Mrs. Ruiz looks over her shoulder at Tailee ducking farther into the seat. “That would be nice, but we’ll have to see what Tailee’s schedule is like.” She shrugs off the idea in that way parents do when they’re lying about something. She leans down to kiss me on my left cheek before heading toward Bianchini’s. “It was nice seeing you.”
“Have a good day.” Mom unlocks the car, and I hop in before we see anyone else we know.
I take a deep breath.
Mom starts the car without saying a word. Guilt presses down on my shoulders.
I stare out the window, unable to look at her.
Of course Tailee wouldn’t want to see me. It’s not like I’ve tried talking to her. Does she hate me now?
My ugly white mask catches my attention in the side mirror. The scuff mark on the bridge of the nose that won’t rub out no matter how hard I try. The scratchy Velcro strap that’s yellowing with age. The searing red scars peeking out from behind the mask like cracks in fine china. Mom couldn’t get rid of every mirror.
• • •
Dr. Miles’s office is filled with toys and games. Not at all what I imagined a therapist’s office would look like. I sit on a large overstuffed couch in front of a table with colored pencils, charcoals, paints, and stacks of heavy paper.
Therapy is the one thing Mom and Dad agree on these days. They think it will make me feel better. But I don’t want to tell people how I’m feeling.
Dr. Miles opens the door and smiles. Her curly red hair is swept back in a low ponytail, and her green eyes twinkle behind her glasses. A smattering of freckles covers her light-brown skin. Some of them pepper her nose, just like mine.
“Good afternoon, Luna,” she says. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She walks over to her desk and unlocks a file cabinet, pulling out a manila folder. “You’re twelve years old, I see. That means you’re in the seventh grade, right? Do you like school?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t been there for a few months because of what happened.” I shift my attention to the hammock full of stuffed animals in the corner. In the heap of teddy bears, elephants, and rabbits there is a bat. An animal that prefers the moon and stars to the sun. An animal like me.
I think of Alessandro, Chiara, and the tiny stars sleeping in their bassinets. How are they doing now? When will they feel better enough to be released? I can almost see the shimmering city lights below and the bright, fiery stars surrounding us in the darkness. I can almost feel the frosty wind nipping at my face and hands.
“Luna?”
I tear my eyes away from the stuffed bat and look at Dr. Miles. She’s sitting on the chair across from the couch, legs crossed, my chart and a yellow legal pad on her lap. “Do you know why your parents thought it would be good for us to meet?”
“Mom says it’s so I can talk about my feelings with someone.”
“That’s what I’m here for. We can discuss anything you want,” she says. “Your mom says you’ve been having trouble sleeping. Do you agree?”
Dr. Miles wouldn’t believe me if I told her about the Sapientis. She’d never guess about the magic and flying up into the sky. I savor this secret like a piece of chocolate.
“I guess so.”
“Is it because you can’t stay asleep, or do you have trouble falling asleep?”
“Both, really.”
“Have you been having nightmares?” Dr. Miles asks, pulling me from my thoughts once more.
The clock on the wall reads 2:15, which means another forty-five minutes of this. “A few, I guess. When I do sleep.”
Dr. Miles adjusts her glasses. “Can you describe them for me?”
“I don’t want to.” I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to keep thoughts of the car wreck away.
“When people go through bad experiences, our brains will sometimes replay the trauma over and over. Other people completely forget. It’s like their brains are wiped.”
“I wish I could forget,” I say. “It’s like I can hear the tires screeching and smell the burning rubber. Sometimes I wake up, sweating, because I can feel shards of glass slicing my face.” I curl my arms around a pillow and press my face into it. Tears squeeze from my eyes, soaking deep into the pillow’s fabric. “Why’d it have to happen right before school started? I could be there with all my friends. Why’d it have to happen at all?”
Dr. Miles’s chair creaks. She presses a tissue into my hand.
I look up from the pillow and scrub at my cheeks with the tissue. “I just want to feel normal.”
“It’s hard feeling happy or normal when you can’t forget the bad thing that happened,” Dr. Miles says.
“Yeah.”
“Do you find it hard to do things you used to enjoy?”
“My favorite thing to do is draw.” I cross my arms over my chest. “I still like doing that.”
She smiles. “That’s wonderful. What do you like to draw?”
“Everything, really,” I say. “I’ve been drawing the sky a lot. The moon and stars.”
“That sounds lovely.” Dr. Miles scribbles in her notepad. “Your mom says you used to love hanging out with your cousins and friends. How do you feel about seeing them?”
“Used to” hangs in the air between us.
I think of sleeping over at Tailee’s house and eating cheeseburgers and corn on the cob her dad grilled. We’d stay up late under the blanket fort we built in her living room, talking about our crushes and playing her brother’s video games. Then Tailee would come over after the accident, chatting like nothing was wrong, and I wasn’t able to respond. The distance between us as far away as the moon is from earth.
“Are you still with me, Luna?” Dr. Miles asks.
“Can we not talk about it anymore?” I pick up a piece of clean white paper from the stack and sit on the floor in front of the table.
My arm still hurts and there’s nothing I really feel like drawing, but I’d rather deal with a sore arm than think any more about how happy I used to be. I start with a regular pencil, one sharp enough to create crisp angles and curves. Some artists begin with color, but that feels backward to me, like putting frosting on the bottom of the baking pan before the cake batter. Mom says I never liked coloring books, even as a little kid. Coloring books feel like living in someone else’s story. I’d rather color in my own drawings.
The edge of Dad’s jawline takes shape on the page. A little shading on the left side of his face, his curly black hair growing out of the whiteness. That’s what I like best about drawing. It makes the thoughts in my head stop for a moment. They race from my brain, down my spinal cord, into my left arm, and shoot out of my fingers into the pencil.
Dr. Miles tries again. “You’re a very talented artist.”
I draw until I’ve created a world out of nothingness on the page. Entire worlds, entire little universes of people and places and things live between my head and the empty sheets of paper. It’s fun discovering them with my pencil, digging them out of the blankness like an archeologist. Every time I draw, I see something new.
Dr. Miles scoots off her chair and sits down next to me on the floor. “What are you drawing?” She looks over my shoulder. Her perfume smells like lavender.
I don’t hide my drawing from her, too intent on getting the width of my dad’s eyes right. I add Mom next to Dad. Her long curly hair takes up most of the white space on the right side of the page. Her eyes are like mine, a soft hazel. They’re wide, too. She always looks curious or surprised, like there’s too much to see and she needs to make sure she doesn’t miss anything.
Dr. Miles grabs her own sheet of paper and a green colored pencil and begins to draw next to me. We sit in silence, the clock ticking the seconds away.
Mom’s face finally looks the way it should and I begin on my own, focusing most of my time on the ridge of my nose. It’s been so long since I’ve seen it correctly. The Bianchini beak. My nose makes me look like the rest of my family. It’s the most important part of my drawing.
> I create a sweep of freckles across my cheeks, nose, and forehead before starting on my dark springy curls.
“You got your eyes just right,” Dr. Miles says. “You’re lucky to have such long eyelashes.”
I sketch Mom’s left hand draped over my shoulder. Hands are hard to draw, but last summer I spent an entire month practicing them in art class. I carve a dark wedding band into her ring finger and go over it several times until the pencil nearly pierces the heavy, white paper.
“Why is the wedding band so important to you?”
I stare at Dr. Miles, her smile small and hesitant. Behind her, the clock reads 2:45.
I look at the picture of my family, and my cheeks grow hot. It’s how I see things, but not how they really are. My dad and I aren’t healed. I still have this mask and my nose may never look like the Bianchini beak ever again. And my parents aren’t healed either. They’re still broken too.
I wasted a perfectly good sheet of paper on a lie. I hold up the drawing and rip it in half. The tearing sound fills the silence. I rip it again and again until it’s nothing more than a flurry of tiny pieces.
If only I had a shooting star now. Everything could be wished back to how things were.
“I’m sorry, Luna.” Dr. Miles shakes her head. She picks up her own drawing and tosses it into the trash. “Before we end for the day, let’s talk about your therapy goals. This is your time, so what can we do that will be useful for you?”
The pieces of my drawing sit uselessly on the table in front of us. “I want to see my friends and not feel like I can’t talk. I want to sleep without having nightmares. I want my family to stop treating me like I’ll break.” My voice cracks, and I swallow the lump forming in my throat. “Can therapy help with all of that?”
Dr. Miles stares at me, head tilted. “Those are all very good ideas. We can certainly try figuring those out.”
“But it’s not a sure thing, is it?”
“It’ll take time, but with some work and patience, therapy can help you develop skills to achieve your goals.”
“We’ll see.” I stand, collecting the pieces of my drawing and tucking them into my coat pocket.
• • •
Snow falls steadily late into the night. So thick that it feels as if the entire house is being folded into giant bedsheets. All of New York, silent and still, snuggled up in fluffy white blankets of snow.
I sit on the window bench, listening to the quiet and watching for Chiara and Alessandro. The torn-up picture from Dr. Miles’s office is in front of me.
After my appointment, Mom and Dr. Miles had a conversation. Mom wasn’t too happy afterward. I don’t know what was said, but when we got home Mom kissed me on the forehead and didn’t make me come down when it was time for dinner.
My eyes move from the window and down to the torn-up drawing. I pick up one of the pieces—what looks like Dad’s left eye—and find the piece that fits next to it. Sometimes even Mom doesn’t know what to do to make me feel better. So she just lets me be until the sadness passes. But that’s been taking longer than it used to.
I find a piece that shows half my smile and dig through the pile of scraps for the other half. Putting together the puzzle that is my family’s happy ending.
A soft tapping at my window makes me jump. Chiara’s face is pressed against the glass. She waves. Her breath fogs the glass.
I lift the window.
“Are you coming tonight?” she asks.
“I thought you might’ve forgotten about me.” I scramble to my knees as a warm blast rushes in. Alessandro waves from the zeppelin’s wheel.
“Forget about you?” Chiara shakes her head. “You’re the only non-spazzatrici in the history of the world that we’ve taken up to the heavens with us. You’re pretty important.”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .”
“So, are you coming or what?”
Before I think to say yes, I leap from the window bench and grab the coat Chiara and Alessandro let me keep.
“What’s on the agenda tonight? More moon sweeping?” I quickly tug on a pair of jeans and lace up some heavy snow boots.
Chiara grins. “Tonight you’ll meet the stars.”
Chapter 14
Alessandro abandons the wheel and runs to help me jump down from my tree platform. Salt crunches under my boots.
“Should keep the snow from piling up,” Alessandro says.
A sharp gust of wind kicks up around us, and flurries of snow pelt our faces. Chiara hands me a pair of mittens and a heavy knit hat. Though it’s not as cold as it could be because of the zeppelin’s magic, it’s still much colder than last night.
“Storm’s getting worse.” Alessandro hurries back to his station. “We need to get past the snow clouds fast. Start helping Chiara store the buckets and brooms in the closet.”
There’s no time to chat as Chiara and I rush to secure equipment for takeoff. Alessandro spins the wheel slowly and carefully to ensure we don’t get stuck between the two houses.
“Get ready. We’re leaving,” Alessandro calls out.
The zeppelin wobbles in the air like a top just about to fall. The lanterns flicker. The Stella Cadente stalls.
My stomach drops. “What’s going on?”
“Hold on!” Alessandro yells.
The ship could crash to the ground and leave smoldering wreckage.
I swallow hard. Like the car accident.
“We need more power,” Chiara says.
She continues to float between our houses, unmoving.
Alessandro pulls a lever by the wheel. A mechanical noise booms over the storm. Chiara tugs at my arm and leads me to the back of the ship. A large brass propeller slides out from underneath and hooks itself to the back, replacing a smaller propeller. It kicks up and cuts through the air like knives, its whir low and fast. A consistent hum competes with the whistling, twisting wind.
“It’s the only way we’ll push through the storm clouds.” Chiara holds tight to the railing. “Grab on to something. It’s going to be bumpy for a while.”
I grip the railing and hold my breath to keep from vomiting over the side of the Stella Cadente.
Chiara grabs my hand. “Don’t worry,” she says. “Alessandro’s one of the best captains around. He’ll get us out of this safely. Do you have your cornicello?”
I nod.
“Then there’s nothing to worry about. I promise.” She squeezes my hand.
The ship dips again. I clamp my eyes shut. That terrible Wednesday before Labor Day fills the darkness. Dad slamming on the brakes, his arm flung across my chest. The huge SUV ramming into us from the side. Our car flipping through the air like a tin can. The airbag colliding with my face and shards of glass cutting up my arms. Fire. Pain. Blackness.
The burns on my face start to throb. My hands and head start feeling cramped and sweaty in the wool hat and mittens.
I take deep, shaking breaths, trying to steady myself.
“What’s wrong?” Chiara asks, wrapping her other arm around my shoulders. “You look sick. What’s the matter?”
“I’m scared of falling out of the sky.” My voice quivers and sounds so small, so far away. Unlike my real voice at all. “I don’t want to die.”
“You’re not gonna die,” Chiara says. “This is normal during a storm.” She pats me on the back. “It’s all gonna be great. We’ll be up with the stars soon. Hey! I bet I can catch more snowflakes on my tongue than you can.”
Chiara tilts her head back, her scarf whipping behind her in the wind. She sticks out her tongue as snowflakes cling to her hair and eyelashes. “There, I got one. Now two . . . three . . . four.” She counts all the snowflakes, her voice sounding silly as she counts with her tongue out.
I laugh. “I can’t even tell what you’re saying.”
Chiara stops and smiles at me. “It’s harder than it looks. You try.”
She grabs my hand and holds tight. “Do it like this!” She sticks out her tongue
again as several snowflakes fall onto her cheeks and chin. “See?” I tilt my head back, doing my best to stick out my tongue. My jawbone on the right side of my face is still sore, and the part of my mask keeping it in place makes it hard to push my tongue past my lips.
“I’m not very good at this,” I say, frustrated. What used to come so easy for me is now a struggle, even things as simple as brushing my hair and teeth.
“Keep trying,” Chiara says. “You can do it.”
I push through the pain and can finally stick out half of my tongue. Chiara dances me away from the railing and around the deck, our tongues out and heads back. She sings a song in Italian as she bounces us up and down. Wind lashes at our cheeks and salt crunches under our boots.
I look up and watch the snow drift underneath the balloon. One tiny snowflake lands on the very tip of my tongue, melting instantly and sending a chill down my spine.
My eyes widen and I jump. “I did it!”
Chiara giggles. “You caught one.”
Another lands on my tongue and then another. I laugh, spinning and giggling along with Chiara until my stomach aches. This is the most normal I’ve felt since the accident. Twirling on a flying ship with a little girl who sweeps the moon and can make doll furniture big with the snap of her fingers. Catching snowflakes on our tongues. I feel okay.
“Are you two going to help, or are you just gonna play all night?” Alessandro stands behind the wheel, hands on his hips.
Chiara and I stop spinning and look around. The Stella Cadente has stopped rocking. Darkness. Stars. The moon hangs above our heads, silver and smiling. Only a few clouds float around us. Snow drifts in sprinkles of white. Far, far beneath us is a thick layer of snow clouds.
We made it through the worst of the storm.
Chiara claps her hands. “See?” A large smile stretches across her face. “We’re safe. We made it.”
I laugh again and toss my head back in relief. “You were right, Chiara.”
“Well?” Alessandro taps his foot on the deck, glaring at Chiara and me. “Grab the ladles. We’re almost to Lynx.”
“We’re not going to the moon at all tonight?” I ask.
The Trouble with Shooting Stars Page 11