How to Become a Planet

by Nicole Melleby

  She woke Pluto up in the middle of the night, and they put flip-flops on and kept their pajamas on. Her mom popped popcorn, wrapped up their biggest beach towel, and the two of them snuck out, over the boardwalk and onto the beach. They picked a spot right in the middle, where the streetlamps barely reached, and it was dark, and quiet, and when they lay down on the towel and looked up at the sky, it was covered with stars.

  “Do you like space, Pluto?” Dr. Collins had asked.

  Pluto loved this. Loved sharing it with her mom. She always had. Before the diagnosis. And now, here, after it.

  “Mom?” she asked, picking the scabs on her knuckles as she tried to spot the shooting stars.

  “Yeah?” she said, eyes glued to the sky.

  “Can I have the glow-in-the-dark stars from my walls? You said you kept them . . .” Pluto said. “I don’t want to stick them back up, but I just . . . don’t want them thrown away.”

  Her mom’s eyes left the stars and focused on Pluto. “Of course you can, Plu.”

  Pluto took a deep breath. “Mom? Why do you think my list didn’t work but Fallon’s did?”

  “Hmm.” Her mom considered. “I think maybe Fallon needed to change, for her. She needed to do the things on her list so that she could figure out the person she needs to be, deep down. You didn’t need to change. You don’t need to change. You just need to learn—and so do I—what it means to deal with depression. Your list wasn’t about that, so it wasn’t the right list.”

  Pluto thought about it. “What would be the right list, then?”

  Her mom rolled to her side, touching her forehead to Pluto’s. “Let’s think . . . Take your medication. Visit your therapist. Keep talking to your dear old mom about how you’re feeling. Be patient, be understanding. Trust yourself.”

  “That’s it?” Pluto asked.

  Her mom shrugged. “I think so. I mean, it’s pretty clear I don’t know all the answers. But I think so.”

  “Will you tell me more about Grandma?” Pluto asked. “Will you tell me about her good and bad days?”

  Pluto’s mom took a big, deep breath. “I’ll try to tell you everything. But mostly I want to tell you about how much I loved her, and how much she meant to me.”

  “Did she like shooting stars?”

  “She loved them.”

  Pluto was about to ask more, about what else her grandma loved, and about her depression, and her life, and her mom’s life with her, but then she saw it out of the corner of her eye. And then there was another. “Mom, look! There! The meteors!”

  Her mom looked up, wrapping her fingers around Pluto’s as they lay side by side, watching the stars. “There!” Her mom pointed as a few more meteors flew across the sky. “Make a wish, Shooting Star.”

  Her mom kept watching the stars, and Pluto turned to watch her mom. She was watching the meteors with a childlike awe, eyes wide, smile bright, that made Pluto wonder what she was like when she was Pluto’s age, discovering the universe for the first time and falling in love with it. She looked so young, even with the dark circles under her eyes, the worry wrinkles on her forehead.

  She was young. It was easy for Pluto to forget that. She was young, and depression, Pluto’s anxiety, was new to her, too. And she was doing her best, even if her best was sometimes wrong, even if her best sometimes hurt, sometimes made Pluto want to scream and cry and push her away. She kept trying. Maybe now, with them on the same page, with therapy appointments on the calendar, she would learn. They both would.

  Pluto sat up to look across the bay at the New York City lights that glistened on the water.

  “Mom?”

  “Yeah, Plu?”

  “I don’t want to live with Dad. I think I’d like to maybe try to visit again. But I want to stay here, with you.”

  Her mom grew still, eyes on the dark sky as the waves of the ocean lapped at the beach and the summer breeze ruffled her hair. Her chest rose and fell with a deep breath. “Good,” she whispered, biting back a smile. “Then I’ll do everything I can to keep you here.”

  Pluto rested her head on her mom’s shoulder.

  Good.

  Together, they watched the meteor shower. And, even though it was a success, even though she’d have been able to check it off as complete, Pluto did not once think about that list.

  28

  Pluto took her medication. She visited her therapist. She watched the meteor shower with her mom. She was allowed to go to the eighth grade in the fall.

  And now, she was standing by the entrance of the Runaway Rapids water park that was located across the street from the Keansburg boardwalk, a wrapped present in her hand, wearing her purple cover-up over her bikini, the same cover-up Meredith had in blue. Her mom stood next to her, holding a birthday card.

  The line to get in was long and loud. It was a gorgeous summer day, but one so hot that everyone was itching for the cool-down of the water park. Pluto recognized some of the kids in line from school. Harper and Charlotte were up at the front, but the rest of Pluto’s class—most of whom she hadn’t seen since spring—were scattered, carrying cards and presents in various colors and sizes, waiting to get in to Meredith’s party.

  Pluto froze, her heart drumming in her chest. She could hear the rushing water on the inside, the screams of children zipping down slides in their tubes, the sounds of people running around and cooling down and shouting and laughing. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, some of her classmates noticing her. Whispering to one another. She had stopped showing up to school, stopped coming around, and did they know why? Would they ask her? Would she have to explain it?

  Would they be okay with it?

  “Hey, look, there’s Fallon,” her mom said, and Pluto breathed a sigh of relief, because Fallon knew everything. Fallon still liked her. Fallon didn’t need any explanation.

  “Hey!” Fallon said, blushing as she ran over to them.

  Pluto smiled. Fallon looked thrilled to be there. Her eyes were hard to look away from, sparkling and blue, like Neptune.

  Pluto’s mom bumped her shoulder gently. Not exactly all that subtly, either.

  “Are you getting in line to go in?” Fallon asked.

  Pluto’s hands felt sweaty and she wondered if she was getting Meredith’s present sweaty, too. She wanted to get in line, and go to the party, like she did every year to kick off the end of the summer with her friends and celebrate her best friend’s birthday. She wanted to say hi to her classmates, to go on her favorite slides, to jump and splash in the sunshine. She wanted to do this. She had worked all summer to get here.

  But she also wanted to go home. It was too much. It was loud, and there were so many familiar faces and so many possible questions. She had that familiar tight feeling in her chest, a ringing in her ears, and she tried to breathe deeply through her nose but was only a little successful.

  “It’s okay if you’re not ready, Plu,” her mom said.

  “No it’s not,” Pluto said, fighting past the lump in her throat.

  “Hey,” her mom said, bending over to meet Pluto’s eyes. “It is. Remember what Dr. Collins said? One day at a time. Some of those days will be easy ones. Some of them won’t be. I’m here to navigate those with you, but you’re the pilot here, Plu. You decide where your limit is. If being thrust into a birthday party with all the kids from school is a bit much right now, okay. We’ll get you there eventually.”

  “What if we don’t?” Pluto said. “What if Meredith gets mad at me?”

  “She won’t be mad,” Fallon said.

  “Yes she will!”

  “Talk to her,” Pluto’s mom said. “Like you’ve been talking to me. She doesn’t understand. And that’s okay! We’re still learning. Give her a chance to learn, too. Okay?”

  Pluto wasn’t sure. Still, she said, “Okay.”

  Pluto’s mom texted Meredith’s, and they waved goodbye to Fallon, leaving her in line as they walked around to the back of t
he water park, where the birthday party tables were set up and Meredith and her mom were waiting. “Hi, Pluto,” Meredith said.

  Pluto handed Meredith the present. She looked back at her mom, who nodded. “I can’t stay,” Pluto said.

  Meredith’s face fell. “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry. I have to go home. I have to . . .” She drifted off. There was a lot to explain, and she didn’t know how to explain it to someone who didn’t know how Pluto felt. Who didn’t experience things like Pluto did. “Can we just hang out by ourselves this week? And I can . . . I can try to tell you why, then? I can tell you all about my diagnosis then.”

  Meredith bit the inside of her cheek. “Just you and me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Pluto said. “Just us.”

  Meredith looked down at her feet. But then she slowly smiled. “I’d like that.”

  “Happy birthday, Meredith.”

  “Thanks, Pluto.”

  Pluto and her mom headed back up the boardwalk to their car in silence. Pluto was relieved that she wasn’t staying at Meredith’s party, but she was also feeling pretty low about it. She wanted to be successful, and even though her mom was keeping positive about it, Pluto still felt like a failure.

  “Can we stop at the restaurant quick?” her mom said, interrupting her thoughts. “I wanna show you something.”

  “Okay.”

  At the end of the summer, the pizzeria always made Pluto a little sad. They stayed open all year, but fewer and fewer people came when the weather started to turn and when school started, and all the college kids who worked there left (Kiera had said goodbye yesterday), and people got too busy with their regular routines. When the summer ended, it still smelled like greasy pizza and her mom’s Taylor Swift perfume, but it looked, well, lonely.

  “You coming?” her mom asked.

  Pluto sighed and opened the door under the faded Timoney’s Pizza sign, the jingling bell ringing out and echoing in the restaurant. She didn’t know what her mom wanted her to see, since it all seemed pretty desolate, and she was even more confused when her mom started walking into the back, toward the kitchen.

  “Get a move on, Shooting Star. I have something for you to see.”

  She followed her mom through the kitchen doors and froze.

  Along the walls and the ceiling, and throughout the kitchen, hung Pluto’s old glow-in-the-dark stars. The door closed behind her, and her mom turned off the lights.

  They were bright. And familiar. And filled something up inside Pluto, like seeing a rainbow after a storm.

  “I know you asked to have them back, but I thought maybe you’d like this,” Pluto’s mom said, coming up behind her to wrap her arms around Pluto’s middle. “I know you might not actually ever want them hanging in your room again. You’re getting older and, well, things change. We know that more than anyone, huh? But I just . . . couldn’t leave them in a box. Not when I can so clearly picture hanging them up with you, seeing that happy look in your eyes that told me how much you loved them. And me. I mean, maybe it’s stupid. I don’t know. But I just couldn’t let them gather dust. It felt so . . .”

  “Wrong?” Pluto finished for her, and she felt her mom nod against her hair.

  “Yeah,” her mom said. “Is it okay?”

  Pluto could try again to go to the planetarium when she turned fourteen. She could try to go to school in the fall. She could repair her friendship with Meredith, explore her friendship with Fallon. She could take her medication, and see her therapist, and have Mrs. McAuliffe in her corner.

  She could have her mom, learning with her, supporting her.

  After the Challenger crashed, the shuttle program was paused for thirty-two months. A special commission investigated. They picked apart all the reasons they had failed—so that they could learn from their mistakes, understand what went wrong, and try again.

  Maybe sometimes Pluto would fail. Maybe sometimes her bad days would be too bad. Maybe she would always have to learn how to deal with depression.

  And maybe that would be okay.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was a hard one to write. For a while, I knew something was missing, and at one point went so far as to add literal fire to the plot to try to figure it out.

  The fires didn’t last very long (thank goodness, could you imagine?), but it wasn’t until I was out for coffee with my friend and fellow author Josh Levy that I found the missing piece. Josh, wonderful sci-fi nerd that he is, told me all about the Hayden Planetarium Astronomy Question and Answer Hotline. Josh, this book wouldn’t be what it is without your passion for accurate sci-fi representation.

  I’d like to both thank and apologize to the Hayden Planetarium Astronomy Question and Answer Hotline for my numerous phone calls. I do, however, hope so many kids find your number from this book and reach out with all their astronomy-related questions. (And if that’s you, if you have a need to discover the universe, if you have an important question about the stars, that number is 212-769-5901.)

  To my agent, Jim McCarthy: Thank you for your patience with me and my ever-growing list of projects that I email you about constantly. Your time and effort and brilliance means the world (and stars and moon) to me.

  To my editor, Krestyna Lypen: There are so few people in this world I would trust completely with my work, without hesitation. You’re top of that list. Even if you always make me do more homework (this time astronomy instead of soap operas!) than I ever bothered with during actual school.

  Everyone at Algonquin: Thank you for always making me feel safe with you all, as an author and human and little anxious toad.

  Liz Welch, you are (thankfully) still my Theo and my wuffenloaf.

  Mom and Dad, thank you for bragging about me. Have I nudged my way into being the favorite yet?

  To every single middle schooler who has reached out to me to tell me your story, I hear and see you.

  If you ever feel like Pluto does, you’re not alone. Reach out to a trusted adult for help. Otherwise, here are a few more hotlines for you:

  The National Hopeline Network has trained counselors available to support you 24/7 at 1-800-442-HOPE (4673).

  If phone calls aren’t for you, you can reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

  And, finally, the Trevor Project is a national 24-hour, toll-free, confidential suicide hotline specifically for LGBTQ youth. If you are a young person in crisis, feeling suicidal, or in need of a safe and judgment-free place to talk, call the Trevor Lifeline now at 1-866-488-7386, or text START to 678678.

  Also by Nicole Melleby

  In the Role of Brie Hutchens…

  Hurricane Season

  Published by

  Algonquin Young Readers

  an imprint of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2021 by Nicole Melleby.

  All rights reserved.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  eISBN: 9781643751627