DEDICATION
For my former students,
who never stopped asking me
about that book I was writing.
EPIGRAPH
I HAVE LOVED THE STARS TOO FONDLY
TO BE FEARFUL OF THE NIGHT.
—Sarah Williams, “The Old Astronomer”
CONTENTS
Dedication
Epigraph
Three Things
The Great T-Shirt Debate
Something Not Like Math
Frank
Let’s Go, Presidents!
The Sadness of Spaghetti
A Surprise Visitor
The Dragon
Revelations
Stories Served Cold
Scenes from a School Day
Cupcakes in Tuxedos
Unwelcome Surprises
Things That Don’t Make Sense
The Same, But Different
One More Thing
A Belated Adventure
Another Good-Bye
Saturdays
Sleeping Beauty
Out of Balance
Store-Bought Potatoes
Triple Word Score
Out of Balance
The Rotation of the Earth
Bad to Worse
Constellations
A Boy and His Dog
Strange Objects in the Sky
Forever
Accusations
The Healing Hearts Picnic
The Properties of Subtraction
The Thing About Promises
An Unexpected Visitor
A Sign
Harold and Edna
Follow the Light
Pillow Sleds
The List
Memories for Sale
Unknown Probability
Joe’s Bowl-a-Rama
The Role of Inverse Operations
Crossing the Street
Something Worth Forgetting
The Escape
The Observatory
Rewriting the Ending
The Birth of Stars
Made of Stardust
Okay
Stella
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
THREE THINGS
There were three things that Charlie Price should have noticed.
For one, the day was blustery and cold. Far too cold for a Cincinnati day in September. Charlie considered it just long enough to pull a jacket from the hallway closet before he walked out the door. The coat was blue. The sleeves were too short, stopping just before his wrists.
It was a coat more appropriate for eleven-year-old arms. Not his newly twelve-year-old arms that had seemed to grow five inches in a matter of weeks.
But Dad hadn’t had time to take him to the mall for a new coat yet. So Charlie yanked at the sleeves instead, willing them to be longer.
The second thing was Imogen. Not his actual sister, who was standing next to him, waiting to walk to school, but the one in the photograph on the wall. It was the last photograph they had taken as a whole family. They were on the beach. Charlie had already been a head taller than Mom, who wore a giant straw hat to cover her bald head. Her skin burned easily, even though the sun was smothered by clouds that day.
But if Charlie would have looked closer, instead of passing by the picture without a second glance like he did every day, he would have seen that the image of Imogen had started to fade. Just slightly, as if someone had taken a giant eraser to it.
And the third thing he should have noticed was the dog that seemed to trail behind Charlie like a shadow after he dropped Imogen off. It followed a few paces behind him, keeping an eye on the bright-red backpack that bobbed up and down as Charlie avoided the familiar cracks and juts of the sidewalk.
The dog followed Charlie as he passed the bakery on the corner. As he took the shortcut through the park. As he ducked under the bridge where strange words and symbols were painted in bold strokes and bright colors.
A chunk of Charlie’s granola bar fell from the package stuffed inside his pocket. Charlie didn’t notice as the dog gobbled it up but kept its eyes on him the entire time. If Charlie had turned around, he would have seen that it was Edna’s dog, Ruby, who sat outside the bakery while she worked. The one he liked to sneak treats to when Edna wasn’t looking.
He didn’t see her settle into a worn groove between two giant tree roots in the green space outside school, watching as Charlie stepped inside the large brick building that read Lincoln Middle School in metal lettering over the doors.
There were three things that Charlie should have noticed that day.
But he didn’t.
THE GREAT T-SHIRT DEBATE
Mr. Spencer’s classroom smelled like math. Eraser shavings and fresh pieces of loose leaf mixed with the slight scent of middle school sweat after gym class. Posters of old mathematicians in stuffy shirts with frilly collars lined the walls, and Mr. Spencer’s prized bobblehead collection nodded at Charlie from its perch on the windowsills. Miranda and Rohan were already at the whiteboard, dry-erase markers in hand, racing to solve what looked like some complex word problem Mr. Spencer had projected on a screen.
Charlie slipped into a seat. His seat. Two seats from the front in the third row from the door. They all had seats they had claimed, and Charlie was glad that this seat and the smells and the posters had been waiting for him at the first official Mathletes meeting.
Charlie pulled out a sandwich and a Post-it note that said apple from the sack lunch Dad had packed him the night before and sighed. The sandwich was a start—it wasn’t made with the good kind of bread Mom used to buy, but it was peanut butter, which was Charlie’s favorite. Ever since Mom died last April, Dad had started to leave notes around the house reminding him about parent-teacher conferences and paperwork he had to send to the school office and that kind of thing. But he wrote so many notes that nothing ever got done—which was why Charlie was staring at the word apple instead of eating one.
“Done,” Miranda yelled as she wrote her final answer, circling it with a flourish. “Three pennies, two nickels, eight dimes, and one quarter.” She slammed her marker down on the tray ledge and then pumped her arms in the air. Finally, she put them under her armpits and flapped around like a chicken. It was her signature end zone dance, but for math. It got old after a while, though the first few times were always funny.
Rohan threw his marker down and grunted. “I almost got you that time. You know these word problems aren’t my thing. But you give me anything with geometry and I’ve got you beat before we even start.”
“You wish,” Miranda said.
Mr. Spencer clapped from the back of the room. “Awesome work, guys!” He glanced at his stopwatch and got up from his desk. “That was fast. Thirty-two seconds. I’m really pleased with how the team is shaping up this year.”
“And with Charlie back now . . .” Rohan trailed off, unsure how to continue. Charlie hadn’t been able to finish out last year’s season. He had missed regionals. That was when Mom was really sick.
Mr. Spencer patted Charlie on the shoulder. “With Charlie back, we’ll be unstoppable. Summitview Prep won’t know what hit them in two weeks. I think we could be a contender for States this year. Speaking of which, with the first competition coming up, we need to talk about a very pressing matter.”
“T-shirts!” June squealed, looking up from her laptop. June took the notes each meeting, and she typically decorated them with a bunch of electronic smiley faces.
Each year at the Mathletes competition, they had a Terribl
e T-Shirt Award, and Mr. Spencer was especially proud of the fact that they’d had a four-year winning streak. Last year, it had been Charlie who had suggested their shirts say “We Love Pi,” with little dancing pi symbols all over them. A few even had actual googly eyes.
“I have an idea,” Miranda offered. “What if we have our shirts say ‘Mathletes: Acute Group of Mathematicians’ surrounded by smiling angles? All acute, of course.”
“Or,” Rohan said, “we could put irrational numbers on the shirt—you know, like pi and square root of ninety-nine and the symbol for the golden ratio.” He rose up on his toes. “And here would be the really great part.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Each one of the numbers would have a speech bubble that said, ‘Be rational—no one beats our team!’ And here’s the even greater part. The shirts will be sports jerseys, and instead of boring numbers on the back, we each iron on an irrational number! Amazing, huh?”
Charlie laughed. It was a pretty terrible idea, which actually made it genius. “I claim the golden ratio.”
“You can’t claim anything,” Miranda said. “We haven’t decided yet. You love geometry, Rohan. I thought you’d be all over my idea.”
“I like to be irrational more,” he replied.
“Clearly,” June said. “Should I put that in the notes?”
Mr. Spencer ran his hand through the hair he had left right as the bell rang. It was the end of the lunch period. “All right, guys. We’ll continue this conversation next time. But be thinking about which idea you want to choose.”
“I’m okay with either as long as they’re aqua or neon orange. Or tie-dye!” June said. “We’ll definitely win again this year. Five-peat, here we come!”
Mr. Spencer pulled a box off one of his bookcases. “Before you go, I want to give you the official Mathletes folders. The calendar for the year’s in there, and so is the parent permission form. Return it to me by next Wednesday at the latest.”
Charlie took the folder and tucked it under his stack of books. He had just thrown his brown lunch bag in the trash when Mr. Spencer said, “Charlie, could you hang back a second?”
He nodded as everyone else filed out of the classroom.
Mr. Spencer opened and closed his mouth as if trying to decide how to begin. “I just wanted to say that I’m really glad you came back. You’re great at math, and the team needs you. And you know your mom was our biggest cheerleader.”
Charlie remembered. Mom would sit in the front row of the competitions, waving her homemade Go math! pennant in the air and yelling out random math words when he got the answer right. Parabola! Equilateral! Pythagorean theorem!
“She’d be happy that you’re back with the team.”
“I know,” Charlie said. It was hard to think about, though.
Mom knew how much Charlie loved math. And he really did. Sure the competitions were fun and exciting and they always saw who could eat the most pizza afterward (normally Rohan). But what he loved most was how logical math was. Two plus two equaled four. A triangle always had three sides. The quadratic formula was always the same. It made sense.
And even though Mom wasn’t here to cheer him on and he couldn’t quite depend on Dad to actually put an apple in his lunch, two plus two still equaled four.
Math was something Charlie could count on.
SOMETHING NOT LIKE MATH
1:27.
1:28.
1:29.
“Charlie, do you have something you’d like to add?” Charlie looked up from his watch. Six faces stared back at him.
What Charlie wanted to add was that he didn’t want to be there in grief group. He’d rather be in the social studies class he was missing for it (even though they were studying geography). But he didn’t get a say when Dr. Miller called up before the school year started to suggest it, and Dad thought it was a good idea.
Dr. Miller leaned toward him. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses, and her eyebrows rose. She nodded at him, just slightly. Charlie was certain that they taught the look in counselor school and didn’t let you graduate until you perfected it. It was a look that said, I’m here for you, and Charlie didn’t want anything to do with it.
Next to Dr. Miller was Elliott. When Charlie wasn’t staring at his watch or concentrating on the exact spot where one linoleum tile met the next, he liked to observe the smattering of freckles that formed tiny constellations across her nose. He learned that she wrinkled her nose when she was nervous and blinked rapidly when she was uncomfortable. Her sneaker tapped the floor underneath their table the entire hour. They were good shoes—the kind you got at a fancy running store, where they studied how your feet moved as you jogged on a treadmill. They were the kind his mom wore before everything happened.
His favorite thing that Elliott did, and she didn’t do it often anymore, was when she’d let the smallest smile slip.
It was funny all you could notice when you really paid attention.
“Not really,” Charlie finally responded, filling the pause that felt like a canyon between him and the others. He wished he could hide behind his hair, which now covered his eyes and curled around his ears. Mom used to cut it the first Saturday of every month. She had been gone for a lot of Saturdays.
Dr. Miller sighed, jotting something in her notebook, and then clapped her hands.
“We’re going to do something a little bit different today.” She pulled a plastic tub out from under her chair.
Seven balloons, a stack of note cards, and ten pieces of string were in it. All of this added up to one of Dr. Miller’s crazy ideas, which Charlie was pretty sure she pulled from a book. The Idiot’s Guide to Grieving Children, probably.
She handed each of them a card and a pencil. “I thought we’d each write a note to the person we’re missing.”
“You mean the person who died, right?” Charlie glanced across the table at the only empty chair. The chair where his best friend, Frank, used to sit. The chair where Frank should have sat now. “I mean, let’s call it what it is.”
“Yes, good, Charlie.” Dr. Miller nodded as if he’d just made some giant breakthrough. “And then we’ll send our notes up in these balloons. I rented some helium.” She gestured toward the small tank behind her desk.
A note.
To his mom.
Dear Mom, I can’t believe you died. Love, Charlie
Dear Mom, I get so sick of everyone asking how I’m doing. How do they think I’m doing? Love, Charlie
Dear Mom, You died and all I got was this stupid support group with this lady who thinks that she knows how I feel and she doesn’t. Love, Charlie
Charlie crumpled the note card in front of him, crushing it in his fist. He heaved it across the room. It didn’t have far to go—the room was small and now felt even smaller. Still, it landed to the right of the trash can. His ears burned even more. “I’m not going to do it.”
Dr. Miller nodded again and put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s all right, Charlie. We each need to go at our own pace.”
He shrugged off her hand and pushed his chair back. It squeaked across the tile. “I’m kind of done with this.” He grabbed his jacket and swung his book bag wildly over his shoulder, nearly taking down the cup of pencils underneath the stupid smiling flower poster that always seemed to be watching him with its wide, oversize eyes. Taunting him.
The other kids stared as if this outburst was something new. Truth was, these feelings were always brimming near the top, threatening to boil over. They often did.
Whenever he walked down the hall at school, he heard the whispers. That’s the kid whose mom died. And when he shopped at the grocery with Dad, the neighborhood women shook their heads and talked in hushed voices about how sad it was.
Like Charlie didn’t know.
He yanked open the door to the counseling office, letting it hit against the wall with a thud.
Dr. Miller called his name, but she didn’t follow him.
Elliott did.
She touched his
arm gingerly, her fingertips like feathers on his skin. “Hey.” He turned to face her.
“It was the balloons, right?” She paused. “Nothing says healing like a tank of helium.” Her voice went up on the last word, like she had just inhaled some. She smiled a little. “Just be glad she’s not talking about the second annual grief picnic.”
Charlie couldn’t even imagine. Talking about dead family members would go perfectly with hot dogs.
Elliott studied his face. “We could sit out here. If you want.”
If anyone could understand him, it would be her. Elliott’s brother had been hit by a car the previous September, walking in a crosswalk. A stupid red car that wasn’t watching the stupid red light.
One driver not paying attention. One Mom-stealing cancer. Two people gone.
Elliott’s face was open, waiting. For a moment, he thought talking to her might help. Charlie shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, as if those two words might explain everything. He turned and walked toward the restrooms, where he could hide out until the next bell.
“I’ll see you at the pep rally, right?” she asked as he retreated.
“Sure,” Charlie said, but he wasn’t sure that Elliott heard him as the bathroom door closed, leaving his friend behind him.
FRANK
Elliott and Charlie hadn’t always been friends. Sure, they’d had a class together last year and had been in the same field trip group to the Newport Aquarium, but he hadn’t really known known her before. She had been more Frank’s friend than his.
He pictured them like one of those Venn diagrams his English teacher liked to draw on the board—him on one side, Elliott on the other. And in the part where their circles intersected? Frank Shin. Somehow, when Frank disappeared, so did the lines between them.
Charlie thought a lot about Frank. In group. At home. On the class trip to the science museum. The first time Charlie met him was in fourth grade.
Frank had stood in the doorway of their classroom on the first day of school, almost eye level with the teacher. She said he’d moved here from Missouri. His pants, a little too short, revealed Superman socks. His shirt had a dancing hot dog on it that said, “Can I Be Frank with You?” If it had been anyone else, they would have slunk into the room, eyes down, to their seat, hoping that if they couldn’t remain anonymous, they’d at least blend in.
The Remarkable Journey of Charlie Price Page 1