“Oh, no,” Pluto said, preemptively rolling her eyes, knowing what her mom was about to say.
“Trek! I like Star Trek. Star Wars is great, don’t get me wrong, but when it comes to science, accurate science, Star Trek at least tries to make sense and work off the real deal,” her mom carried on, like she usually did when someone brought it up.
Thankfully, Fallon only laughed. “Okay. Got it.”
A Lady Gaga song started playing on the radio, and since Chloe and Kiera were working the shift together again, the dancing started almost immediately. Kiera grabbed for Pluto’s mom’s arm, but she was having none of it. “I told you I don’t dance! Accost the children instead.”
So then Kiera reached for Pluto. She was about to protest, but Chloe grabbed for Fallon at the exact same time.
And suddenly, all four of them were bouncing around the pizzeria. And it felt ridiculous, and Pluto kept glancing over at Fallon to make sure she didn’t think it was stupid or feel weird, but Fallon was laughing, which almost made Pluto want to laugh, too.
“That’s more like it,” Pluto’s mom said.
The bell above the door started jingling, and Pluto turned in time to see Harper and Charlotte enter the pizzeria.
Pluto stopped dancing.
“Plu!” Harper called. “It’s a million degrees outside; we were hoping you’d hook us up with some water!”
The song ended, so the girls got back to work and Fallon slid back into the corner booth, staying behind as Pluto went to meet Harper and Charlotte at the counter.
Charlotte, who had been president of their class for the past three years and was friends with everybody, noticed Fallon immediately, and she waved at her while Pluto began filling soda cups with ice. “Hi,” Charlotte said.
Fallon gave her a small smile in response.
Harper pursed her lips in the way she always did right before calling out in class. “Who’s that?” she asked as Pluto handed them their waters.
Fallon didn’t seem to be interested in introducing herself—she was concentrating much too hard on the pizza in her hands—so Pluto said, “That’s Fallon. Her family owns the funnel cake place by the arcade.”
Harper exchanged glances with Charlotte.
“What?” Pluto asked, her shoulders tensing.
Harper and Charlotte exchanged glances again.
“We’re meeting Meredith at the amusement park later,” Charlotte said, “if you want to come hang with us.”
Pluto’s hands felt clammy, and the lie came easy. “I think my mom needs me here today. Donna has off on Thursdays.”
“Hey, girls!” As if on cue, Pluto’s mom came over and wrapped an arm around Pluto’s shoulders. Pluto tensed up even more at the touch. “You guys need anything to eat?”
Charlotte shook her head. “No thanks, Ms. Timoney.”
“We were just dying of thirst,” Harper supplied.
Pluto’s mom laughed. “Well, I’m glad I can keep you hydrated.”
“We were just telling Pluto we’re all hanging on the boardwalk later,” Harper said, looking back at Fallon for a moment. “We asked her to come, but she said she needs to stay here?”
Pluto held her breath, because of course her mom was going to say that she didn’t have to stay here, that of course she should take a break and go be with her friends, whom she hadn’t spent time with in forever.
But her mom surprised her. “Actually, Harper, I do need Plu here today. But hopefully she can join you guys for a beach day soon, okay?”
Harper shrugged, and Charlotte thanked Pluto’s mom a second time for the water. As they left, Pluto turned to her mom, who still had an arm wrapped tight around her shoulders.
“Thanks, Mom,” Pluto said.
The smile her mom gave her was strained.
12
“Wake up, Shooting Star.” Her mom’s voice and the strands of her blond hair tickled Pluto’s ear. “It’s my favorite day of the year.”
Pluto blinked open her eyes. Her mom was kneeling next to her bed, and the first thing Pluto saw was the burning candle, sticking out from a blueberry muffin. Pluto smiled.
“Blow it out, Plu. Let’s start your birthday with a wish.”
“What should I wish for?” Pluto asked, her voice barely above a whisper. It seemed super early to be celebrating.
“Oh, I can’t tell you that,” her mom said.
“Well, what would you wish for?”
Her mom made a show of thinking about it. “A year’s worth of mortgage payments? No, wait. An entire year of the restaurant making more money than it loses. Oh! A huge chocolate cake, and a trip to the moon. Come on, your turn. But don’t tell me what it is.”
Pluto closed her eyes and really thought about it. What did she wish for? Thirteen seemed like an opportunity for a fresh start from the bad ending of twelve. An entire new year to be a new, better Pluto.
And then it came to her.
I want the International Astronomical Union to decide they were wrong. I want them to make Pluto a planet again.
She blew out the candle.
The Liberty Science Center was only an hour away in Jersey City, and every year on her birthday, Pluto and her mom saved the planetarium for last. Her mom could give better tours than the tour guides, and the way her face lit up made Pluto want to know more and more and more.
So she couldn’t explain, as they pulled into the parking lot, why her heart felt like it was pounding out of her body, or why her chest was almost too tight to breathe. She wiped her sleeve across her sweaty forehead, wiped her damp palms on her shorts. It was a hot day, but the car had air-conditioning.
Pluto realized, startled by the thought, that she wanted to go home.
The first time they went was when Pluto turned five. She couldn’t remember much, but she did remember that it wasn’t long after Poppy had died. Her mom had been so sad. Pluto had been sad, too, but her mom was also busy dealing with the things that need to be dealt with when someone dies, as well as dealing with the fact that she was now the sole owner of Timoney’s Pizzeria.
It had been her mom’s idea to go, because, she said, “We need to get out of this pizzeria and do something fun!” Pluto remembered seeing the dome of the planetarium for the first time, dark and wide and high. She remembered sitting in her mom’s lap, looking up, and grabbing her mom’s hands as the lights went out.
And she remembered the lights coming back on—not the ones they had just turned off, but the stars. Pluto was mesmerized by the vast darkness of outer space, beautifully illuminated by the suns and moons, planets and stars, that shot across the dome. Whoopi Goldberg’s voice filled that dome, filled Pluto’s head on their journey through the stars.
There, at five, in her mom’s lap and wrapped up in her mom’s arms, she so easily got lost in it all. Got lost in the colors of the sky and in her mother’s whispers. “That’s Pluto,” she said, pointing. “That’s you.”
She’d felt like they were there, out in the universe, and she was the real Pluto orbiting, orbiting, orbiting, her mom’s arms keeping her safe, both of them smiling real smiles for the first time in weeks.
Pluto took a deep breath as her mom turned off the ignition. The car instantly grew stuffier. “Mom?” Pluto said, voice shaky.
“You ready?” her mom asked, smile wide, and real, and not even a little strained, just like that first trip. Her mom loved this. Her mom loved this and loved the pre-diagnosis Pluto, five-year-old Pluto, turning-twelve-years-old Pluto. Astronomy was her everything, and then Pluto came along, and Pluto became her everything, too. Her mom shared her love of science, of outer space, of the planets and moons and stars. It was special to her, and it was supposed to be special to Pluto, too.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars . . .
Pluto had to do this. She had to do this for her list, and she had to do this for her mom.
“Yeah,” Pluto lied. “I’m ready.”
; The Liberty Science Center, from the outside, looked like any other gray building, except for the large sphere of the planetarium on the side. The inside, though, was magnificent. Bright blue and orange lights illuminated different areas, leading the groups of kids and adults past security and welcome booths to the exhibitions. There was the reptile house (her mom hated snakes) and the bodies exhibit full of skeletons and organs that always fascinated Meredith. (Neither Pluto nor her mom brought up the fact that ever since Pluto and Meredith had become best friends, Meredith had tagged along for Pluto’s birthday. Pluto was relieved that her mom didn’t ask, but thinking about it made her stomach hurt. Especially since Meredith hadn’t even texted Happy birthday! yet.)
On the other side was the Touch Tunnel, which she and her mom always went through, even though they both hated the dark and the unknown and they released deep breaths when they came out on the other side. Then there was the Tesla show, where coils produced bursts of lightning to music, which had helped Pluto get over her fear of thunderstorms when she turned seven; and the Infinity Climber, which she was never afraid of. Pluto had been riding the roller coasters at the boardwalk ever since she was tall enough. The multistory Infinity Climber went as high as thirty-five feet above the atrium floor, and she used to climb to the top, higher than Meredith. She used to climb higher and faster and was once braver than Meredith. It never fazed her.
It fazed her now. As did the crowds and the lights and the bursts of noise that sang of science. The loud sounds of children, of animals, of lightning strikes and security guards—it was too much. She didn’t want to go through the Touch Tunnel, didn’t want to climb the Infinity Climber. She didn’t want to see the snakes or the spiders or monkeys. She didn’t want the lights of the Tesla coils and she did not want to look at dead bodies or living organisms or any of it.
She wanted to go home. She couldn’t go home. She had to do this for her list. For her mom.
“It’s crowded today,” her mom observed.
The only living things known to survive in space were microorganisms, things you could see only under a microscope, like tardigrades. Meredith thought tardigrades were adorable little water bears, and Pluto thought they were actually more alien-looking than mammal—but she still wished that the Liberty Science Center was crowded with only tardigrades, not people. Maybe then she’d be able to breathe better.
Pluto hadn’t brought her headphones, couldn’t drown out the noise with a podcast. She tried creating one in her head instead. Here, at the Liberty Science Center, Pluto, just like an active particle, must take up energy from her environment, must absorb the enthusiasm of the crowd around her, and convert it into direct motion to move forward.
Her mom took her hand and frowned. Pluto’s palm was warm and damp.
“Hey, Shooting Star, how about we change things up and go to the planetarium first this time. Okay?”
Pluto nodded eagerly. The planetarium was dark and calm, and she could sit next to her mom and watch the space show, and everything around her could fade away.
Her mom bought tickets to Dark Universe and chatted with the woman who sold the tickets while they waited to be let inside. When the doors opened, most kids and families went straight for the center, straight for the front view. Pluto and her mom knew better, knew that the best seats were the ones in the back, where you could see every inch of that dome without straining your neck, engulfing yourself in the stars.
The lights went down, and her mom leaned over to whisper, “I love it here.”
Pluto wanted to respond. She wanted to agree. She wanted to mouth the words along with the Neil deGrasse Tyson narration that went along with the show they had chosen. Way out here, ten million light-years from planet Earth, every point of light is a galaxy containing billions of stars.
Pluto tried to relax in her seat as the room went dark and then the stars lit it back up again. This is Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I’m here to guide you through a century of discovery about the past, present, and future of our universe.
Pluto started thinking about her bedroom.
She used to fall asleep with the glow of her plastic stars reminding her of this moment, of each year at this very place with her mom. They’d made her feel safe, and loved, and now they were gone, and so was that feeling Pluto used to get here, in this planetarium.
There’s no center to the universe . . . Wherever you are, it looks as if you’re at the center and everyone else is speeding away.
Pluto didn’t want to be here.
She did not want to be here.
“Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars . . .”
“What’s that, Plu?” her mom whispered, leaning over. Pluto didn’t realize she’d spoken out loud.
“Mercury, Venus . . . Mercury . . .”
She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t.
She couldn’t be here, and she couldn’t breathe, she could not breathe. She looked at her mom, who was looking up at the stars, smiling, eyes bright in the dimmed room, and Pluto knew she had to hold it together. She couldn’t let her mom know she was panicking. She couldn’t let her mom realize she couldn’t do this. These are the nine planets that we know. Round and round the sun they go.
Pluto needed to fake it. She needed to hold the arms of the seat and keep her head pointed up at the stars and stay completely still. She needed to keep herself from shaking. She needed to take a deep breath and hold it. She needed to clench her teeth together. She needed to ignore the ringing in her ears. She needed to make her mom think she was okay.
When astronauts go to outer space and experience zero gravity for the first time, their bodies change. They grow an inch or two because body fluids move toward their head, which means they also get really bad headaches at first. A lot of astronauts get nauseous. And to make it even more complicated, they have to convince their body that up is wherever they point their head—even if it seems like their head is actually facing down.
That was what Pluto needed to do. She had to convince her body where up was, she had to convince her lungs they could breathe, convince herself she was fine.
When the lights came up, Pluto shrank back in her seat, blinking at the sudden bright assault. She hadn’t realized the show was over. Her shoulders were tense, her jaw clenched, and she felt a little sore.
“What’d you think, Shooting Star?”
Pluto wiped her hair, damp from sweat, away from her forehead. She nodded through the ache in her neck. “Yeah. Yeah, it was great. I loved it.”
By the time they got home, Pluto was stiff and sore and tired. She felt like she was coming down with a fever, even though she knew she wasn’t really sick. She went straight to her bedroom and slept through the rest of her birthday.
The following morning, she didn’t want to get out of bed. Her head was foggy, her body heavy. It had been a few weeks since she’d had one of these days. She wished it didn’t feel like such a warm, welcome embrace. She covered her head with her blanket, trying to maintain the darkness, and waited anxiously for her mom to try to wake her.
But her mom never did. She left Pluto alone, even though Pluto could hear her go about her business through the house, knew that she was home and awake and getting a move on. Which was exactly what Pluto wanted, but it was also not what Pluto wanted at all.
When she finally managed to climb out of bed, she reached for her cell phone and saw how late it was, the bright light from the screen illuminating the bedroom like the stars from the planetarium.
Her dad had texted. He was excited she was coming to visit soon, and looking forward to celebrating her birthday then. Fallon had texted, too: Happy birthday!!! with both a cake and rocket ship emoji. Charlotte—who texted everyone on their birthdays, regardless of whether or not she was close friends with them—also sent Pluto a text.
Meredith hadn’t texted. Pluto had thought they were getting back to something next to normal when they’d watched TV together, texting like they used to, but she
guessed not.
The light was on in the living room, and Pluto followed it to see her mom fast asleep on the sofa, glow from the TV dancing across her face. Pluto reached for the remote to turn the TV off, and the sudden silence startled her mom awake.
For a moment, they just stared at each other. And then her mom was sitting up, rubbing her eyebrows and taking a deep breath. “Hi,” she said. Her voice was rough and scratchy, and she cleared her throat before adding, “You’re awake.”
“Hi,” Pluto said. Her voice wasn’t any better.
“Guess you can check the planetarium off your list, huh?”
She wanted to say, Can I really? Was it actually a success? Because it felt like a failure. She wanted to know if she’d ever be able to visit the Liberty Science Center again without thinking about this birthday. She wanted to ask what her mom did when she’d turned thirteen, if it was the best birthday ever, or if she wished she hadn’t had a birthday at all, wished she could never have another birthday again, wished that she would just stop getting older, stop growing, just stop.
Instead, she said, “Did you know that Cancer is the dimmest zodiac constellation?”
“I have something for you,” her mom said, ignoring Pluto’s comment and sounding so eager it made her stomach hurt.
She waited for Pluto to respond, so Pluto nodded, and her mom took Pluto’s sweaty hand and led her into the kitchen.
On the table was a chocolate-frosted cake—Pluto’s favorite. Her mom had made it (from a box) and stuck in fourteen mismatched candles (one was for good luck), and in red frosting she’d written, Happy Birthday, Shooting Star. But she’d run out of room and the last two letters of Star sat below the rest of them. “Did I ever tell you that I almost named you after my mom?”
Pluto shook her head. As far as she knew, she was always destined to be Pluto.
“I was so scared when I was pregnant with you. I was young, and your dad and I were already in a weird place. My friends were off at college and partying and doing all the things young adults do. My mom was the only person I felt I could turn to, you know?” Pluto’s mom paused, taking a deep breath as she blinked back the tears that shone in her eyes. “She was all I had, before I had you. My best friend.”
How to Become a Planet Page 7