On Monday, Cora arrived at her office an hour after me, sweeping in in a whirl of raindrops and giant hair. Outside, a summer storm raged, hurling fat raindrops against the roof. I was glad it had held off through the weekend, which I’d spent lying on different beaches with the Barbanel cousins and their friends. Now a torrential downpour had decimated the sunshine, water flung about by howling wind. I liked it, the rage of the storm, especially from safe inside. I felt cozy and calm, with my browser full of tabs and my steaming mug of coffee.

I’d spent the morning working on a project Cora had sent me, though I’d also read the notes she’d made on a large whiteboard. Now I draped myself over the back of my chair in her direction. “Are you working on an article?”

She looked up. “Hm?”

I nodded at the whiteboard with its large TO DO list. The first item was MAKE DECISION ON HC ARTICLE!!! Another read DECIDE ABOUT HC ARTICLE!! And a third, EMAIL DF ABOUT HC ARTICLE. A pro/con list was tacked to the adjacent bulletin board. The pros: 1) Shiny article, 2) Will get DF off my back, 3) Might not have a choice. Cons: 1) Ugh, 2) Tedious research, 3) No time, 4) Sentences are bad. “I’m decent at research and stuff, if you want me to do some. That’s, like, my dad’s whole world.”

She sipped her coffee. “That’s not…a horrible idea.”

I glowed.

“I’ve been asked to write a piece connecting my work to the legacy of female astronomers and their stellar classification systems. It’s not the worst article,” she said, damning with faint phrase, “but it’s human interest, not academic. I don’t love the idea of writing it, but it’s for a high-profile magazine and it’d be great exposure.”

“If I could help, I’d love to.”

“I’ll think about it.”

By lunch the rain had stopped, and I met up with two of the girls who I’d met at the beach party and then again over the weekend: Abby, who was dating Noah Barbanel, and her friend Stella. We picked up sandwiches downtown and ice cream after, sitting on park benches and devouring our cones as we watched bunnies dart across green lawns still glistening with raindrops.

When I got back to the office, Cora beckoned me over. As far as I could tell, she hadn’t moved from her spot, but her coffee cup was full once more.

“Your idea works,” she said. “I wrote up a project doc over lunch with a bunch of the info I need—names and dates and background. You good to go over it now?”

“Yeah,” I said eagerly. “Sounds great.”

“Cool.” She leaned forward in her chair, hands clasped. “Here’s the deal. The article is about the Harvard Computers, a team of female astronomers in the late eighteen hundreds who invented ways to categorize all the stars in the sky. Hopefully, I’m also going to invent a radically helpful categorization system, so the article is about the lineage. I’m going to have you pull details about their backgrounds, accomplishments, and obstacles overcome. Sound good?”

I nodded. “I didn’t know there were so many early female astronomers. Like Maria Mitchell.”

“Yeah, in the eighteen hundreds lots of women studied astronomy—it was considered ladylike, done in private, in the home. After Mitchell discovered her comet, she became a massive celebrity and all these young girls got into it. She got an award from the King of Denmark, met with Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Ralph Waldo Emerson. People were psyched about her.” Cora sipped her coffee. “But when astronomy became professionalized a few decades later, men swept in and women were shut out.”

“That seems…bad.”

“Yep. It’s rarely been easy, being a woman in STEM. Not to mention being a woman of color. Though we’ve always been here.” She rolled her eyes. “They used to call the Harvard Computers ‘Pickering’s Harem.’ He was the director of Harvard’s observatory and they worked for him.”

My mouth fell open. “What?”

“Men always think they’re cleverer than they are. Anyway, it’s these women you’ll be researching. There’re a few really famous ones—Annie Cannon, who designed the basis of our current star-categorization system; Henrietta Leavitt, whose work helped Hubble determine the size of the universe. Cecilia Payne, she came later, in the 1920s—she discovered stars are made up of hydrogen and helium. I’ve noted the specifics I want, but add anything interesting you come across, too, especially anything related to Nantucket—I’ve also been asked to write an article on the island’s astronomical heritage, so we can use this research there, too.”

I dove in.

In the 1880s, an amateur astronomer named Henry Draper and his wife, Mary Anna, photographed the spectrum of stars. Their photographs, which were viewed on glass plates, translated stars into shaded bars with lines through them. On her husband’s death, Mary Anna donated the plates to Edward Pickering, the director of Harvard’s observatory.

Pickering realized the stunning amount of information in the photos and hired a team—half women—to photograph every star in the sky. It turned out the striations corresponded to everything from chemical blend to distance to brightness and temperature. The Harvard Computers set out to photograph the heavens and analyze and classify each star. To do so, they used two new telescopes, one donated by Mrs. Draper and one bought with money from the Bache Fund: a foundation, of course, named after Ben Franklin’s great-grandson.

One of the women, Annie Jump Cannon, stood out to me. Over the course of her career, she classified over three hundred and fifty thousand stars—more than anyone else. Her classification system was still in use by the International Astronomical Union. And best of all, she’d visited Nantucket.

When the Maria Mitchell Association was founded in 1902, they reached out to Pickering, who agreed to help launch the island’s nascent astronomy program. He asked Cannon to advise them, and she became a founding member of the Maria Mitchell Association. For several summers, she spent a few weeks on Nantucket teaching astronomy courses. This was exactly what I’d been looking for.

I wasn’t my father’s daughter for nothing; when Google turned up little on the astronomy classes, I turned to primary sources, thinking this would be a good way to beef up background for Cora’s Nantucket astronomy article. The archives on the Atheneum’s website included back issues of The Inquirer and Mirror, Nantucket’s long-running newspaper. Annie Cannon’s name pulled up a handful of results, and I clicked on the oldest, an issue from 1906. It opened a digitized scan. In tightly printed letters, sandwiched between an article on the cranberry bog yield and another about a dog running off with some luggage, I found a short note:

Miss Cannon arrives on Nantucket from Harvard Astronomical Observatory. Joining her is Nantucket local Miss Darrel, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Darrel. Miss Cannon and Miss Darrel will be giving astronomy lectures for the Maria Mitchell Association, inviting local Nantucketeers to learn more about the heavens.

Since I hadn’t come across an Andrea Darrel before, I plugged her into Google. Her biography was short and to the point. Andrea Darrel was born in 1873, in Nantucket, Mass., and died in 1964 in Cambridge, Mass. She attended Vassar College from 1892 to 1896. From 1896 to 1924, Darrel worked as a computer at the Harvard Observatory, under Edward Pickering and later Annie Jump Cannon.

A minor astronomer, then, not as lauded as Annie Cannon or Cecilia Payne or the others I’d been reading about. But my curiosity was piqued. Dad loved researching little-known figures and bringing their stories to light; if I wanted to really impress him, there’d be no better way than by showing him I could do the same. And Andrea Darrel could be interesting if I was trying to stress a Nantucket connection. She would have been ten years younger than Annie Cannon, and fifty-five years younger than Maria Mitchell. What if they’d all overlapped? While Maria Mitchell would have been teaching at Vassar in upstate New York by the time Darrel was born, I imagined the famous local had loomed large over the imagination of an island girl. Especially one who decided to go to Vassar and become an astronomer herself.

“Have you heard of Andrea Darrel?” I asked Cora during her next coffee break. “She was a Harvard Computer originally from Nantucket.”

“Nope.” Cora listened as I described the little I’d found. “Interesting. Sounds worth checking out.”

I smiled at her, a big burst of excitement in my chest. “I’ll see what I can do.”

After dinner with Dad, I biked back to Golden Doors. My quads burned as I pushed uphill, though the cool breeze off the sea whisked away my sweat. After changing into my pajamas, I headed to the cousins’ room. I was getting used to the soundtrack of Golden Doors: piano played properly, violin played poorly, laughter, squabbling. The triplets whispering fiercely, the littles shrieking with laughter, the adults pouring wine and talking into the early hours of the morning. The birdsong floating through the open windows.

The cousins’ room was always cozy, a place where you could be surrounded by others but not have to pay much attention. Tonight, a group played video games, a few more did a puzzle, and a handful read books. If Ethan had been there, it wouldn’t have been restful, but he wasn’t. So I fully relaxed, a blanket draped over my lap as I nestled into a couch, Miriam at the other end. I’d spent my work hours pulling reports and crunching numbers for Cora, along with the research she’d requested on the Harvard Computers, but now I wanted to see what I could find on Andrea Darrel.

Andrea Darrel diariesled to a page at Harvard Library’s Archival Discovery, but to my dismay it gave the location as a physical box in a storeroom instead of, say, a downloadable PDF. Vassar was more helpful: a page on the school’s website showed scanned diaries from some of the first women to attend. One of the diaries, with cramped, rounded script (plus a digital transcript, thank god) belonged to Andrea Darrel.

The diaries started in 1892, when Andrea would have been eighteen. She’d be heading off to college, like me in a few months. I didn’t usually think of nineteenth-century women going to university, but I supposed some had. Had Andrea felt the way I did—uncertain, excited, thirsty for knowledge and friendship? Probably. Time and clothing and societal expectations might change, but people probably didn’t.

I started at the beginning.

September 24, 1892

I arrived in New York a few hours ago. I feel a bit like I’m in a dream; I’ve never been further from Nantucket than Boston, and never so far from the ocean.

Uncle Henry met me at the depot. He is very against these “newfangled women’s schools” and thought it important I know this on the eve of attending one. I told him Vassar was founded thirty years ago, and its first students were women of his age. He turned ruddy and said, “What man wants an overly-educated wife?”

I said, “What woman wants a husband who doesn’t respect her education?” This did not start our visit on an amiable note.

But I can think of worse things than spending my life unmarried. Miss Mitchell never wed, after all, and she was the first faculty named to Vassar, and the reason I chose to come here—the reason Vassar has higher enrollments for astronomy than Harvard or Radcliffe.

“Studying the stars is a ladylike pursuit,” Aunt Lisa said, trying to calm her husband down. Unfortunately (poor Aunt Lisa) this only upset her husband outwardly and me inwardly. Uncle Henry says women should only study the hierarchies of nature and should leave debates to men, and Miss Mitchell should never have been named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (alarmingly, no other woman has been admitted in the 44 years since).

Then I said I am not interested in being ladylike, I’m interested in understanding the world. Aunt Lisa closed her eyes very tightly then, looking so much like Mama I apologized and excused myself to bed. At home, I would have burned off my rage by going outside to sweep the skies, but New York has too much light, so I’m writing here instead.

September 25

I’m feeling very overwhelmed about tomorrow—am I expecting too much of college? I don’t know what I expect, but it seems to be everything. I remember Miss Mitchell visiting Nantucket and letting me look through her telescope and saying, “You will make a very good astronomer; you must come study with me at Vassar.”

I wish she were still alive and could see I am going to be an astronomer.

Hattie says Miss Mitchell would have said as much to any child from home who showed an interest in astronomy, especially the child of people she taught when she was a young schoolteacher. I say Hattie is jealous because I left Nantucket and she’s stuck there and Mama will have no one to badger except her for the next four years.

Hattie also says I shouldn’t dream too much; Miss Mitchell might have become famous around the whole world, but the chance of another island girl doing so is too much to ask.

AmI reaching too far beyond my grasp? Papa is a fisherman and Mama runs the house. It’s more likely I’ll wind up a fisherman’s wife than a lauded academic.

Merely writing that makes my whole body shiver. I want to be inducted into the Academy of Arts and Sciences. I want my college degree. I want to change the world. I want to study the stars. I want everything.

September 26

Took the train from the city to Poughkeepsie. I’ve never traveled by myself before—hardly left the island—and now here I am, completely independent! I am not sure whether to laugh or cry.

I met a girl on the train also bound for Vassar, a Miss Slate. At the depot, we paid a man to take our trunks to the college and caught a streetcar right to the college gates. I have never been on a streetcar before and thought it perfectly charming. Miss Slate told me it was old and rickety and in the worst condition of any streetcar she had ever been on. Clearly Miss Slate and I lead very different lives.

For whatever reason, I thought my arrival at Vassar would be more monumental. Perhaps I pictured cheers? Instead, I was one more in a teeming crowd of young women (which was quite the sensation! I’m not used to being around so many girls my own age). There are about a hundred girls in my class, and we will all be living in a dormitory together.

October 8

First few weeks have flown by! Must try to be better at chronicling my life, otherwise future biographers will be stymied about my formative years. (Thought this an entertaining quip and shared it with Miss Blanchard down the hall, who regarded me quite blankly. Perhaps I’m not as funny as I thought.)

In the first few days, I took exams to place me in my classes. Went to the chapel to receive our schedule, as follows:

Latin

French

German

Rhetoric

Algebra

Geometry

Hygiene

I am quite miserable at everything outside of maths.

The breakfast bell wakes us at 7:45 every day, and lunch is just past noon. Supper’s at six, and chapel half past. The other girls are from all over the country—Miss Gallaher is from Kansas, Miss Clayden from Albany. Everyone is brilliant. I used to consider myself decently intelligent, but now I am afraid I am exceptionally mediocre.

All the teachers are lovely, but most striking is Professor Perkins, who is dark-haired and handsome, with sad eyes. Unfortunately, yesterday at lunch with Miss Alice Brady and Miss Maria Carpenter (of Boston and New York, respectively) I was informed all the girls in our class are taken with him. Another example of my extreme ordinariness, I am afraid.

Apparently I am most of note for being from Nantucket, which I realized when I mentioned home today. Everyone asked if I’d known Miss Mitchell, and when I said yes, they clustered about my skirts like children at story time. I had little to say, even though my memories of her are so strong: kind and steady and sure of herself. Though she left the Quakers, they left a strong imprint on her from childhood. She was so unlike Mama, who worries and corrects me about everything. Miss Mitchell corrected me, too, when I didn’t understand how to use the telescope or said something silly about the planets, but she was kind and patient and exactly how I want to be someday.

Andrea Darrel’s diary became sparser over the next years, picking up mostly when she headed home to Nantucket for the summers, or when she was stressed about a class or a friendship or a new lecturer she hero-worshipped. (Or when she was irritated with her mother or sister Hattie, with whom she must have maintained a lively correspondence, given they always seemed to be asking if she’d met anyone eligible at nearby West Point.)

I learned the details of her life, though: she played doubles tennis with her classmates and went out on the lake and attended organ concerts. She wrote with great excitement of each new scientific discovery, from the first open-heart surgery to enthusiastically following the discussion of canals and seas on Mars, which had once been considered a certainty but which experts became skeptical of in the mid-1890s.

As graduation approached, her journals became expansive again as she tried to capture the end of an era. In November she wrote about wearing bloomers and sweaters on a rainy afternoon for the first-ever field day; in March she wrote about the heated presidential race between two men I had never heard of, William McKinley and William Bryan (presumably one of these men won?). And by May, she was filled by nostalgia for college and hope for the future.

May 5, 1896

What a night!

The astronomy club had its annual Dome Party tonight. We were told to bring poems, and some of the girls had the nerve to write rather good ones (Miss Slate set hers to music, and it was appallingly lovely). We sat at little tables under the dome and ate and laughed and shared our mostly horrible poetry.

Then Miss Antonia Maury arrived! Miss Maury is not just an alum, she works at Harvard Observatory (funded by Miss Maury’s aunt, Mrs. Draper). She has calculated orbital periods and discovered a binary star. But she made it quite clear she doesn’t consider the Observatory a perfect place—Dr. Pickering, the director, received credit for her discoveries, and she only made 25¢ an hour, half the salary of her male colleagues. She quit for these reasons once before, and only returned because Dr. Pickering especially asked her.

I know this should infuriate me, and it does, but I still want to work at the Observatory. After she read her poem, I made my way over to her. We both graduated with honors in physics, astronomy, and philosophy, and so I hope that will help me the way it helped her, even if her connections are far superior to mine—her family is made up of physicians and scientists and teachers.

She rather scoffed at me when I told her I hoped to work at the Observatory. “And make little money and receive no credit? It would be easier to work elsewhere.”

“I don’t want to work elsewhere,” I said. “I want to be an astronomer. I can fight for credit, if I have discoveries to fight for.”

She cannot be more than half a dozen years older than me, but she shook her head like she was weary as Atlas. “You are so young and hungry still,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if she meant it as a compliment or an insult. “If you want it so badly, I’ll make an introduction.”

I want it so badly I would bleed out my entire heart to have it. And now I think I have it. I think I may be on my way to becoming an astronomer.

May 12, 1896

Everything is a “last” these days—our last recital, last time on the lake, last walk through the orchards. Last exam! We all promise we’ll return, but it won’t be the same.

We went out on the lake tonight, the senior girls, with the sun setting in a blaze and the stars shining bright. We were very loud, lit with some wild fire, singing and laughing and half dancing, and when we returned to the seniors’ hall we continued to make a spectacle of ourselves, and I am sure I did not imagine the younger classes looking on with envy. We’re at the peak of everything, of life itself, it feels. We have the whole world in front of us and it feels like we’re about to jump off a cliff and fall forever.

Or maybe fly.