It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little about it.
— Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot

Prologue

CARL SAGAN SAID

that if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. When he says "from scratch," he means from nothing. He means from a time before the world even existed. If you want to make an apple pie from nothing at all, you have to start with the Big Bang and expanding universes, neutrons, ions, atoms, black holes, suns, moons, ocean tides, the Milky Way, Earth, evolution, dinosaurs, extinction level events, platypuses, Homo erectus, Cro-Magnon man, etc. You have to start at the beginning. You must invent fire. You need water and fertile soil and seeds. You need cows and people to milk them and more people to churn that milk into butter. You need wheat and sugar cane and apple trees. You need chemistry and biology. For a really good apple pie, you need the arts. For an apple pie that can last for generations, you need the printing press and the Industrial Revolution and maybe even a poem.

To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world. 

Daniel

Local Teen Accepts Destiny, Agrees to Become Doctor, Stereotype

It's Charlie's fault that my summer (and now fall) has been one absurd headline after another. Charles Jae Won Bae, aka Charlie, my older brother, fi rstborn son of a firstborn son, surprised my parents (and all their friends, and the entire gossiping Korean community of Flushing, New York) by getting kicked out of Harvard University (Best School, my mother said, when his acceptance letter arrived). Now he's been kicked out of Best School, and all summer my mom frowns and doesn't quite believe and doesn't quite understand.

Why you grades so bad? They kick you out? Why they kick you out? Why not make you stay and study more?

My dad says, Not kick out. Require to withdraw. Not same as kick out.

Charlie grumbles: It's just temporary, only for two semesters. Under this unholy barrage of my parents' confusion and shame and disappointment, even I almost feel bad for Charlie. Almost.

Natasha

MY MOM SAYS IT'S TIME for me to give up now, and that what I'm doing is futile. She's upset, so her accent is thicker than usual, and every statement is a question.

"You no think is time for you to give up now, Tasha? You no think that what you doing is futile?"

She draws out the first syllable of futile for a second too long. My dad doesn't say anything. He's mute with anger or impotence. I'm never sure which. His frown is so deep and so complete that it's hard to imagine his face with another expression. If this were even just a few months ago, I'd be sad to see him like this, but now I don't really care. He's the reason we're all in this mess.

Peter, my nine-year-old brother, is the only one of us happy with this turn of events. Right now, he's packing his suitcase and playing "No Woman, No Cry" by Bob Marley. "Old-school packing music," he called it.

Despite the fact that he was born here in America, Peter says he wants to live in Jamaica. He's always been pretty shy and has a hard time making friends. I think he imagines that Jamaica will be a paradise and that, somehow, things will be better for him there. 

The four of us are in the living room of our one- bedroom apartment. The living room doubles as a bedroom, and Peter and I share it. It has two small sofa beds that we pull out at night, and a bright blue curtain down the middle for privacy. Right now the curtain is pulled aside so you can see both our halves at once.

Excerpted from The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon. Copyright © 2016 by Nicola Yoon. Excerpted by permission of Delacorte Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.