• • •
The sky breaks with the blue-gray haze of dawn, and the sun’s light bleeds onto the horizon east of us. The zeppelin lowers between our houses to let us off at our windows. I wave to Alessandro and Chiara from my tree platform. Alessandro tugs at the silver cord tied to the Luna figurehead. Fireflies dance around the zeppelin as it begins to shrink, transforming back into the wooden toy ship.
I climb in through the window and scramble over to my desk. My sketch pad is already open to a fresh sheet of paper, and I grab the first pencil I find. There’s no time to be choosy—I need to get it all down. All the visions of shooting stars and magical dust. The big, beautiful moon staring at us. Every moment I spent in the heavens.
I close my eyes, conjuring the round, silver moon. Her beautiful, craggy face. And the moondust—the shimmering, soft clumps of powder, dancing through the heavens. I push past the pain in my already sore arm and finish the last little peaks and valleys on the moon. I take a step back to look at my drawing in the soft dawn light filtering through my curtains. The moon stares back at me, not exactly the same moon I saw in person, but close enough.
“There will be time to get you looking just right.” I smile.
Before dropping me off, Alessandro and Chiara promised another trip. They even let me keep the leather bomber jacket from the closet so I’ll be ready for next time.
Birds begin their morning songs, and a soft pattering of snow taps against my window. My clock reads 6:45. Mom and Dad will be waking up soon and the day will begin. Back to life as it was before.
But maybe not entirely. Maybe now it’s a little different.
I creep from my room and down the hall, drawing in hand. Dad’s door is partially open, and I push my way into his room. His snores echo and bounce off the walls. His hospital bed is squeezed in next to the regular guest bed. I stare at him for a moment, taking in his messy black hair and big nose. My heart twitches. I swallow back the tears pooling in my eyes and place the drawing of the moon on his nightstand. No moondust just yet. No shooting star.
Maybe this tiny bit of magic can make Dad feel a little better.
Chapter 11
Doctor’s offices are always cold and stink like those antiseptic wipes. I shift back and forth on the exam table, the sanitary paper crinkling underneath me. The harsh, fluorescent light illuminates every nook and cranny in the tiny white room. There’s no place to hide. Mom sits nearby on a black plastic chair. Her knee bounces up and down as we await Dr. Tucker’s arrival.
It always seems like we’re waiting for something.
I wipe the sleep from my eyes. Mom woke me up an hour after I finally dozed off this morning. But it’s not like I would’ve gotten much sleep anyway. My head is full from my night spent zipping past the stars and all the way up to the moon. It was weird waking up, my adventure burned away by the bright light of morning. I wouldn’t have believed any of it really happened if I didn’t see the jacket Chiara and Alessandro let me keep hanging in my closet.
Dr. Tucker opens the door, followed by a woman in a white coat I haven’t seen before.
“How are we doing, Luna?” Dr. Tucker asks while checking a clipboard. He looks up, light reflecting off his perfect white smile. His black hair is cut short. A set of bushy eyebrows sits atop his brown eyes, narrowing at the bridge of his nose. His skin is smooth and dark, except for a mole almost the size of a dime right on his jaw, about the same shade of his hair. Sometimes I stare at it when he’s talking so he thinks I’m still paying attention. He’s kind, and his smile always feels genuine. He doesn’t look at me like I’m some wounded kitten.
“My face is still broken,” I say. “Not great.”
“Luna.” Mom shakes her head. “Be nice.”
“It’s fine, Sofia. Honesty helps us fix problems.” He gestures to the tall, blond woman in the lab coat. “This is Dr. Manikowski. She’s a radiologist.” She smiles, her teeth slightly crooked, red lipstick bleeding from her mouth onto pale white skin.
“Good morning, Luna.” She puts her hand out and I shake it. “I’ll be taking your X-rays today.”
“May I remove your mask?” Dr. Tucker asks.
I nod.
He unstraps it. It feels good when the air hits my clammy skin. The scars itch a little, and I put my hands under my back so I don’t accidentally scratch at them. There’s a mirror in the room, and I want to ask him to help me up so I can see myself. Really see what I look like since there are no mirrors in my house. Not just a distorted view in puddles or a half glance in car mirrors.
A knot forms in my stomach. I think of Nonna Bianchini. If she thought the mask was bad, I can only imagine what she’d think of seeing me without it. It’s one thing to wear a mask. It’s another to actually see the monster underneath.
“Will the X-rays hurt?” I ask.
“No. Of course not.” Dr. Tucker gestures for me to hop down from the table. Mom and I follow after him and Dr. Manikowski into the X-ray room, where Dr. Manikowski helps me lie down on a different table. Above me is the X-ray machine, a white plastic contraption with a camera on the end.
I stare into the camera, its eye cold and unblinking. It’s hard to move. I try wriggling, but the machine is only a foot above my body. This must be what it feels like for crickets or worms right before they are devoured by birds. Alone, pinned down, and unable to look anywhere else but into the unfeeling eye of their predator.
I squeeze my eyes shut and think of the heavens. Of the bigness of space. Large, wide, dark, and open. Nothing but the stars and the moon.
“It’ll take only about ten minutes,” she says. “We just need you to lie still and move your head when I tell you to.”
Dr. Manikowski places foam pads on either side of my face to keep it still, her hands small and slightly cold against my warm skin. They place a heavy black vest on my chest.
“Sofia, you’ll have to step out while the X-rays are being taken,” I hear Dr. Tucker say.
I can’t see anyone, only the black camera inside the hulking white machine.
“Okay, Luna, I’ll take the X-ray on the count of three. Then I’ll reposition you,” Dr. Manikowski says. “One, two, three.”
She presses a button, moves out of the room, and the machine makes a clicking noise. I wonder what it would be like to be Dr. Manikowski. A bone photographer. Instead of taking pictures of mountain ridges or celebrities, she takes photos of people’s skeletons. Do my bones look different to her? Or do we all look the same on the inside?
Dr. Manikowski reenters, her smiling face looming over mine. “Very good, Luna. Now you’ll want to tuck your chin closer to your chest and hold that position really still.”
After a while the camera feels less cramped. Less like a giant bird waiting to gulp me down. More like my aunt Therese’s pug poking her face against mine when I try to nap on the couch. It isn’t comfortable, but more bearable.
She has me tilt my head up, and then I have to lie on my left side. She takes another X-ray of my full face. Dr. Manikowski smiles.
“You’re doing really good, Luna,” she says. “But we’re going to need you to lie down on your right side now so I can get an X-ray of the left portion of your skull. Now, this might hurt a little.”
She directs me onto my right side, cradling my head like I was a baby, before gently laying me against the hard exam table. It hurts lying directly on the broken side of my face with no pillow or support. The scars begin to feel even itchier, growing hot and sweaty, sticking to the table like when your legs stick to a car’s leather seats in the summer.
The camera clicks, but Dr. Manikowski shakes her head. “You can’t move, Luna. You need to do your best to stay still so I can get a good X-ray.”
“It really hurts,” I say. “I’m getting a headache.”
She touches my hand. Her red nail polish matches her lipstick. “I know, but once we get this one, you’re done with X-rays.”
The camera clicks again, and she reenters to ex
amine the X-ray. “Luna, we really need you to stay still. Dr. Tucker,” Dr. Manikowski calls into the hallway. “Will you please hold her still while I take the picture?”
After a few seconds Dr. Tucker’s face beams down at me. “Hi, Luna. This’ll take only a moment,” he says. He holds the foam gently and keeps me still.
My face throbs even more, burning against the exam table. It’s not Dr. Tucker’s fault, but it feels like being forced under water.
The camera clicks.
“All done,” he says, removing his X-ray vest and helping me into a seated position. He calls Mom into the room.
She puts her hand on my knee. “You did a good job, sweetheart.”
Dr. Manikowski pulls the X-rays up on the large computer screen. My skull looms white and hazy, like a ghost against the black background. The right side where my fracture happened looks odd, like a puzzle piece being jammed into the wrong spot.
Dr. Tucker shakes his head, looks down at his chart, and back up at the X-rays. “While her cheek fracture is healing nicely because there was no dislocation and the compression mask is holding everything in place, the nasal fracture isn’t healing like we thought it would.”
“What do you mean?” Mom asks, her voice raised. “I thought everything was on schedule.”
“Luna’s nasal fracture is healing, just not properly.” He takes a step back, tapping a finger against his lips. He circles the X-ray image of my nose with the same finger. “The skin on her right nostril is still badly burned, and the bones in her nose aren’t fitting together. As a result, her nose is deformed. If not addressed, this can cause breathing issues.”
The room begins to spin. Everything feels hazy, and my mind travels to the photos of the wolf man in my Ripley’s Believe It or Not book. He toured with circuses, his face covered in thick patches of hair, his eyes yellow. I think of the Phantom and his mask. How he spent his entire life hidden away in the dark corners of the opera house. My stomach dips.
Deformed. Ugly.
“What can be done?” Mom croaks. “What can you do?”
“There are surgeries,” Dr. Tucker explains. He places his clipboard on the table and crosses his arms over his chest.
“And surgery will fix it, right?” she says. “Her face will look like it did before.”
“The surgeries will improve her appearance. We can reset the bones into proper alignment. We’d need to take a small skin graft from her abdomen and transplant it onto the right nostril,” Dr. Tucker says. “But there’s no promise that she’ll look the same as she did prior to the accident.”
Mom’s lips quirk down. Her eyes are wet, but she doesn’t let the tears fall. She moves her hand to cover her mouth, her fingers trembling against her cheek.
Her hand moves from her face and over her blond curls. She lets out a shaky breath. “How long is recovery? How much will it cost? We’ve already spent so much time and money.”
I can’t look at her anymore. I stare past Dr. Tucker’s shoulder at the X-ray of my broken face, unable to pay attention to his response. When I was still in the hospital, Dr. Tucker and the other doctors were so hopeful about everything. The scars would fade. My face would heal smoothly. They all said these things. They all promised life would go back to normal. But going back to before—to normal—is no longer an option. Was never an option, I guess.
The X-ray goes blurry as tears fall down my cheeks. A loud, heaving sound moves from my stomach, up my throat, and out into the doctor’s office. The tips of my fingers feel numb. My head is cloudy.
I look through the tears at Mom. Her eyes are red, her face wet like mine. I cry even harder. When I was eight her sister, my aunt Marie, died. The same sister we’d visit to drink tea. We were making breakfast in the kitchen when the phone rang. We all knew Aunt Marie was sick. She had cervical cancer and things were progressing fast. But I remember Mom’s movements when she picked up the phone this time: the nod of her head, how she dropped the phone on the counter as if it were a snake that had bitten her. Her face looked the same as it does now: splotchy, red, and twisted in pain. She grabbed me in a hug and we sat on the kitchen floor for what felt like hours, her head on my shoulder. Grief is like a tornado, crushing even the sturdiest buildings.
Mom takes my hand, wrapping her arm around my shoulder.
Dr. Tucker hands us each a tissue.
She blows her nose. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“Don’t apologize, Sofia,” Dr. Tucker says. “It’s still a lot to take in.”
He looks at me, a weak smile on his lips. “It’s going to be fine, Luna,” he says. “The surgery will promote a vast improvement over what the X-ray is showing us now.”
I wipe the tears from my cheeks. The numbness in my fingers creeps up my hands as the idea of surgery begins to sink in, feeling more like a necessity. It’s going to be fine? Who is he trying to reassure?
“It’s common for those who have had craniofacial breaks to undergo this type of surgery.” Dr. Tucker pats me on the shoulder.
Mom takes a deep breath to steady herself.
He takes up my chart again and looks through the pages. “Rhinoplasty is a common surgery, so the initial procedure should be very short. But there’s always going to be risk with any surgery. For example, after we perform the skin grafting, there may be some permanent scarring along the right nostril.”
“Luna.” Mom looks at me, eyes rimmed red and mascara running down her cheeks. “We need to talk to your dad first, but what do you want to do?”
I don’t like having to choose. Mom says I’m indecisive because I was born a Libra, but I think it’s because making a decision feels so final. Once it’s made, that’s the path I’m on. Everything is set in stone.
I think of last night. Of being high up above Staten Island where none of this mattered. Alessandro, Chiara, the baby stars. All of that feels years away now.
“I’m scared.” I squeeze my mom’s hand and she squeezes back. I’m scared that I’ll never be put back together again. That I’ll have to take school photos in a compression mask. Or that people will stare at my burns and disfigured nose as I walk across the stage years from now at my high school graduation. That’ll I’ll be Humpty Dumpty forever.
“If it helps me look normal—even just a little bit—I’ll do it,” I say, even though it would be so easy to keep hiding behind my mask.
Dr. Tucker nods. “We’ll make sure things go as smoothly as possible.”
Mom helps me hop down from the table, and Dr. Manikowski assists in putting my mask back on as Mom and Dr. Tucker discuss the surgery. She pulls the strap tight around my head, ripping and adjusting the Velcro, giving me another headache. The numbness begins to fade, replaced by nausea.
I watch Mom’s expression slowly relax as Dr. Tucker goes down a list of presurgery requirements. Mom likes lists. She says they keep her mind from floating away.
“It’ll be okay, right?” she asks Dr. Tucker.
“Yes,” he replies. “Luna’s strong.”
I have to be strong for Mom, Dad, Nonna, and everyone else. But I just want to be a kid again. I want this to all go away.
Chapter 12
We’ve got to go to the deli before your therapy appointment,” Mom says while pulling out of the parking lot of Dr. Tucker’s office. “Uncle Mike needs us. You can do your homework there.”
I try not to think about everything Dr. Tucker just told us, doing all I can to push that and Mom crying out of my mind. Exhaustion pulls at my eyelids.
I cross my arms over my chest. “I want to go home. I don’t need therapy anyway.”
It’s almost eleven thirty. Alessandro and Chiara have to be awake by now. They’re probably busy with the baby stars. Maybe they’re helping their mom make potions from the moondust we collected last night. What if they stopped by to see me?
“Well, the fact that you’re so eager to go home and skip out on a trip to the deli makes me think otherwise,” Mom says. “You always love going to th
e deli.”
“It’s not that.”
She arches an eyebrow up at me.
I don’t say a word about Chiara and Alessandro.
It takes us a long time to pull out of the parking lot and onto the street. There’s more traffic than usual for a Friday morning, with everyone busy rushing around for the best after-Thanksgiving deals. No doubt my cousins are already at the mall, shopping for Christmas presents. Last year Rocco and I ended up buying each other the same gift: a pair of lime-green socks with hamburgers on them. I don’t know when I’ll do my shopping this year. Or even if we’ll be having Christmas with the family. Especially after Mom’s fight with Nonna.
Mom adjusts her hands on the steering wheel. My stomach lurches. On her left ring finger is a pale indentation where her wedding band should be.
I look out the window, focused on the passing cars. “This is stupid. I hate this. I’ve already had to see one doctor today.”
“Nowadays you hate everything but being in your room,” Mom says. “You’re going to the appointment after the deli. Get with the program.”
She turns up the radio and we drive the rest of the way in silence. I drum my fingers on my sketch pad. The empty space on Mom’s ring finger is harsh in the bright sunshine.
I press my forehead to the window and try to conjure up memories of last night’s trip. That nagging thought of whether Alessandro and Chiara will come over to visit nips at me. What if they only brought me up with them in the first place because they felt bad when they saw my dumb mask and broken face? What if they really don’t like me at all?
“I need to talk about Dr. Tucker’s plan with your father.” Mom’s voice cuts through my panic.
My head feels heavy. I take a deep breath and squeeze my eyes shut.
The car comes to a stop. “We’re here, Luna.”
I open my eyes. The big red, green, and white sign for Bianchini’s Deli catches the sunlight. Panic rises in my chest. This is my first time here since before the accident.
Mom grabs her purse from the backseat, and I spy the empty space on her ring finger again. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it before. She could have taken it off at any time, with all the arguing Mom and Dad do and how much she hates him going to the deli when he’s not feeling well . . . I can’t believe I wasn’t paying attention.
The Trouble with Shooting Stars Page 9