"Josie? What are you thinking about?" my friend Travis asked as we walked through the hall
toward my locker. I had to squint when I looked at Travis because a special lamp was positioned right
behind him. The lamp was supposed to mimic real sunlight, and the school installed several of these
lamps a few weeks ago because they were worried students wouldn't adjust well to living in
semidarkness all the time. The lamps are supposed to help our bodies produce vitamin D, but all these
lamps do is make the hallway feel like a blacktop parking lot in August.
"I don't know... everything." I said.
"Could you be a little less specific?" he joked.
I remember the day Travis and I became friends. On that day, the solar eclipse occurred. The entire
earth science class had gathered in the school courtyard. Emily, Tegan, Ben, Manuel, and Travis were
taking turns looking through Mr. Kim's telescope, which he had outfitted with a special solar filter so
we could safely view the eclipse. The rest of us were watching using a pinhole projector we'd made in
class. Our projector was really just a large piece of paper with a small hole, which we made with a
pencil, in the center of it. With her back toward the Sun, Grace held the pinhole projector above her
shoulders, allowing the Sun to shine through the pinhole. There was a second piece of paper on the
ground. This piece of paper acted like a screen. When the Sun projected through the pinhole, we could
view an inverted image of the Sun on the second piece of paper. This simple tool provided us with a
view of the eclipse without the need to look directly at the Sun.
"Josie, do you remember what that shadow's called?" Mr. Kim asked.
"The umbra," I mumbled, transfixed by the projected image of the diminishing Sun.
The shadow grew larger, and the world around us darkened, like twilight was coming. Then, it was
like night.
"Is it supposed to get this dark?" someone whispered. No one answered.
"Okay, here it is: a total eclipse," Mr. Kim said. I could hear the excitement in his voice.
The sun-circle on the second piece of paper had looked like a crescent moon before; now, it was
all black. A shadow fell over everything, and a chill embraced me. I shivered.
A minute passed, and then two, as we all waited for the eclipse to ebb, for the Sun to return.
It never did. That was two months ago.
I grabbed the bag from my locker and slung it over my shoulder. All around us, students were
filing past, their footsteps clapping and scraping as they shuffled out the doors and hurried to catch the
bus or to meet their parents who were waiting in idling cars.
