[Part 4] "Stargirl" by Jerry Spinelli

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CHAPTER XXVI.

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Usually I saw her in the courtyard before school, but that day I didn’t.

Usually I passed her between classes at least once or twice before lunch.

Not that day.

In fact, when I looked over to her table at lunch, there was Dori Dilson, as usual, but someone else was sitting with her.

No Stargirl in sight.

Coming out of the lunchroom, I heard laughter behind me.

And then a voice, Stargirl’s: “What do you have to do to get somebody’s attention around here?”

I turned, but it wasn’t her.

The girl standing, grinning in front of me wore jeans and sandals, had burnt-red nails and lipstick, painted eyes, finger rings, toe rings, hoop earrings I could put my hand through, hair…

I gawked as students swarmed past.

She made a clownish grin.

She was beginning to look vaguely familiar.

Tentatively I whispered, “Stargirl?”

She batted her chocolaty eyelashes.

“Stargirl?

What kind of name is that?

My name is Susan.”

And just like that, Stargirl was gone, replaced by Susan.

Susan Julia Caraway.

The girl she might have been all along.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

She cradled her books in her arms.

The sunflower canvas bag was gone.

The rat was gone.

The ukulele was gone.

She turned around slowly for my open-mouthed, dumbstruck inspection.

Nothing goofy, nothing different could I see.

She looked magnificently, wonderfully, gloriously ordinary.

She looked just like a hundred other girls at Mica High.

Stargirl had vanished into a sea of them, and I was thrilled.

She slid a stick of chewing gum into her mouth and chewed away noisily.

She winked at me.

She reached out and tweaked my cheek the way my grandmother would and said, “What’s up, cutie?”

I grabbed her, right there outside the lunchroom in the swarming mob.

I didn’t care if others were watching.

In fact, I hoped they were.

I grabbed her and squeezed her.

I had never been so happy and so proud in my life.

We sailed through time.

We held hands in the hallways, on the stairs, in the courtyard.

In the lunchroom I grabbed her and pulled her over to our table.

I looked to invite Dori Dilson, too, but she was gone.

I sat there grinning while Kevin and Susan gabbed and gossiped over their sandwiches.

They joked about her disastrous appearance on Hot Seat.

Susan suggested that I should go on Hot Seat one of these days, and Kevin said no, he’s too shy, and I said not anymore, and we all laughed.

And it was true.

I didn’t walk, I strutted.

I was Susan Caraway’s boyfriend.

I.

Me.

Really?

That Susan Caraway?

The one with the tiny barrettes and toe rings?

Yep, that’s the one, my girlfriend.

Call me Mr. Susan.

I started saying “we” instead of “I,” as in “We’ll meet you there” or “We like fajitas.”

Whenever I could, I said her name out loud, like blowing bubbles.

The rest of the time I said it to myself.

Susan…Susan…

We did our homework together.

We hung out with Kevin.

Instead of following strangers around, we went to the movies and plunged our hands together into the six-dollar Super Tub of popcorn.

Instead of shopping for African violets, we shopped for Cinnabons and licked icing from each other’s fingers.

We went into Pisa Pizza.

We walked past the bulletin board inside the door.

We shared a pizza: half pepperoni, half anchovies.

“Anchovies, ugh,” I said.

“What’s wrong with anchovies?” she said.

“How can you eat them?

Nobody eats anchovies.”

I was sort of kidding, but her face was serious.

“Nobody?”

“Nobody I know.”

She picked the anchovies from her slices and dumped them into her water glass.

I tried to stop her.

“Hey—”

She pushed my hand away.

She dropped the last anchovy into the glass.

“I don’t want to be like nobody.”

On the way out, we ignored the bulletin board.

She was mad for shopping.

It was as if she had just discovered clothes.

She bought shirts and pants and shorts and costume jewelry and makeup.

I began to notice that the items of clothing had one thing in common: they all had the designer’s name plastered prominently on them.

She seemed to buy not for color or style but for designer label size.

She constantly quizzed me about what other kids would do, would buy, would say, would think.

She invented a fictitious person whom she called Evelyn Everybody.

“Would Evelyn like this?”

“Would Evelyn do that?”

Sometimes she misfired, as with laughing.

For several days she was on a laughing jag.

She didn’t just laugh, she boomed.

Heads turned in the lunchroom.

I was trying to work up the nerve to say something when she looked at Kevin and me and said, “Would Evelyn laugh this much?”

Kevin stared at his sandwich.

I sheepishly shook my head.

The laughing stopped, and from that moment on she did a perfect imitation of a sullen, pout-lipped teenager.

In every way she seemed to be a typical, ordinary, everyday, run-of-themill teenager.

And it wasn’t working.

At first I neither noticed nor much cared that the shunning continued.

I was too busy being happy that she was, as I saw it, now one of us.

My only regret was that we could not play the basketball season over again.

In my mind’s eye, I pictured her aiming her incredible zeal and energy exclusively at the Electrons.

We could have won games on her cheering alone.

It was she who said it first: “They still don’t like me.”

We were standing outside the TV studio after school.

As usual, people were passing by as if we weren’t there.

Her lip quivered.

“What am I doing wrong?”

Tears made her eyes even larger.

I squeezed her hand.

I told her to give it some time.

I pointed out that the state basketball finals would take place in Phoenix that Saturday, and that would end the season and clear the way for her cheerleading crimes to be forgotten.

Her mascara was muddy.

I had seen her sad many times before, but always for someone else.

This was different.

This was for herself, and I was powerless to help.

I could not find it in me to cheer up the cheerleader.

That night we did homework together at her house.

I ducked into her room to check out her happy wagon.

There were only two stones in it.

When I came to school next day, there was something different about the buzz in the courtyard.

The arriving students were milling about, some roaming at random, some in clusters, but as I approached, there seemed to be a distinct clearing around the palmetto.

I wandered in that direction, and through the crowd I could see that someone—Susan—was seated on the bench.

She sat upright and smiling.

She was holding a foot-long stick shaped like a claw on one end.

Around her neck, dangling on a string, was a sign that read:

TALK TO ME AND I’LL SCRATCH YOUR BACK.

She was getting no takers.

No one was within twenty feet of her.

Quickly I turned away.

I walked back through the crowd.

I pretended I was looking for someone.

I pretended I hadn’t seen.

And prayed for the bell to ring.

When I saw her later that morning, the sign was gone.

She said nothing about it.

Neither did I.

Next morning she came running at me in the courtyard.

Her eyes were bright for the first time in days.

She grabbed me with both hands and shook me.

“It’s going to be okay!

It’s going to end!

I had a vision!”

She told me about it.

She had gone to her enchanted place after dinner the day before, and that’s where the vision had come to her.

She had seen herself returning in triumph from the Arizona state oratorical contest.

She had won first prize.

Best in the state.

When she returned, she got a hero’s welcome.

The whole school greeted her in the parking lot, just like in the assembly film.

There were streamers and confetti and tooting kazoos and horns blaring, and the mayor and city council were on hand, and they had a parade right then and there, and she rode high on the back seat of a convertible and held her winner’s silver plate up for all to see, and the happy faces of her classmates flashed in the sparkling trophy.

She told me this, and she threw up her arms and shouted, “I’m going to be popular!”

The state contest was a week away.

Every day she practiced her speech.

One day she called over little Peter Sinkowitz and his playmates and presented the speech to us from her front steps.

We applauded and whistled.

She bowed grandly, and I, too, began to see her vision.

I saw the streamers flying and I heard the crowd cheering, and I believed.

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CHAPTER XXVII.

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“…and our best wishes go with you, Susan Caraway.”

The PA announcement echoed through the school lobby, and we were off to Phoenix.

The driver was Mr. McShane, Mica High’s faculty representative to the state contest.

Susan and I sat in the back.

Susan’s parents were driving their own car and would meet us in Phoenix.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, she wagged a finger in my face.

“Don’t get a big head, mister.

I was allowed to invite two friends along.

You weren’t the only one I asked.”

“So who was the other?” I said.

“Dori.”

“Well, then,” I said, “I think I’ll go for the big head.

Dori isn’t another guy.”

She grinned.

“No, she’s not one of those.”

Suddenly she unbuckled her seat belt—we each had a back window.

“Mr. McShane,” she announced, “I’m moving over so I can sit close to Leo.

He’s so cute, I can’t help myself.”

In the rearview mirror, the teacher’s eyes crinkled.

“Whatever you like, Susan.

It’s your day.”

She slid over and fastened herself into the middle belt.

She jabbed me.

“Hear that?

It’s my day.

I get whatever I want.”

“So,” I said, “what happened when you asked Dori Dilson?”

“She said no.

She’s mad at me.”

“I could tell.”

“Ever since I became Susan.

She thinks I betrayed myself.

She just doesn’t understand how important it is to be popular.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

I was feeling a little uneasy.

Fortunately, wondering what to say wasn’t much of a problem for me during that two-hour ride, because Susan chattered away like the old Stargirl the whole time.

“But I know Dori,” she said, “and I’ll tell you one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“She’ll be in the front of the mob cheering for me when we get back tomorrow.”

I later found out that after we left the school, the principal had spoken again on the PA.

He announced our expected time of return on Saturday and suggested that everyone be on hand to meet us, win or lose.

Losing, as it turned out, never occurred to the contestant herself.

“Would you do a favor for me?” she said.

I told her sure.

“That big silver plate that goes to the winner?

I’m such a klutz with dishes at home.

Would you hold it for me when the crowd rushes us?

I’m afraid I’ll drop it.”

I stared at her.

“What crowd?

What rush?”

“In the school parking lot.

When we get back tomorrow.

There’s always a crowd waiting for the returning hero.

Remember the film at school?

My vision?”

She cocked her head and peered into my eyes.

She rapped my forehead with her knuckle.

“Hello in there.

Anybody home?”

“Oh,” I said.

“That crowd.”

She nodded.

“Exactly.

Of course, we’ll be safe as long as we’re in the car.

But once we get out, who knows what will happen.

Crowds can get pretty wild.

Right, Mr. McShane?”

The teacher nodded.

“So I hear.”

She spoke to me as if instructing a first-grader.

“Leo, this has never happened in Mica before, having a winner of the Arizona state oratorical contest.

One of their very own.

When they hear about it, they’re going to go bananas.

And when they get a gander at me and that trophy—” She rolled her eyes and whistled.

“I just hope they don’t get out of hand.”

“The police will keep them in line,” I said.

“Maybe they’ll call out the National Guard.”

She stared wide-eyed.

“You think?”

She didn’t realize I was kidding.

“Well,” she said, “I’m really not afraid for myself.

I won’t mind a little jostling.

Do you think they’ll jostle, Mr. McShane?”

In the mirror his eyes shifted to us.

“Never can tell.”

“And if they want to carry me around on their shoulders, that’s okay, too.

But they better not”—she poked me with her finger—“better not mess with my trophy.

That’s why you”—another poke—“are going to hold it.

Tight.”

I wished Mr. McShane would say something.

“Susan,” I said, “did you ever hear of counting your chickens?”

“Before they hatch, you mean?”

“Exactly.”

“I hear you’re not supposed to.”

“Exactly.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“Never made much sense to me.

I mean, if you know they’re going to hatch, why not count them?”

“Because you can’t know,” I said.

“There’re no guarantees.

I hate to break this to you, but you’re not the only person in the contest.

Somebody else could win.

You could lose.

It’s possible.”

She thought about that for a moment, then shook her head.

“Nope.

Not possible.

So…” She threw up her arms and smiled hugely.

“Why wait to feel great?

Celebrate now, that’s my motto.”

She nuzzled into me.

“What’s yours, big boy?”

“Don’t count your chickens,” I said.

She shuddered mockingly.

“Ouuu.

You’re such a poop, Leo.

What’s your motto, Mr. McShane?”

“Drive carefully,” he said, “you may have a winner in the car.”

That set her off howling.

“Mr. McShane,” I said, “you’re not helping.”

“Sorry,” he lied.

I just looked at her.

“You’re going to be in a state contest,” I said.

“Aren’t you just a little bit nervous?”

The smile vanished.

“Yes, I am.

I’m a lot nervous.

I just hope things don’t get out of hand when we get back to the school.

I’ve never been adored by mobs of people before.

I’m not sure how I’m going to react.

I hope I don’t get a big head.

Do you think I’m the big-head type, Mr. McShane?”

I raised my hand.

“Can I answer that?”

“I think your head is just fine,” said the teacher.

She jabbed me with her elbow.

“Hear that, Mr. Know-it-all?”

She gave me her smug face, which promptly disappeared as she thrust up her arms and yelped, “They’re going to love me!”

Mr. McShane wagged his head and chuckled.

Silently I gave up.

She pointed out the window.

“Look, even the desert is celebrating.”

It seemed to be true.

The normally dull cacti and scrub were splashed with April colors, as if a great painter had passed over the landscape with a brush, dabbing yellow here, red there.

Susan strained against her seat belt.

“Mr. McShane, can we stop here, just for a minute?

Please?”

When the teacher hesitated, she added, “You said it’s my day.

I get whatever I want.”

The car coasted to a stop along the gravelly roadside.

In a moment, she was out the door and bounding across the desert.

She skipped and whirled and cartwheeled among the prickly natives.

She bowed to a yucca, waltzed with a saguaro.

She plucked a red blossom from a barrel cactus and fixed it in her hair.

She practiced her smile and her nod and her wave—one-hand, two-hand—to the adoring mob at her hero’s welcome.

She snapped a needle from a cactus and with the slapstick pantomime of a circus clown pretended to pick her teeth with it.

Mr. McShane and I were leaning on the car, laughing, when suddenly she stopped, cocked her head, and stared off in another direction.

She stayed like that, stone still, for a good two minutes, then abruptly turned and came back to the car.

Her face was thoughtful.

“Mr. McShane,” she said as the teacher drove off, “do you know any extinct birds?”

“Passenger pigeon,” he said.

“That’s probably the best known.

They say there used to be so many of them they would darken the sky when they flew over.

And the moa.”

“Moa?”

“Huge bird.”

“Like a condor?” I said.

He chuckled.

“A condor wouldn’t come up to its knee.

Make an ostrich look small.

Twelve, thirteen feet tall.

Maybe the biggest bird ever.

Couldn’t fly.

Lived in New Zealand.

Died out hundreds of years ago.

Killed off by people.”

“Half their size,” said Susan.

Mr. McShane nodded.

“Mm.

I wrote a report about moas in grade school.

I thought they were the neatest thing.”

Susan’s eyes were glistening.

“Did moas have a voice?”

The teacher thought about it.

“I don’t know.

I don’t know if anybody knows.”

Susan looked out the window at the passing desert.

“I heard a mockingbird back there.

And it made me think of something Archie said.”

“Mr. Brubaker?” said Mr. McShane.

“Yes.

He said he believes mockingbirds may do more than imitate other birds.

I mean, other living birds.

He thinks they may also imitate the sounds of birds that are no longer around.

He thinks the sounds of extinct birds are passed down the years from mockingbird to mockingbird.”

“Interesting thought,” said Mr. McShane.

“He says when a mockingbird sings, for all we know it’s pitching fossils into the air.

He says who knows what songs of ancient creatures we may be hearing out there.”

The words of Archie Brubaker settled over the silence in the car.

As if reading my thoughts, Mr. McShane turned off the air conditioner and powered down the windows.

Hair blew in a faint, smoky scent of mesquite.

After a while I felt the touch of Susan’s hand.

Her fingers wove through mine.

“Mr. McShane,” she cooed, “we’re holding hands in the back seat.”

“Uh-oh,” he said, “hormonal teenagers.”

“Don’t you think he’s cute, Mr. McShane?”

“I never really thought about it,” said the teacher.

“Well, look,” she said.

She grabbed my face in her hand and pulled it forward.

The teacher’s eyes considered me briefly in the rearview mirror.

“You’re right.

He’s adorable.”

Susan released my blushing face.

“Told you.

Don’t you just love him?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

A minute later: “Mr. McSha-ane…”

Now I felt something in my ear.

“I’m putting my finger in his ear…”

This sort of silliness went on until we rounded a mesa and saw the brown mist on the horizon that announced our approach to the city of Phoenix.

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CHAPTER XXVIII.

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Her parents met us in the lobby of the hotel where Susan, Mr. McShane, and I each had a room for the night.

After we checked in, the five of us ate a buffet lunch in the hotel restaurant.

Then we watched Susan board a bus that would take her and eighteen other contestants to Phoenix West High School.

There were thirty-eight contestants; nineteen had already given their speeches that morning.

By the end of the afternoon, ten finalists would be chosen.

The finals would take place that evening.

To be honest, none of us was surprised that Susan made the cut.

She was incredibly good.

The surprise was this: her speech was new.

It was not the one she had given at Mica High.

It was not the one she had been practicing for weeks in front of me and Peter Sinkowitz and assorted saguaros.

It was not the one I had heard just the day before.

But it was wonderful.

There were some elements of the old speech in it, and much that was as new as that morning.

Like a butterfly, her words fluttered from image to image.

She swung from the distant past (Barney, Archie’s Paleocene rodent skull) to the present (Cinnamon) to the distant future (the death of the sun).

From the most ordinary here (the old man nodding off on the bench at Tudor Village) to the most extraordinary there (a newly discovered galaxy ninety percent to the end of the universe).

She touched on silver lunch trucks and designer labels and enchanted places, and when she said her best friend gave her pet rat a ride on his shoulder, tears came to my eyes.

It was a jumble, it was a mishmash, and somehow she pulled it all together, somehow she threaded every different thing through the voice of a solitary mockingbird singing in the desert.

She called her speech “I Might Have Heard a Moa.”

The auditorium was half full, mostly with small groups of students and parents from the competing schools.

After a contestant finished, his or her supporters whistled and whooped, as if doing so would influence the judges.

The rest was polite applause.

When Susan finished, the four of us managed a modest cheer, but that was about it.

No whistles, no whoops.

I think we were made of more timid stuff than the speechmaker herself.

Back at the hotel Mr. McShane and I mobbed her, if two can be a mob.

Her parents were more reserved.

They were full of smiles and “well dones,” but they seemed no more surprised at her success than Susan did.

When the adults went off to the gift shop, I had her to myself.

I said, “Where did that come from?”

She grinned.

“Did you like it?”

“Sure, but it’s not what I’ve been hearing for the last month.

What were you doing, practicing a secret speech on the side?”

The grin got wider.

“Nope.

That was the first time I heard it, too.”

I stared at her.

Slowly her words sank in.

“Let me get this straight.

You’re saying you just made it up this morning?”

“I’m saying I didn’t even make it up.

It was just there.

All I did was open my mouth and let it out.”

She held both hands out to me and snapped her fingers.

“Presto!”

I gaped at her.

“What are you going to say tonight?”

She threw out her arms: “Who knows?”

The five of us ate an early dinner in the hotel restaurant.

Afterward, we waited in the lobby while Susan changed clothes.

She stepped off the elevator wearing a peach-colored pantsuit.

She slinked across the lobby, modeling for us.

She sat on her mother’s lap and said, “My personal seamstress made it for me.”

We applauded lightly and sent her off on the bus.

The general public was invited to the evening show, and the auditorium was packed.

People stood in back.

Down front, a high school orchestra played rousing music by John Philip Sousa.

The ten contestants sat onstage.

Seven were boys.

All of the contestants appeared to be grim and nervous, stiff as manikins, except for Susan, who was bending the ear of the boy sitting next to her.

He nodded occasionally but kept his eyes and spine at attention and obviously wished that she would shut up.

Susan’s parents chuckled knowingly at her behavior, while I tried to disguise a stab of jealousy.

One by one the contestants took the long walk to center stage to give their speeches.

The applause was equally hearty for all.

A grade school girl in a frilly white dress handed each contestant a bouquet of roses, yellow for the girls, red for the boys.

While the girls cradled their roses, the boys looked at them as if they were hand grenades.

Susan was next to last to speak.

When her name was called, she bounced up from her chair and practically ran to the microphone.

She did a sprightly pirouette, a curtsy, waved her hand in a window-washer motion, and said, “Hi.”

Accustomed to seeing stiff, mortified contestants, the audience responded with uncertain titters.

They didn’t know what to make of this unconventional teenager any more than we had on the first day of school.

Several bold souls said “Hi” and waved back.

She did not begin, at least not in the usual sense.

There was no ringing preamble.

She merely stood there comfortably chatting away as if we were all on rocking chairs on her front porch.

Murmur drifted toward the ceiling; people were waiting for her to get started.

The murmur subsided as it occurred to them that this was it and they were missing it.

The quiet that then fell over the auditorium was absolute.

I was more tuned in to the audience than to the speaker, and if for the last five minutes of her talk anyone was breathing, I could not detect it.

When she finished with barely a whisper—“Can you hear it?”—and leaned with her cupped hand to her ear, fifteen hundred people seemed to inch forward, straining to hear.

There were ten seconds of purest stillness.

Then she turned abruptly and went back to her chair.

Still there was no reaction.

What’s going on?

I wondered.

She sat forward in her chair, her hands folded primly in her lap.

And then it came, suddenly, explosively, as if everyone had awakened at once.

We were all on our feet, clapping and shouting and whistling.

I found myself sobbing.

The cheering was as wild as that of the crowd at a championship basketball game.

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CHAPTER XXIX.

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She won.

As she had said she would.

The silver plate they gave her twinkled like a starburst in a galaxy of flashing cameras.

Two TV crews washed her in lights and interviewed her backstage.

Strangers mobbed her, citizens of Phoenix gushing, telling her they had been coming to the contest for years and had never heard anything like it.

Schoolchildren thrust programs in her face for autographs.

Every parent wanted her for a daughter, every teacher for a student.

She was so happy, she was so proud.

She yelped and cried when she saw us.

She hugged each of us in turn, and I thought she would squeeze the breath out of me.

Back at the hotel everyone already seemed to know: the doorman, the desk manager, the people in the lobby and elevator.

Suddenly she had this magical, wonderful power; whoever laid eyes on her smiled.

And the English language dwindled to a single word, repeated over and over: “Congratulations!”

We walked—we floated—around the block to burn off our excess energy.

Back at the hotel we were invited into the nightclub, even though Susan and I were underage.

We drank ginger ales and ordered jalapeño poppers and we all danced to a country and western band while Susan’s face beamed on the late news from the TV above the bar.

The dance floor was the only place where she did not carry her silver plate.

First thing next morning there she was, sliding under the door of my hotel room: her picture on the front page of the Arizona Republic.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at it, pride welling in me.

I read the story.

It called her speech “mesmerizing, hypnotic, mysteriously touching.”

I pictured folded morning papers tossed from cars, landing in driveways all over Mica.

We all met for the breakfast buffet.

People stared and nodded and smiled and silently lip-said “Congratulations” across the restaurant.

We headed for home in a two-car caravan.

For a while, Susan was her usual chatty self.

She put the silver plate on the front seat beside Mr. McShane.

She told him it would ride next to him for ten whole minutes, and he could touch it all he wanted.

This was his reward, she said, for telling her about moas.

As soon as the ten minutes was up, she took back the plate.

As we drew nearer to town, the chatter subsided and finally stopped.

We rode the last miles in silence.

She took my hand.

The nearer we came the harder she squeezed.

When we hit the outskirts of town, she turned to me and said, “Do I look okay?”

I told her she looked great.

She didn’t seem to believe me.

She held up the silver plate and studied her reflection.

She turned to me again and looked at me for some time before she spoke.

“I’ve been thinking.

This is how I’m going to do it.

I’m going to hold on to the plate myself—okay?”

I nodded.

“…until…until they lift me onto their shoulders.

Then I give it to you.

Understand?”

I nodded.

“So stay next to me.

Every second.

Crowds can separate you, you know.

They do that.

Okay?”

I nodded.

“Okay.”

Her hand was hot and sweating.

We drove past a man in his driveway.

He was dipping a large, broomlike brush into a pail and painting the asphalt with black sealer.

He was bent intently to his work in the noonday sun, and somehow I knew at that moment what would happen, I could see it.

I wanted to shout to Mr. McShane, “No, don’t turn!

Don’t go there!”

But he did turn.

He turned, and there was the school in front of us, and never in my life have I seen a place so empty.

No banners, no people, no cars.

“Probably around back,” Mr. McShane said.

His voice was hoarse.

“Parking lot.”

We swung around back to the parking lot and—yes—there was a car, and another car.

And people, three of them, shading their eyes in the sun, watching us.

Two of them were teachers.

The other was a student, Dori Dilson.

She stood apart from the teachers, alone in the black shimmering sea of asphalt.

As we approached, she held up a sign, a huge cardboard sign bigger than a basketball backboard.

She set the sign on edge and propped it up, erasing herself.

The red painted letters said:

WAY TO GO,

SUSAN

WE’RE PROUD OF

YOU

The car stopped in front of it.

All that was left to see of Dori Dilson were two sets of fingers holding the sides of the sign.

We were close enough now to see that the sign was trembling, and I knew that behind it Dori was crying.

There was no confetti, no kazoos.

Nothing cheered, not even a mockingbird.

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CHAPTER XXX.

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As we idled, stunned and silent in front of Dori Dilson’s sign, Susan’s parents came and retrieved her from Mr. McShane’s car.

As in all things, they did not appear especially surprised or emotional over what was happening.

Susan seemed in a trance.

She sat beside me, staring vacantly at the sign through the windshield.

Her hand was no longer holding mine.

I groped for words but could not find them.

When her parents came, she allowed herself to be led away.

As she got out of the car, the silver plate slid from her lap and rang like a dying bell against the asphalt.

Her father picked it up.

I thought he would take it, but instead he leaned into the back seat where I sat and with a strange smile gave it to me.

I did not see her for the rest of the weekend.

By Monday she was Stargirl again.

Floor-length skirt.

Ribbons in her hair.

Just like that.

She went from table to table at lunchtime, passing out happy-face cookies.

She even gave one to Hillari Kimble.

Hillari took off her shoe and used it like a hammer to smash the cookie on her table.

Stargirl strolled among us strumming her ukulele, asking for requests.

Cinnamon perched on her shoulder.

He was strapped onto a tiny toy ukulele.

She made her voice squeaky and kept her lips from moving and it was as if Cinnamon were serenading with her.

Dori Dilson, bless her, stood and applauded.

She was the only one.

I was too stunned to join her.

And too cowardly.

And angry.

And not wanting to show approval for her return to Stargirl.

Most of the students did not even look, did not even seem to listen.

At the bell, as we left the lunchroom, I looked back.

The tables were littered with cookies.

Walking with her after school that day, I said, “I guess you’re giving up, huh?”

She looked at me.

“Giving up?

On what?”

“On being popular.

On being…” How could I say it?

She smiled.

“Normal?”

I shrugged.

“Yes,” she said firmly.

“Yes?”

“I’m answering your question.

The answer is yes.

I’m giving up on trying to be popular and normal.”

Her face and body language did not seem to match her words.

She looked cheery, perky.

So did Cinnamon, perched on her shoulder.

“Don’t you think maybe you should back off a little?” I said.

“Don’t come on so strong?”

She smiled at me.

She reached out and brushed the tip of my nose with her fingertip.

“Because we live in a world of them, right?

You told me that once.”

We stared at each other.

She kissed me on the cheek and walked away.

She turned and said, “I know you’re not going to ask me to the Ocotillo Ball.

It’s okay.”

She gave me her smile of infinite kindness and understanding, the smile I had seen her aim at so many other needy souls, and in that moment I hated her.

That very night, as if he were playing a scripted role, Kevin called me and said, “So, who are you taking to the Ocotillo Ball?”

I dodged.

“Who are you taking?”

“Don’t know,” he said.

“I don’t either.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“Not Stargirl?”

“Not necessarily,” I said.

“You trying to tell me something?”

“What would I want to tell you?”

“I thought you were a two.

I thought there was no question.”

“So why are you asking?” I said, and hung up.

In bed that night, I became more and more uncomfortable as the moonlight crept up my sheet.

I did something I had never done before.

I pulled down the shade.

In my dreams the old man on the mall bench raised a wobbling head and croaked, “How dare you forgive me.”

Next morning there was a new item on the plywood roadrunner, a sheet of white paper.

At the top it said:

Sign Up Here to Join

New Musical Group,

THE UKEE DOOKS

No Experience Necessary

There were two numbered columns for names, forty in all.

By the end of the day all forty were filled in, with names such as Minnie Mouse and Darth Vader and The Swamp Thing.

The principal’s name was there, too.

And Wayne Parr.

And Dori Dilson.

“Did you see?” said Kevin.

“Somebody wrote in Parr’s name.”

We were in the studio control room.

It was May and our Hot Seats were over for the year, but on some days we still gravitated to the studio after school.

“I saw,” I said.

He stepped up to a blank monitor, studied his reflection.

“So, I didn’t see your name on the list.”

“Nope.”

“You don’t want to be a Ukee Dook?”

“Guess not.”

We fiddled with the equipment for a while.

Kevin walked out onto the stage.

He flipped a switch.

His mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear.

I held the soft pad of a headphone against my ear.

His voice seemed to come from another world.

“She’s turning goofy again, isn’t she?

Worse than ever.”

I stared at him through the glass.

I put down the headphone and walked out.

I understood what he was doing.

He had decided that it was now okay to say bad things about Stargirl.

Permission to do so must have come from my behavior.

Apparently the first to read me was Stargirl herself.

I still felt the sting from her remark about the Ocotillo Ball.

Was I that obvious?

Classrooms, hallways, courtyard, lunchroom—everywhere I went I heard her disparaged, mocked, slurred.

Her attempt to become popular, to be more like them, had been a total failure.

If anything, they detested her more now.

And they were more vocal about it around me.

Or was I just listening better?

She and Dori Dilson, the only Ukee Dooks, did a duet in the courtyard one day after school.

Stargirl strummed the ukulele and they both sang “Blue Hawaii.”

Clearly, they had been practicing.

They were very good.

They were also very ignored.

By the end of the song, they were the only two left in the courtyard.

Next day they were there again.

This time they wore sombreros.

They sang Mexican songs.

“Cielito Lindo.”

“Vaya Con Dios, My Darling.”

I stayed inside the school.

I was afraid to walk on past them, as if they weren’t there.

I was equally afraid to stand and listen.

I peeked from a window.

Stargirl was doing her best imitation of a flamenco; the click of castanets came through the windowpane.

Students walked past, most of them not even glancing her way.

I saw Wayne Parr and Hillari Kimble go past, Hillari laughing out loud.

And Kevin.

And the basketball guys.

I realized now that the shunning would never end.

And I knew what I should do.

I should go out there and stand in front of them and applaud.

I should show Stargirl and the world that I wasn’t like the rest of them, that I appreciated her, that I celebrated her and her insistence on being herself.

But I stayed inside.

I waited until the last of the students had left the courtyard, and Stargirl and Dori were performing for no one.

To my surprise they went on and on.

It was too painful to watch.

I left school by another door.

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CHAPTER XXXI.

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As she had predicted, I did not ask her to the Ocotillo Ball.

I did not ask anyone.

I did not go.

She did.

The ball took place on a Saturday night in late May on the tennis courts of the Mica Country Club.

When sunset was down to a faintly glowing ember in the west and the moon rose in the east, I went forth on my bicycle.

I coasted by the club.

Festooned with Cantonese lanterns, the ball in the distance looked like a cruise ship at sea.

I could not identify individuals, only stirrings of color.

Much of it was powder blue.

The day after Wayne Parr said he had chosen powder blue for his dinner jacket, three-quarters of the boys ordered the same from Tuxedo Junction.

Back and forth I cruised in the night beyond the lights.

Music reached my ears as random peeps.

The desert flowers, so abundant in April, were dying now.

I had the notion that they were calling to each other.

I cruised for hours.

The moon rose into the sky like a lost balloon.

Somewhere in the dark shapes of the Maricopas, a coyote howled.

In the days and weeks and years that followed, everyone agreed: they had never seen anything like it.

She arrived in a bicycle sidecar.

Just big enough for her to sit in, the sidecar had a single outboard wheel.

The inboard side was braced to the bike.

Everything but the seat of the bike and the sidecar bench was covered in flowers.

A ten-foot blanket of flowers trailed the rear fender like a bridal train.

Palm fronds flared from the handlebars.

It looked like a float in the Rose Parade.

Dori Dilson pedaled the bicycle.

Eyewitnesses later filled in what I could not see: parents’ cameras flashing, floodlights making a second day as the gorgeous couples disembark from limos and borrowed convertibles and promenade to the festive courts.

Showers of applause.

Suddenly the flashing stops, the floodlights dim, a hush falls over the crowd.

As a particularly long white limo rolls away from the entrance, here comes this three-wheeled bouquet.

The driver Dori Dilson wears a tailed white tuxedo and tall silk hat, but it is her passenger who rivets the crowd.

Her strapless gown is a bright, rich yellow, as if pressed from buttercups.

There must be one of those hooped contraptions underneath, for the skirt billows outward from her waist like an upside-down teacup.

Her hair is incredible.

Descriptions clash.

Some say it is the color of honey, some say strawberries.

It fluffs like a meringue high upon her head.

It’s a wig.

No, it’s all hers.

Both sides are certain.

Earrings dangle.

They are little silver somethings.

But what?

They are partly obscured by falling ringlets.

Many answers are offered.

The most popular is Monopoly pieces, but this will prove to be wrong.

From a rawhide string around her neck dangles a white inch-long banana-shaped fossil identifying her as a member in good standing of the Loyal Order of the Stone Bone.

While others wear orchids, the corsage on her wrist is a small sunflower.

Or a huge black-eyed Susan.

Or some sort of daisy.

No one is sure, except that the colors are yellow and black.

Before proceeding, she turns back to the bicycle and bends over a small basket hanging from the handlebars.

The basket, too, is covered with flowers.

She appears to kiss something in it.

She then waves to Dori Dilson, Dori salutes, and the bicycle pulls away.

People nearby catch a glimpse of tiny cinnamon-colored ears and two peppercorn eyes peering out of the basket.

“Beautiful.”

“Unusual.”

“Interesting.”

“Different.”

“Regal.”

These words will come later from the parents lining the walk.

For now, there are only stares as she makes her way from the entrance to the ball.

Someone recalls a single camera flashing, but that is all.

She is no one’s child.

She is the girl they have heard about.

As she passes by she makes no attempt to avoid their eyes.

On the contrary, she looks directly at them, turning to one side, then the other, looking into their eyes and smiling as if she knows them, as if they have shared grand and special things.

Some turn aside, uneasy in a way they cannot account for; others feel suddenly empty when her eyes leave theirs.

So distracting, so complete is she that she is gone before many realize that she had no escort, she was alone, a parade of one.

Perched on my bike in the distance, I remember looking up and seeing the torrent of stars we call the Milky Way.

I remember wondering if she could see them, too, or were they lost in the light of the lanterns?

The dancing took place on the center tennis court, which had been covered with a portable parquet floor.

She did what everyone else did at the ball: she danced.

To the music of Guy Greco and the Serenaders she danced the slow dances and the fast ones.

She spread her arms wide and threw back her head and closed her eyes and gave every impression of thoroughly enjoying herself.

They did not speak to her, of course, but they could not help looking over the shoulders of their dates.

She clapped at the end of each number.

She’s alone, they kept telling themselves, and surely she danced in no one’s arms, yet somehow that seemed to matter less and less.

As the night went on, and clarinet and coyote call mingled beyond the lantern light, the magic of their own powder-blue jackets and orchids seemed to fade, and it came to them in small sensations that they were more alone than she was.

Who was the first to crack?

No one knows.

Did someone brush against her at the punch table?

Pluck a petal from her flower?

(One was missing.)

Whisper “Hi”?

This much is certain: a boy named Raymond Studemacher danced with her.

To the student body at large, Raymond Studemacher did not have enough substance to trigger the opening of a supermarket door.

He belonged to no team or organization.

He took part in no school activities.

His grades were ordinary.

His clothing was ordinary.

His face was ordinary.

He had no detectable personality.

Thin as a minute, he appeared to lack the heft to carry his own name.

And in fact, when all eyes turned to him on the dance floor, those few who came up with a name for him frowned at his white jacket and whispered, “Raymond Something.”

And yet there he was, Raymond Something, walking right up to her—it came out later that his date had suggested it—and speaking to her, and then they were dancing.

Couples steered themselves to get a better look.

At the end of the number, he joined her in clapping and returned to his date.

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He told her the silver earrings looked like little trucks.

Tension rose.

Boys got antsy.

Girls picked at their corsages.

The ice shattered.

Several boys broke from their dates.

They were heading her way when she walked up to Guy Greco and said something to him.

Guy Greco turned to the Serenaders, the baton flashed, and out came the sounds of that old teen dance standard: the bunny hop.

Within seconds a long line was snaking across the dance floor.

Stargirl led the way.

And suddenly it was December again, and she had the school in her spell.

Almost every couple joined in.

Hillari Kimble and Wayne Parr did not.

The line curled back and forth across the netless tennis courts.

Stargirl began to improvise.

She flung her arms to a make-believe crowd like a celebrity on parade.

She waggled her fingers at the stars.

She churned her fists like an egg-beater.

Every action echoed down the line behind her.

The three hops of the bunny became three struts of a vaudeville vamp.

Then a penguin waddle.

Then a tippy-toed priss.

Every new move brought new laughter from the line.

When Guy Greco ended the music, howls of protest greeted him.

He restruck the downbeat.

To delighted squeals, Stargirl led them off the parquet dance floor onto the other courts—and then through the chain-link fence and off the tennis courts altogether.

Red carnations and wrist corsages flashed as the line headed onto the practice putting green of the golf course.

The line doodled around the holes, in and out of sidepools of lantern light.

From the dance floor it seemed to be more than it was: one hundred couples, two hundred people, four hundred dancing legs seemed to be a single festive flowery creature, a fabulous millipede.

And then there was less and less to see as the head vanished and the rest curled through the fringe of the light and followed, like the tail of a powder-blue dragon, into the darkness.

One girl in chiffon had a tiff with her date and ran off toward the first tee, calling, “Wait for me!”

She looked like a huge mint-green moth.

Their voices came in clearly from the golf course.

The laughing and yelping made a raucous counterpoint to the metronomic tock-tock-tock of the bunny’s never-ending hop.

Once, in the light of the quarter moon, they appeared in silhouette on a domed, distant green, like figures dancing in someone’s dream.

And then quite suddenly they were gone, as if the dreamer had awakened.

Nothing to see, nothing to hear.

Someone called “Hey!” after them, but that was all.

It was, according to those left behind, like waiting for a diver in water to return to the surface.

Hillari Kimble, for one, did not share that feeling.

“I came here to dance,” she declared.

She pulled Wayne Parr along to the bandstand and demanded “regular music.”

Guy Greco tilted his head to listen, but the baton did not stop and neither did the band.

In fact, as the minutes went by, the music seemed to become louder.

Maybe it was an illusion.

Maybe the band felt a connection to the dancers.

Maybe the farther the line spun into the night, the louder the band had to play.

Maybe the music was a tether.

Or a kite string.

Hillari Kimble dragged Wayne Parr out to the middle of the parquet floor.

They slowdanced.

They fastdanced.

They even tried an oldfashioned jitterbug.

Nothing worked.

Nothing went with the triplethumping drumbeat but the bunny hop itself.

Hillari’s orchid shed petals as she beat her fist on Wayne Parr’s chest.

“Do something!” she yelled.

She ripped sticks of chewing gum from his pocket.

She chewed them furiously.

She split the wad and pressed the gum into her ears.

The band played on.

Afterward, there were many different guesses as to how long the bunnyhoppers were actually gone.

Everyone agreed it seemed to be hours.

Students stood under the last line of lanterns, their fingers curling through the plastic-coated wire of the fence, peering into the vast blackness, straining for a glimpse, a scrap of sound.

All they heard was the call of a coyote.

A boy dashed wildly into the darkness; he sauntered back, his blue jacket over his shoulder, laughing.

A girl with glitter in her hair shivered.

Her bare shoulders shook as if she were cold.

She began to cry.

Hillari Kimble stalked along the fence, clenching and unclenching her fists.

She could not seem to stand still.

When the call finally came—“They’re back!”—it was from a lone watcher at the far end.

A hundred kids—only Hillari Kimble stayed behind—turned and raced down eight tennis courts, pastel skirts flapping like stampeding flamingos.

The fence buckled outward as they slammed into it.

They strained to see.

Light barely trickled over crusted earth beyond the fence.

This was the desert side.

“Where?…Where?”

And then you could hear: whoops and yahoos out there, somewhere, clashing with the music.

And then—there!—a flash of yellow, Stargirl leaping from the shadows.

The rest followed out of the darkness, a long, powder-blue, many-headed birthing.

Hop-hop-hop.

They were still smack on the beat.

If anything, they seemed more energized than before.

They were fresh.

Their eyes sparkled in the lantern light.

Many of the girls wore browning, half-dead flowers in their hair.

Stargirl led them along the outside of the fence.

Those inside got up a line of their own and hopped along.

Guy Greco struck the downbeat three final times—hop-hop-hop—and the two lines collided at the gate in a frenzy of hugs and shrieks and kisses.

Shortly after, as the Serenaders gratefully played “Stardust,” Hillari Kimble walked up to Stargirl and said, “You ruin everything.”

And she slapped her.

The crowd grew instantly still.

The two girls stood facing each other for a long minute.

Those nearby saw in Hillari’s shoulders and eyes a flinching: she was waiting to be struck in reply.

And in fact, when Stargirl finally moved, Hillari winced and shut her eyes.

But it was lips that touched her, not the palm of a hand.

Stargirl kissed her gently on the cheek.

She was gone by the time Hillari opened her eyes.

Dori Dilson was waiting.

Stargirl seemed to float down the promenade in her buttercup gown.

She climbed into the sidecar, the flowered bicycle rolled off into the night, and that was the last any of us ever saw of her.

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CHAPTER XXXII.

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That was fifteen years ago.

Fifteen Valentine’s Days.

I remember that sad summer after the Ocotillo Ball just as clearly as everything else.

One day, feeling needy, empty, I walked over to her house.

A For Sale sign pierced the ground out front.

I peered through a window.

Nothing but bare walls and floors.

I went to see Archie.

Something in his smile said he had been expecting me.

We sat on the back porch.

Everything seemed as usual.

Archie lighting his pipe.

The desert golden in the evening sun.

Señor Saguaro losing his pants.

Nothing had changed.

Everything had changed.

“Where?” I said.

A corner of his mouth winked open and a silky rumple of smoke emerged, paused as if to be admired, then drifted off past his ear.

“Midwest.

Minnesota.”

“Will I ever see her again?”

He shrugged.

“Big country.

Small world.

Who knows?”

“She didn’t even finish out the school year.”

“No.”

“Just…vamoosed.”

“Mm-hm.”

“It’s only been weeks, but it seems like a dream.

Was she really here?

Who was she?

Was she real?”

He looked at me for a long time, his smile wry, his eyes twinkling.

Then he shook his head as if coming out of a trance.

He deadpanned, “Oh, you’re waiting for an answer.

What were the questions again?”

“Stop being nutty, Archie.”

He looked off to the west.

The sun was melting butter over the Maricopas.

“Real?

Oh, yes.

As real as we get.

Don’t ever doubt that.

That’s the good news.”

He pointed the pipe stem at me.

“And well named.

Stargirl.

Though I think she had simpler things in mind.

Star people are rare.

You’ll be lucky to meet another.”

“Star people?” I said.

“You’re losing me here.”

He chuckled.

“That’s okay.

I lose myself.

It’s just my oddball way of accounting for someone I don’t really understand any more than you do.”

“So where do stars come in?”

He pointed the pipe stem.

“The perfect question.

In the beginning, that’s where they come in.

They supplied the ingredients that became us, the primordial elements.

We are star stuff, yes?”

He held up the skull of Barney, the Paleocene rodent.

“Barney too, hm?”

I nodded, along for the ride.

“And I think every once in a while someone comes along who is a little more primitive than the rest of us, a little closer to our beginnings, a little more in touch with the stuff we’re made of.”

The words seemed to fit her, though I could not grasp their meaning.

He saw the vacant look on my face and laughed.

He tossed Barney to me.

He stared at me.

“She liked you, boy.”

The intensity of his voice and eyes made me blink.

“Yes,” I said.

“She did it for you, you know.”

“What?”

“Gave up her self, for a while there.

She loved you that much.

What an incredibly lucky kid you were.”

I could not look at him.

“I know.”

He shook his head with a wistful sadness.

“No, you don’t.

You can’t know yet.

Maybe someday…”

I knew he was tempted to say more.

Probably to tell me how stupid I was, how cowardly, that I blew the best chance I would ever have.

But his smile returned, and his eyes were tender again, and nothing harsher than cherry smoke came out of his mouth.

I continued to attend Saturday meetings of the Loyal Order of the Stone Bone.

We did not speak of her again until the following summer, several days before I was to leave for college.

Archie had asked me to come over.

He took me out back, but this time not to the porch.

Instead he led me to the toolshed.

He slid back the bolt and opened the door and—it was not a toolshed afterall.

“This was her office,” he said and gestured for me to enter.

Here it was: all the stuff of her activity that I had expected to see in her room at home, the “office” whose location she would not reveal.

I saw wheels of ribbon and wrapping paper, stacks of colored construction paper, cardboard boxes of newspaper clippings, watercolors and cans of paint, a yellow stack of phone books.

Tacked to one wall was a municipal map of Mica.

Hundreds of pins of a dozen different colors pierced the map.

There was no indication what they stood for.

A huge homemade calendar covered the opposite wall.

It had a square for every date in the year.

Penciled into the squares were names.

Across the top of the calendar was one word:

BIRTHDAYS.

There was one dot of color on the whole thing, a little red heart.

It was next to my name.

Archie handed me a fat family album sort of book.

The homemade title said “The Early Life of Peter Sinkowitz.”

I flipped through it.

I saw the pictures she had taken that day: Peter squabbling with the little girls over his beloved banana roadster.

“I’m to wait five years, then give it to his parents,” said Archie.

He pointed to a filing cabinet in the corner.

It had three drawers.

I opened one.

There were dozens of red hanging folders, each with a name tag sticking up.

I saw “Borlock.”

Me.

I pulled it out, opened it.

There was the birthday notice that appeared in the Mica Times three years before.

And a profile of me from the school paper.

And pictures: candid snapshots of me in a parking lot, me leaving my house, me at the mall.

Apparently, Peter Sinkowitz wasn’t the only target for her camera.

And a sheet of paper with two columns: “Likes” and “Doesn’t Like.”

Heading the list of “Likes” was “porcupine neckties.”

Under that was “strawberry-banana smoothies.”

I replaced my folder.

I saw other names.

Kevin.

Dori Dilson.

Mr. McShane.

Danny Pike.

Anna Grisdale.

Even Hillari Kimble and Wayne Parr.

I stepped back.

I was stunned.

“This is…unbelievable.

Files.

On people.

Like she was a spy.”

Archie nodded, smiling.

“A lovely treason, hm?”

I could not speak.

He led me out into the dazzling light.

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CHAPTER XXXIII.

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Throughout my college years I visited Archie whenever I came home.

And then I got a job back East, and my visits were less frequent.

As Archie grew older, the difference between himself and Señor Saguaro seemed to become less and less.

We sat on the back porch.

He seemed fascinated by my work.

I had become a set designer.

Only recently has it occurred to me that I became one on the day Stargirl took me to her enchanted place.

On my last visit with him, he met me at the front door.

He dangled keys in front of my eyes.

“You drive.”

An old tar pail rattled in the bed of his ancient pickup as he pointed me west to the Maricopas.

In his lap he carried a brown paper bag.

Along the way I said, as I always did, “So, have you figured her out yet?”

It was years since she had gone, yet still we needed no name for her.

We knew who we were talking about.

“I’m working on it,” he said.

“What’s the latest?”

We were following a familiar script.

On this day he stated: “She’s better than bones.”

On my previous visit, he had said, “When a Stargirl cries, she does not shed tears, but light.”

On other days in other years, he had called her “the rabbit in the hat” and “the universal solvent” and “the recycler of our garbage.”

He said these things with a sly grin, knowing they would confound me as I mulled them until our next meeting.

We were in the foothills by early afternoon.

He directed me to stop on a stony shoulder of the road.

We got out and walked.

He brought the paper bag with him.

I brought the pail.

He pulled from it a floppy blue hat, which he mashed onto his head.

The sun that had looked warm and buttery at a distance was blazing hot here.

We didn’t go far, as walking was a chore for him.

We stopped at an outcropping of smooth, pale-gray rock.

He pulled a small pick from the pail and tapped the rock.

“This’ll do,” he said.

I held the paper bag while he put pick to rock.

The skin on his arms had become dry and flaky, as if his body were preparing itself to rejoin the earth.

It took him ten minutes to gouge out a hole that he judged to be right.

He asked for the bag.

I was shocked at what he took from it.

“Barney!”

The skull of the Paleocene rodent.

“This is home,” he said.

He said he was sorry he did not have the energy to return Barney to his original stratum in South Dakota.

He laid Barney in the hole, then took from his pocket a scrap of paper.

He crumpled the scrap and stuffed it into the hole with the skull.

Then he pulled a jug of water, a small bag of patching cement, a trowel, and a plastic tray from the tar pail.

He mixed the cement and troweled over the hole.

From a distance you wouldn’t know the rock had been altered.

Heading back to the pickup, I asked him what was written on the paper.

“A word,” he said.

The way he said it told me I’d get no answer to the next question.

We rode east down out of the mountains and were home before sundown.

When I returned next time, someone else was living in Archie’s house.

The shed out back was gone.

So was Señor Saguaro.

And a new elementary school now occupies Stargirl’s enchanted place.

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CHAPTER XXXIV. MORE THAN STARS

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Since graduating, our class has had a reunion every five years, but I haven’t yet gone.

I stay in touch with Kevin.

He never left Mica, has a family there now.

Like me, he did not wind up in television, but he does make good use of his gift of gab: he’s an insurance salesman.

Kevin says when the class gathers for reunions at the Mica Country Club, there is much talk of Stargirl and curiosity as to her whereabouts.

He says the most common question these days is “Were you on the bunny hop?”

At the last reunion several classmates, for a lark, lined up, hands to waists, and hopped around the putting green for a few minutes, but it wasn’t the same.

No one is quite sure what happened to Wayne Parr, except that he and Hillari broke up shortly after graduation.

The last anyone heard, he spoke of joining the Coast Guard.

The high school has a new club called the Sunflowers.

To join, you have to sign an agreement promising to do “one nice thing per day for someone other than myself.”

Today’s Electron marching band is probably the only one in Arizona with a ukulele.

On the basketball court, the Electrons have never come close to the success they enjoyed when I was a junior.

But something from that season has resurfaced in recent years that baffles fans from other schools.

At every game, when the opposing team scores its first basket, a small group of Electrons fans jumps to its feet and cheers.

Each time I visit Mica, I drive past her old house on Palo Verde.

On the most recent visit, I saw a red-haired young man across the street, fixing water skis to the roof of a yellow Volkswagen Beetle.

It must have been Peter Sinkowitz.

I wondered if he was as possessive of his Beetle as he had been of the banana roadster.

I wondered if he was old enough to love his scrapbook.

As for me, I throw myself into my work and keep an eye peeled for silver lunch trucks, and I remember.

I sometimes walk in the rain without an umbrella.

When I see change on the sidewalk, I leave it there.

If no one’s looking, I drop a quarter.

I feel guilty when I buy a card from Hallmark.

I listen for mockingbirds.

I read the newspapers.

I read them from all over.

I skip the front pages and headlines and go to the pages in back.

I read the community sections and the fillers.

I see little acts of kindness happening from Maine to California.

I read of a man in Kansas City who stands at a busy intersection every morning and waves at the people driving to work.

I read of a little girl in Oregon who sells lemonade in front of her house for five cents a cup—and offers a free back scratch to every customer.

When I read about things like these I wonder, Is she there?

I wonder what she calls herself now.

I wonder if she’s lost her freckles.

I wonder if I’ll ever get another chance.

I wonder, but I don’t despair.

Though I have no family of my own, I do not feel alone.

I know that I am being watched.

The echo of her laughter is the second sunrise I awaken to each day, and at night I feel it is more than stars looking down on me.

Last month, one day before my birthday, I received a gift-wrapped package in the mail.

It was a porcupine necktie.

THE END.