[Part 2] "Stargirl" by Jerry Spinelli

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CHAPTER XI.

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During the first quarter of each home game, Stargirl went over to the visitors’ section and gave them a cheer.

She began with an exaggerated ball-bouncing motion:

Dribble, Dribble!

Sis Boom Bibble!

We don’t bite!

We don’t nibble!

We just say—

(sweeping wave)

“Howwww-dee, friends!”

(two thumbs pointing to her chest)

“We’re the Electrons!”

(points to them)

“Who—are—YYYYYYOU?”

(turns head to side, cups ear)

A couple of visiting cheerleaders, maybe a fan or two would call back: “Wildcats!” or “Cougars!” or whatever, but most of them just gaped at her as if to say, Who is this?

Some of her fellow cheerleaders were amused, some were mortified.

At that point the only crime Stargirl could have been accused of would be corniness.

But she didn’t stop there.

She cheered whenever the ball went in the basket, regardless of which team shot it.

It was the strangest sight: the other team scores, the MAHS crowd sits glumly on their hands while Stargirl, alone, pops up cheering.

At first the other cheerleaders tried to suppress her; it was like trying to calm down a puppy.

When they gave her the pleated skirt, they made a cheerleader they never imagined.

She did not limit herself to basketball games.

She cheered anyone, anything, anytime.

She cheered the big things—honors, election winners—but she gave most of her attention to little things.

You never knew when it would happen.

Maybe you were a little ninthgrade nobody named Eddie.

As you’re walking down the hall you see a candy wrapper on the floor.

You pick it up and throw it in the nearest trash can—and suddenly there she is in front of you, pumping her arms, her honey hair and freckles flying, swallowing you whole with those enormous eyes, belting out a cheer she’s making up on the spot, something about Eddie, Eddie and the trash can teaming up to wipe out litter.

A mob is gathering, clapping hands in rhythm, more eyes on you than all the previous days of your life combined.

You feel foolish, exposed, stupid.

You want to follow the candy wrapper into the trash can.

It’s the most painful thing that’s ever happened to you.

Your brain keeps squirting out a single thought: I’m going to die…I’m going to die…

And so, when she finally finishes and her freckles settle back onto the bridge of her nose, why don’t you?

Why don’t you just die?

Because they’re clapping for you, that’s why, and whoever heard of dying while they’re clapping for you?

And they’re smiling at you.

People who never even saw you before are smiling at you and slapping your back and pumping your hand, and suddenly it seems like the whole world is calling your name, and you’re feeling so good you pretty much just float on home from school.

And when you go to bed that night, the last thing you see before you zonk out are those eyes, and the last thing on your face is a smile.

Or maybe you showed up at school with really unusual earrings.

Or you aced a test.

Or broke your arm.

Or got your braces off.

Or maybe you weren’t even a person.

Maybe you were a charcoal drawing on the wall done by an art whiz.

Or a really neat-looking bug out by the bike rack.

We wagged our heads and agreed what a goofy girl this was, maybe even officially crazy, but we walked away smiling and maybe not saying but all thinking the same thing: it felt good to get credit.

And if this had been any other year, things might have just gone on and on like that.

But this was the year something unbelievable was happening on the basketball court.

This was the year the team was winning.

Only winning.

And that changed everything.

Early in the season no one noticed.

Except for girls’ tennis, we had never had good teams in anything.

We expected to lose.

We were comfortable with losing.

In fact, most of us were oblivious to it, since we didn’t even attend the games.

The year before, the basketball Electrons had won only five of twentysix games.

This year, they won their fifth game before Christmas.

By early January they had won the tenth, and people began to notice that there was still a zero in the loss column.

“UNDEFEATED!” blared a sign on the plywood roadrunner.

Some said we were winning by accident.

Some said the other teams were simply more rotten than we were.

Some thought the sign was a joke.

One thing was certain: attendance went up.

By the start of February the winning streak had reached sixteen, and there wasn’t an empty seat in the gym.

But something even more interesting was happening.

Suddenly we were no longer comfortable with losing.

In fact, we forgot how to lose.

The transformation was stunning in its speed.

There was no apprenticeship period, no learning curve.

No one had to teach us how to be winners.

One day we were bored, indifferent, satisfied losers; the next we were rabid fanatics, stomping in the grandstand, painting our faces green and white, doing the wave as if we had been perfecting it for years.

We fell in love with our team.

When we spoke of it, we used the word “we” instead of “they.”

The leading scorer, Brent Ardsley, seemed to have a golden glow about him as he moved through the school.

And the more we loved our team, the more we hated the opposition.

We used to envy them.

We even applauded them to spite our own hapless teams.

Now we detested the opposition and everything about them.

We hated their uniforms.

We hated their coaches and their fans.

We hated them because they were trying to spoil our perfect season.

We resented every point scored against us.

And how dare they celebrate!

We began to boo.

It was our first experience as booers, but you’d have thought we were veterans.

We booed the other team, we booed the other coach, we booed the other fans, the referees—whatever threatened our perfect season, we booed it.

We even booed the scoreboard.

We hated games that went down to the wire.

We hated suspense.

We loved games that were decided in the first five minutes.

We wanted more than victories, we wanted massacres.

The only score we would have been totally happy with would have been 100 to 0.

And right there in the middle of it all, in the midst of this perfect season mania, was Stargirl, popping up whenever the ball went through the net, no matter which team scored, cheering everything and everybody.

It was sometime in January when calls started flying from the stands: “Siddown!”

Then came the boos.

She didn’t seem to notice.

She did not seem to notice.

Of all the unusual features of Stargirl, this struck me as the most remarkable.

Bad things did not stick to her.

Correction: her bad things did not stick to her.

Our bad things stuck very much to her.

If we were hurt, if we were unhappy or otherwise victimized by life, she seemed to know about it, and to care, as soon as we did.

But bad things falling on her—unkind words, nasty stares, foot blisters—she seemed unaware of.

I never saw her look in a mirror, never heard her complain.

All of her feelings, all of her attentions flowed outward.

She had no ego.

The nineteenth game of the basketball season was played at Red Rock.

In previous years cheerleaders had outnumbered Mica fans at away games.

Not now.

The convoy rolling across the desert that evening stretched for a couple of miles.

By the time we were seated, there was barely room for the home-team fans.

It was the worst slaughter of the year.

Red Rock was helpless.

By the start of the fourth quarter we were ahead, 78 to 29.

The coach put in the subs.

We booed.

We smelled a hundred points.

We wanted blood.

The coach put the starters back in.

As we howled and thundered in the stands, Stargirl got up and walked from the gym.

Those of us who noticed assumed she was going to the rest room.

I kept glancing toward the exit.

She never returned.

With five seconds left in the game, the Electrons scored the hundredth point.

We went nuts.

Stargirl had been outside the whole time, chatting with the bus driver.

The other cheerleaders asked her why she left.

She said she felt sorry for the Red Rock players.

She felt her cheering was only making the massacre worse.

Such games were no fun, she said.

Your job isn’t to have fun, they told her, your job is to cheer for Mica High no matter what.

She just stared at them.

The team and the cheerleaders rode the same bus.

When the players came out from the locker room, the cheerleaders told them what had happened.

They devised a trick.

They told Stargirl that someone had forgotten something in the gym, and would she please go get it.

With Stargirl gone, they told the bus driver everyone was aboard, and the bus made the two-hour return trip without her.

A Red Rock custodian drove her home that night.

Next day in school, the cheerleaders told her it was all a big misunderstanding and acted as if they were sorry.

She believed them.

The next day was February thirteenth.

The Hot Seat.

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CHAPTER XII.

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This is how Hot Seat went.

It took place in the communications center studio.

There were two chairs on stage: the infamous Hot Seat itself—painted red with flames running up the legs—and an ordinary chair for the host, Kevin.

Off to the side were two rows of six chairs each, the second row higher than the first.

This was where the jury sat.

It was a jury in name only.

The twelve members did not vote or render a verdict.

Their job was to ask questions, to give the Hot Seat its heat: ticklish questions, embarrassing questions, nosy questions.

But not mean or hurtful questions.

The idea was to make the subject squirm, not roast.

In the spirit of mock inquisition, we called the subject the “victim.”

And why would anyone want to be the victim?

The lure of TV.

The chance to confess—or lie— before a camera and before peers instead of parents.

But I doubted the usual reasons applied to Stargirl.

There were three cameras: one for the stage, one for the jury, and Chico.

Chico was the handheld close-up camera.

According to Mr. Robineau, our faculty advisor, a student named Chico once begged him to be a close-up camera kid.

Mr. Robineau gave him a tryout, but Chico was so skinny he practically collapsed under the camera.

The job went to someone else and Chico went to the weight room.

By the following year Chico had muscles, and the camera was like nothing on his shoulder.

He got the job, and he was brilliant at it.

He gave the camera his own name.

“We are one,” he said.

When he graduated, his name stayed behind, and from then on the close-up camera and its operator were a unit called Chico.

The host and the victim were each fitted with a thimble-size clip-on mike; the jury passed around a hand mike.

Opposite the stage was the glassed-in control room, sound-insulated from the rest of the studio.

That’s where I worked, wearing my headset, watching the monitors, directing the shots.

I stood at the shoulder of the technical director, or TD.

He sat at a rack of buttons, punching up the shots I ordered.

Also in the control room were the graphics and audio people.

Mr. Robineau was there as faculty overseer, but basically the students worked everything.

Kevin’s job was to get things started: intro the victim, ask a few opening questions, stir things up if the jury was slow.

Usually the jury was on the ball.

Typical questions: “Does it bother you that you’re so short?”

“Is it true that you like so-and-so?”

“Do you wish you were good-looking?”

“How often do you take a shower?”

It almost always added up to entertainment.

At the end of the half hour, as we cued credits and music, there was always a good feeling in the air, and everyone—victim, jury members, studio crew—mingled and became students again.

We filmed the shows after school, then broadcast them that night—prime time—on local cable.

About ten thousand homes.

Our own surveys said at least fifty percent of the student body watched any given show.

We outdrew most of the hot sitcoms.

We expected to top ninety percent for the Stargirl show.

But I had a secret: I wished no one would watch.

In the month since we had scheduled the show, Stargirl’s popularity had dropped out of sight.

Gone were ukuleles from the lunchroom.

More and more kids saw her cheerleading behavior as undermining the basketball team and its perfect record.

I was afraid the boos for her might spread from the court to the studio.

I was afraid the show might turn ugly.

When Stargirl came in that day after school, Kevin gave her the usual briefing while Mr. Robineau and I checked out the equipment.

As the jury members straggled in, they were not clowning around or tapdancing on the stage as jurors usually did.

They went right to their seats.

Stargirl was the one tap-dancing.

And mugging for the cameras with Cinnamon the rat licking her nose.

Kevin was cracking up, but the faces of the jurors were grim.

One of them was Hillari Kimble.

My bad feeling got worse.

I retreated to the control room and shut the door.

I checked communications with the cameras.

We were ready.

Kevin and Stargirl took their seats.

I took one last look through the plate glass that separated the set from the control room.

For the next half hour I would see the world through four monitors.

“Okay, everybody,” I announced, “here we go.”

I cut the studio mike.

I looked over my control-room mates.

“We all set?”

Everyone nodded.

Just then Stargirl lifted one of Cinnamon’s front paws and waved it at the control room and said in a squeaky voice, “Hi, Leo.”

I froze.

I came unraveled.

I didn’t know she knew my name.

I just stood there like a dummy.

Finally I waggled my fingers at the rat and mouthed the words “Hi, Cinnamon,” although they couldn’t hear me on the other side of the glass.

I took a deep breath.

“Okay, ready music, ready intro.”

I paused.

“Music, intro.”

This was the moment I lived for, launching the show.

I was the director, the maestro, I called the shots.

On the monitors before me I watched the program unfold according to my commands.

But on this day the thrill was missing.

I felt only a dark dread snaking along the cables.

“Greetings…and welcome to Hot Seat…”

Kevin went through the opening spiel.

Kevin loved to be on camera.

He was ideal for a show like this, which made good use of his smirky grin and arching, Did-I-really-hear-you-say-that? eyebrows.

He turned to Stargirl.

Then, impromptu, he reached out and stroked the nose of Cinnamon, who was perched on Stargirl’s shoulder.

“Want to hold him?” she said.

Kevin gave the camera a Should-I look.

“Sure,” he said.

“Ready, Chico, rat,” I said into my headset mike.

“Ready” was always first in the command sequence.

Chico zoomed in.

“Chico.”

TD punched up Chico.

The camera followed Cinnamon from Stargirl’s hands to Kevin’s.

No sooner was the rat in Kevin’s lap than it scampered up his chest and darted between two buttons into his shirt.

Kevin yipped and squirmed.

“It scratches!”

“He has fingernails,” Stargirl said calmly.

“He won’t hurt you.”

Chico nailed Cinnamon poking his head out from between the two buttons.

Mr. Robineau stuck a thumbs-up in front of my face.

Kevin gave the camera his Ain’t-I-something face.

He turned again to Stargirl.

“You know, ever since you showed up at school this year, we’ve been wanting to put you on the Hot Seat.”

Stargirl stared at him.

She turned to the live camera.

Her eyes were growing wider…

Something was happening.

…and wider…

“Chico!” I barked.

Chico moved in, crouching, giving it a little upshot.

Terrific.

“Closer, closer,” I said.

Stargirl’s wonderstruck eyes practically filled the screen.

I checked the long-shot monitor.

She was frozen, rigid, as if electrified to the chair.

Someone smacked my shoulder.

I turned.

Mr. Robineau was laughing, saying something.

I lifted one earphone.

“She’s joking,” he repeated.

And suddenly I saw.

She was taking “Hot Seat” literally.

She was milking it for all it was worth, and judging from the blank stares of Kevin and the jury, Mr. Robineau and I were the only ones who got the joke.

Stargirl’s hands were rising now from the arms of the Hot Seat…

“Ready one,” I called.

“One!”

Camera One, not there at first but getting it now, the long shot, nailing her as her hands came off the chair arms, fingers spread wide, you could almost see her fingertips smoking…

Hold it, I prayed, hold it…

…as her horrified eyes swung down over the side of the chair, the Hot Seat, saw the painted flames…

“EEEEEEEEEEEEYIKES!”

Her scream bent instrument dials like palms in a hurricane.

The rat leaped from Kevin’s shirt.

The TV image quaked as my Camera One man flinched, but he recovered and caught her standing now on the front edge of the stage, bending over with her rear end in the camera, flapping her hand behind her, fanning her smoking fanny.

Finally Kevin got it.

He went nuts.

“One, pull back, get Kevin in it.

Ready…One.”

Kevin was doubled up, tipping out of his chair, on his knees on the stage.

His laughter flooded the control room.

The rat ran over his hands and hopped down the single stage step…

“The rat!” I yelled.

“Two, get the rat!”

But Two couldn’t get the rat because the rat was nosing around Two’s feet and Two was bolting from his camera.

“Chico, rat!”

Chico dived.

He was flat on the floor, feeding the live screen a brilliant shot of the rat heading over to the jury, the jury members scrambling, taking off, climbing onto their seats.

Forget the “Readys”; things were happening too fast.

The cameras were dancing, feeding the monitors.

I barked commands.

TD was punching his button rack like some hard-rock keyboarder.

Stargirl’s pantomime remains the best I have ever seen.

Mr. Robineau kept squeezing my shoulder.

As he said later, it was the greatest moment in Hot Seat history.

But because of what followed, no audience would ever see it.

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CHAPTER XIII.

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In less than a minute, everything returned to normal.

Stargirl retrieved Cinnamon and sat back coolly in the Hot Seat as if nothing had happened.

Kevin’s eyes twinkled.

He was squirming.

He couldn’t wait to dig into the interview.

Neither could the jury, but their eyes were not twinkling.

Kevin forced himself to look serious.

“So, your name.

Stargirl.

It’s pretty unusual.”

Stargirl gave him a blank look.

Kevin was flustered.

“Isn’t it?” he said.

Stargirl shrugged.

“Not to me.”

She’s putting him on, I thought.

“Chico,” I said into my mike, “stay tight on her face.”

A voice was heard dimly off-camera.

Kevin turned.

A jury member had spoken.

“Jury mike up,” I said.

“Ready Two.”

The mike was passed to Jennifer St. John.

“Two.”

The mike looked like a black ice cream cone before Jennifer’s face.

Her voice wasn’t pleasant.

“What was wrong with the name your parents gave you?”

Stargirl turned slowly to Jennifer.

She smiled.

“Nothing.

It was a good name.”

“What was it?”

“Susan.”

“So why did you drop it?”

“Because I didn’t feel like Susan anymore.”

“So you just threw out Susan and named yourself Stargirl.”

“No.”

Still smiling.

“No?”

“Pocket Mouse.”

Twelve pairs of eyes boggled.

“What?”

“I named myself Pocket Mouse,” Stargirl said breezily.

“Then Mudpie.

Then Hullygully.

Then Stargirl.”

Damon Ricci snatched the mike from Jennifer St. John.

“So what’s it gonna be next?

Dog Turd?”

Uh-oh, I thought, here we go.

Kevin jumped in.

“So…you change your name whenever you get tired of it?”

“Whenever it doesn’t fit anymore.

I’m not my name.

My name is something I wear, like a shirt.

It gets worn, I outgrow it, I change it.”

“So why Stargirl?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

She petted Cinnamon’s nose with her fingertip.

“I was walking in the desert one night, looking up at the sky—like,” she chuckled, “how can you not look at the sky!—and it just sort of came to me, fell onto me.”

Kevin looked up from his sheet of prepared questions.

“So what do your parents think?

Are they sad you didn’t keep Susan?”

“No.

It was almost their idea.

When I started calling myself Pocket Mouse when I was little, they called me that, too.

And we just never went back.”

Another distant voice from the jury.

I tapped the soundman.

“Jury mike.

And keep all mikes open.”

I hated to do it.

It was Mike Ebersole.

“I said, do you love your country?”

“Yes,” she answered briskly.

“Do you love yours?”

Ebersole ignored her question.

“Why don’t you say the Pledge of Allegiance right?”

She smiled.

“Sounds right to me.”

“Sounds like you’re a traitor to me.”

Jurors were only supposed to ask questions, not make statements.

A hand reached into the picture and grabbed the mike from Ebersole.

Becca Rinaldi’s angry face appeared on Camera Two.

“Why do you cheer for the other team?”

Stargirl seemed to be thinking it over.

“I guess because I’m a cheerleader.”

“You’re not just a cheerleader, you dumb cluck”—Becca Rinaldi was snarling into the mike—“you’re supposed to be our cheerleader.

A Mica cheerleader.”

I glanced at Mr. Robineau.

He was turned away from the monitors.

He was staring straight at the set through the control room window.

Stargirl was leaning forward, looking earnestly at Becca Rinaldi, her voice small as a little girl’s.

“When the other team scores a point and you see how happy it makes all their fans, doesn’t it make you happy, too?”

Becca growled, “No.”

“Doesn’t it make you want to join in?”

“No.”

“Don’t you ever want the other team to be happy, too?”

“No.”

Stargirl seemed genuinely surprised.

“You don’t always want to be the winner…do you?”

Becca scowled at her, jutted out her jaw.

“Yes.

Yes, I do.

Yes.

I always want to be the winner.

That’s what I do.

I root for us to win.

That’s what we all do.”

She swept her arm around the set.

“We root for Mica.”

She jabbed her finger at the stage.

“Who do you root for?”

Stargirl hesitated.

She smiled, she threw out her arms.

“I root for everybody!”

Kevin—to the rescue, thankfully—clapped his hands.

“Hey—how about this?

Maybe it should be official.

Maybe one person in the whole district should be appointed to be on”—he waved his arm—“everybody’s side!”

Stargirl reached over and slapped Kevin’s knee.

“She could wear every school’s letter on her sweater!”

Kevin laughed.

“She’d have to be big as a house!”

Stargirl slapped her own knee.

“Then no letter at all.

That’s even better.”

She looked into the camera, she swiped at the space before her.

“Out with letters!”

“Cheerleader-at-large!”

“Everybody’s cheerleader!”

Kevin sat at attention, placed his hand over his heart.

“With liberty and justice…and a cheerleader for all.”

Ebersole snarled into the jury mike: “And a nut roll for all.”

Kevin wagged his finger.

“That’s a no-no,” he scolded.

“No statements from the jury.

Questions only.”

Renee Bozeman snatched the mike.

“Okay, here’s a question.

Why did you quit homeschooling?”

Stargirl’s face became serious.

“I wanted to make friends.”

“Well, you sure have a funny way of showing it, making the whole school mad at you.”

I wished I had never given in to Hot-Seating Stargirl.

Stargirl just stared.

Chico filled the screen with her face.

“Gimme—” It was Jennifer St. John, reaching for the mike.

“And out of school, too.

You meddle into everybody’s business.

You stick your nose in, whether you’re invited or not.

Why do you do that?”

Stargirl had no reply.

Her usual impish expression was gone.

She looked at Jennifer.

She looked at the camera, as if trying to find an answer in the lens.

Then she was looking away, looking at the control room.

I took my eyes from the monitor and for a second I thought they met hers at the control room window.

I had been wondering when Hillari Kimble would speak up.

Now she did.

“I’m gonna tell you something, girl.

You’re goofy.

You’re crazy.”

Hillari was standing, jabbing her finger at Stargirl, chewing on the mike.

“You must’ve come from Mars or something…”

Kevin raised a timid hand.

“And don’t you tell me ‘no statements,’ Kevin.

Where’d you come from, Mars or something?

There, now it’s a question.

Why don’t you go back to where you came from?

There’s another question.”

Stargirl’s eyes filled the camera.

Don’t cry, I prayed.

There was no stopping Hillari.

“You want to cheer for other schools?

Fine!

Go there!

Don’t come to my school.

Get outta my school!”

Other hands were snatching at the mike.

“I know what your problem is.

All this weird stuff you do?

It’s just to get attention.”

“It’s to get a boyfriend!”

The jurors laughed.

They were a mob.

Hands grabbed at the mike.

Kevin looked anxiously at me.

I could do nothing.

With all the buttons and switches at my command, I was helpless to change anything on the other side of the glass.

“I got a simple question for you.

What’s the matter with you?

Huh?

Huh?”

“Why can’t you be normal?”

“Why do you wanna be so different?”

“Yeah—is something wrong with us, you gotta be so different?”

“Why don’t you wear makeup?”

They were all standing now, jabbing, jutting, shouting, whether they had the mike or not.

“You don’t like us, do you?

Do you?”

Mr. Robineau flipped the master toggle on the console.

“That’s it,” he said.

I flipped the studio sound switch.

“That’s it.

Show’s over.”

The jury went on shouting.

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CHAPTER XIV.

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This was the start of a period that blurs as I try to recall it.

Incidents seem to cascade and merge.

Events become feelings, feelings become events.

Head and heart are contrary historians.

The Hot Seat session was never aired.

Mr. Robineau destroyed the tape.

Of course, that didn’t stop every moment of it from being reported.

In fact, most of the students knew about it by the time school opened next day.

What I recall then, when the last detail had been spilled, is a period of whispers and waiting.

Tension.

What would happen now?

Would the jury’s open hostility spill over into the classrooms?

How would Stargirl react?

Answers were expected on the following day, Valentine’s Day.

On previous holidays—Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Groundhog Day—Stargirl had left a little something on each desk in her homeroom.

Would she do likewise this time?

The answer was yes.

Each member of Homeroom 17 found a candy heart on his or her desk that morning.

There was a basketball game that night; that I do remember.

The biggest game of the year.

The Electrons had breezed through the regular season undefeated, but now the second season was about to begin: the play-offs.

First the districts, then the regionals, and finally the state tournament.

We had never even made it to the districts, but now visions of championships danced in our heads.

The Electrons—champions of all Arizona!

We would settle for nothing less.

First hurdle in our way was Sun Valley, champions of the Pima League.

The game was played Valentine’s night on a neutral court in Casa Grande.

All of Mica, it seemed, emptied out and headed for the game.

Kevin and I went in the pickup.

From the moment the Mica mob entered the gym, our cheers rattled the rafters.

The big green M on Stargirl’s white sweater flounced as she spun and leaped with the other cheerleaders.

I spent as much time watching her as I did watching the game.

She cheered when we scored.

When Sun Valley scored, she did not.

Something inside me felt better.

But not for long.

We were losing.

For the first time all year, we were trailing at the end of the first quarter.

In fact, we were getting smoked, 21 to 9.

The reason was no mystery.

While Sun Valley’s team was not as good as ours, they did have one thing we did not: a superstar.

A kid named Ron Kovac.

He stood six-foot-eight and averaged thirty points per game.

Our players looked like five Davids flailing against Goliath.

Sun Valley’s lead had increased to nineteen points midway through the second quarter.

Our once-raucous fans were stunned into silence, and that’s when it happened.

The ball was loose in the middle of the floor.

Several players from each team dived for it.

At that moment Kovac was running past, trying to avoid the divers, and his right foot came down on a prone player’s sneaker—so it was told in the newspapers the next day.

At the time, it happened so fast no one saw it, though several people said they heard a sickening crack, like a twig snapping.

All we knew was that suddenly Goliath was on the floor writhing and screaming, and his right foot looked all wrong, and the Sun Valley coaches and trainer and players were sprinting across the floor.

But they were not the first.

Stargirl, somehow, was already there.

While Kovac’s own cheerleaders sat gaping and stricken on their bench, Stargirl knelt on the hardwood floor.

She held his head in her lap while the others attended his broken leg.

Her hands moved over his face and forehead.

She seemed to be saying things to him.

When they carried him away on a stretcher, she followed.

Everyone—both sides—stood and applauded.

The Sun Valley cheerleaders leaped as if he had just scored two points.

Ambulance lights flashed in the high windows.

I knew why I was applauding, but I wondered about some of the other Mica fans.

Were they really standing in tribute, or because they were happy to see him go?

The game resumed.

Stargirl returned to the cheerleaders’ bench.

Without Kovac, Sun Valley was a pushover.

By early in the second half we took the lead and went on to win easily.

Two nights later we lost to Glendale.

Again we fell farther and farther behind as the first half went on.

But this time there was no turnaround in the second half.

This time the Electrons faced not one but five players better than themselves.

This time no opponent broke an ankle, though I’m sure in our desperation some of us secretly wished for it.

We were shocked.

We couldn’t believe it.

And then, as the seconds of the fourth quarter ticked by, we did believe.

The cheers from across the gym were like volleys of arrows piercing our grand delusion.

How could we have been so stupid?

Did we really think that little Mica, undefeated in its own third-rate league, could ever stand up to the big-city powerhouses around the state?

We had been lured into great, foolish expectations.

Suckered.

We were devastated.

It had been so wonderful to be winners.

And so right for us.

Winning, we had come to believe, was our destiny.

And now…

As the Glendale coach sent in the scrubs to mop us up, Mica girls wept.

Boys cursed and booed.

Some blamed the officials.

Or the nets.

Or the lights.

The cheerleaders, to their credit, kept on cheering.

They looked up at us with glistening eyes and mascara tracks on their cheeks.

They pumped their arms and shouted and did everything that cheerleaders are supposed to do, but their gestures were empty, their hearts not in it.

Except for Stargirl.

As I watched her intently, I could see that she was different.

Her cheeks were dry.

There was no crack in her voice, no sag in her shoulders.

From the start of the second half on, she never sat down.

And she never again looked at the game.

She turned her back on the court.

She stood and faced us and gave not an ounce of herself to the jubilation across the gym.

We were losing by thirty points with a minute to go, but she cheered on as if we had a chance.

Her eyes blazed with a ferocity I had never seen before.

She shook her fists at us.

She flung her defiance at our gloom.

And then her face was bloody.

A Glendale player had just dunked the ball and Kevin pounded my knee with his fist and I looked to see Stargirl’s face suddenly a bloody mask and I was on my feet screaming, “NOOOOO!”

But it wasn’t blood.

It was a tomato.

Someone had splattered her face with a perfectly thrown ripe tomato, and as the clock expired and the Glendale fans poured onto the court, Stargirl just stood there, her great eyes staring up at us in utter bewilderment through the pulpy red gore.

Spouts of bitter laughter erupted among us, even some applause.

The next morning at home I found the card.

It was in a school notebook that apparently I had not opened for several days.

It was a valentine, one of those little cut-out third-grade sorts, showing a blushing little boy and a girl with mary jane shoes and a big red heart between them and the words

“I LOVE YOU.”

And as third-graders—and high-schoolers— often do, the sender had signed it in code:

(A drawing of a star and a girl)

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CHAPTER XV.

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She gave everybody in school a card.

That was my first thought.

When I saw Kevin at school, I was about to ask him, but I pulled back.

I waited until lunch.

I tried to be casual.

I slipped it in with the only thing that mattered that day.

The school was in mourning.

The game.

The loss.

The tomato.

Oh yeah, incidentally, speaking of Stargirl: “Did you happen to get a card?”

He looked at me funny.

“She gave them to her homeroom, I heard.”

“Yeah,” I said, “that’s what I heard, too.

But was that all?

Didn’t she give them to everybody else?”

He shrugged.

“Not to me.

Why?

You get one?”

He was looking away across the lunchroom, biting into his sandwich, yet I felt he was grilling me.

I shook my head.

“Oh no, just wondering.”

Actually, I was sitting on the card.

It was in the back pocket of my jeans.

Meanwhile, all eyes in the lunchroom were on Stargirl.

I think we half expected to see traces of red still clinging to her face.

She sat at her usual table with Dori Dilson and several other friends.

She seemed subdued.

She did not play her ukulele.

She did not play with her rat.

She just ate and talked with the girls at her table.

As the lunch period was ending, she got up but did not head straight for the exit.

Instead she detoured in the direction of my table.

I panicked.

I jumped up, grabbed my stuff, blurted “Gotta go,” left Kevin with his mouth hanging, and took off.

Not fast enough.

Halfway to the door I heard her behind me: “Hi, Leo.”

My face got warm.

I was sure every eye was turned to me.

I was sure they could all see the card in my pocket.

I pretended to look at the clock.

I pretended I was late for something.

I ran from the lunchroom.

I lurked in the shadows for the rest of the day.

I went straight home after school.

I stayed in my room.

I came out only for dinner.

I told my parents I had a project to do.

I paced.

I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling.

I stared out the window.

I laid the card on my study desk.

I picked it up.

I read it.

I read it.

I read it.

I played “Hi, Leo” over and over in my head.

I tossed darts at the corkboard on the back of my door.

My father called in, “What’s your project, darts?”

I went out.

I drove around in the pickup.

I drove down her street.

At the last intersection before her house, I turned off.

For hours I lay under my sheet of moonlight.

Her voice came through the night, from the light, from the stars.

Hi, Leo.

In the morning—it was a Saturday—Kevin and I went together to Archie’s for the weekly meeting of the Loyal Order of the Stone Bone.

There were about fifteen of us.

We wore our fossil necklaces.

Archie wanted to discuss the Eocene skull he was holding, but all the others could talk about was the game.

When they told Archie about the tomato, his eyebrows went up, but other than that, his face did not change.

I thought, This is not news to him, he already knows.

Archie spent the whole session that way, nodding and smiling and raising his eyebrows.

We dumped our disappointment on him, the devastation of the loss.

He said very little.

When it was over, he looked down at the skull in his lap and patted it and said, “Well, this fellow here lost his game, too.

He was winning for ten million years or so, but then the early grasses started growing up around him, and he found himself in a different league.

He hung in there as well as he could.

He scored his points, but he kept falling farther and farther behind.

The opposition was better, quicker, keener.

In the championship game, our boy got annihilated.

Not only didn’t he show up for class the next day, he never showed up, period.

They never saw him again.”

Archie lifted the snouted, fox-size skull until it was side by side with his own face.

A good minute passed as he said nothing, inviting us into our own thoughts.

Faces staring at faces staring at faces.

Tens of millions of years of faces in a living room in a place called Arizona.

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CHAPTER XVI.

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Monday.

Lunch.

This time I stayed put when Stargirl came toward my table on her way out.

My back was to her.

I could see Kevin’s eyes following her, widening as she came closer.

And then his eyes stopped, and his mouth was sliding toward a wicked grin, and it seemed like everything stopped but the clink of pans in the kitchen, and the back of my neck was on fire.

“You’re welcome,” I heard her say, almost sing.

I thought, What? but then I knew what.

And I knew what I had to do.

I knew I had to turn around and speak to her, and I knew she was going to stand there until I did.

This was silly, this was childish, this being terrified of her.

What was I afraid of, anyway?

I turned.

I felt heavy, as if I were moving through water, as if I were confronting much more than a tenth-grade girl with an unusual name.

I faced the gaudy sunflower on her canvas bag—it looked hand-painted— and at last my eyes fell into hers.

I said, “Thanks for the card.”

Her smile put the sunflower to shame.

She walked off.

Kevin was grinning, wagging his head.

“She’s in love.”

“Bull,” I said.

“She is mucho in love.”

“She’s goofy, that’s all.”

The bell rang.

We gathered our stuff and left.

I wobbled through the rest of the day.

A baseball bat could not have hit me harder than that smile did.

I was sixteen years old.

In that time, how many thousands of smiles had been aimed at me?

So why did this one feel like the first?

After school my feet carried me toward her homeroom.

I was trembling.

My stomach had flies.

I had no idea what I was going to do if I saw her.

I only knew I couldn’t not go.

She wasn’t there.

I hurried through the hallways.

I ran outside.

The buses were loading.

Cars were revving.

Hundreds of kids were scattering.

For months she had been everywhere, now she was nowhere.

I heard her name.

Her name.

The same two syllables, the same eight letters that I had been hearing all year, and suddenly the sound struck my ear with a ping of pure silver.

I drifted sideways to overhear.

A group of girls was chattering toward a bus.

“When?”

“Today.

After school.

Just now!”

“I don’t believe it!”

“I don’t believe it took so long.”

“Kicked off?

Are they allowed?”

“Sure.

Why not?

It’s not her school.”

“I would’ve kicked her off long ago.

It was treason.”

“Good riddance.”

I knew what they were talking about.

It had been rumored for days.

Stargirl had been kicked off the cheerleading squad.

“Hi, Leo!”

A chorus of girl voices calling my name.

I turned.

They were in front of the sun.

I shaded my eyes.

They sang in unison: “Starboy!”

They laughed.

I waved and hurried home.

I could never have admitted it, but I was thrilled.

Her house was two miles from mine, behind a little ten-store shopping center.

Archie had told me where.

I walked.

I didn’t want to ride.

I wanted to be slow about it.

I wanted to feel myself getting closer step by step, feel the tension rising like fizz in a soda bottle.

I did not know what I would do if I saw her.

I knew only that I was nervous, afraid.

I was more comfortable with her as history than as person.

Suddenly, intensely, I wanted to know everything about her.

I wanted to see her baby pictures.

I wanted to watch her eating breakfast, wrapping a gift, sleeping.

Since September she had been a performer— unique and outrageous—on the high school stage.

She was the opposite of cool; she held nothing back.

From her decorated desk to her oratorical speech to her performance on the football field, she was there for all to see.

And yet now I felt I had not been paying attention.

I felt I had missed something, something important.

She lived on Palo Verde.

For a person so different, her house was surprisingly ordinary, at least by Arizona standards.

Single story.

Pale adobe.

Clay-red pipetile roof.

Not a blade of grass in the small front yard, but rather barrel and prickly pear cacti and clusters of stones.

It was dark, as I had intended, when I got there.

I walked up and down the other side of the street.

It occurred to me I might be mistaken for a prowler, so I walked around the block.

I stopped into Roma Delite for a slice of pizza.

Gulped down only half of it, hurried back out, couldn’t relax when her house was not in sight.

Couldn’t relax when it was.

At first it was enough just to see the house.

Then I began to wonder if she was inside.

I wondered what she could be doing.

Light came from every window I could see.

There was a car in the driveway.

The longer I hung around, the closer I wanted to be.

I crossed the street and practically dashed past the house.

As I went by, I scooped up a stone from the yard.

I went up the street, turned, and looked at her house in the distance.

I whispered to the salt-sprinkled sky, “That’s where Stargirl Caraway lives.

She likes me.”

I headed back toward the house.

The street, the sidewalks were deserted.

The stone was warm in my hand.

This time I walked slowly as I approached.

I felt strange.

My eyes fixed on a triangle of light in a curtained window.

I saw a shadow on a yellow wall.

I seemed to be drifting, footless, into the light.

Suddenly the front door opened.

I dived behind the car in the driveway and crouched by the rear fender.

I heard the door close.

I heard steps.

The steps matched the movement of a long shadow cast down the driveway.

My breath stopped.

The shadow stopped.

I felt both ridiculous and weirdly, perfectly placed, as if crouching by that car was precisely what life had in store for me at that moment.

Her voice came from beyond the shadow.

“Remember when you followed me into the desert that day after school?”

Absurdly, I debated whether to answer, as if doing so would—what?

Give me away?

I leaned into the smooth metal of the fender.

It never occurred to me to stand, to show myself.

Hours seemed to pass before I finally croaked, “Yes.”

“Why did you turn around and go back?”

Her tone was casual, as if she held conversations every night with people crouching behind the car in the driveway.

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“Were you afraid?”

“No,” I lied.

“I wouldn’t have let you get lost, you know.”

“I know.”

A little shadow detached itself from the larger one.

It came toward me, wavering over the pebbled driveway.

It had a tail.

It wasn’t a shadow.

It was the rat, Cinnamon.

Cinnamon stopped at the tip of one of my sneakers.

He stood, looking up at me.

He put his front paws on top of my sneaker and nosed into the laces.

“Are you getting acquainted with Cinnamon?”

“Sort of.”

“Are you lying?”

“Sort of.”

“Are you afraid of rats?”

“Sort of.”

“Do you think I’m cute?

If you say sort of, I’ll tell Cinnamon to bite you.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“I think you’re cute.”

I thought of adding “sort of” just to be funny, but I didn’t.

“Do you think Cinnamon is cute?”

The rat had climbed fully onto my sneaker now.

I could feel his weight.

I wanted to shake him off.

His tail spilled onto the driveway.

“No comment,” I said.

“Oh my, hear that, Cinnamon?

No comment.

He doesn’t want people to know he thinks you’re cute.”

“I think you’re getting a little carried away,” I said.

“I certainly hope so,” she said.

“Nothing’s more fun than being carried away.

Would you like to carry Cinnamon away for the night?

He loves sleep-overs.”

“No thank you.”

“Oh.”

Her voice was mock-pouty.

“Are you sure?

He’s no trouble.

He hardly takes up any room.

All you have to feed him is a Mini Wheat.

Or two grapes.

And he won’t poop on your rug.

Will you, Cinnamon?

Go ahead, stand up and tell him you won’t.

Stand up, Cinnamon.”

Cinnamon stood on my sneaker.

His eyes shone like black pearls.

“Doesn’t he have the cutest ears?”

Who notices a rat’s ears?

I looked.

She was right.

“Yeah,” I said, “I guess he does.”

“Tickle him behind his ears.

He loves that.”

I swallowed hard.

I reached down with the tips of my two forefingers and tickled the tiny, furry spaces behind the rat’s ears.

I guessed he enjoyed it.

He didn’t move.

And then, surprising myself, I moved one fingertip in front of his nose, and he licked me.

It had never occurred to me that rats do that.

His tongue was half the size of my little fingernail.

I would have guessed it was rough, like a cat’s, but it wasn’t; it was smooth.

And then he was no longer on my foot—he was on my shoulder.

I yelped.

I tried to swat him off, but he dug into my shirt with his fingernails.

Meanwhile, Stargirl was cracking up.

I could see the shadow shaking.

“Let me guess,” she said.

“Cinnamon jumped onto your shoulder.”

“You got it,” I said.

“And you’re thinking about how rats are supposed to go for people’s throats.”

“I wasn’t,” I said, “but now that you mention it…”

I clamped my hands around my neck.

I felt something in my ear.

Whiskery.

I yelped again.

“He’s eating my ear!”

Stargirl laughed some more.

“He’s nuzzling you.

He likes you.

Especially your ears.

He never meets an ear he doesn’t love.

By the time he’s done, that ear of yours will be clean as a whistle.

Especially if there’s some leftover peanut butter in it.”

I could feel the tiny tongue mopping the crevices of my left ear.

“It tickles!”

I felt something else.

“I feel teeth!”

“He’s just scraping something off for you.

You must have something crusty in there.

Have you washed your ears lately?”

“None of your business.”

“Sorry.

Didn’t mean to get personal.”

“I forgive you.”

All was quiet for a while, except for the snuffing in my ear.

I could hear the rat breathing.

His tail drooped into my front shirt pocket.

“Do you want to confess now?”

“Confess what?” I said.

“That you’re actually starting to like having a rodent poking around in your ear.”

I smiled.

I nodded, dislodging the rat’s nose for a moment.

“I confess.”

More silence, tiny breathing in my ear.

“Well,” she said at last, “we have to go in now.

Say good night, Cinnamon.”

No, I thought, don’t go.

“I still have another ear,” I said.

“If he does that one, he’ll never want to leave you, and I’ll be jealous.

Come on, Cinnamon.

Time for beddy bye.”

Cinnamon went on snuffing.

“He’s not coming, is he?”

“Nope.”

“Then just take hold of him and put him on the ground.”

I did so.

As soon as I put the rat down, he scooted under the tailpipe and out of sight on the other side of the car.

The shadow withdrew.

I heard the front door open.

Light gushed out.

“’Night, Leo.”

“’Night,” I called.

I didn’t want to leave.

I wished I could curl up right there on the driveway and go to sleep.

I had been crouching for a long time.

It was a chore just to stand.

I was halfway home before I could walk right.

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CHAPTER XVII.

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Just two weeks before, I had found out she knew my name, and now I was loopy with love.

I was floating.

I floated up the white light that washed my sheets and slept on the moon.

In school I was a yellow balloon, smiling and lazy, floating above the classrooms.

I felt a faint tug on my string.

Far below, Kevin was calling, “You’re in love, dude!”

I merely smiled and rolled over and drifted dreamily out a window.

This state lasted until lunch, when suddenly I became self-conscious.

I was certain that everyone in school knew.

They would be waiting for me, turning as I entered the lunchroom, staring.

I was uncomfortable in the spotlight, always had been.

I was happy to stay behind the camera and let Kevin take the bows out front.

So I hid for those thirty-five minutes in the gym equipment room.

I sat atop a rolled-up wrestling mat, kicking a volleyball against the opposite wall.

I had nothing to eat—I had intended to buy—but I wasn’t hungry.

After school we found each other, not that we had to look.

She took Cinnamon from her bag and put him on her shoulder.

“Shake paws with Leo, Cinnamon.”

Cinnamon and I shook paws.

“Do you believe in enchanted places?” she said.

“You talking to me or the rat?”

She smiled.

She dazzled.

“You.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I never thought about it.”

“I’m going to show you one.”

“What if I don’t want to see it?”

“You think you have a choice?”

She grabbed my hand and almost pulled me off my feet, laughing out loud, and we flew across the school fields, swinging hands for all the world to see.

We walked for miles, out past the business park, MicaTronics, the golf course, into the desert.

“Look familiar?” she said.

By now, Cinnamon was riding my shoulder.

And I was carrying the ukulele, strumming nonsense.

“It’s where we came that day,” I said.

She gave a snort.

“We?

I was coming out here, you were half a mile behind.”

She poked my shoulder.

“Sneaking after me.”

She poked me again, hard this time, but her eyes were twinkling.

“Stalking me.”

I acted horrified, hurt.

“Stalking?

I was not stalking.

I was just lagging behind a little, that’s all.”

“Following me.”

I shrugged.

“So?”

“Why?”

I could feel a million reasons, but there were no words to express them.

“I don’t know.”

“You liked me.”

I smiled.

“You were smitten with me.

You were speechless to behold my beauty.

You had never met anyone so fascinating.

You thought of me every waking minute.

You dreamed about me.

You couldn’t stand it.

You couldn’t let such wonderfulness out of your sight.

You had to follow me.”

I turned to Cinnamon.

He licked my nose.

“Don’t give yourself so much credit.

It was your rat I was after.”

She laughed, and the desert sang.

To the person who expects every desert to be barren sand dunes, the Sonoran must come as a surprise.

Not only are there no dunes, there’s no sand.

At least not the sort of sand you find at the beach.

The ground does have a sandy color to it, or gray, but your feet won’t sink in.

It’s hard, as if it’s been tamped.

And pebbly.

And glinting with—what else—mica.

But you don’t notice the ground much.

What you notice are the saguaros.

To the newcomer from the East, it’s as simple as that.

The desert seems to be a brown wasteland of dry, prickly scrub whose only purpose is to serve as a setting for the majestic saguaros.

Then, little by little, the plants of the desert begin to identify themselves: the porcupiny yucca, the beaver tail and prickly pear and barrel cacti, buckhorn and staghorn and devil’s fingers, the tall, sky-reaching tendrils of the ocotillo.

We walked a weaving line around the plant life, up and down washes and gullies, the Maricopas looming lavender in the distance.

“When you turned and ran that day,” she said, “I called after you.”

“You did?”

“I whispered.”

“Whispered?

How’d you expect me to hear?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I just thought you would.”

I strummed the uke.

I squared my shoulders.

Giving a rat a ride improves the posture.

“You’re shy, aren’t you?” she said.

“What makes you think that?”

She laughed.

“Were you embarrassed when I pulled you along after school today?

All those kids looking?”

“Nah.”

“Are you lying?”

“Yeah.”

She laughed.

I seemed to be good at making her laugh.

I glanced back.

The highway was out of sight.

“Do you have the time?” I said.

“Nobody has the time,” she said.

“The time cannot be owned.”

She threw out her arms and twirled till her multicolored skirt looked like a pinwheel taffy.

“The time is free to everyone!”

“Sorry I asked,” I said.

She hung her sunflower bag on a cactus arm and cartwheeled toward the Maricopas.

Crazily, I felt like joining her.

I told myself I couldn’t because I was loaded down with a ukulele and a rat.

I picked up her bag and followed.

When she decided to walk like a normal human again, I told her she was goofy.

She stopped, turned to me, and bowed grandly.

“Thank you, good sir.”

Then she took my arm as if we were strolling down a promenade and she said, “Scream, Leo.”

“Huh?”

“Just throw your head back and let it all out.

Scream your ears off.

Nobody will hear you.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

She turned her astonished eyes on me.

“Why wouldn’t you?”

I pointed to Cinnamon.

“If he screams first, then I will.”

And I changed the subject.

“Are we ever going to get to this enchanted place?”

I felt silly just saying the words.

“Just a little farther,” she said.

I humored her.

“So how do you know an enchanted place when you come to it?”

“You’ll see,” she said.

She squeezed my hand.

“Did you know there’s a country with officially designated ‘enchanted places’?”

“No,” I said.

“Where would that be?

Oz?”

“Iceland.”

“Imagine that.”

“I’m ignoring your sarcasm.

I think it would be neat if we had that here.

You’d be walking or riding along, and there would be this stone marker with a brass plate: ‘Enchanted Site.

U.S. Department of Interior.’”

“We’d litter it up,” I said.

She stared at me, her smile gone.

“Would we?”

I felt bad, as if I had ruined something.

“Not really,” I told her.

“Not if there’s a Don’t Be a Litterbug sign.”

A minute later she stopped.

“We’re here.”

I looked around.

The place couldn’t have been more ordinary.

The only notable presence was a tall, dilapidated saguaro, a bundle of sticks, in worse shape than Archie’s Señor.

The rest was gray scrub and tumbleweed and a few prickly pears.

“I thought it might look different,” I said.

“Special?

Scenic?”

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“Yeah, I guess.”

“It’s a different kind of scenery,” she said.

“Shoes off.”

We pulled off our shoes.

“Sit.”

We sat, legs crossed.

Cinnamon scampered down my arm and onto the ground.

Stargirl shrieked, “Stop!”

She scooped up the rat and put him in her bag.

“Owls, hawks, snakes.

He’d be a tasty meal.”

“So,” I said, “when does the enchantment start?”

We were sitting side by side, facing the mountains.

“It started when the earth was born.”

Her eyes were closed.

Her face was golden in the setting sun.

“It never stops.

It is, always.

It’s just here.”

“So what do we do?”

She smiled.

“That’s the secret.”

Her cupped hands rested in her lap.

“We do nothing.

Or as close to nothing as we can.”

Her face turned slowly to me, though her eyes remained closed.

“Have you ever done nothing?”

I laughed.

“My mother thinks I do it all the time.”

“Don’t tell her I said so, but your mother is wrong.”

She turned back to the sun.

“It’s really hard to do nothing totally.

Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering.

There’s a whole commotion going on inside us.”

“That’s bad?” I said.

“It’s bad if we want to know what’s going on outside ourselves.”

“Don’t we have eyes and ears for that?”

She nodded.

“They’re okay most of the time.

But sometimes they just get in the way.

The earth is speaking to us, but we can’t hear because of all the racket our senses are making.

Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses.

Then—maybe—the earth will touch us.

The universe will speak.

The stars will whisper.”

The sun was glowing orange now, clipping the mountains’ purple crests.

“So how do I become this nothing?”

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“There’s no one answer to that.

You have to find your own way.

Sometimes I try to erase myself.

I imagine a big pink soft soap eraser, and it’s going back and forth, back and forth, and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, back and forth, and there they go— poof!—my toes are gone.

And then my feet.

And then my ankles.

But that’s the easy part.

The hard part is erasing my senses—my eyes, my ears, my nose, my tongue.

And last to go is my brain.

My thoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head.

That’s the hardest, erasing my thoughts.”

She chuckled faintly.

“My pumpkin.

And then, if I’ve done a good job, I’m erased.

I’m gone.

I’m nothing.

And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl.”

“And?” I said.

“And…I see.

I hear.

But not with eyes and ears.

I’m not outside my world anymore, and I’m not really inside it either.

The thing is, there’s no difference anymore between me and the universe.

The boundary is gone.

I am it and it is me.

I am a stone, a cactus thorn.

I am rain.”

She smiled dreamily.

“I like that most of all, being rain.”

“Am I the first one you’ve brought out here?”

She didn’t answer.

She faced the mountains, bathed in sun syrup, her face as still and peaceful as I’ve ever seen a face.

“Stargirl—”

“Shhhh.”

That was the last sound either of us made for a long time.

We sat side by side, lotus style, facing west.

I closed my eyes.

I tried to be perfectly still —and promptly found out that she was right.

I could immobilize my arms and legs, but inside me it was rush hour in downtown Phoenix.

I had never been so aware of my breath and my heartbeat, not to mention other assorted grumblings and gurglings.

And my head—it just wouldn’t close down.

Every question, every stray thought from miles around came wandering into my brain, sniffing about, scratching at my attention.

But I tried.

I tried the eraser, but it wouldn’t even wipe out the first toe.

I tried to imagine I was sawdust blowing away with the wind.

Swallowed by a whale.

Dissolving away like Alka-Seltzer.

Nothing worked.

I could not make myself disappear.

I peeked.

I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but I did.

Clearly, she had erased herself.

She was gone.

She was serenity.

Her lips faintly smiling.

Her golden skin.

The glowing thread-ends of her hair.

She seemed to have been dipped in sunlight and set here to dry.

I felt a pang of jealousy, that she could be sitting next to me and not know it.

That she could be somewhere most wonderful and I could not be there, too.

Then I saw the rat.

He had crawled out of the bag.

He was sitting on it much as we were, his front paws—I kept thinking of them as tiny hands, they were so human-like—dangling before him.

He, too, was not moving.

He, too, was facing the sunset, his pelt the color of a new penny.

His peppercorn eyes were fully open.

I knew it must have been a trick she had taught him, or imitative rodent behavior.

Still, I couldn’t help thinking there was more to it, that the whiskered little fellow was having an experience of his own—which might include digestion in a critter’s stomach if Stargirl’s fears came true.

As quietly as possible, I reached over and scooped him up.

I held him in both hands.

He did not struggle or squirm, but resumed facing the sunset with his tiny chin resting on my forefinger.

In my fingertips I could feel his heartbeat.

I drew him closer to my chest.

I dared any varmint to come near.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for another try at enchantment.

I don’t think I succeeded.

I think Cinnamon was a better eraser than I.

I tried.

I tried so hard I almost squeaked, but I could not seem to leave myself, and the cosmos did not visit me.

I could not stop wondering what time it was.

But something did happen.

A small thing.

I was aware of stepping over a line, of taking one step into territory new to me.

It was a territory of peace, of silence.

I had never experienced such utter silence before, such stillness.

The commotion within me went on, but at a lower volume, as if someone had turned down my dial.

And an eerie thing happened.

While I never did totally lose awareness of myself, I believe I did, so to speak, lose Cinnamon.

I no longer felt his pulse, his presence, in my hands.

It seemed we were no longer separate, but were one.

When the sun fell behind the mountains, I felt it as a faint coolness on my face.

I don’t know how long my eyes were closed.

When I opened them, she was gone.

Alarmed, I jerked around.

She was standing off a ways, smiling.

Evening had come.

While my eyes were closed, the mountains’ dusky lavender had drifted over the desert.

We put on our shoes.

We headed for the highway.

I expected her to interrogate me, but she did not.

One moment the moon was not there, and then it was, then one bright star.

We walked across the desert hand in hand, saying nothing.