“Come on, Pluto,” her mom’s voice cut in. She picked up Pluto’s pen and put it back in Pluto’s hand. “What’s the next step?”
What was the next step? Pluto had woken up, and taken her medication, and taken a shower, and brushed her teeth, and brushed her hair, and tried to get ready for the eighth grade. She had to do this. She had to pass.
She had to remember how to breathe.
“You know this. Focus. You can do this.”
I can’t, she thought. I can’t, I can’t.
It is such a hot day that the normally chatty men behind the game booths, the ones that sell tickets to win prizes like salesmen sell cars, are too busy standing in front of their fans to call at the people walking by.
“Ms. Timoney? I think the register’s stuck,” the college girl behind the counter called.
“I’m hot,” Pluto said, looking up into her mom’s face. Her mom’s cheeks were red with frustration. Pluto’s palms were sweaty, making the pen slick in her hand. “It’s too hot.”
Her mom exhaled, deflating as the air left her lungs. “No, it’s not.”
And then the bell above the door jingled, and Pluto looked away from her mom to come face-to-face with Meredith Han.
Meredith had on flip-flops and sunglasses that she’d pushed back to keep her thick, dark hair out of her face, and she stood there in the bright blue cover-up that Pluto had in purple, because they’d bought them together.
And she wasn’t alone. She was with her mom, who was waving and calling for Pluto’s mom, and two other girls from school. Charlotte Jackson and Harper Leiman were best friends like Meredith and Pluto were best friends, and when Pluto’s mom said, “Take that table over there!” the two of them ran ahead of Meredith to get their seats.
“Hey, Plu, come here,” her mom said, waving Pluto over as she greeted Meredith’s mom. “Take a break, have some lunch with your friends.”
Pluto had already eaten the cheese off a slice of pizza an hour ago.
“Hi, Ms. Timoney,” Meredith said, and as Pluto came to stand next to (and slightly behind) her mom, Meredith added a quiet, “Hi, Plu.”
“Mrs. Han brought the girls here to hang for a bit before they head to the arcade,” Pluto’s mom said. “You want to go with them?”
Pluto hated that her mom asked in front of Meredith, in front of Meredith’s mom, in front of Harper and Charlotte, who were leaning over to listen from their table.
Meredith was chewing on the inside of her lip, something she did when she was worried. They had been best friends since the third grade, when Meredith introduced herself and said, “My mom watched a lot of TV when she was pregnant and named me after her favorite character in her favorite show,” and Pluto had responded, “My mom named me after her favorite planet. Well, it was a planet when she was growing up. It wasn’t one anymore when I was born, but my mom looked at me and said it was a perfect fit.”
“I hope my mom doesn’t think naming me Meredith will make me become a doctor,” Meredith had replied before scrunching up her nose. “Blood freaks me out.”
But even before the night her mom broke down her bedroom door, Pluto was certain she had become a bad best friend. For almost all of seventh grade, she’d ignored most of Meredith’s texts, not wanting to talk. She’d turned down all of Meredith’s invitations to her house after school, because Pluto just wanted to go home. Her diagnosis came later, but whatever she had let happen between her and Meredith started much earlier.
“I’ll go get a couple of pizzas in the oven for you guys,” Pluto’s mom said, squeezing Pluto’s arm and walking away, glancing over her shoulder before disappearing into the kitchen.
Meredith turned to take a seat at the table, across from Harper and Charlotte, leaving a seat open for Pluto. Pluto stared at that empty seat. She looked back in the direction her mom had gone. Save me, she wanted to say. Tell them I can’t do this.
“Pluto, hon, come take a seat,” Meredith’s mom said.
She let Mrs. Han lead her to the table, where she sat next to Meredith and across from Harper, who was making a mess, as always, with the salt shaker. “Mrs. Beckett said you were sick,” Harper said, leaning forward as if inspecting Pluto for potential infections.
When the Apollo 11 astronauts returned to Earth, they were scrubbed and quarantined, going through a thorough decontamination process to protect the world from any diseases and other germs they might have brought home. It was said to be a humiliating process, and as Pluto sat there under Harper’s scrutiny, she felt as though maybe she could relate.
Charlotte kicked Harper under the table. “We missed you at school,” she said.
Meredith said nothing.
“So . . .” Harper said, picking up the pepper shaker. “Where were you?”
“Harper!” Charlotte said.
“I’m sorry! I just don’t understand!” Harper was a big girl with a big mouth, but she used that big mouth to tell off Jeremy Ng when he made fun of Meredith’s teeth or Charlotte’s hair or Pluto’s name, so everyone (but Jeremy) liked Harper anyway. She turned to Meredith. “I thought you were mad at her.”
“My mom made these plans,” Meredith said, looking down at the napkin she always kept in her lap.
Pluto turned to look for her mom, who caught her eye from behind the counter, and Pluto knew immediately that no, Meredith’s mom hadn’t made these plans. Pluto’s mom had.
And it felt even more like an ambush.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars . . .
“I . . .” Pluto managed to say, her heartbeat loud in her ears, and all three girls looked at her. She swallowed. “I should go,” she said, because she meant it. Harper and Charlotte and even Meredith didn’t seem to want her there anyway. She slinked out of her seat before anyone could protest (would anyone protest?), catching her mom’s eye again and watching as her dark eyebrows creased and her face fell. The checklist Pluto made was in the back pocket of her shorts, and she reached for it, crumpling it up in her fist. She had nowhere to disappear to in the pizzeria, with her friends (were they still her friends?) sitting in one of their booths and her mom watching eagerly from behind the counter.
The bell above the entrance jingled in her wake as Pluto stepped outside.
Pluto thought she would be able to breathe easier outside, with the fresh ocean air, the sun on her face. Away from the smell of pizza. Away from Meredith and Harper and Charlotte. Away from her mom.
The boardwalk always felt more like home than Pluto’s actual home did. She’d spent so many summers there, summers that started in the spring and blended into fall. She knew the boardwalk better than she knew herself—especially lately—and she loved it.
Or she used to, before. Before Donna started working with them. Before Meredith and Harper and Charlotte started spending their summer without her.
It seemed brighter today. Louder. The wooden planks felt harder under her feet and looked more splintered and worn. The smell of the hot dogs from the Olde Heidelberg across the way made her want to gag, as did the lingering garbage smell from the dumpsters out back. The woman who owned the burrito restaurant next door was yelling loudly at her son, and the line for the lemonade stand on the other side was long, blocking her way to the beach.
Pluto pushed by, bumping into people who shouted back. She made her way to the railing that separated the boardwalk from the sand, and looked out at the umbrellas scattered like mushrooms popping out from the earth, a swirl of brightly colored pinks and blues and reds and yellows that made her dizzy. But no, she was dizzy because she was breathing funny, because she couldn’t take a real deep breath, no matter how hard she tried, and that made her nervous, made her breathe even funnier the more she tried not to.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and . . . Earth, and . . .
She looked at the wrinkled checklist in her shaky and sweaty hands and tried to smooth it out. The list seemed impossible. How was she ever supposed to go to Meredith�
�s birthday party? How was she ever going to be able to go back to school? She couldn’t even have a slice of pizza with three of her friends.
“You want a zeppole?”
She turned to find a little boy with one large front tooth and the other one missing as he leaned into her personal space. His cheeks had powdered sugar on them.
Pluto shook her head and closed her eyes and tried to breathe. Earth, and . . . and Mars.
“Fallon!” the little boy called, too close to Pluto’s ear. “I think she’s broken!”
Yes, I’m broken, Pluto thought. Just let me be broken and leave me alone.
She kept her eyes sealed tight as she tried to revel in the darkness, the light spots reflecting behind her eyelids like stars, like the dome of a planetarium. She wanted to get lost in them, to let everything else—the crashing waves of the ocean, the chatter of the boardwalk, the screams from the amusement rides—disappear.
She heard someone come running up, pulling the little boy out of the way—“Get out of her face, Tommy”—and taking his place. There was a tentative touch on Pluto’s shoulder, and the new voice asked, “You okay?”
No. She wasn’t okay. She was having what the doctor labeled a panic attack, and she could not remember a single thing he or her mom had told her for how to stop it. Instead, she tried to breathe and tried not to cry and failed at doing both those things. “I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth.
“You don’t really look fine.”
Pluto opened her eyes to come face-to-face with the kid with the neon shorts and ice-blue eyes she’d failed the other day, her long, wild hair blocking the sun except for a halo it created around her head. Her shorts, this time, were neon blue. “Maybe you should sit down. Will that help?”
Pluto didn’t respond, but she let Neon Shorts pull her down so that they could both sit on the hard wooden boardwalk. Around them, people kept walking and talking and shouting and laughing, as if the fun of summer was blinding them to the two kids on the sandy boards. Pluto closed her eyes and tried again to take a deep breath.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, but otherwise, neither of them moved.
“The Challenger lasted only seventy-three seconds,” Pluto managed to say, her voice scratchy.
“What?” Neon Shorts asked.
Pluto shook her head. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
Neon Shorts pointed to the crumpled list in Pluto’s hands. “What’s that?”
“My list.”
“Medication for what?”
Pluto shook her head again. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Sorry! Sorry. We can just sit here,” Neon Shorts said. “Will that help? Is it helping?”
Pluto nodded, before pulling her knees to her chest.
“I’m Fallon,” she said.
Pluto didn’t respond, and Fallon didn’t say anything else. She also didn’t leave, just sat there with Pluto, who rested her head on her knees, as people walked by, as the sounds of the roller coasters on the other end of the boardwalk roared around them, as the ocean crashed behind them. Pluto didn’t move, and Fallon didn’t leave, until she shifted and said, “Is that your mom? I think she’s looking for you. Hey!” Fallon shouted. “Over here!”
And then arms she would know anywhere were pulling her close, and blond hair was tickling her face, as her mom surrounded her, saying, “Hey, Shooting Star, you’re okay. I’m sorry. I’ve got you.”
6
Pluto knew it was coming before her mom even opened her mouth. “I just got off the phone with your dad,” she said, taking a seat next to where Pluto had been sitting on the couch for the past two hours.
“No,” Pluto said, chest tight as the tears came so easily. “No, Mom, please, no.”
“Wait, hey, shh.” Her mom scooted closer on the couch, practically in Pluto’s lap before she pulled Pluto into her own. “Hey, listen to me. We need to talk about this. I love you, Shooting Star. You’re my everything. You know that, right?”
Pluto was her mom’s everything, but that was before. Back when it was her and her mom and their pizzeria, their own universe against the world. She didn’t know what they were anymore. “Then let me stay here. I won’t run out on my friends again. I promise. I’m sorry.”
“I know you didn’t mean to hurt them.” Her mom ran her fingers through Pluto’s hair, then turned to pull the throw blanket over them both. “I also know that this is . . . new. And bigger than us. I just want to do whatever is best for you, and your dad has money that we don’t. There are things he can afford that we can’t.”
“Dad can just send money,” Pluto said.
“Yeah, well, your dad’s selfish,” her mom said, before pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t say that. There are more resources for you in the city, and some change might be good for you. That’s what he and I are talking about. That’s what we think we can do for you.”
“You just want to get rid of me so you can have more free time to go to wine-and-paint nights with Donna,” Pluto said, anger building in her chest. “You have her now so you don’t need me.”
“That’s not true and you know it, Pluto,” her mom said. “I can’t be here for you and be at the pizzeria all the time, that’s true. But hiring Donna as a manager had nothing to do with how I feel about you.”
Pluto knew that was a lie. Hiring Donna had everything to do with how her mom felt about Pluto, and how she felt that Pluto was becoming too much to handle. Too much to handle alone without Donna, and too much to keep around instead of sending her to live with her dad.
Pluto twisted in her mom’s grasp, trying to get her hand into her pocket. She pulled out the crumpled and now slightly ripped piece of paper, her checklist, and sat up straight so she could show it to her. “Here, look. I made a list, like the one we do every day, and I can check things off. If I do it, if I do all of this, please can I stay?”
Her mom’s forehead creased, and Pluto was almost certain she had deeper worry lines these days. “The planetarium? Meredith’s party? What is this?”
“It’s my list. If I do the list, I’m Pluto again, like normal. And then I can stay. Please give me time to do the list. Don’t send me to Dad’s yet. I need . . . I can do it, just give me time.”
Her mom was quiet and still as she looked at Pluto’s list. “Meredith’s party is at the end of the summer,” she said.
Pluto nodded.
Her mom rubbed her eyebrow and then turned to the coffee table, reaching for a cap-less pen sitting in the mug they used for little loose things like paper clips and hair ties. She flattened Pluto’s list out on the table. “Okay. So, medication, the planetarium, and Meredith’s party. We’ll check them off one at a time over the summer and see what you can do. As for school, I’ve been in contact with that tutor, and I really think she’ll be good for you. I have some . . . things . . . to work out with your father about that, but I think it won’t hurt to get you started, at least get you to meet her. So I’m going to call and set that up for this week, okay?”
Pluto frowned but nodded.
“And I have something to add. Because we haven’t talked to anyone other than at your medication checkups, and I really think it’d be good for you to see a therapist regularly. Our insurance won’t cover a ton, but we could do a couple visits before the end of the summer, and maybe we can get you on your dad’s insurance, but anyway.” Her mom seemed almost out of breath when she finally paused. “What do you think?”
Pluto hesitated. “I have to see a therapist?”
Her appointments with the psychiatrist were so basic. She answered questions about how she felt on her medications. Are you more hungry? Are you less hungry? Do your arms or legs tingle? Do you still feel sad? How do you sleep at night? How is your energy during the day?
Simple questions she could answer, but Pluto couldn’t even talk to her best friend. How was she supposed to talk to
a stranger?
But her mom nodded, looking so . . . so hopeful. And Pluto didn’t want her to hire any more people to take over the pizzeria, and she didn’t want her mom to decide to send her away.
“Do we have a deal?” her mom asked.
A list was tangible. A list felt real, and Pluto could take it one step at a time, and she could do this, she could.
She took a deep breath and agreed. “Deal.”
7
Pluto was starting to suspect that “I don’t want to pay for a sitter” was actually code for “I don’t want you staying home anymore,” but in the face of their new plan, the list that Pluto had to complete by the end of the summer, she didn’t mind as much.
She did mind, however, when her mom stopped her before she could sit in a booth. “Come help me today. We’re short-staffed.”
Pluto didn’t buy it. “Donna’s literally in the back taking inventory.”
“Donna is busy in the back taking inventory.”
“What’s the point of hiring another manager if you’re still short-staffed?”
“For someone who hates that I hired a new manager, you’re sure making a case for me hiring another.” Her mom sighed. “Come on, Plu. Help me out here, like you used to.”
Those words knocked the fight right out of Pluto. Her mom was right. Here we have the Timoney Solar System, its two fixed planets orbit in harmony, no collisions. Like it used to be.
If Pluto was honest, she didn’t even really like pizza. She usually just ate the cheese off the top because she didn’t like sauce and she didn’t like crust, and she didn’t like getting greasy pizza juice all over her hands. As far as family businesses go, this wouldn’t have been her chosen one, but she knew her mom hadn’t really wanted to choose it either.
How to Become a Planet Page 3