(Why she had to choose it was because Pluto was born when her mom was nineteen, and a lot of the things she once seemed destined for changed after that.)
When Pluto first started feeling different, when she started wanting to stay home, started sleeping more, started avoiding Meredith, her mom did everything she could to stay home when Pluto needed her. Quickly, though, that meant Pluto was getting in the way. Her mom never complained before about spending long hours on her feet, sometimes making the pizzas herself when the cook canceled, sometimes manning the register and waiting tables and cleaning because college students on summer break weren’t always reliable. She never complained before about going through bottle after bottle of Taylor Swift perfume to try to mask the smell of grease and constantly failing.
But when she had to close the restaurant more and more often because she couldn’t physically do all those things while staying home with Pluto, and she couldn’t just leave Pluto alone, either, she had to change things.
So, she did. Starting with new hours at the pizzeria, followed by babysitters for Pluto, followed by a new manager. Even though no one except a Timoney had ever run the place before, and the only person who was supposed to run the place once her mom was done and had enough was Pluto.
Pluto wondered how Poppy or her great-grandfather would feel about Donna. She wondered if they would consider it all Pluto’s fault.
Her mom was currently in the kitchen arguing with Martin, who’d started working for them last summer and who came to work smelling like cigar smoke, which gave Pluto’s mom headaches.
Pluto was standing by the register, though it was too early for pizza—for the most part. There was always the chance someone would pop in for a 10 a.m. breakfast slice, which made Pluto want to gag. She had a book open that her new tutor wanted her to read ahead of their first lesson (which was just one of a long list of things Pluto was supposed to do before she even met the woman).
Pluto read the first couple of sentences three times before she gave up. She just wasn’t paying enough attention. Her head felt too heavy, too foggy, to focus.
“I read that book last year! How far along are you?”
Pluto popped her head up, startled that she had been concentrating so hard on the book she hadn’t even heard the bell above the door. Fallon stood in front of her (wearing bright yellow shorts), and Pluto’s cheeks immediately grew warm.
“Are you almost done?” Fallon continued. “I didn’t really like the ending.”
Pluto put the book down. “I’m not really paying attention to any of it right now.” She reached for the pad and pen next to the register, keeping her eyes down and focused on the task instead of on Fallon. “Are all your shorts that bright?”
“What?” Fallon asked, looking down at her shorts. “Oh. They’re actually my brother’s old ones. I never thought about it. I’ll have to ask him about them.”
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
“Forget the shorts.” Fallon lifted up the white box Pluto hadn’t noticed in her hands, interrupting her. “I, uh, actually brought these for you.”
Pluto frowned. “For me?”
Fallon placed the box on the counter, and Pluto opened one of the flaps. The smell of sugar wafted out, and she saw the powdered white coating.
“They’re, uh, funnel cakes,” Fallon said.
So they were. “Why?” Pluto asked.
Which was, apparently, the wrong thing to say. Fallon reached to take the box back. “If you don’t like them, I’ll just . . . my brothers will eat them, it’s fine.”
Pluto didn’t know what to say, but just then her mom and Donna appeared from the kitchen. “Oh! Hello,” Pluto’s mom said, smiling one of her warmest smiles at Fallon. “Our friend from the other day. What brings you by?”
“Funnel cakes,” Pluto said.
Her mom reached for the box, opening it up. “Mmmm. Is that right? These look delicious.”
“They’re, uh, from my dad’s—I mean, our shop. The funnel cakes. And zeppoles and stuff.” Fallon’s face grew pink. “We’re new.”
“You’re next to the arcade, right? Your mom’s Leanne Zamprogna?” Donna asked. She already knew everyone on the boardwalk. Pluto’s mom knew most of their storefront neighbors from when she was just a child, but she always made a point of introducing herself to anyone new. She was getting a late start with that this summer, though, and Donna had beaten her to it. Pluto figured that was her fault, too.
Fallon nodded. “Yeah, that’s my mom. That’s us.”
“Well, it was very sweet for you to bring this over to us. Can I send you back with a pizza?” Pluto’s mom asked.
“Oh, no—uh—thank you, but that’s—we’re okay,” Fallon stuttered. It made Pluto wonder if she was even supposed to be bringing funnel cakes over in the first place. “I just wanted to . . .”
Check on me? Pluto thought.
“Well.” Fallon shrugged, with a small little almost-laugh. “You never told me your name.”
“Oh,” Pluto said, and when nothing else was forthcoming, her mom bumped her hip. “I’m Pluto.”
As expected, Fallon narrowed her eyes. “Really?”
Pluto’s mom laughed. “My doing, guilty as charged.”
The bell above the door jingled as a young man and woman walked in, and Pluto’s mom gently moved Pluto aside, focusing on the couple. “Hey, guys, what can I do for you?”
Which left Pluto and Fallon alone, which seemed to be what Fallon wanted. She leaned in, hesitated, but then said, “I want to talk to you about your list,” which was the last thing Pluto was expecting.
Pluto shook her head. “That’s . . . private.”
“I think we can help each other out. I just . . . can we meet later? I’ll be at our shop until four. Can you meet me by the bumper cars after that?”
Pluto was already shaking her head.
“Just—” Fallon let out a frustrated sigh. “Please. I’ll tell you how the book ends if you want. I’m better than SparkNotes.”
Pluto glanced over at her mom, who was taking the couple’s order but had an ear facing Pluto. She knew her mom was eavesdropping. It was sort of her specialty lately. “I can finish it myself,” she said.
“Well, what about the other stuff?”
“What about it?”
Fallon let out a frustrated puff of air. “Look, just . . . can we meet and talk about this later? Please?”
Pluto caught her mom looking at them out of the corner of her eye, and Fallon was looking at her, too, and it was just . . . all a bit too much attention. So, Pluto surrendered, if only to get back to being alone. “Okay. Fine. But not the bumper cars. The quiet side of the boardwalk, instead.”
There was relief written all over Fallon’s face. “You have a phone?”
“What?”
“A cell phone. I’ll give you my number.”
Pluto reached into her pocket, but Donna was on top of it like she had a satellite rigged right into the pizzeria to identify cell phones. “Same rules apply to you as anyone else, Pluto,” Donna said. “No cell phone use behind the register.”
Pluto was about to argue, because this was her pizzeria, not Donna’s, but Fallon interrupted, “I’ll get your number later. Four, okay? By the visitors booth.”
Fallon left, and the couple her mom was helping sat at a table. Pluto pulled the funnel cake box closer, opened it up and stuck her finger inside, tearing off a piece to eat. It was oily and sweet, which was everything good about a funnel cake.
Her mom came over and popped a piece into her mouth. “Look at that, huh?” she said, wrapping an arm around Pluto and giving her a squeeze. “Somebody made a friend.”
Pluto glanced up into her mom’s face. She looked just as relieved as Fallon.
The quiet side of the boardwalk was at the opposite end of the amusement park, where the shops thinned out and condos took their place. On this end, Pluto could hear the seagulls,
could hear the waves lapping against the shore. On this end, people jogged, or walked along with babies in strollers, and everything was much, much calmer.
Pluto used to prefer the other end, where she’d run around with Meredith, begging their moms for tickets to ride the bumper cars and roller coasters, saving up enough quarters to try to win prizes at the arcade. “Once that man leaves, we’ll play that machine. Look at how many tickets he’s won!” Meredith had said, just last year. They’d made a point of watching the senior citizens who played the arcade games as if they were at the poker machines in Atlantic City. They’d spent most of June watching the same man, gray mustache and tan cap, play the same game day after day, winning more tickets than Meredith and Pluto had won in all of the summers they’d spent there combined.
Meredith wanted to steal his game, win the tickets he had been winning, but he got there before they did every day, and he stayed until after they got too bored waiting. Until one day Pluto got fed up enough to walk right up to him and ask, “Can we please have a turn now?”
He didn’t seem too happy about it, but Meredith sure did, as he finally vacated that spot.
Pluto couldn’t imagine walking up to a stranger and asking them much of anything right now, and she wondered if that man was back at the arcade this summer, playing the same game. She wondered if Meredith was trying to get him to leave again, if she had gotten Harper and Charlotte to help her try.
Pluto put her earbuds in and turned the volume on her phone way up. She was listening to a podcast about how two astronomers in New Jersey (just like Pluto!) made the huge discovery of light from the big bang itself.
(Could her mom, also born and bred in Jersey, have discovered something too, if things had been different, if Pluto were different, if Pluto didn’t exist at all?)
Suddenly, one of her earbuds was yanked from her ear. “Hey!” Pluto yelled.
“I was trying to get your attention for like an entire minute,” Fallon said. “What are you listening to?” Before Pluto could pull it away, Fallon held up the earbud to her own ear. Her forehead creased. “Is this for school?” she asked.
Now, Pluto did pull the earbud away. “No, it’s . . . it’s for me. It’s just astronomy stuff.”
Fallon leaned against the visitors booth, which was made of wood and painted white, though the paint chips were peeling and coming off on Fallon’s T-shirt. “Like space and stuff? I read a book last summer by Neil deGrasse Tyson. It was on my older brother’s summer reading list, but I always do all his reading because I read fast and he’s an idiot.”
Pluto felt like she could float away. “Yes! He narrates one of my favorite planetarium shows. My mom and I go every year for my birthday to the Liberty Science Center—have you ever been? It’s right in Jersey City, it’s not far, but I’ve memorized the entire script. Did you like the book?” Pluto was a little out of breath when she finished, and she blushed. She never really spoke that much to anyone, let alone someone she just met.
Fallon laughed. “I like all the books. Well, that’s not really true. My older brother’s high school teacher is going to be such a bore, if his reading list this summer is any indication.” She pulled out a rolled-up paperback that had been tucked in the deep back pocket of her boy shorts.
“I can give you more. Astronomy books, I mean.” The words left Pluto’s mouth without thinking, and once she heard them, she almost didn’t believe what she was hearing. She didn’t know Fallon, not really, and she hadn’t lent out an astronomy book since she’d loaned one to Meredith in fifth grade, and Meredith decided she would rather read Goosebumps. “I have a bunch about the solar system, but also about rockets. Like the Apollos. And the Challenger.”
“I read a book about that one once, too! About the teacher who was on it. It was so sad.”
“It was so sad,” Pluto agreed. “Her name was Christa McAuliffe and she was chosen out of eleven thousand people.”
“Yikes! Imagine, getting chosen out of all those people and then . . .” Fallon said. “Anyway, let’s talk books more later, okay? I actually wanted to talk to you about something else.” She glanced around the boardwalk, and then leaned in to Pluto. “The list.”
Pluto felt her chest tighten, and her shoulders grew heavy all over again. “I told you, that’s private.”
Fallon kept pushing anyway. “Do you have to do all the things on the list by a certain time?”
“The end of the summer, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
“What happens if you do?” Fallon asked. “If you finish the list, I mean. Do you get something?”
I get to stay here, Pluto thought. I get to feel like Pluto again.
Instead, she said: “You wouldn’t understand.”
This was a mistake. Fallon didn’t really want to talk about astronomy books or Christa McAuliffe, and Pluto didn’t want to talk about her list. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to make new friends. She had a hard enough time keeping the ones she already had, and at least Meredith would know better than to pry into Pluto’s secrets. Even if Pluto keeping secrets is what made her lose Meredith in the first place.
“I can at least try,” Fallon said.
Pluto bit her lip, thinking about Meredith, and her mom, and everyone who did not seem to understand, because they knew who Pluto was before her diagnosis. Fallon, though, never knew the old Pluto. Fallon couldn’t tell how broken she was. “If I don’t do the things on the list, I have to go live with my dad. In the city. Because he thinks I can get better there. The things on the list will prove that I can be better here,” she said, throat scratchy. “I, um. I have depression. That’s what the doctors say.”
Fallon grew quiet. Pluto felt the pressure in her chest start to grow. She wanted to take it back and not tell Fallon anything, because clearly Fallon could not understand, and Pluto felt stupid. She opened her mouth to take it back, to tell Fallon she had to leave, and go hide out in the pizzeria, in the dark booth in the corner where she could hope that everyone would just leave her alone.
“If I make a list—” Fallon suddenly said, her voice hardly above a whisper. “If I help you do yours, will you help with mine?”
“You . . .” Pluto frowned. “You want to . . . what? Why? Are you . . . ?”
Are you depressed, too?
“No,” Fallon answered, even though Pluto couldn’t get the words out to ask. “But I’m . . . different . . . too, maybe. So, what do you think?”
What did she think?
What did she think?
She thought it all seemed impossible, both her own list and helping someone else with theirs. She could barely get one done, let alone two, and she didn’t want to be distracted.
But also, she didn’t want to do it alone. And maybe now, she wouldn’t have to.
Pluto took a deep breath and hoped to heck she wouldn’t regret it. “Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll help you.”
8
Pluto’s phone buzzed four times before she gave in and rolled over to reach for it. She’d spent the entire afternoon and all night in bed, if the time on her phone was actually right, but even as she scrolled through her notifications, she had no plans on leaving the warmth of her blanket.
Her dad had texted twice. Pluto was relieved he was starting to take the hint and texting her instead of calling. It was much easier to talk to him when she could think about what to say first, type it out, delete it if she needed to, try again. Pluto Jean! he’d written. Her dad loved exclamation points. It’s almost your birthday!
Well, yes. That was true. He probably wanted to know what to get her.
My D&D group is taking a bit of a break. Maybe you can spend a weekend here soon. I can teach you how to play!
That was a little unexpected. Her dad had been playing Dungeons & Dragons with the same group of friends since college. Her mom even used to play with them sometimes, when she and Pluto’s dad were together, though she was always more of a sci-fi fan than fantasy
.
Her other texts were from Fallon, which was also a surprise. Fallon hadn’t texted her yet since they’d swapped numbers after Pluto agreed to help her with her list. Are you going to be at the pizza place today? and Maybe I can talk my mom into letting me come hang during my break.
Meredith used to text her similar things. Texts like, My mom is bringing us to the boardwalk. I’ll come by so we can hang! Meredith didn’t have to ask if Pluto would be at the pizzeria; she knew Pluto always was. Back when Pluto used to constantly play Angry Birds, she and Meredith would pretend they were shooting the birds across the store, knocking down pizzas and customers instead of blocks and pigs. Another summer they climbed over the booths and the counter and snuck into the kitchen, behind the sauce and flour containers, trying to catch Pokémon.
She doubted Donna would allow them the freedom to do anything like that now, even if Pluto wanted to. Even if Meredith wanted to. But Meredith didn’t text Pluto anymore, and Pluto didn’t blame her. Maybe they were too old to do that kind of stuff, anyway.
“Hey, Shooting Star.” Her mom stepped over the threshold of Pluto’s room and climbed into the bed with her. “I’ve got an idea, if you’re up for it.”
Pluto burrowed her face into her mom’s chest, and she felt her body tense, ready for the fight. “I’m not going to the pizzeria today. You’ve made me go all week.”
“I know, I know,” her mom said. “But, I was thinking about your list and the promise you made to me, and I think today would be a good day to meet your therapist. What do you say? I made an appointment for later this afternoon, if you’d like to try for me.”
Pluto looked up into her mom’s big, hopeful eyes. “You don’t have to go to the boardwalk?”
Her mom shook her head. “Donna’s got it covered, which is exactly why I hired her. We don’t even need to stop by.”
Pluto considered it. She had written that list weeks ago, and she was no closer to proving to her mom she could beat this. Visiting her therapist seemed . . . doable, when even texting her dad or Fallon back didn’t. “Okay,” Pluto said.
How to Become a Planet Page 4