Love, Stargirl (4 page)

I hate you!

March 21

LEO!

March 22

Now see what you did. You made me miss the start of spring. It happened yesterday, but I was so busy moping over you that I didn’t even notice. I’d probably still be in the dark if I hadn’t gotten a letter from Archie today. He asked me if I saw the sunrise on March 21. Archie and I used to go into the desert and watch the sunrise on four special dates: the VernalEquinox (March 21), the Summer Solstice (June 21), the Autumnal Equinox (September 22), and the Winter Solstice (December 21). We poured green tea into plastic cups and toasted each new season.

Yesterday the sun was directly over the equator. Day passed night. Winter became spring. With every turn of the earth now, day is leaving night a few more minutes behind. The universe is going about its business. Why am I surprised?

March 23

All my father said last night was, “Go to bed early.” I didn’t ask why, but I knew. Sure enough, he woke me at 2 this morning, and 30 minutes later we were having grilled sticky buns and coffee at Ridgeview Diner. I knew what he was doing. He’s noticed my mood. He was trying to perk me up. He believes that the answer to anyone’s problem is to go on a milk run.

Confused?

Yes, my father is a milkman now. After fifteen years as an engineering supervisor at MicaTronics, he was burned out. Still, he wasn’t going to quit. But my mother made him after she asked him what he would rather do and he grinned and said, “I always wanted to be a milkman.”

So we loaded the truck at the warehouse and headed for the Friday route. As the truck turned a corner at a Wawa store, the headlights suddenly caught a face. It was a face in a Dumpster, wide-eyed with surprise. And then we were gone.

“See that?” said my father.

“I did,” I said. I was still seeing the face, like the afterglow in my eyes when I turn away from the sun.

The Friday route is in the southern part of the county. Developments. Farms. Solitary homes along curvy country roads. No streetlights. No traffic. Only the dark and our own headlights and the rattle of glass bottles in the racks behind us.

The customers leave notes, Scotch-taped to the door or rolled and rubber-banded in the metal milk box on the front step. Some order the same thing every week, some different. Some parents let their kids write the note. Like:

Dear Mr Milkman,

Pleeze leave 1 gal skim

1 qt choc

2 cott cheese

1 doz eggs

My cat Purrfecto loves your milk!!

Love,

Cory

I’ve gone on other Friday milk runs with my father, and there was one address I was especially looking forward to. It came early in the run: 214 White Horse Rd. The Huffelmeyers. The Huffelmeyers are an old couple. They get one quart of buttermilk, one quart of chocolate each week. But my father doesn’t leave their stuff on the front step—he takes it inside. See, the Huffelmeyers remember the old days, when things were safer and they left the front door unlocked all the time and the milkman just came in and put their stuff in the fridge. And that’s the way they keep it. At 214 White Horse Road it’s still 1940. We just walk on in. Dad turns on a small table lamp with a fringed shade so we can see. We stay as quiet as we can. While Dad heads for the kitchen, I like to stop and look at the pictures. There must be a hundred family photographs in the living and dining rooms. I watch them go from black and white snapshots—the young married couple, he in his World War II uniform, she in a floral dress and wide-brimmed hat, standing arm in arm in front of a Ferris wheel—to color pictures of the old couple surrounded by kids and grandkids and, it looks like, great-grandkids.

Leo, some people might say it’s creepy, tiptoeing through someone’s house at four o’clock in the morning—but it’s not. It’s wonderful. It’s a sharing. It’s the Huffelmeyers saying to us,
Come into our house. Look at whatever you like. Get to know us. We’re upstairs, sleeping. Feel free to stroll through our dreams and memories. We trust you. And don’t forget to take the empty bottles.

An hour later we left the weekly cottage cheese and orange juice in the kitchen of the Dents, who are even older than the Huffelmeyers. My father headed east then, toward a silver-gray sky. New day coming. So far we had hardly said a word to each other. Now we did, though the conversation was stop-and-go, shorthand, constantly interrupted by the rattle of the milk carrier as my father hustled off to another customer.

Dad: So.

Me: So.

Dad: Blue these days?

Me: More like gray.

Dad: I see you’re down to two pebbles.

Me: You noticed.

Dad: Leo Borlock?

Me: Leo Borlock.

Dad: Still?

Me: Still.

Dad: Worth it?

Me: Not sure. I think so.

Dad (
his hand on mine
): One thing you
can
be sure of.

Me: That is?

Dad: Me.

Me (
smiling
): I know.

Dad: And Mom.

Me: I know.

By the time we headed home, kids were pouring onto the playgrounds of grade schools for morning recess.

March 24

I was pretty OK the rest of yesterday. Puttered around the house. Visited Betty Lou’s with Dootsie. Then, as soon as I was alone—bedtime—it all came back.

I dreamed of Señor Saguaro again. This time he didn’t spit darts. He didn’t speak. I couldn’t even see his mouth. Then I realized it was on the other side of him. I walked around to his back, and the mouth moved to the front. And that’s how it went: wherever I looked, the mouth moved to the other side. Soon I was desperately running in circles around the old cactus, trying to catch up with the mouth, because I knew that only when I caught up to it would it speak to me.

I’m disappearing, Leo. Like Dootsie’s trick, except this is real. Who are you if you lose your favorite person? Can you lose your favorite person without losing yourself? I reach for Stargirl and she’s gone. I’m not me anymore.

I went to the stone piles today. I had a feeling that the shuffling man would come by again, and he did. Still wearing the moss-green knit pullover cap and tassel and navy peacoat, still gravelsliding along. He stopped in front of me. He said, “Are you looking for me?” and shuffled on without waiting for an answer. I called after him, “I’m looking for me! Have you seen me?!” but he just kept on moving, green tassel bobbing….

March 27

I played homeschool hooky. I stayed in my room all day—writing, reading, daydreaming, remembering. My mother didn’t object, didn’t ask why. I wrote three haiku and two lists. Maybe I’ll send you the haiku someday. Here’s the first list:

THINGS I LIKE ABOUT LEO

1. You loved me

2. You liked my nose freckles

3. You were nice to my rat

4. You loved Archie

5. Your shy smile

6. You followed me into the desert

7. You held my hand in front of everybody

8. You chose Me over Them

9. You filled up my happy wagon

And the second list:

THINGS I DON’T LIKE ABOUT LEO

1. You dumped me

2. You liked Susan more than Stargirl

3. You weren’t brave enough to be yourself

4. You chose Them over Me

5. You’re emptying my happy wagon

March 29

Down to one pebble.

March 30

Leo! Save me from an empty wagon!

April 1

I had promised Dootsie I would take her to Bemus Park today. At the first corner we came to, Dootsie said, “I wanna wear them.” She was pointing at my earrings, the little silver lunch trucks that my father had a silversmith make for me in Tucson. I took them off. I went to put them on her ears, but she said, “
I
wanna do it.”

“Okay,” I said, and handed them to her.

Next thing I knew she tossed them into the nearby sewer, threw up her hands, and cried out, “April fools!”

She was so pleased and proud of herself, I hated to spoil her fun. But you know me, Leo, I’m not exactly the world’s greatest actress. I couldn’t cover up my shock and disappointment. She saw it on my face. Her eyes grew wide, her smile vanished. She tugged on my finger. She peeped, “April fools?” I could only stare at the sewer grate. She howled, “I did it bad!” and started bawling.

I hugged her and calmed her down. How do you explain the trickery of April Fools’ Day to a five-year-old? I tried to tell her how it works. I told her that in the end, the important thing is that the victim feels relieved and happy because things aren’t really so bad after all. The look on her face told me she wasn’t getting it. But I would soon find out she was getting it all right—just in her own way.

We continued our walk to Bemus Park. Along the way I bought us each a pack of Skittles. It was the first warm Sunday of spring. The playground was an ant colony of little kids—swinging, climbing, darting this way and that, sawdust flying. Dootsie stationed herself at the bottom of the sliding board. As each slider landed, Dootsie held out a Skittle and said, “April fools!” Pretty soon every kid on the playground was lined up at the sliding board. When Dootsie’s Skittles were gone, she took mine.

When the Skittles ran out, we started for home. We passed people in the park. Dootsie began unloading the rest of herself. To the first person, she gave a Mary Jane from her pocket. “April fools!” To another, she gave a pink quartz stone she had found. To another, a button that said
THINK
. To another, a paper clip. Each came with an “April fools!” and a giggle. And usually a puzzled smile from the recipient.

When her pockets were empty, she took the red plastic Cracker Jack ring off her finger and gave that away. Then the pink rubber band on her wrist. She panicked when she saw the next person coming and realized she was empty. She reached for my Stone Bone fossil necklace. “No!” I said.

I gave her the change in my pocket. Dootsie gave away my coins one at a time. I was hoping we would run out of people before we reached her house. We didn’t. Dootsie gave away the last nickel and again went for the fossil necklace. I straightened up, keeping the necklace out of her reach. She kept jumping, reaching, squeaking, “Gimme! Gimme!”

I gave it. It was gone in a minute, and she was back at me. “Stargirl! More!”

“Dootsie,” I said, “I’m empty. There’s nothing left.”

I was lying. There was one thing left. It was a tiny brown feather of an elf owl. I had seen it clinging to the bird’s nest hole high in a saguaro near my enchanted place in the desert. I used a yucca stick to dislodge it. Since the day we moved from Arizona I’ve carried the elf owl feather everywhere I go.

Dootsie was going for my pockets. I blocked her. The feather had come to mean you. Us. Stargirl and Leo. Blocking my pockets only made her suspicious. She knew I was holding back. “You have something!” she wailed. She was crying. Crying for lack of something to give.

I had been crying a lot lately too. I remembered Archie’s words, the words you told me he said to you once: “Star people do not shed tears, but light.”

Dootsie was tugging. “Gimme!”

Give.

And what had that loose change been doing in my pocket in the first place? Remember how it used to be, Leo? I never had change because as soon as I got some I would toss it onto the sidewalk to be found.

What happened to that Stargirl?

Shed.

Light.

Tears don’t bounce. Light does.

I gave her the feather. She gave it to a man walking his dog. “April fools!”

April 2

And so I’m me again, Leo. Thanks to the example of a five-year-old. I’m hoping you wouldn’t wish it any other way. Not that you weren’t flattered, right? I mean, to have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing her self and her self-respect—well, that’s trophy enough for any guy’s ego, huh?

You occupied my space. But because you were not in my present, when I looked into my future I saw…nothing. Isn’t that sad? And stupid?

Well, I hope you enjoyed your smuggies while they lasted because it’s over now. Oh sure, I’ll still be missing you as much as ever. I’ll still smile at the memory of you. I’ll still be—OK, I’ll say it again—loving you, but I won’t abandon myself for you. I cannot be faithful to you without being faithful to myself. I’ve reclaimed my future. If we are destined to be together again, be happy to know you’ll be getting the real me, not some blubbering half me.

So I gave my wagon a booster shot the other day—five pebbles! That’s six now.

Spring has finally caught my attention. I say, “Good morning!” to daffodils.

And I’m dropping loose change again.

As for the paper money in my allowance, I have a new use for it. The local newspaper is called the
Morning Lenape.
(The Lenape tribe—it’s pronounced
len-AH-pay
—used to live around here.) The paper has a section for classified ads. Three lines, three days, fourteen dollars. Most people use the section to advertise yard sales and such.

Here’s my first ad. It will run Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday next week:

Dootsie Pringle

is the BEST April Fooler

in the world!

April 11

Something happened today that was both disturbing and mysterious.

Dootsie has been sick with the flu, so I went over to let Cinnamon cheer her up. I had just left the Pringles’ and climbed on my bike to head home when I heard a gruff voice behind me: “Hey.”

It was Alvina. Charming Alvina. I stopped.

“Hi,” I said. “Growl at anybody today?”

She ignored the question. “I’m going home from my job.”

“I see,” I said.

The little plastic Pooh Bear around her neck was holding out his arms and wearing a huge smile—unlike the sour face above him.