What Stars Are Made Of

by Sarah Allen

  Did you know when your dad kisses the top of your head, you can feel the warmth all the way down to your toes?

  The Impossible Dream

  Somehow it seems strange when things go back to exactly normal after a break. Back to Nonny calling Thomas every night, because he was away again, doing his dangerous job in the Florida Keys. Back to lunches in the library. Back to homework.

  Back to planning and editing.

  Even Talia was home. I thought I could see the sadness she was carrying in the gray around her eyes, most of all when she tried to smile and wave at me when I came to class. She didn’t talk too much, mostly stared at her pencil. And she worked on her Poetry Out Loud contest harder than ever. She passed me a note one day that said: I’m really sorry I can’t do lunch again today. Gran told me to work as hard as I can and you better believe I’m going to.

  When I got the note, I nodded to her. I didn’t know a sign to say, I’m still so sorry about your grandma but I know she’s proud of you and you are going to do awesome in this contest and you do whatever work you need to do, so I gave her a thumbs-up instead.

  I got a note from someone new, too. Charise from the Lunch Table Girls passed me a note in the hallway that said she’d tried my mom’s constellation cupcakes. Her note said they were Out of this world delicious! I wrote back thank you with five exclamation points and I knew the note would make my mom smile.

  The Out of This World note made me more excited about math than I normally am. I knew people who wore NASA shirts had to be pretty great.

  But I still missed Talia. I wanted to show her the note, but I didn’t want to interrupt her focus. She needed to be ready to be a rock star at this poetry contest.

  So I went back to going over my master plan, half terrified, half impatient for the day Mr. Hickman would finally show up. Only a couple of weeks to go. Apart from my essay, I had printed-out pages, cut-out pictures, glue sticks, tape, and a bunch of other crafty things spread across my room. I was going to be ready, that was for sure.

  I talked the plan over with Cecilia almost every night.

  Usually preparing and going over plans makes me feel better. That’s why I like getting my homework done early, because it means I’ve planned and that when I walk in the doors the next day I know for sure I’m prepared.

  I’ve tried to know for sure that I’m ready for the big things that are coming, but I’m still scared. Terrified.

  Timorous. Another Hard Reading Word.

  It means scared.

  When Scared/Terrified/Timorous Me comes along she pushes her way in, shoving Regular Happy Me into a corner and sort of taking control of everything. If the two me’s were at a party, Scared Me would be the one who started shouting and screaming and talking as loud as she could every time Regular Happy Me tried to talk.

  So after school, I grabbed my stuff from my locker and decided to go talk to someone who never, ever seemed to be afraid.

  She was sitting at her desk, looking at papers.

  “Ms. Trepky?” I said.

  She glanced up and when she saw me, she put her pen down and scooted the pages to the side.

  “Ms. Monroe,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  Then I didn’t quite know what to say. I’m not usually scared to talk to people, but when the door has somehow been opened for Scared Me to move in, she kind of grabs the steering wheel and doesn’t let go for a while.

  “Well…,” I started. Maybe this really was a stupid idea. Maybe this wasn’t something you talked to your teachers about, and I just didn’t know. Probably everyone would think it was odd if they knew. Maybe even Ms. Trepky would think I was weird and awkward.

  Ms. Trepky folded her hands on her lap. She had a smile that wasn’t quite a smile because her mouth only moved a tiny bit, but it was more of an Inside Smile and I knew she wouldn’t think I was embarrassing.

  “Do you ever get scared? About doing something?” I said it all at once, fast, so I was sure to get it out.

  Then Ms. Trepky looked down at her hands and smiled again, and it wasn’t a You’re So Cute smile, which would have made me want to cry, but a sort of Chuckling at Myself kind of smile.

  “Let me tell you a secret,” she said.

  I stepped closer.

  “Do you know what sound scares me more than any other?”

  Scary sound? “Fire alarm?” I said.

  “The school bell, first thing in the morning.”

  My eyes went big. It was like a tiger admitting she was scared of oinking. “The bell? Why?”

  “Because it means it’s time to get up in front of you and start teaching, and let me tell you a secret I think every teacher shares. Nothing is more frightening than teaching.”

  “But … but we’re just kids.”

  “Exactly. You are our tomorrow, and we don’t want to mess anything up.”

  “But if it’s so scary how come you do it? How can you do it every day?”

  Ms. Trepky scooted her chair back and leaned toward me. Even through her glasses I could see her looking at me very, very closely.

  “How important are these things that scare you?”

  I didn’t even have to think about that one. “The most important.”

  She nodded. “Precisely. If they weren’t, or if you didn’t care deeply about them, they wouldn’t scare you. And so you do them anyway.”

  “So how do you not be scared?”

  “You don’t,” she said. “But you get better at the doing-it-anyway part, even when you risk failure. And that, in my mind, is the perfect definition of courage.”

  We were quiet for a minute, and I tried to make sense of it. Maybe there were also two Ms. Trepkys, the Regular Confident One and the Shy Frightened One. And maybe the Frightened Ms. Trepky made the same shrieks and screams and moans that Scared Me made. Maybe the trick for Confident Ms. Trepky wasn’t knowing how to make the wailing go away, but learning how to dance to it.

  “Thanks, Ms. Trepky,” I said.

  I didn’t know if I was going to be able to be brave like Ms. Trepky, but I didn’t really have a choice. I had too many important, scary things coming up.

  “Libby,” Ms. Trepky said. I looked back at her from the classroom door. She hesitated, mouth open like she was searching for words, and I waited. Finally she said, “Good work in my class, Libby.”

  A New Doctor

  A few days after talking with Ms. Trepky my mom checked me out of school half an hour early.

  I flopped into the backseat and dropped my backpack on the floor. It seemed like so many worry whirlpools—baby worry, Mr. Trent Hickman worry, Talia’s worries—were swirling around in my mind into one big blustery mess.

  “How was school?” Mom asked.

  “It was good,” I said, trying not to pick at my nails. Sometimes I did that when I was so focused and anxious about something.

  Mom cleared her throat and looked back at me, so I knew she was going to tell me something important. “Honey, do you … do you remember when you were taking piano lessons and things were really, really hard? And I told you I’d look into something?”

  I nodded. Was Mom going to sign me back up for piano?

  Mom kept going. “Sweetie, I know things are going on with Talia and school and other things making you anxious and … well, if it’s okay, I’m going to take you to a new doctor’s office because I think they might have some ideas.”

  “A doctor? What kind?”

  “It’s called a … I think she’s a neuroscientist. Or a psychologist.”

  “A neuropsychologist.”

  “Sure, that works. Is that okay? We’re just going to talk to her.”

  My mom was looking at me, both hands on the wheel, and she looked nervous to be asking me this, like maybe it would hurt my feelings. I smiled at Mom and her shoulders relaxed.

  “Okay,” I said.

  This doctor’s office was in a brown brick building about twenty minutes away. This office had the puffy gray chairs,
landscape paintings, and latex-and-disinfectant smell like my other doctors’ offices. Mom checked us in, then a nurse in turquoise scrubs brought us to the back. Like normal.

  Except this time it was slightly different. This time I didn’t take my shoes off and stand on the scale, and this time they didn’t take my blood pressure. And when we got to the office in the back there wasn’t a doctor’s table covered in paper for me to lie on. Instead, more chairs and a desk.

  Then a woman came in who was only a few inches taller than me and had brown skin and the brightest smile. “I’m Dr. Prasad,” she said, coming straight over to me. “And you’re Libby?”

  I shook her hand and smiled back. I already liked Dr. Prasad.

  “Yes,” I said.

  And that’s how the weirdest doctor visit I ever had began. Dr. Prasad asked me a lot of questions at first. She asked me if I liked school, and what parts I liked. I told her I definitely didn’t like math. She asked me about my friends. She asked if it was hard for me to make friends. I told her I liked eating lunch in the library, because with doctors you’re supposed to tell the truth, and I told her about Talia. She asked me lots of questions about how I had made friends with her. She asked me if I knew the difference between anxiety and fear and I said of course and she smiled and asked me if I felt anxious a lot.

  Then we did some game-style tests. There were flash cards with symbols and sounds that I had to memorize, and a game on the computer where I had to click the space bar when I saw a certain letter. Some of the test games were easy and some were a lot harder than they seemed.

  Then we waited a bit, and then Dr. Prasad and Mom went into another room and talked by themselves. I read a National Geographic magazine.

  When they came back out I couldn’t read the expression on Mom’s face. It was almost like she’d been crying, but not. Like she was sad and also relieved, like she was gearing up and also ready to lie down.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Libby,” said Dr. Prasad. “Keep working hard in school.”

  I nodded.

  “Thank you,” said Mom, like she really meant it. Like after a couple of hours they were now the best of friends.

  I was ready to leave, which was unusual for me and doctors’ offices. Dr. Prasad was maybe the nicest doctor ever, but I felt like something that had been under the microscope for too long.

  NLD

  Mom and I walked out through the front office and took the elevator to the main floor without saying anything. I really wanted my mom to explain everything to me, but I was also trying to sort through everything that had happened and think it through in my head first, so being silent for a while was okay.

  Then when we got in the car, Mom turned it on and turned the radio down.

  “Remember when we told you about Turner syndrome?” Mom asked.

  “Yes. We had chocolate cake. Are we going to get chocolate cake?”

  Mom laughed. “If you want, but it’s not quite that kind of a chocolate cake moment. It’s another part of … everything.”

  “The icing.”

  She looked at me. “Do you remember the boy in your third-grade class who took medicine for ADHD?”

  “Do I have ADHD?”

  “No, no, you don’t, I’m trying to find an example…”

  “Oh.”

  “And maybe that’s not the right way to start … I don’t know. I’ve never had to explain … But, well, everyone learns differently, right?”

  I nodded.

  “And there are lots of things our brains do.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now,” Mom said. “Your brain is working totally fine. It’s just that a lot of times with Turner syndrome there’s something else that happens that influences the way your brain learns things.”

  “Like ADHD does.”

  “Sort of, yes, but this is different. It’s called a nonverbal learning disorder.”

  I looked at the deep line across the bridge of her nose. She still hadn’t started driving. “I have a learning disorder?”

  “I don’t like that word,” Mom said, and she kept talking, almost to herself. “The literature makes it sound … And she asked if you wanted special modifications or special testing…” Mom looked at me. “You don’t need special help on tests, do you?”

  “Special help?” I asked. “What do you mean? I ace my tests.”

  Mom looked ahead and nodded. “That’s what I said.” She took a deep breath, then looked at me. “But sweetie, this is part of why you … why you worry about things or get focused on things that are making you anxious. This is why certain things are especially tricky for you. Like learning piano.”

  I was so focused on trying to understand the worried way Mom kept looking at me that it took a second for the words to make sense.

  “This is why piano was hard?” I said finally.

  “Yes. A nonverbal learning disorder makes certain things more difficult, things that you can’t explain in words. Or maybe when you’re talking with people it’s harder to understand the things they don’t say out loud. Things like friends and piano stretch your brain in a really good way, but a hard way. Do you understand?”

  Her eyes searched my face like a flashlight scanning words across a page.

  I thought about Nonny’s Silent Questions, and her long fingers hopping across the piano keys like jumping spiders. This was why it took me so long to figure out about Silent Questions. This was why I couldn’t ever get my brain and hands to connect to the music no matter how much I practiced.

  I didn’t quite know how to feel about this new information, like it was both hot and cold at the same time. This was another way I was different. Another way I couldn’t do things the way Mom and Nonny could. If they were graceful swans, was I always going to be a fuzzy little goose?

  But on the other hand, this meant it wasn’t my fault. This meant it was science.

  I didn’t need to feel bad about science. Right?

  Or did this mean there were more and more things I couldn’t do?

  But then my mom said something.

  “I’m really proud of you, sweetheart.”

  Proud? I didn’t feel like anything to be proud of. I felt confused, trying to figure out how to fit the me that wanted to cry with relief next to the me that was stuck in a locked box with no key.

  I looked at my mom.

  She said, “You … I know you try so hard. With everything. That piano recital…”

  “The one that went supernova bad?”

  “No,” Mom said. “No, it’s like you played with your hands tied behind your back. And you got up and played anyway.”

  I looked at my knees. There was too much heat in the car. The hot-behind-your-eyes kind of heat, and what-if-there-are-lots-of-things-I-can’t-do heat, and mom-is-proud heat. It’s not that I would be embarrassed to cry when it’s just my mom, but I never know what to do in that kind of heat. Such serious, somber heat. It makes me fidgety. I had to let out some of the steam.

  So I sat on my hands, lifted my feet onto the dashboard, and started humming my old piano piece while wiggling my toes.

  Mom laughed, and we pulled out of the parking lot. I hoped she knew what I was trying to say inside the joke. A different kind of inside joke.

  And some of the behind-the-eyes-heat went away.

  For now.

  There’s a Monster at the End of This Brain

  That night Nonny looked pale. Paler than normal, which is saying a lot. Looking dangerously close to the gray-faced-nausea type of pale from before. She kept saying she was fine, but I could tell she wasn’t feeling well.

  I boiled some water and made her some orange marmalade toast and herbal tea. Mom and Dad were out on a date together, but Mom had taught me how to make tea, even though I’d broken a couple of mugs in the beginning. Still, though, it was kind of strange being alone in the kitchen.

  Nonny was lying on the couch, her eyes closed, her long dark hair draping down to the floor, and if I was a goo
d artist I would have wanted to paint her. I think it was the orangey smell of the tea that made her look over at me, and she smiled. I was glad to see a touch of color in her cheeks when she did.

  “Oh, you. You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

  I put the mug and the plate of toast on the coffee table by the couch. Nonny curled herself up and I sat down at her feet. She took the mug in both hands and breathed in the steam and sighed when she took a sip.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’re my favorite sister.”

  “I better be,” I said.

  She took another sip and a bite of toast. After a minute she said, “I heard you went to the doctor today.”

  I tucked my feet under me. “Yeah.”

  “Usually you like the doctor.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But not this one?”

  “I liked her a lot.”

  Another sip of tea. This time I knew she was asking me a Silent Question.

  “It’s weird…,” I said. I didn’t really know what exactly was bothering me. “It’s hard to explain.”

  She kept going with the Silent Question.

  “It’s like…,” I started. “It’s like they told me there’s something sort of controlling how I think. I mean, not exactly, but something at least kind of influencing the way I think. That … that’s weird. If … if that’s true, if something in my brain really is different, then I … I don’t know what’s me and what’s … controlling me.”

  “I get that,” Nonny said. “But I don’t think they mean something’s inside your brain controlling you. It’s the way your particular brain is built. It’s you.”

  “But it’s a different thing,” I said. “I mean, it means my brain works a certain way. A different way. So then, what if I didn’t have that thing? Wouldn’t that mean I’m a different person?”

  “Then you’d be a different person,” Nonny said. “But you’re not.”

  “I guess.”

  Nonny put the mug back on the table and sat up taller. “Think of it this way. Tell me something you learned at school today.”