“Oh,” Pluto said. She smiled, a small but real one. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Meredith said, a smile on her face, too. “I gotta go, though. Mom’s thirsty. And, well . . . Maybe I’ll text you later?”
Pluto had flutters in her stomach, making it hard to speak, and quickly nodded. “Okay. Yeah.”
The bell jingled as Meredith left. Pluto looked around for her mom, but she had disappeared into the kitchen. This was good, wasn’t it? Maybe Meredith didn’t hate her after all. Maybe they could be friends again, someday, if Pluto completed her list and became Pluto again, if Pluto went to Meredith’s party and things went back to normal.
Pluto felt . . . hopeful. Meredith didn’t hate her, maybe. Her tutor was Mrs. McAuliffe, which had to be a sign, really. And, sure, maybe Pluto had messed up her therapy appointment, but she could try again, and maybe next time she could do it. Maybe.
A giant step back, but two little steps forward.
“You can go hang with your friend if you want,” Donna said, coming over to lean against the counter next to Pluto. “We’ve got it covered here.”
Pluto was feeling hopeful. Still, she didn’t want to—couldn’t—bring herself to hang with Meredith like they used to yet. “I’m okay. Thanks, though.”
Donna looked like she had more to say, but then Pluto’s mom came out from the kitchen, balancing three steaming extra-cheese pizza slices on paper plates. “Hey, how’s it going?” she said, passing one slice to Pluto and one to Donna, then leaning on the counter right between them to take a big bite of her own. There was so much cheese, it pulled away from the pizza, stringy and long as her mom tried to chew through it.
Pluto smiled and said, “Meredith came to say hi.”
“That was nice of her,” Pluto’s mom said, then glanced at Donna. Pluto ignored the look that passed between them, because it didn’t matter.
She reached a hand into her back pocket, feeling the folded piece of paper she had there, her checklist that would prove her diagnosis wasn’t her, that she was just fine. That was what mattered. She was still just Pluto. She could do this.
Her mom took another big bite of pizza.
Pluto, still smiling, pulled the cheese off her own.
She could do this.
10
Meredith did text Pluto that evening. Do you want to watch something together?
Since their parents never let them hang out after dinner on school nights, and they’d both gotten cell phones for their tenth birthdays, they would pick a movie or TV show to stream and watch it at the same time. They’d text each other comments, and it was almost like they weren’t half a town away from each other, in their pajamas, ready for bed.
Pluto could do that. She could watch something from the safety of her bed. She let Meredith pick (she chose She-Ra), and Meredith counted down. They didn’t text much, but it was more than they had since Pluto stopped going to school. They watched four episodes together before Pluto fell asleep.
Instead of focusing on her schoolwork, Pluto was trying to figure out how to ask Meredith if they could watch a TV show over text again.
“What’s your least favorite school subject?” Mrs. McAuliffe asked, pulling Pluto from her thoughts. The answer was grammar—Pluto got a lot of the rules confused—but she wondered if she should lie. Would Mrs. McAuliffe want to do her least favorite subject first, to get it over with?
They were sitting on Mrs. McAuliffe’s white sofa, and Pluto found herself touching the little tufts sticking out of its rounded edges.
“My cat did that,” Mrs. McAuliffe said.
Pluto hadn’t realized she was watching her that closely. She wanted to ask where the cat was, but she couldn’t bring herself to.
“She died last spring,” Mrs. McAuliffe answered anyway. “We were thinking about getting another, but, you know, then we have to worry about having another. I loved her, that little cat, but she was a bit of a brat.”
Pluto almost smiled.
“What’s your favorite subject, then?” Mrs. McAuliffe asked. “Mine was always science.”
“Mine, too,” Pluto said, and it was like those words shook the rest of her loose and she breathed a bit more normally. “I like science, too.”
Mrs. McAuliffe reached into her big tote bag to pull out the science book Pluto had used all year at school. “Then let’s start there, huh?”
She flipped it open, the pages familiar. It made her think about school, and about how she and Meredith sat next to each other in science class, with Harper a row in front of them and constantly getting in trouble for turning around to chat. Was it weird for that desk, the one she sat in all year, to end up empty for thirty-four days? Did Harper still turn around to talk to Meredith? She must have. Because who else would Meredith talk to?
She hoped Meredith would want to stay up late with her again, watching TV.
“What’re you thinking about?” Mrs. McAuliffe asked.
Pluto shook her head. It was too hard to explain, and she didn’t really want to, anyway.
“I know a thing or two about depression, you know,” Mrs. McAuliffe said. And that reminded Pluto that as cool as it was to have her own Mrs. McAuliffe, it wasn’t the same. The real Mrs. McAuliffe would know a thing or two about space, about astronomy, and not about the very thing Pluto wanted to forget. “I know, it sucks, right? It’s why I went into psychology, to try to understand it better. Because I’m sure it’s extra hard for your mom to understand, but you and I both know it isn’t exactly a piece of cake for you either. It’s closer to rocket science, right?”
That made Pluto smile.
“I know it’s a lot. And I know we have to get this work done, because the school needs to see you making progress, and so does your mom,” Mrs. McAuliffe said. “But you can talk to me about other things, too. If you want. When you’re ready. Okay?”
Pluto wasn’t really sure it was okay.
Luckily she didn’t have to answer. The front door opened, and another woman walked in. She was about Mrs. McAuliffe’s age, with long brown hair and bright blue eyes. “Oh! Sorry! Hi!” she said, her smile wide.
She looked so happy, like she’d never known what sadness was. Pluto looked over at Mrs. McAuliffe, but suddenly Mrs. McAuliffe looked like straight-up happiness, too. “Hey, Sunny. This is Pluto, the student I told you about.”
“Pluto,” the other woman said, and held out her hand for Pluto to shake. “I’m Sunny. It is very, very nice to meet you.”
Pluto smiled as she shook her hand, because her name was Sunny, and Pluto—of all people—especially liked that.
It felt like another sign. Pluto thought, maybe, she was meant to be here.
When her phone buzzed in her pocket, Pluto quickly pulled it out, hoping it was Meredith, hoping she was repairing that friendship slowly but surely.
It wasn’t Meredith, though. It was Fallon.
Are you at the boardwalk this week? Can we meet tomorrow?
Fallon told Pluto to meet in their spot. Pluto didn’t realize they had a “spot.” They’d only met there once before. Still, she knew to meet Fallon at the visitors booth and got there first. She put in her earbuds. She was falling behind on her podcasts anyway.
“Sorry I’m late!” Pluto nearly jumped ten feet into the air when Fallon finally arrived. “Whoa, sorry for scaring you. I had to make like thirty zeppoles for some guy right as I was trying to leave.”
Pluto nodded, trying to get her heart rate back to normal. “What did you want to meet me for?”
Fallon stuck her hand down into the pocket of her long board shorts and pulled out a folded-up paperback (a different one than last time) and piece of paper. “Well, first, I brought this book for you. I thought you might like it.”
Fallon held out the book. Pluto, surprised, stared at the cover for a moment. It had robots and aliens and three kids in school uniforms on it. “Seventh Grade vs. the Galaxy?” Pluto read, looking up at Fallo
n.
Fallon nodded. “Yeah! It’s about a school that’s a rocket ship. Like, in space. And the author actually lives in Jersey, too. And, anyway, it made me think of you so I thought you’d like it.”
Pluto reached to take it and felt the blush in her cheeks. “Thank you.”
Fallon shrugged and held out the piece of paper she had in her other hand. “Anyway, I made my list.”
“Oh,” Pluto said, taking the list. Fallon didn’t immediately let go, which confused Pluto for a moment. Fallon seemed hesitant, which didn’t make sense, since this was all her idea in the first place.
Pluto unfolded the piece of paper.
Fallon’s list:
Get a haircut
Convince Mom not to make me wear a dress to Grant’s wedding
There was one more item, but it was crossed off in heavy black ink, so Pluto couldn’t read what it said. “What was this last one?”
Fallon tensed up in that defensive way Pluto was discovering she had, where her entire body went stiff. “Nothing. I changed my mind. Just the others.”
“Getting a haircut doesn’t seem like a big deal,” Pluto pointed out.
“Neither does going to some birthday party,” Fallon fired back.
“Well—” Pluto considered it. “Okay. But why have a list at all? There’s only two things on here.”
“Why do you have a list at all?”
Pluto sighed. “I just don’t know why you’re doing this.”
“Why are you?”
Pluto was getting annoyed that Fallon kept answering her questions with questions. “I told you why. I have to. Or I have to live with my dad. I have to show my mom I can be fine.”
“Well I need to show my mom I can’t be. That I’m not.”
That answer startled Pluto. She wasn’t expecting that. She looked Fallon up and down, from her old dirty sneakers to her boy shorts to her long wild hair. She was tall and lanky and stood straight and looked alert and not sleepy and not panicky and Pluto could not see what was wrong with her.
But she supposed Meredith and her mom and everyone else couldn’t see what was wrong with Pluto, either. Not until it got bad, and she lost her bedroom door, and the doctor slapped a label on her.
“Things have been weird since the doctor said I have depression. I’m on medication that only kind of helps and I make my mom sad,” Pluto said quietly. “I need to go to tutoring so I can be in the eighth grade in the fall. I need to go to the planetarium to make my mom happy. And I need to go to Meredith’s birthday party so she’ll be my friend again. And then I’m me again. I’m a full, complete Pluto again.”
Fallon listened, her eyes not wavering from Pluto’s. “Sometimes—” Fallon said, and then stopped.
Pluto really wanted her to keep going. “What?” she whispered.
“Sometimes,” she repeated, “I don’t feel right. That my hair is too long. And my school clothes are too . . .” She drifted off, trying to find the words. “My mom picks them out. That’s why I wear my brother’s stupid neon shorts, because she won’t buy me what I like. I want my hair short like my brothers’. And I feel . . . I just . . . I don’t like me in a dress. My brother Grant is getting married and the rest of my brothers get to wear suits and my mom picked out this really pretty yellow dress for me, but I just . . .”
She had a hard time saying it, and Pluto understood. She had a hard time explaining the way she felt, too. “Do you feel . . . are you a boy?” Pluto asked.
“No!” Fallon snapped, and then immediately softened. “Maybe? Sometimes? But sometimes not. I don’t know. I’m hoping the list can help me figure it out. Or at least make me feel more . . .”
“Make you feel like you?” Pluto asked.
Fallon exhaled. “Yeah.”
A flock of seagulls flew overhead, squawking and casting Pluto and Fallon in brief shadows. They both ducked slightly, focusing on the birds as they flew away.
“Okay,” Pluto said, and she meant it.
11
Storms were common at the Jersey Shore in summertime, sometimes even bad ones like tropical storms and hurricanes and other frightening events Pluto tried not to think too hard about. When the weather was really bad, like it currently was, with lightning and rain coming down impossibly hard, her mom decided not to even open the restaurant. She called the staff and Donna and Martin and told them all to stay home. (Donna insisted she could open, but my mom insisted she get some much-needed downtime.) Anyone who went to the boardwalk on a day like this was a fool, her mom firmly believed, and she did not feel comfortable serving those fools to begin with.
Her mom was making chicken for dinner, which always came out too dry, but Pluto didn’t mind. The summers were full of greasy pizzas, and dried-out chicken was almost welcome.
Pluto reached into the pan to steal a potato as her mom’s cell phone started ringing. Her mom’s hands were covered in breadcrumbs and oil. “Can you see who that is?” she asked.
Pluto popped the potato into her mouth, which was a mistake since it was hotter than expected, and looked at her mom’s phone. Her stomach flipped. “It’s Dad,” she said.
Her mom looked at her for a moment before she said, “You wanna get it?”
She kind of didn’t. She nodded anyway and pressed the button to answer the call. “H-hello?” she said, angry at herself for the stutter. She hadn’t actually talked to her dad in what felt like forever. They had been doing just fine texting. He’d been teaching her the ins and outs of D&D. She didn’t really understand anything he explained, but it kept him engaged at least.
“Pluto Jean? That you?” her dad said. His voice was charming as always, the sound of laughter in every word, whether or not something was funny. “How’s it going, little one? I was hoping to get to talk to you.”
“Fine,” she said, her voice small.
“Listen, I gotta talk to your mom still, but how about you come spend the weekend here with me for your birthday? I was thinking we could start a campaign, actually get you playing D&D. It’s easier to explain in person, anyway,” he said, and Pluto’s chest grew tight. She looked frantically over at her mom, who stopped in the middle of checking on the chicken in the oven and mouthed, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m going to the planetarium,” Pluto said. “With mom. For my birthday.”
“I know you usually do that, but I was hoping you’d maybe want to try doing this with me this time, instead,” he said. “I was thinking you could come up on Friday night, and then we’d get you home by dinner Sunday. It’ll be good for you to spend some time here. Check the area out, see what it’s like.”
“I have a therapist here,” Pluto found herself telling him. She heard her mom slam the oven door shut. “And a tutor.”
“I know, I know. Just think about it, for the weekend, okay?” he continued. “You do the space thing with your mom all the time. We can go out somewhere fancy for your birthday dinner. You’d love it—”
Suddenly, the phone was being pulled from Pluto’s hand, and her mom put it to her own ear, saying, “John? It’s me. You’re seriously springing this on her right now?”
Her mom walked out of the kitchen, her voice doing that thing where she wanted to be whispering but also wanted to be yelling, so Pluto could hear her until she went into her bedroom and shut the door. Pluto stood in the kitchen alone, trying to get her breathing back to normal, as the chicken in the oven not only got dry, but also started to burn.
“So do you have to spend your birthday with him?” Fallon asked after Pluto told her the story.
“Mom said they made a compromise,” Pluto said. “I’ll stay home and go to the planetarium with her for my birthday and then go visit him the weekend after. She was really mad, though.”
Fallon and Pluto sat in the pizzeria with a large pizza between them for lunch. Fallon reached for a second slice, the cheese pulling like a long string from the rest of the pie before making it, messily
, into her mouth. Her eyes closed in bliss. Fallon loved pizza.
When Fallon opened her ice-blue eyes again, Pluto found herself staring into them, cheeks flushing, and was so distracted she almost missed what Fallon was saying. “Do your parents normally get along?”
Pluto almost laughed. “No, not really. Mom says they were young when they met and just grew in different directions. They used to be nicer to each other, though. They’ve just been fighting lately.”
“My parents met when they were young, too. I’m not sure if they grew in different directions or not, but I think it was just easiest to grow together. Especially after five kids,” Fallon said.
“Do you like having brothers?”
“Sometimes,” Fallon said. “Grant is a lot older, so he’s never really around, and Dom can be a jerk, but sometimes we play video games together. My younger brothers can be really annoying. But they’re okay sometimes, too, I guess. You can come meet them if you want.”
Pluto had to fight the urge to say, No, absolutely not, even though it sounded exhausting.
“Hey, did you read that book I gave you?” Fallon asked.
Pluto blushed again. “Not yet. My mom actually did though. I left it on the kitchen counter. She read it in like an hour; she loves sci-fi.”
“I think you’ll like it, too,” Fallon said.
“I’m going to read it!” Pluto said, a little too loudly. “I just haven’t yet. But I will. I promise.”
Fallon smiled. Pluto felt herself smiling, too. She didn’t know what to say next, so she didn’t say anything, and the silence settled between them in a way that made Pluto feel like she should say something. She just didn’t know what.
Luckily, her mom chose that moment to walk over. “How you two doing over here?”
“We’re good!” Fallon said. “Pluto said you read the book I gave her. And that you like sci-fi? Like Star Wars and stuff?”
How to Become a Planet Page 6