she thought of all the different projects she had on the burner. She couldn’t pick one, so habit won out.

Aster sat down at her desk and opened her laptop. Probably a mistake. Her eyes filled with blue and she slumped a little as she let the world fill her. The tiny voice in her head was instantly drowned out by a three-trillion parameter machine designed with the sole intention of destroying every last neuron in her soul. She sifted through the dirt, trying to find something of worth. Nothing grabbed her, nothing inspired her. Try as the thing might to convince her otherwise, there was just nothing new yet.

She slammed the laptop shut in frustration. What was she doing? She looked over at the clock. Twelve-twelve.

Frick. That was two hours she had wasted. Two freaking hours. What was wrong with her?

Aster grabbed her wallet and stormed out of the door into the empty common area of the suite. There was barely anyone else in the dorms during the summer, so nobody else lived with her in the suite. The other bedrooms were completely bare and consisted only of a bed frame, mattress, and desk.

She continued out of the dorm and into the barren hallway. The dirty white tiles stretched endlessly against bare muddy-cream walls. She stopped at the vending machine by the washing machines, jamming in her debit card and selecting a crummy toaster pastry. She didn’t even wait before she got back to her dorm to start peeling off the plastic and eating it.

Aster paced aimless circles in her room. What could she do differently to stop doing crap like this? She couldn’t just get rid of her laptop—she needed it for drawing and programming, not to mention work. A few more minutes plodding around her room didn’t yield any solution. At the end of the day she couldn’t avoid using a computer. She loved them, after all.

Well, she could keep wallowing or she could do something. She sat down at her desk and rearranged her clutter. The stacks went on the floor, the drawing pad in a drawer in the desk. Her book opened to her makeshift marker next to her laptop, she got to work.

Time began to pass in autodidactic bliss. She hummed songs stuck in her head as she read and programmed, appreciating the textbook as it were a fine wine. Sure, she always told herself that she read these kinds of things to fill gaps in her pitifully lacking education, but at the end of the day she just loved learning from these kinds of books.

There was a kind of textbook that was a cut above the rest: a class of book she considered as part of an invisible, unspoken canon. Unlike the shoddy, publish-or-die slop that big companies pushed new editions of each year, these books were perennial. The authors, professors as well as laymen, never wrote them for accolades or for money. That much was clear. They were full of detailed, accurate explanations written in objectively skillful prose instead of crummy “academic” language. There were jokes and doodles on every page, evidences that screamed of the loving hand of a normal, real person. These sorts of books made her feel like she had a friend standing next to her, gently and winsomely guiding her through complex topics.

After a couple hours, her attention began to wane. In minutes, she was researching unrelated rabbit trails beyond her original project. A few minutes more, and she began to feel the tug of the world again. As soon as she realized where she was going again, she stood up and paced the room angrily once more. Why couldn’t she just stay focused on doing what she loved? She sighed, hopping on her bed and sitting cross-legged. She’d move on to something else.

Characters and stories began to fill her head as she sat on her bed, distant daydreams that let her see beyond her small room. It took her a moment to realize she wasn’t actually doing anything. She hopped back off her bed and rummaged in her drawer for the drawing pad, pushing her textbook to the side and plugging it into her laptop. With her headphones and drawing glove slipped on, she lost herself in her task, sketching a scene she’d had stuck in her head the past few days. After a few minutes she pushed her chair back and surveyed her work. It was crap.

What was supposed to be an exciting scene was marred by poor composition, proportion, and perspective. Her drawing was flat, boring, and wonky. After a few moments she stopped herself. Yes, it was bad. Yes, her harsh criticism was warranted. But she could get better. Technical ability could always be improved.

Aster spun her drawing pad’s pen in her hand and pulled up a video on drawing human anatomy. It well enough, for a few minutes—at least until her subconscious frustration drew her to the world again. It was easier to look at what other people were making than to make anything herself. Before long, her head was filled with noise instead of ideas.

At some point she came to her senses. The clock against the wall now read four-twenty-six. Frick.

Aster paced around her room several times. Maybe she needed a change of scenery. She grabbed her laptop and headed into the common room. Cozied up on the couch, she closed out of her browser and pulled up the draft of the story she was working on. Soon she was in the groove again, in her own world instead of someone else’s.

A couple hours later, she was on the ground staring at the ceiling. Her prose was clunky. Her story was boring. Her characters were paper-thin. The plot was going nowhere. She could forget about exploring the theme without making herself cringe.

Why was she doing any of this? Would she be stuck making stupid things forever? How much had her inability to work cost her the skill she needed?

She got up off the floor, grabbed her laptop, and headed back to her room. She was an utter, abject failure. Nobody would ever think she was cool or look up to her or be transformed by what she made. Nobody could be intimate with her because there wasn’t enough there to be intimate with. She just wasn’t interesting. So, she turned to the world, offered up her mind on a silver platter. Words and images of constructed affection crowded out what she really felt in her heart. She looked for validation in the acceptance and adoration given to people that didn’t ever exist. Maybe, just maybe, she could feel what they felt. She could feel wanted for once. Or at least want herself.

It was seven-forty-seven before she closed her laptop. She sat for a minute in blinding clarity as her mind readjusted to the real world. Wow. That did not make her feel better at all. Go figure. It was obvious why to her now, but of course now it was after the fact. She knew she wouldn’t remember how she felt now the next time around.

Aster wandered aimlessly into the kitchen. She should probably eat. She grabbed some chicken nuggets from the freezer and shoved them in the microwave on a plate. Of course, she’d meant to cook for herself this summer. There was a kitchen in her suite she had all to herself. She didn’t realize she’d never be up to doing it.

The microwave blared its happy trill to let her know the nuggets were done. She set them on the table with a bottle of ketchup and a plastic cup full of water. Dang. Aster almost laughed to herself. What a depressing spread.

She wolfed them down in silence and wondered what she’d do next. That meteorite—maybe she’d be able to figure out what was up with it. Maybe it was glowing again.

Aster finished her meal, cleaned up, and ambled back into her room. She fished around in her backpack and pulled out the meteorite from a pocket on the side. Dr. Kerioth had taken all the samples from the main compartment.

The meteorite looked no different than it had the night before. It was plain and very much not glowing, and refused to do so even when Aster flicked off the lights. She sighed. Where would she even begin researching something like this?

She sat down on the floor with her laptop and began typing in random search combinations into her browser. There were no hits. She couldn’t even find anything in the news about the recent impact. The media probably wouldn’t even know until Dr. Kerioth filed some kind of report, or did whatever it is people do to notify news outlets.

Aster had basically given up at this point. She closed her search tabs and binged a crappy anime until the world outside matched how bright she felt. Her novels sat on the shelf collecting dust. Some had bookmarks sticking out in random places. Their disuse came from their simple property of requiring an attention span in order to be consumed.

She closed her laptop one last time and stood up. Checking the clock wouldn’t be worth her time. The the number on the display would only serve to mock her inability to live.

She scooped up one of the jackets strewn about her room. It was her navy blue one. Sure, maybe it wasn’t the right temperature, but she needed something comforting to wear. The logo had faded off by this point, and the stitches around the sleeve cuffs were beginning to fray. It was well-loved.

Aster burst out of her door, strode past the empty common room, down the barren hall, down the dirty stairs, and out into the night air. Around her crickets serenaded her, singing grand tales she couldn’t understand. Their song was occasionally broken by the rumble of a far-off car. She looked up at the light polluted sky, disappointed as always by what she found. There was the faint outline of the Big Dipper, and sometimes Orion if she was lucky, but that was about it. It was a far cry from what she was used to.

Thus began her meanderings. There weren’t many great places to go on campus, but she’d travel through them anyway. Most of the academic buildings were unlocked at night—they only ever locked the labs and computer rooms inside—so she wandered around those first. She passed empty classrooms and lecture halls, mere echos of the places they had been when students were there. They were they same as they had always been, of course, but the empty seats made it seem as if the architecture of the room itself had changed. Everything seemed bigger.

Ahead of her, Aster could see a room with a light on. From inside, muffled voices chattered and laughter rang. It wasn’t many people, two or three at most.

She did an about face and went the way she came. She did not currently own the the mental capacity for any awkward interactions with strangers. From their slurred speech and merry demeanor it was obvious they were inebriated. For some reason school policy allowed drinking in the academic halls, but not the dorms. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out why.

Now out of the door and into the night again, Aster did the best she could with the paths she had. Criss-crossed networks of walkways ran between academic buildings, dining halls, dorms, and sports complexes. She traveled them all, stretching her legs and trying to knead out the knot in her chest. There wasn’t anything particularly new or beautiful to see. Really, she’d have liked to walk in the suburbs outside campus or even on a trail, but she knew it would be pretty stupid to leave campus alone at night. The news around here was enough to testify to that.

Gradually, she came to the spot she always finished at. The parking lot was situated behind an academic building and was restricted to teachers only. Since it was deserted at night, it made the perfect place to pace or sit down. Rickety street lamps lit the lot surprisingly well, as if it were an empty dance floor or stage on the inside of a building. In the distance, beyond a chain-link fence, unfelled trees beckoned her, motioning her home with leaves swaying softly in the cool night breeze. Cicadas cooed at her from within, welcoming her. She didn’t know how far the grove extended. It could just end in a few yards at another fence, or for all she knew, a part of the mountain had made it to campus.

After sweeping the ground with her foot to check for any dangerous bits like broken glass, Aster sat herself cross-legged under the bright light. She stared at the ground. It would be nice to cry, but she didn’t have the energy to do it. Her brain was completely drained, her capacity to process emotion broken along with the rest of her.

She wanted desperately to do something other than wallow in self-inflicted misery. Gears ground in her mind, trying to force out some wisdom or solution she could use to better her life, but nothing came of it. Eventually, she gave up. There was no magic fix, nothing left to change in her environment, no radical action to take. The problem at this point was her. She’d just have to keep pushing forward.

Aster stood and surveyed the desolate lot before pacing around. One of the lights in front of her flickered ominously, as if it were sending a message in Morse code. She stood near it and looked up at for a moment. If only she could communicate with whatever poltergeist haunted this lot. She’d have someone to talk to.

Her thoughts were interrupted as she noticed something strange. But what was that up there? On top of another pole, next over from the flickering one, was a strange outline. Somebody had put something on top of the pole, but she couldn’t see what it was since the lights made it impossible to see anything other than the ground. How the frick did they get that up there?

She jogged up to the pole and kicked it. Maybe she could get it to fall so she could see what it was. A few more tries later, it still didn’t budge. The pole wasn’t vibrating enough with her kicks for the top of it to move at all. The concrete underneath was absorbing everything.

If only that meteorite was still glowing. Maybe she could have used it to magic the thing down. She imagined it floating gently down from the top of the pole and into her hand.

Something cold and smooth touched her hand, and she jumped back in surprise, whatever it was clattering to the ground noisily in the quiet lot. It took a few moments for her fight-or-flight response to wear off. On the asphalt in front of her was an old, tattered beer can, faded as if it’d been on that outside for years. She tapped it with her foot. The can seemed to be weighed down from the inside with something—probably just rocks.

She looked up at the pole. Nothing was at the top anymore. This beer can must’ve been it.

Maybe her kicking earlier had dislodged it enough to slide off slowly? The rational and irrational in her mind fought for control as she hoped beyond hope. Aster stretched out her hand and stared at the beer can on the ground. She didn’t care how stupid she looked, she was going to try. Her eyes trained on the can, she willed it to float into her hand. It responded at the speed of her thought, gently touching down on her outstretched palm.

“Holy freaking crap,” she said reverently. Her mind filled once again with fantastical images of great feats of witchery. Aster tossed the can to the side and raised her hands to the sky, imagining fire streaming out from her fingertips upwards. Absolutely nothing happened.

“Huh,” she whispered. She arced out her fingers towards the can, imagining lighting streaming from her fingertips and into the can. Absolutely nothing happened.

She willed the can to shoot up in the air and float at eye level, and it responded. Okay. Not what she expected to be able to do, but still pretty freaking cool. She moved the can toward her with her strange ability, then reached out and poked it. It stayed where it was, suspended as if bolted to one of the light poles. Weird. “I guess I’m a trash witch,” she said to nobody in particular.

Her face lit up with renewed excitement, Aster looked around for something else to test on. The can clattered to the ground as soon as she stopped focusing on it, causing Aster to whip around in surprise. She smiled as the realization dawned on her. It was only in the air as long as she actively kept it there. She tried recreating the situation again a few times, practicing moving the can and then dropping it. It was a strange feeling—it was “letting go” in one sense, but really she had to forget the object for it to drop. If she kept holding it in her mind, it would stay up even if she closed her eyes or turned her back.

Aster quickly returned to her original task. There—a small rock by the edge of the lot. Her face lit up maniacally as she successfully willed the rock into her hand. Her heart beat fast as she rubbed the rock between her thumb and forefinger. “I’m a witch,” she whispered softly to herself.

She uncurled her fingers and floated the rock softly above her hand. Could she…? Aster looked at one of the light poles in the distance while still focusing on the rock. Unconscious thoughts crowded in her head, folding her emotions in on themselves as her breath quickened in excitement. She imagined the stone rocketing in the direction of the light pole. It shot from in front of her faster than she was able to perceive, a gray blur against the pale light, smacking into the light pole in front of her with a resounding clang that echoed into the night air.

Aster ran over to the pole. Just below eye level, there was a new dent the width of the entire pole. Aster pressed her thumb in the divot and just stood there. She rested her head against the pole and stared down at the ground, suddenly overtaken by extreme emotion. To her surprise, the guttural noises coming from her throat weren’t sobs—they were maniacal laughs. That felt good. It felt better than anything had felt in years.