“Oh, good.” Her mom smiled.
It was a smile that made Pluto know she couldn’t take the agreement back, even though her entire body was fighting her to do so.
Pluto did not have a panic attack in the waiting room. Her hands were clammy as she gripped the sides of the uncomfortable chair, and the sounds from the soap opera playing on the TV hung in the corner of the room put her on edge, but she did not have a panic attack. Her breathing was even, her mom’s hand was gentle and soothing on her arm.
She did not have a panic attack.
Even though she felt like she might for the entire twenty minutes they waited.
Months ago—after Pluto’s mom had begged and begged and even tried to pull Pluto out of her bed to make her go to school—Pluto had one of her worst panic attacks. It took over an hour for her mom to get her to breathe calmly, and when she finally did, her mom didn’t mention school again. She’d called for a sitter and left for work, and Pluto went back to bed.
Her chest had hurt for the rest of the day, and she was afraid she would suddenly be unable to breathe again.
After the panic attack, Pluto called the Hayden Planetarium Astronomy Question and Answer Hotline. She asked, “Do you know if people born with the Cancer constellation sign have panic attacks a lot?”
The voice on the other end of the line said that they didn’t know all that much about zodiacs, but did Pluto want to know more about the constellation?
Pluto did not, but let them tell her about it anyway.
(The voice told her that Cancer was the dimmest out of all thirteen zodiac constellations, which was when Pluto hung up the phone.)
“Anna and Pluto Timoney?” the receptionist called, startling Pluto out of her thoughts. There was a question in the receptionist’s voice and her eyebrow was slightly raised. It was the sound and look that Pluto got most often from new teachers taking attendance, the one that said, “This can’t be right, can it?”
Pluto sheepishly smiled in the way she always did, that said, “Yes, that’s right, that’s me, that’s really my name.”
Pluto reached a clammy hand to hold on to her mom’s.
“Hey,” her mom said, bumping her shoulder into Pluto’s in that way that Pluto used to love, but lately just screamed, Get a move on. “This is for you, Plu. You can talk to her about whatever you want, even with me in there with you. This has nothing to do with me, okay?”
I’m only here for you, Pluto thought. She nodded anyway and looked back at the receptionist.
“Ready?” the receptionist asked.
Pluto wondered if she really had a choice.
The receptionist led them down the hall to a door with a plaque that read Dr. Cynthia Collins. She knocked, two small knocks with her knuckle, and opened the door. To Pluto’s surprise, the room was bright. Bright blue walls, bright red couch, bright yellow lamps. It didn’t match, but also it did in a way that Pluto really liked, clashing colors coming together to make something that shouldn’t work, work. “Hi, Mrs. Timoney,” a voice said, and Pluto stopped looking around the room to focus, instead, on the woman who was standing up from behind her desk, crossing to shake her mom’s hand. “I’m Dr. Collins.”
“Oh! It’s Ms. Not Mrs. God, no. No. I mean, hi, hello.” Pluto’s mom’s voice was high-pitched and weird. Pluto shot her a look. “Sorry. I think I’m nervous.”
Dr. Collins’s smile was kind. “That’s perfectly normal. For you, too,” she said, looking at Pluto. “You must be Pluto. Why don’t you two have a seat and we can chat a bit? Sound good?”
Pluto turned in time to see the receptionist smile at her before exiting behind the closing door.
Pluto couldn’t get her feet to move, even though her mom had already crossed the room and taken a seat on the red couch. Her mom patted the spot beside her, but still, Pluto couldn’t follow.
“That’s okay, you can sit when you’re ready,” Dr. Collins said. She was a large woman with big bones and a large mouth, and thick brown curls that seemed to float around her head. Her glasses were thin and sat low on her nose. She constantly ran a hand through her hair, giving it a messy look that didn’t match the rest of her professional attire—or the formal diplomas on the walls.
Lower along the walls were bookshelves filled with children’s books, and Pluto wondered if there were any about astronomy, and if there were, had she and her mom already read them? On the coffee table in front of the bright red couch were boxes filled with string and beads; a half-made necklace dangled from one.
Pluto could not breathe right.
She felt dim; she felt weighted down.
She felt like she might panic.
“Come sit, Plu. We’re just going to get to know each other a bit,” her mom said.
“You don’t look like you want to be here, Pluto,” Dr. Collins said, and Pluto wanted to say, Of course I don’t! But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
“It’s okay if you don’t,” Dr. Collins continued.
That didn’t seem right. That didn’t seem true.
“Anna, why don’t you tell me a little bit about why you two are here?”
“Pluto was recently diagnosed with depression and general anxiety disorder. It got really bad about a month ago. Before that she was, well, mostly just really lethargic? Kind of moody?”
“I don’t want to be here,” Pluto interrupted. She took a deep, stuttering breath. “I’d like to go home now.”
“Pluto, wait—” her mom started to say, but Pluto shook her head.
“You said it was okay if I didn’t want to be here,” she said to Dr. Collins. “I don’t want to be here. I want to go home. Please.”
“Shooting Star—”
“Please.”
“Okay,” Dr. Collins said, her voice soft, her eyes kind. “Pluto, would it be okay if you waited outside the room for a minute? Can I just have a few seconds to chat with your mom before you leave?”
“But I can leave? I can go?”
“Yes.” Dr. Collins nodded. “You can go.”
They didn’t talk about it. Her mom patted Pluto on the thigh in the car on the way home, said a supportive, “We’ll try again next time,” and left it at that. Pluto didn’t think this was something she would be able to check off her list, because she’d failed, but she didn’t want to bring it up and didn’t want her mom to bring it up either.
So they barely spoke for the rest of the day.
The Mars Observer was launched into space in 1992. It was supposed to track Mars’s terrain and climate. Instead, three days before it was supposed to enter Mars’s orbit, its communication system suddenly stopped. Whether it was, to this day, still orbiting Mars or whether it had blown right past it into uncharted space, no one knew. It was a failure, and an embarrassment.
Therapy felt kind of like that.
Pluto Jean Timoney was due to land on Dr. Collins’s couch this afternoon, but instead, she hovered by the door before disappearing back out of it, opting to orbit elsewhere.
That night, Pluto couldn’t sleep. She held her wrinkled list in her hand, focused on her failed therapy visit, on her last failed attempt to have lunch with her friends, and on the planetarium visit that she was supposed to take with her mom on Pluto’s birthday, which was only a couple of weeks away.
She put the list aside and started counting the chips in the paint on her walls where the glow-in-the-dark stars used to hang. She counted them a lot, when she couldn’t sleep.
There were over two hundred billion stars in the galaxy. There were over two hundred billion known galaxies in space. There used to be thirty-two stars on Pluto’s bedroom wall.
She started counting them again, making it to seventeen paint chips before she heard it: a gasping, sort of muffled sound that caught her ear. She rolled over to face the open threshold where her door used to be, tracing the sound down the hall in the direction of her mom’s bedroom.
Pluto climbed out o
f bed and softly padded down the hall, wooden floor cold under her feet, with the scratch of beach sand that no matter how much her mom vacuumed never seemed to completely go away. Her mom’s bedroom door (it had one) was cracked open like always, just in case Pluto needed her.
Her mom was crying. The realization of it brought a lump into Pluto’s throat as she slowly pushed open the door.
Her mom was curled into her side of the bed (she always took the right side, even though she hadn’t had anyone share her bed, besides occasionally Pluto, for as long as Pluto was alive), and her blond hair was draped over her hands as they covered her face. Her shoulders shook with each muffled sob, her face pressed into her pillow.
“Momma?” Pluto said, her voice rough and scratchy, as if she were the one who had been crying.
Her mom quickly sat up, eyes wide, looking as though she’d been caught stealing, finding herself in a situation she so clearly did not want Pluto to see. She opened her mouth to say something, but hiccupped a sob instead, covering her mouth with one hand and holding her other out for Pluto.
Pluto ran to her, climbing into the bed as her mom pulled her close, wrapping her arms so tight, almost too tight, around Pluto and crying into her hair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” her mom said, a broken whisper, even though Pluto wasn’t entirely sure what she was apologizing for. Pluto just let her hold her, not knowing what else she could do, as her mom tried to stop crying, breathing deeply through her nose and noisily out her mouth. Pluto wanted to tell her, “I feel like that all the time, like I can’t stop, like I can’t calm down,” but she said nothing.
Her mom did calm down. And with one more deep breath, she opened her eyes and looked at Pluto and smiled, a wobbly one that wasn’t very convincing.
“I should know how to make this better,” her mom said.
“I’ll talk to Dr. Collins next time,” Pluto quickly replied. “About whatever you want. I promise.”
Her mom didn’t respond, just buried her face back in Pluto’s hair and held on tighter.
9
Two days later, Pluto was standing outside another stranger’s door, her mom’s grip on her shoulders almost too tight as she rang the doorbell.
A woman older than Pluto’s mom opened the door, a smile on her face that made way for the deep laugh lines on her face. “Hi,” she said, her curly blond hair static-clinging to the wooden frame of the doorway. “I’m Mrs. McAuliffe. You must be Pluto.”
“Yep! This is Plu. Thanks for agreeing to this on such short notice,” Pluto’s mom was saying, and Mrs. McAuliffe responded, and her mom said something else, but Pluto missed all of it.
Because Pluto was hung up on the fact that her name was Mrs. McAuliffe. Just like the teacher from the Challenger.
Pluto’s tutor, Pluto’s teacher, was Mrs. McAuliffe.
She looked at her mom to see if she noticed, but she was still talking.
McAuliffe! It had to be a sign. It had to be.
“Hey, Shooting Star. Aren’t you gonna say something?” her mom attempted to tease with a tight smile, pulling Pluto’s focus.
“What’s your first name?” Pluto blurted out, which definitely wasn’t what she was supposed to say based on the way her mom’s eyebrows shot up.
Mrs. McAuliffe laughed, and waved Pluto’s mom’s concern away. “Come on in, you two. Let’s get to work, shall we?”
Pluto really wanted Mrs. McAuliffe to come to their house, had practically begged her mom to make it happen, but this was easier for Mrs. McAuliffe—at least that’s what Pluto’s mom had said—and, anyway, Mrs. McAuliffe was doing them a favor, since it was such short notice. (Plus, Pluto’s mom hadn’t worked out exactly how to pay her yet, which Pluto had learned from eavesdropping on her mom’s side of a phone conversation with her dad.)
So here we observe Mrs. McAuliffe in her natural habitat. Based on the double sets of plates on the table, the double mugs on the coffee table, and the double pairs of running shoes by the front door, she does not live alone.
No one else seemed to be home, though.
Mrs. McAuliffe was more than just a tutor, which is why she was recommended to Pluto’s mom. She had a degree in psychology and experience as a counselor and therapist, and, well, Pluto should have assumed she wouldn’t get a regular tutor, since she was no longer a regular kid. “Did you read that book I emailed you about?”
Pluto didn’t realize the question was asked to her, and not her mom, even though she should have. Both adults stared at her, waiting for an answer. Pluto felt her cheeks grow warm. “Oh. Um.”
“Answer me truthfully,” Mrs. McAuliffe said. “Did you try?”
Pluto started to nod, but then stopped. “A little.”
“She’s been having some trouble focusing,” Pluto’s mom supplied, her voice quiet in the even quieter house.
Mrs. McAuliffe’s smile was kind, just like Pluto’s therapist’s. Pluto wanted to ask her if she knew about the Challenger, if she knew she had the same last name as the teacher who’d been chosen for the mission, if she knew anything about astronomy. Instead, when she opened her mouth, she said: “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, Pluto,” Mrs. McAuliffe said. “That’ll just give us a place to start.”
Pluto’s head was swimming when they got back to the pizzeria, swirling with homework assignments, and facts about the Challenger, and thoughts about how cool it would be if she could go back in time and her tutor could actually be the Christa McAuliffe.
(There were a lot of theories about time travel, and its relation to movement through space. Pluto once listened to ten entire podcast episodes that discussed theories on traveling faster than the speed of light, and how it could create a wormhole between different timelines. Pluto didn’t understand it all that much, but it was fun to think about, anyway.)
The bell above the door jingled as they entered, and the air-conditioning felt good on Pluto’s skin, giving her goose bumps. “Hey, Donna!” her mom hollered as they entered.
Donna smiled and motioned to the two college girls, Kiera and Chloe, who were “working,” but really were just dancing around the pizzeria, bouncing from table to table as they sang along with the old-school Britney Spears song playing on the sound system. “Glad you guys are here. These two have been doing this all day, driving me crazy.”
“You drive me crazy!” Kiera scream-sang in Donna’s direction.
Donna threw her hands up and Pluto’s mom laughed. It was a quiet day in the pizzeria, but the few customers scattered throughout seemed amused. “Go join the girls, Plu.”
Every year without fail, at least one of their summer employees would dance around in the restaurant. Last year, a girl named Summer (who was Pluto’s favorite; she had really pretty freckles and the best raspy voice, and Pluto knew she’d remember Summer’s name forever) would beg Pluto’s mom to turn the radio up on slower days. She would reach for Pluto’s and Meredith’s hands, and they would dance and sing until they got so loud people started poking their heads into the pizzeria to see what the ruckus was.
Watching the girls dance around now made Pluto’s chest feel tight. She didn’t join them. Instead, she followed her mom behind the counter. “Hey, Mom, did you notice? My tutor’s name is Mrs. McAuliffe.”
Her mom was opening the register to see how the day had gone. “Uh-huh.”
“Mom, her name is Mrs. McAuliffe. Like Christa McAuliffe.” Pluto’s mom was still focused on the register. “Like the Challenger, Mom.”
And then her mom’s eyes snapped up, her face bright and eyes crinkling as she looked at Pluto. “Oh wow! How’d I miss that?” She winked. “Must be a sign, huh? You’ll be in eighth grade no problem in the fall.”
It was a sign. That’s exactly what Pluto had thought.
“Anna, let’s see your moves!” Kiera called out.
“Dancing is so not my thing!” Pluto’s mom responded. “I skipped my senior prom for a comic convention!”
Donna cut her off before she could finish. “Don’t even ask.”
They didn’t get all that busy that afternoon. It was one of those gorgeous—but exceptionally hot—summer days, so they sold more sodas and waters than actual pizza. Pluto was a little slow filling drinks—which made one customer angry, which made her mom angry at the customer, so she took over. Pluto moved to the corner, trying to stay out of the way.
After a while, everyone had either gone back to the beaches or gone home for the day and the bell on the door got a break until the evening crowd arrived for rides and games and pizza. When it did jingle, Pluto didn’t bother looking up. She figured her mom or Kiera could take care of it.
But then her mom said, “Hey, Pluto, you want to take this one?” and Pluto looked up to see Meredith, skin summer-burned pink and thick black hair wet and salty from the ocean.
“Hi,” Meredith said.
“Hi,” Pluto replied. And then, noticing the sweat dripping down the side of Meredith’s face, she realized why Meredith was there. “Oh! Water?”
Meredith nodded. “Two, if that’s okay? My mom’s like dying in this heat.”
It was one of the perks of having a restaurant on the boardwalk on hot beach days. Meredith and Pluto often ran around the boardwalk, and sunbathed on the sand, growing hotter and hotter and more dehydrated than either of their parents would like before finally giving in and making their way up the beach, which by then felt like the Sahara, to the pizzeria where Pluto’s mom would have cups of ice water waiting.
Pluto packed two cups with ice before filling them with water. She carefully handed them to Meredith.
“Thanks,” Meredith said.
“Anything else?” Pluto asked.
Meredith shook her head. “Nah, I only came for the waters.” She took both waters in her hands and turned toward the door. “Actually, I lied,” she said, turning back around. “I really came to say hi.”
How to Become a Planet Page 5