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"Wouldn't it be great if we could watch a star explode?"

It was just like her to say that. The violence of another world's ending was, to her, poetic. If our own sun exploded, I think she'd open up her arms to embrace it.

"I don't know that I'd want to be that close," I said.

"That's the cool part. You wouldn't have to be." But she still didn't think we were close enough.

That was how we always ended up like this, sitting in a car, driving to nowhere, with nothing but the sound of the tires on the highway and the company of the stars above us. She couldn't sit still long enough to color in the details, so we never did. We just kept driving.

She leaned back in the passenger seat and kicked her feet up, staring at the ceiling of the car as if it wasn't there.

"When stars exploded a long time ago, they painted pictures of them and wondered if the gods were looking down on them. What do you think we'll do when we get to see one?"

"Take a picture."

She shot an expression at me that I was familiar with: You have no imagination, it said.

I was still trying to decide if we were living in a fairy tale or a tragedy. The thought that haunted me and kept me from sleeping was this: could it be both?

Maybe we were better off just hoping it wouldn't end. But the sound of the highway underneath us always struck me as the soundtrack to us, barely touching the ground, always moving faster, faster, hoping that someday, we might fly.

But if we ever really flew, I knew we would eventually have to come back down.

And I already knew she thought supernovae were poetic.