Love, Stargirl (13 page)

He wasn’t there.

Why should he be? I hadn’t flat-out asked him to come (dummy).

I walked about the field. I joined the singing insects. The moon rose higher and higher. Was the moon looking for him too? I scanned the horizon for shadows. I walked about with the flashlight on, so I couldn’t be missed by anyone nearby. When the sun arrived I planted the new marker and went home.

August 18

I did errands downtown for Betty Lou today. I was in the dollar store, paying for lightbulbs and hairpins at the checkout counter, when I looked out the window and saw Perry across the street. With a girl. Ponytail. Not red-haired Stephanie. Ponytail was holding something out to him. He took a bite of it. She playfully kicked him in the behind. He playfully kicked her. They laughed and jostled on up the street.

Suddenly I had to talk to Alvina. Now. I ran to Margie’s.

“Alvina in?” I said, breathless.

Margie thumbed over her shoulder. “Back.”

I almost cheered. I pushed through the swinging door. Alvina was cleaning donut trays.

I had my first question ready—my life could not proceed without the answer—but I didn’t want to be too obvious. I started out with everyday chitchat, waiting for an opening. When it came, I tried to sound as if it had just occurred to me: “Oh yeah…remember that guy? Perry? What’s his last name, anyway?”

She snapped donut crumbs from a rag. “Delloplane,” she said.

Ah, Perry Delloplane.
“You think he’s cute?” Where did
that
come from? I hadn’t planned to say that.

Alvina was giving me and my question an I-smell-a-skunk face when Margie’s voice came roaring from out front: “Alvina!”

A customer had spilled a MargieMocha all over the floor, and Alvina had to mop it up. Then she had to take over the counter while Margie went to the bathroom. One thing after another occupied Alvina for the next hour, so I finally gave up and left.

I am a mess. Like that MargieMocha, I am spilled across a floor, but there’s nobody to mop me up. I have only one thing to show for the day:
Perry Delloplane.
The sound of a name. It is a grape in my mouth. I roll it over and over on my tongue—
perrydelloplaneperrydelloplaneperrydelloplaneperrydelloplane—
but when I try to crush it with my teeth, it slips away.

August 19

Today the mockingbird doesn’t sound happy. It sounds as if it’s coming apart. As if the very heart of itself—its song—is breaking into pieces and flying off in a hundred directions.

August 21

I do my job. I weed the gardens of other people. I pull out the weeds and put them in plastic bags and the people throw them out with the trash. When I am finished there is nothing left but flowers and other proper, upstanding not-weeds. I sometimes almost hear the flowers say to me,
Ah…thank you for getting rid of that riffraff. It was junking up the neighborhood.
I’ve become pretty good at telling weeds from not-weeds. But every once in a while I have my doubts. I come across an especially difficult root. I pull and it doesn’t come out. I pull again. It resists. I dig my gloved fingers into the soil and grab it with both hands and pull yet again. It begins to come out, but I can see it’s going to take several more hard pulls. And that’s when the doubts begin. I begin to wonder:
Have I made a mistake? Is this really a weed? If it’s not supposed to be here, why is it resisting so?
But it’s too late now. There’s nothing to do with a plant half pulled but to go all the way. And so I tug some more, and finally, shedding clods of dirt and worms, it breaks free of the earth—and I try not to hear the tiny, anguished cry.

August 23

Another Thursday morning on Calendar Hill. By myself.

A TV crew came to Bridge Street today. They were filming the
Blob
banner and the front of the Colonial Theatre. They interviewed the mayor, who said, “It was our lucky day when
The Blob
crawled into town.”

My mother talked me out of dressing up Cinnamon and taking him as Frankenrat. She pointed out that in a crowd like that, someone might panic at the sight of a rat. It might not be safe for Cinnamon.

No such problem with Dootsie. My mother was so pleased with the Mrs. Blob outfit that she came with me to deliver it. The moment Dootsie saw it she put it on—which was pretty easy, since all she had to do was lower it over her whole self. No arms, no legs to deal with. My mother had sewn together a couple of sheets, dyed pink, and stitched clumps of cushion foam throughout the space between. The result was a pink, lumpy, formless droop—a Blob—that reminded me of a giant, rumpled sock. There were two eyeholes and, lest anyone mistake the Mrs. for a Mr., a cute little thimble-shaped hat. The droop was purposely made much too long, so that the hem crumpled about her feet and oozed across the floor. Mrs. Blob looked as if she were sprouting wings as two hidden arms punched upward and she declared, “I’m a winner!” Then she came sliming after us—and we ran screaming from the house.

August 24

By 6 p.m. Bridge Street was mobbed with Blobs and other assorted despicables, as all monsters were eligible for the contest. Demons, witches, zombies, skeletons, aliens, phantoms, ghouls, cannibals—and Blobs—all came slogging down the sidewalks toward the Colonial Theatre.

The theater lobby was Monstrosity Grand Central. I spotted a blood-splattered hag with one elegant fingernail. She was accompanied by a short Frankenstein and a man I assumed to be Mr. Klecko. I spotted the ponytailed girl I had seen Perry with. And red-haired Stephanie from the pool. But no Perry.

Everyone was reaching for Margie’s fried dough Blobogobs. This was where Dootsie ran into a snag. Because my mother had not given the costume a mouth hole (“The Blob doesn’t
have
a mouth,” she said, “the Blob
is
a mouth”), I had to feed Dootsie her Blobbogob through an eyehole.

When the last seat in the balcony was filled, the monsters were invited backstage. One by one they came out from behind the curtain and crossed the stage to the hoots and whistles of the crowd. Dootsie started out well—she even got a few wolf whistles. Then she had problems. She tripped over her hem and fell. When she got up, she felt for her hat and discovered it wasn’t on her head, it was still on the floor, but she didn’t know exactly where because her eyeholes were now at the back of her head and she couldn’t see. She was crawling blindly around the floor, feeling for her hat—
really
looking like a Blob now—and crawled right off the edge of the stage. I jumped up and yelled, “Dootsie!”—but a judge was there, catching her. He put her back, stood her up, replaced her hat, and pulled her eyeholes around to her eyes. She hiked her sheet up to her neck, showing the world she wore nothing else but her Babar the Elephant underpants, and ran off the stage to laughter and the loudest ovation of the night.

There were two sections: little kids and big kids. The little-kid winner was…“Dootsie Pringle!” Among the big kids, Alvina got an honorable mention. I wished Betty Lou were there to see it all.

When the monsters were back in their seats, the lights went down and the movie began. What I had heard about the movie was true—it’s more funny than scary, at least to the older kids and the adults in the audience. But that didn’t stop the little kids from screaming every time the Blob oozed across the screen. The big scene came over an hour into the film: the Blob oozing out of the projection booth, the audience screaming, stampeding under the marquee and into the street—The film suddenly stopped, freezing the fleeing figures in mid-scream, calf-length skirts and pompadours flying. The theater lights went on. A basso voice came over the PA: “Okay, Blobbonians, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. The most famous moment in horror movie history—and it took place rrrrright here, in
yyyour
Colonial Theatre. Now is your chance to relive that history. Finish your Blobbogobs, spritz up your vocal cords, and get rrrrrrready to scream, Blobbonians. And remember—parents, hold on to your children. Nobody gets trampled. Nobody gets hurt. This is civilized bedlam. One row at a time. Starting at the back. Last row first. Slow and easy does it into the lobby—and then out the door and…
lllllllllet ’er rip
! The cameras are rolling. Back row, get going…NNNNNOW!”

We weren’t supposed to act terrified until we hit the sidewalk, but as soon as the announcer said “NNNNNOW!” every little kid screamed. The rows funneled into the aisles. We were in one of the front rows, so by the time we reached the lobby the bedlam from outside was backwashing over us, and for the first time in my life I felt the force of a stampeding mob. Afraid for Dootsie, I started to lift her, but she broke away from me and plunged into the crowd, waving her arms inside her pink sheet, shoving aside other little kids in her panic to escape the creeping goo, tripping over the sheet, falling on her face, getting up, the mob trampling her thimble hat. I lost sight of her, then spotted her as we were swept through the doors and into the screaming blaze of the marquee and TV lights. I grabbed the top of her and a moment later had nothing but a pink sheet in my hand as she ran screaming down the middle of Bridge Street, naked except for her sneakers and Babar the Elephant undies.

I caught her at the traffic light. She was laughing and yelling: “I’m ternified!” I wrapped the sheet around her till she looked like a tiny Roman with a sloppy toga. We joined the after-panic crowd milling outside the theater. Many were going back in to watch the rest of the movie. We were about to join them when Dootsie shouted: “Perry!” She broke from me and ran to Pizza Dee-Lite, directly across the street from the Colonial. Perry was sitting at a table at the front window, watching the festivities. Red-haired Stephanie sat across from him.

I watched as Dootsie burst into the restaurant and announced, “I won!” and leaped into Perry’s lap. Stephanie laughed. A two-pronged fork of jealousy stabbed deep into me.

Dootsie was jabbering in Perry’s face as I walked in. Perry looked past her ear and gave me a smile and turned to Stephanie. “This is her,” he said.

This is her.

Stephanie looked up at me. Her red hair was especially bright in the fluorescent light. She pulled a string of cheese from her chin and fed it into her mouth. She wiped her fingertips on a napkin and jabbed her hand out to me. Her smile looked unforced. “It’s really Stargirl? Your name?”

I shook her hand. “Really,” I said.

“Homeschool, huh?”

“Yes.”

She wagged her head. “Too bad.”

“How’s that?” I said.

“We could use you at the high school. We need some
fascinating
people there.” She flung the word “fascinating” across the table at Perry, her eyes flaring for an instant. She turned back to me, smiled. “We already have enough boring ones.”

Perry said, “I didn’t say ‘fascinating.’”

She pistol-pointed at him. “That’s right. He said you were weird.” She chuckled and picked a pepperoni disk from her slice and pitched it across the table. Perry caught it in his mouth. It could not have been done so neatly without a lot of practice. “I’d hit him if I were you.”

“I told her you were interesting,” Perry said to me.

Dootsie wanted attention. She rose up on Perry’s lap. She grabbed him by the ears and swung his face to hers. “I’m
telling
you how I won.”

The word “interesting” fluttered about my head.

“Sit,” said Stephanie.

I sat. I felt like I was auditioning.

A blood-splattered hag appeared at the table. “Hello, Alvina,” I said, but she was focused only on Perry. Perry had just picked up a slice of pizza and was about to chomp into it when Alvina snatched it from his hand. “Yo,” he said, “take that one.” He pointed to the last piece on the platter. “I want this one,” she said, and bit into it.

“She beats up boys,” Dootsie told Perry.

Alvina took the last empty chair.

“Congratulations on your honorable mention,” I said.

“I stunk,” she said.

“I won!” said Dootsie.

“Where are your parents?” I asked Alvina.

“They went home.”

“Out alone at night,” said Stephanie. “Big girl.”

Dootsie piped, “She
is
a big girl. Look.” She grabbed Alvina’s little finger and displayed the fancy fingernail.

Stephanie whistled. “Impressive.”

Dootsie reached across the table and plucked the last pepperoni disk from Stephanie’s slice. “Open,” she commanded Perry, and from a distance of one inch she tossed it into his mouth.

Alvina picked a pepperoni from her own slice and pitched. She missed. Dootsie picked the piece from Perry’s lap and handed it back to Alvina. This time Alvina held the piece out to Perry’s lips. He took it between his teeth. He tugged. She held it for a second, then let it go. I wondered if he still believed she didn’t have a crush on him.

“Looks like I’m the only girl at the table who hasn’t fed Perry tonight,” I said.

Then a voice behind me: “Hi.”

It was Ponytail. With a zombie.

“Ooh, yum,” said Ponytail. She grabbed the last slice and took a big bite. “How’d you know I wanted pepperoni?”

Zombie snatched the slice from Ponytail, folded it, and stuffed the whole thing into her mouth. She said something that came out: “Yuh yuh yuh yuh.”

All the girls started laughing and swatting playfully at each other. There didn’t seem to be any animosity among them. Suddenly Zombie leaned in to Perry and gave him a long kiss on the lips. Dootsie folded her arms and glared at the smoochers. Alvina looked the other way, as if the chair beside her were empty. She pretended to be searching for someone in the restaurant. Finally, while the kiss was still going on, she popped up and left. I wished I could have too. Zombie somehow managed to take Alvina’s vacated seat while continuing to kiss Perry. Finally Dootsie snarled, “That’s e-
nuff,
” and pushed Zombie’s face away.

More laughter.