I drove us to the community park where we walked out to a hill in the middle of a field with a brown bag of fast food to settle her stomach. The greasy cuisine immediately lifted her spirits again. In the breezy yet tranquil air, laying down in the grass, I pointed to the infinite sea of stars above us. It was a plethora of vertices waiting to be connected.

“They're resplendent.” she said.

“There’s infinitely more, but this is what happens when you live near a city.” I said, feeling insignificant beside her.

I studied her iridescent face in the soft moonlight. The shadows described her geometry clearly. My attempts at recreating human faces digitally didn’t work out too well. They looked human, but not like her. It was frustrating seeing those features and not being able to design them myself. If only I could have unlocked those secrets of nature.

“Sorry about those drunks back there. People just aren’t like characters in novels. They don’t have compelling back stories or motivations. They are just ignorant and usually only do what they have to to get by.” I said, trying to mitigate her first real life experience in public.

“Mea culpa, I was naive. I don't know what I was expecting but I did get the exhibition I was asking for.” she admitted.

“You sure did.”

“I’ve felt this incongruity for a long time, like I should be doing something else with my life. But maybe my first outing was too much, too fast.” she contemplated.

“From the height of affluence to the pit of destitution.”

“Pure indigence.” she scoffed.

“Hey, now. I’m financially challenged too.” I cried.
“Sorry. So tell me, what are those stars right there? Do you know their constellations?”

“The Greek ones.” I mentioned.

“My family is from Greece but I don't know much about them. Do they all have stories about them?” Sophia asked. She was becoming even more loquacious when we were alone.

“You mean myths?”I said. “Most of them do. Some of the Greek philosophers have stores that are just as epic.”

“Tell me about one of them. They might turn out to be one of my ancestors.” she jested.

"Well, there was Diogenes, grandfather of stoicism. He was a kooky old man who wandered through the city with a lantern in the daytime, looking for an honest man. He lived in a wine jug and urinated on people he disagreed with."

“Maybe not him then. Who else could be my ancestor?”

“Well, I get most of my information from the cartoon Socrates and Friends. There are plenty of interesting characters on that show, especially Socrates.” I said.

“Socrates might be as real as one of those constellations. Historians are tenuous about whether he really existed at all.” She said, pedantically.

“Oh, really? What do you know about the real Socrates?”

  “Socrates did not write down his ideas himself, Plato kept records  for him. It’s hard to say how much of that was actually Socrates and how much Plato embellished it with his own ideas. It's a similar situation to the Sherlock Holmes series where the great detective's adventures were narrated by his assistant Dr. Watson. He acted as a mouthpiece, a buffer between Holmes and the readers.” she explained.

“You’re putting me on again. You know all about Greek literature. Why didn't he write his own books?”

“Sometimes people are too busy teaching to write books about themselves.” She proposed. “It’s easy to place Socrates on a pedestal the way Plato absolutely lauded him, but he was actually an idiot. History has a way of being over simplified.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“His trial.”

“You mean when he was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth?”

“That’s the simple version, but he was actually a political instigator. He opposed the democratic system of Athens and wanted a dictatorship.” she lectured.

“I find that hard to believe.” I doubted.

“Well, it’s not something a cartoon would show you.”

“You got me there.” I surrendered. “Even with the heavy topic it’s more of a kid’s show. Why did he want dictatorship? Who would rule?”

“An expert. He wanted the best person for the job.”

“That sounds reasonable.” I replied.

“You would give up democracy that easily?” she laughed.

“I didn’t realize Socrates was so complicated.”

“This is nice, talking to you. No one else understands literature. If they read at all, their critiques are bland and pithy. I tell my friends things about myself and they just recite platitudes back like it's what they're expected to say. It's all politeness and etiquette without saying how they really feel, you know?” she ranted.
All I could think about was my own life and how I couldn't trust anyone either. People acted like real people, I could pinch them and they would cry. I could prick them and they would bleed. But I couldn’t trust that they were real, or just reacting how they were supposed to. They were zombies.  Finding Sophia was like finding another survivor of a catastrophic shipwreck.

“Sometimes I just feel like I'm not supposed to be happy.” Sophia confessed.

That mirrored my own feelings. I wanted to tell her that to support her. She was opening up to me like a blossoming flower as I was sealing up like a fly trap. In my mind I couldn't find the words to say, so I said nothing.

What felt like an hour must have passed and I wasn’t sure if she was disappointed in me or not and whether she expected more of me.

“I know that one!” she giggled, pointing to four stars in the sky arranged in a square. “Little Dipper.” 

“Ursa Minor.” I told her.

“I don't know much about constellations, but  Oscar Wilde once said 'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at stars.'” She quoted.

There was a letter on the kitchen table when I got home. Right away I knew it was from Dexter Shuman because we never got letters. Immediately, my thoughts and heart were racing and I ran through what it could say. Would he even go through the trouble of writing back if he said no? He could have a boilerplate message for things like this that would be easy to send out. If that was the case then it should have arrived even sooner. It was futile. There was no way to predict what was inside. It had to be opened. I picked up the envelope and glared at it for what must have been a few minutes. When I finally tore it open there was only an index card inside that read 'come.'