Page 12 of The Last Love Story

Ms. Astor purses her lips, thinking. “Who, I wonder, gets to decide what books are dangerous?”

It’s a rhetorical question. I know the answer.The people in power.

Her eyes dip down to where I’m clutching the hardcover. “The book you’re holding? It warned us about book burning. But then it was gone, so people didn’t know what to look out for when the flames arrived. These stories are important. We have to protect them.”

My heart races. “What can we even do?”

“Lyceum has been saving knowledge and disseminating it secretly for years now,” she says. “But recently, we’ve taken a more active role in trying to inform the public about what’s going on. Information is easy. Getting people to care is the hard part.”

Ms. Astor reaches up on a shelf, pulling down a single piece of folded paper.

There’s a hand-drawn rolled-up document on the front, along with writing:

The First Amendment.

“We’ve been making these,” she says. “And trying to sneak them into places where people will find them. We’ve got to get the word out, somehow, before the election this fall. Most people don’t seem to care... fine. But if a quarter of them do, we need to find all of that quarter and bring them together to make a difference. We are trying to get books out—get them to people who want them. That, plus the pamphlets... people are posting about them, even if Alba is deleting their videos. If the people can all find their voice again, we can start trying to change the story that’s being written without us.”

“But how can I help? Why ask me? I’m just... Ripley Hart. You know better than most that I’m more likely a liability than an asset.”

Ms. Astor pivots, turning to a shelf. She runs her hand along the spines of books until her fingers land on one. She pulls it out.

It’s loosely bound, something distinctly handmade about it—no cover, like the hardback I hold in my hands.

“What—” I stop as I see the title, scrawled in black marker on the cover:

Written in the Stars.

My whole body hums. This is my writing.

“I asked for Ripley Hart,” Ms. Astor says, “because we need Saffron.”

My cheeks burn. Has she read it?

Suddenly, I feel raw. Exposed. All of the love, the yearning, the loneliness I poured into the words makes the pages feel heavier in my hands.

I wrote to process how I felt about him, the boy who lived next door.

Eating Popsicles on the astroturf in the community center. At Data Refining Day Camp during summer, racing to finish assignments before each other.

And one day, he looked at me as we walked to the train and my stomach flipped in this unfamiliar way. And suddenly I understood what it meant to have a crush.

But what was I supposed to do with it? I didn’t know the first thing about boys. I just knew he made me nervous in a good way. I wanted to be near him. His laugh made the air feel safe.

So I started writing it down. All of it. Every look, every joke, every dream I had about him.

It was like I was emptying that buzzing feeling out, sparking it down my arms and letting it charge the paper.

I called him Orion, because I named him after the constellation he longed to see.

There’s a whole belt, he’d tell me. We’d seen photos, of course. In training, we’d have to sort the real astronomy photos from the fake ones. But we’d never been able to see it for real.

I changed little details about him, letting my imagination take over, but the rest was all him. Every victory. Every heroic act. Every smile.

And I created another character: Saffron. She was me, but... not. She was brave, she could do the splits. She didn’t think the hot sauce in the monthly meal allocations was too spicy. She could say everything I was thinking. She could be everything I wasn’t.

And Ms. Astor has read it.

All of it.