My Name Is Venus Black

by Heather Lloyd

But the truth is, we all just barely made it here. Thousands of other combinations of your mother’s egg and your father’s sperm just missed their chance to connect, and one small change in circumstance could have wiped you out before you began. If you ask me, we’re all born by accident and there’s no such thing as God. We travel through this life with no real trajectory, ricocheted here and there by the consequences of other people’s actions. And it works both ways, of course. The stupidest little thing we do can alter the future for so many people.

I’d been reading astronomy books since I was six, so this was old news to me. But I hadn’t yet learned that smart kids shouldn’t be show-offs, so I made sure everyone knew this.