Billy was currently sitting at a table outside, working on the summer schoolwork he had to finish if he wanted to pass math and get into fifth grade. He looked sullen and bitter about it. Pluto could relate.
The Zamprognas were loud, and big, and Pluto wondered what it might be like to grow up in a family that wasn’t just her and her mom.
“Here, Pluto, eat one of these. I think they’re gross, but apparently everyone else loves fried Twinkies,” Mrs. Zamprogna said, handing Pluto a plastic plate with a gooey fried Twinkie, covered with too much powdered sugar, thanks to Tommy. Pluto didn’t really want it, but she didn’t want to say no to Mrs. Zamprogna, either. She was tall and round, with an apron stretched around her middle and her hair pulled back from her face. She had a soft look that reminded Pluto of a mom—not a particular mom, just a mom in general.
“Can I take a break while Pluto eats it?” Fallon asked, wiping the sweat off her forehead with her forearm.
Her mom gave them the go-ahead, and they went outside to sit on the wooden benches. They waved at Billy, who was daydreaming out at the ocean instead of focusing on his homework. Pluto picked at her Twinkie.
“Have you talked to your dad since the weekend?” Fallon asked. “We should go back sometime. I want to play D&D again. I want to learn to be the game master, so I can come up with the stories. Speaking of! I was on the computer, there’s a ton of awesome bookstores maybe we could check out next time. There’s one that has eighteen miles of books!”
Pluto shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about my dad’s right now.”
“Okay,” Fallon said. “Well, what about your list? Is there anything you wanna try and cross off? Isn’t your friend’s party soon? Oh! Maybe we can go to the gift shops and find her a present?”
Pluto scowled. She suddenly felt really, really angry again, her shoulders and chest tight. “I don’t want to talk about that either.”
Fallon’s eyebrows pinched together, confused. “Oh. Okay. Well, can we talk about my list? I was hoping you could help me figure out how to talk to my mom about the dress thing.”
“I don’t want to talk about the stupid lists at all, Fallon,” Pluto snapped. “I don’t even know if I want to do them anymore. And I don’t want this Twinkie, either.” She pushed the paper plate away from her, powdered sugar getting all over the table.
“What are you—” Fallon shook her head. “What’s wrong? I thought we were spending the summer on these lists. I thought this was the point of everything.”
“Maybe the point was to just be friends,” Pluto said, her nose burning as she held back tears.
“It was—it is—I just . . .” Fallon looked as though she might start crying, too, and Pluto couldn’t help thinking of the fight with her mom. “What’s going on? I don’t understand what’s wrong.”
“I’m wrong!” Pluto shouted. “And everything was okay in the city, so why should I keep failing at that stupid list when I can just forget all of it and go stay with my dad?”
Fallon narrowed her eyes, shoulders tensing. “You want to stay with your . . . After everything we’ve . . .” She couldn’t seem to finish any of her sentences. “Is this why you’re fighting with your mom? Your dad was hardly even there last weekend!”
“You don’t understand!” Pluto was shouting, but she couldn’t bring herself to care if anyone could overhear her, if even the seagulls were startled enough to turn and stare. “All you had to do was get a stupid haircut. You have no idea what it’s like!”
“You know what, Pluto,” Fallon said, standing. “You’re right. I don’t understand. But neither do you. So, forget it. You don’t want to do the list, fine. I don’t want your help anyway.”
Fallon left so quickly Pluto couldn’t stop her. She couldn’t say, I’m sorry and I didn’t mean to upset you and I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.
She didn’t know how to say, I’ve hurt my best friend and I’ve hurt my mom and I didn’t mean to hurt you, too.
Instead, she watched Fallon walk away, caught between wanting to apologize and wanting to keep on yelling.
Pluto could not stay near the funnel cake shop. She did not want to go back to the pizzeria, either.
So there she stood, against an ice cream shop in the center of the boardwalk, on a busy summer day, jaw and fists and eyes clenched tight, breathing heavily through the tightness in her chest, wishing she could just be invisible so that no one would stop and ask her if she was okay, because she didn’t think she was okay, but if she opened her mouth to answer them, she might just start screaming.
She wished the Hayden Planetarium Astronomy Question and Answer Hotline had answered her question months ago and told her how to create a black hole so she could fall into it.
She wanted to be left alone, but she didn’t want to feel lonely. She couldn’t get herself to just . . . be normal. To just be Pluto. To just be the girl she used to be, before this summer, before the diagnosis, who was fun and kind and friendly. Who loved to listen to her mom talk about outer space. Who loved running down the boardwalk with Meredith.
“Pluto? Are you okay?”
A soft hand touched Pluto’s shoulder, and Pluto jumped, her eyes flying open to see Meredith jump, too.
Pluto was having trouble breathing. Meredith grabbed her hand, but Pluto yanked it away. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t want Meredith, or anyone, touching her. She was just so . . . mad. At her mom. At Fallon. At Meredith. At everyone.
“Do you need me to get your mom?”
“No,” Pluto managed to choke out. “Just . . . no.”
Meredith didn’t say anything else, but she didn’t leave, either. They stood silently against the wall of the ice cream shop. It was cloudy, a slow day for the boardwalk, and Pluto counted the people who walked by, trying to control her breathing. Two boys on their skateboards skated in between an older couple walking hand in hand, forcing them to release their hold. Near them, a little kid was throwing a hissy fit over her dropped ice cream, and a dog was trying desperately, straining at its leash, to lick it up.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars . . .
“Remember the time Harper’s dog got lost, and we searched for hours on the boardwalk trying to find her?” Meredith suddenly said.
Pluto nodded. She did remember. Harper cried the whole time, and Pluto and Meredith decided to ride the rocket roller coaster, the highest point on the boardwalk, to try to spot her. Pluto, from the very top of that coaster, saw the dog first. “She was on the beach,” Pluto said. “Chasing seagulls.”
“Such a dumb dog,” Meredith said. “Remember how, after that, we called the planetarium hotline and asked them how to successfully launch a dog into space?”
“Harper was so mad,” Pluto said.
“Are you okay?” Meredith asked.
“Yeah,” Pluto nodded. “Thanks.”
Meredith chewed the inside of her cheek. “What’s wrong with you, Pluto? Just . . . tell me.”
“You already know. I have depression. And anxiety.”
Meredith sighed. “I know. But what’s wrong? Why does that stop you from being my friend? Why are you friends with the funnel cake girl and not me?”
Pluto looked up at Meredith, whose light brown eyes were wide and pleading. Fallon’s eyes were the color of Neptune, and Pluto’s were the color of Mercury, but Meredith’s were the color of Pluto. And that . . . that meant something. All those years of friendship meant something.
“Fallon didn’t know me before,” she admitted. “She couldn’t tell that I’m different now.”
Meredith grew quiet, looking out at the ocean. At the city skyline that felt, right then, even farther away. “I just miss my friend.” Meredith turned to look back at Pluto. “I’m sorry I got mad at you. It just hurt. I was . . . jealous, I guess. And confused.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Pluto said. “For making you feel that way.”
“I should go, though.” Meredith c
ringed. “I told my mom I was going to the bathroom, like, forever ago. She’s gonna start worrying.”
“Oh,” Pluto said. “Yeah, okay.”
“But—” Meredith took a deep breath. “You should come to my birthday party. If you can, I mean. If you want to.” She smiled, even if it was a little wobbly. “I really do want you there.”
Take medication. Visit the planetarium with Mom.
Go to Meredith’s birthday party.
Meredith was giving her the chance to actually accomplish something on her list. If that was something she wanted to do.
Pluto took a deep breath. She didn’t feel quite so mad anymore.
“Okay,” she said. “Yeah. I’ll try.”
19
“You’re not even trying today, Pluto. Why’re you looking so sad?” Mrs. McAuliffe asked about a half hour into their tutoring session.
Pluto scowled. “I have depression. I always look sad.” Or angry, or tired, or anything other than what a normal thirteen-year-old girl in the summertime should look like.
But Mrs. McAuliffe shook her head. “You know what I mean. This is different. What’s bothering you? Because I know something is bothering you. That last math question had an entire space station theme and you didn’t even crack a smile.”
Did it? Pluto read back over the last couple of questions. One was about the square footage of materials a guy needed to build a porch, and the other was about the amount of flour someone needed to bake a cake. “There’s no space station question.”
“Aha! But you had to read them again. Which proves to me you’re not even a little bit paying attention,” Mrs. McAuliffe said. She looked proud of herself. “What’s going on?”
Pluto sighed. “Everyone is mad at me. Well, I made everyone mad at me. Well, I yelled at my mom and at my friend Fallon and now they’re both mad at me.”
“Why did you yell at them?”
“I don’t know,” Pluto said.
“You’re going to need to do better than that if you’re going to ignore my math lessons all day,” Mrs. McAuliffe responded.
Pluto ran her fingers over the pages in her math workbook, along the edges, before turning the page back to the beginning. “I don’t know,” she said again, honestly. “I was just so mad that things were so good when I was with my dad and then I came back home and it went back to normal. Or not normal, but back to being bad again.” Pluto sighed. “Which I guess is normal. And then I couldn’t make the mad feelings go away.”
Mrs. McAuliffe hmmed in that way she did when she was taking in everything Pluto was saying. She always hmmed when Pluto spoke to her. It made Pluto feel like she was a very good listener. Not everyone was. “Have you tried talking to your mom or Fallon? Explain to them how you felt in the moment and why, and that you are sorry if you hurt their feelings? They know you, Plu. They know you didn’t mean it.”
“I never mean to do anything lately,” Pluto said, her chest tightening with that familiar anger all over again.
“You’re seeing a therapist, right?”
Pluto pulled a face.
Mrs. McAuliffe laughed. “No! No. Therapy can be great! Scary and uncomfortable, at least at first, but really great. Your therapist is yours. To say anything to. All of this, and more. You might find you really like it.”
Pluto shook her head. “I tried. It didn’t go so well.”
“You should try again,” Mrs. McAuliffe said. “When you’re ready.”
Pluto leaned back into the soft cushions of Mrs. McAuliffe’s couch, pouting a little, sulking a little more than that. She glanced around the living room, at the photographs along the mantel above the small fireplace. They were all of Mrs. McAuliffe and Sunny, laughing at the beach, or at a restaurant, or in the city with the big Christmas tree in the background.
Looking at them made Pluto’s chest feel tight again. Because they made her think of Fallon on the boardwalk, or Fallon at the pizzeria, or Fallon by her side in the city.
“Mrs. McAuliffe?” Pluto said, her voice suddenly much quieter. “How did you know you really really liked someone like Sunny?”
Mrs. McAuliffe smirked. “You mean how did I know I really liked someone beautiful and funny and smart and, well, a bit kooky?”
Pluto sighed. No, that’s not what she meant. But also it was. But also it wasn’t.
Mrs. McAuliffe knew what she was asking anyway. “I just did, Pluto. It just felt right. A lot of things in my life didn’t, but Sunny? She always did.”
Pluto didn’t know what to say to that, but she nodded anyway, and reached to pull her math notebook closer to her. She picked up her pencil. “Yeah,” she said. “I think I get that.”
She didn’t say anything more about fighting with her mom and Fallon, or Sunny, or how some of those things were connected. And Mrs. McAuliffe didn’t ask her to.
Later that night, even though every inch of her was fighting it, Pluto took a deep breath and knocked softly on her mom’s bedroom door. “Mom?”
Her mom put down the book she was reading. Tried, and failed, to hide the eagerness on her face.
It made Pluto’s stomach hurt. “I was wondering. I mean, I know I keep messing up, but I think I’d like to try again. I mean . . .” The words were getting jumbled in her head.
“Tell me, Shooting Star,” her mom said. “Whatever it is.”
Pluto thought about everything Mrs. McAuliffe had told her, and she tried again. “Can we make another therapy appointment?”
This seemed to shock her mom, who put her book down on the dresser beside her, full attention on Pluto. “Really? I mean . . . That’s what you want?”
“Well . . . it’s on my list,” she said.
The look on her mom’s face made Pluto feel like she might start crying. “It is on your list,” Pluto’s mom agreed. “I thought—I mean, are you . . . still working on your list?”
Pluto slowly nodded.
“So . . .” Her mom was being careful with her words. Pluto wished she wouldn’t. She wished she would talk to Pluto like normal, without walking on eggshells. “What does that mean . . . about your dad’s?”
It was the question Pluto was waiting for, but the one she still didn’t have an answer to. Did she really want to leave her mom? Her home? The boardwalk? Fallon?
But things had seemed so . . . easy, in New York.
“I don’t know,” Pluto answered honestly. “I just . . . want to do the list.”
“Okay,” her mom said, a little too quickly. “Then we’ll do the list. And I’ll make that appointment first thing in the morning.”
Now was the time Pluto would normally climb into her mom’s bed, into her mom’s arms, and let her mom tell her about the universe. About Pluto’s place in it.
Instead, she hovered by the door. “I’m gonna go to bed,” she said.
Her mom nodded. “Goodnight, Plu.”
“Goodnight, Mom.”
Take medication. Get into the 8th grade. Watch the Perseid meteor shower with Mom. See the therapist. Go to Meredith’s birthday party.
New list. New day. Pluto was ready to start again.
That didn’t mean she was ready for her mom to wake up and schedule a therapy appointment for that morning, but there she was, once again in the waiting room, gripping the arms of an uncomfortable chair.
New list. New day. Second chance.
“You look like you’re getting ready for battle,” her mom said with a slight frown. “You’re safe here. She’s not going to breathe fire at you or anything, I swear, Plu. Even if she did, you know she’d have to answer to me.”
Pluto wasn’t afraid of the therapist. She was afraid that her second attempt would go as miserably as the first. The thought of failure made her want to give up before it could happen, made her want to turn around and walk out the door.
“Pluto Timoney?” the receptionist called.
New list. New day. Second chance.
She t
ook a deep breath. She didn’t know if she was ready. But even the best astronauts got nervous before takeoff.
If they could travel outside the safe haven of Earth and into the unknown . . . so could she.
“Hello again, Pluto,” Dr. Collins said, her wide mouth in a kind smile as she pulled her glasses off her face. She motioned, once again, to the bright red couch across from her. “You want to sit down this time? Might be more comfortable.”
Pluto eyed the couch, then the door, then Dr. Collins.
Dr. Collins laughed gently. “You can keep standing if you want. Makes it easier for a quick getaway, I completely understand.” She stood, crossing from behind her desk to perch on the front of it. She crossed her heels, bringing Pluto’s attention to the work boots that did not match the rest of her outfit—professional blouse and dress pants—at all. They did, however, match her messy hair.
Dr. Collins followed Pluto’s gaze. “I usually change these when I get here, even though my heels kill my feet, but I’ve been swamped today and I keep forgetting.”
“I like them,” Pluto said.
“Your mom said it was your idea for this appointment today,” Dr. Collins said. “And that you wanted to see me alone. There must be something you want to talk to me about.”
Pluto tilted her head. “I thought you’re supposed to ask me a bunch of questions.”
Dr. Collins laughed. “I can do that, too. But I have a feeling there’s something you want to get off your chest, and I don’t want to waste your time. So, you can take the lead if you want. Or I can take it for you. What do you think, Pluto?”
“Did you know that a girl my age picked the name Pluto? For the planet, I mean,” Pluto suddenly found herself saying. She didn’t even know why she was bringing it up.
How to Become a Planet Page 12