by Wendy Mass
From behind me I hear Kenny laugh. But there’s no meanness in his laugh; there never is. Kenny is one of those rare people who are all goodness. That’s not to say he doesn’t do the typical annoying little brother stuff like grab the last buckwheat pancake off my plate or stick a wet finger in my ear. But he’s also really smart and pretty funny. If I had to pick anyone to grow up with in the middle of nowhere, he’d be the one.
Kenny joins us and says, “You can sleep outside half the night, but a little old spider freaks you out? All sorts of things could be crawling on you. A lot big-ger than that spider, I bet. I’ll show you my chart at lunch.”
“First of all,” I reply, “this was no little spider. It had a presence. It had a soul. A mean soul, intent on eating me. And second, I am not sleeping when I’m out there on my lawn chair. I am intently stargazing. And third, I don’t ever want to see that creepy chart of yours again. I had nightmares for weeks the last time you left it open on the kitchen table.”
Kenny is determined to get his name in the history books by finding a bug that hasn’t been discovered before. He keeps a huge sketchpad with drawings of every creepy crawler he’s come across since he was five. He then compares the drawings to pictures of bugs in the encyclopedia-like volume The Complete Bug-Hunters’ Guide to Insect Life in America, from Ants to Zarthopods. The title alone is enough to curl my toes. I can deal fine with your regular garden variety bug. It’s just when one has an overabundance of legs, or is of a size more commonly associated with a household pet, that I get freaked out.
I prefer looking up, rather than down, and have a different plan to secure my immortality.
I’m going to discover a comet.
According to the rules of comet-finding, my comet will be named after me. Even if I’d wanted to name it something else, I wouldn’t be allowed. Every time it circles around the sun and approaches Earth, excited onlookers will exclaim, “There goes Comet Summers, isn’t it bright? Isn’t it amazing?” My grandpa had hoped to find a comet or an asteroid but never did. His eyesight wasn’t so good, and even powerful binoculars didn’t help after a while. If I find an asteroid I’m going to name it after him, because you can’t name an asteroid after yourself. Don’t ask me why—that’s just the way it is.
“C’mon, Ally,” Kenny says, picking up one of the long flat brooms. “I’ll help you.”
“Don’t forget to fill out the logbooks,” my father says over his shoulder as he walks away. “Things are going to get crazy soon, and you need to keep organized.”
Kenny whispers, “You know he’s saying that because he and Mom were arguing last night and he wants to keep the peace. She’s the only one who checks those boring logbooks.”
“Mom and Dad were arguing?” I’d heard them whispering loudly to each other, only to stop when I walked in the room, but I didn’t think much of it. I figure they don’t get much privacy and it’s not my business if they don’t want me to hear something. I bend down to snip at some roots while Kenny starts his slow smoothing process. It would go faster without his help, but he’s usually good company.
“I did hear one other thing,” he says, even though I hadn’t asked. “But it didn’t really make sense. I probably heard it wrong.”
I pick up a twig off the path and toss it into the woods that surround the labyrinth. “What did you hear?”
“I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything. Never mind.” He begins smoothing faster, not even looking for bugs. Something is up. I reach out and put my hand on the broom to stop it. “Just tell me,” I say firmly.
“Okay, okay. I heard Dad say, ‘But Ally wears a meteorite around her neck. The kids might not understand.’”
My brows crinkle. “What kids? Why wouldn’t someone understand my necklace?”
He shrugs. “That’s it, that’s all he said.” He goes back to brushing the dirt path. “I told you it didn’t mean anything. I probably heard him wrong anyway.”
“I guess,” I say, picking up my own broom and entering the first circle. I reach up with my other hand and clutch the pouch around my neck, feeling the familiar lump inside. As always, it makes me think of Grandpa. He is the reason the Moon Shadow Campground exists. He started my mom on her love of the stars, she got my dad hooked, and the rest is history. And it was all because of a rock.
When my grandfather was ten years old, a rock fell from the sky and grazed his left ear. He was lying on the grass at the time, staring up at the stars. Convinced that a piece of the moon had broken off and landed on Earth, he ran inside to show his mother. She was more concerned with the trickle of blood that was sliding down his ear onto his neck. She wouldn’t even look at the shiny black rock until she had dabbed some whiskey on the cut.
At first his mother was convinced the rock had been thrown by a mischievous neighbor boy named Hank, but an investigation determined that Hank was “indisposed” at that time, which was the polite way of saying that Hank had eaten some bad carp that he had fished illegally from the river behind the glue factory and had been stuck on the toilet since dinner.
The next day my grandfather’s father brought the rock to work with him at the factory and on his way stopped at the local library, where apparently all the smartest people in town worked. The head librarian took one glance at it and announced that my grandfather had indeed been struck by an object that had been hurled out of the heavens—a meteorite. Now my grandfather’s father, he was a nice guy, played ball with his son, went to church on Sundays, but he never did have much aptitude for science. Noticing his blank expression, the librarian explained that a meteorite was what happened when a meteoroid broke through the earth’s atmosphere, but didn’t burn up like it was supposed to. The meteorite, she explained, was made of iron, and was probably a tiny chunk of an asteroid. The librarian made some calls, and found out that as long as the meteorite wasn’t found on government land, like a national park or the White House lawn or something, the person whose property it lands on is the rightful owner.
That weekend my grandfather’s parents took him to the five and dime store, where my grandfather picked out a small blue pouch about the size of a deck of cards. His mother punched holes in it and looped a leather string through them. My grandfather dropped the meteorite in the pouch, tied it closed, and slipped it over his head, where it remained for the rest of his life. Well, he took it off for showers and swimming, of course. And when he slept. And anytime he had to wear a suit. Oh, and to wash the pouch occasionally. But other than that, it thumped on his chest in tune to the beating of his heart. Or so he claimed.
As a kid, he showed the rock (and the scar on his ear) to anyone who would listen, and explained that the odds of getting hit by a meteorite are a trillion to one. While I would have thought this would make him really popular, it didn’t. It did make him really interested in space though, and in the way that all the planets and stars and galaxies are kept in a delicate balance. He worried that because a piece of an asteroid had landed on Earth, the balance of the universe was disrupted. He became obsessed with trying to even things out by bringing a part of the earth up to the sky. He figured spotting a new asteroid and having it named after him would even things out. But just in case he never found one, he had a backup plan. When I was one year old, he put a pen in my hand and guided me to sign my name on a piece of paper. I’m sure it wasn’t legible, but that signature was scanned into a computer and put on a disk along with Grandpa’s and my parents’ and a half a million others, and that disk is a billion miles away, circling Saturn right now in the Cassini spacecraft.
By the time he died, I had already inherited Grandpa’s love of the stars. Then I inherited the meteor-ite, too.
I haven’t noticed if it has negatively affected my popularity status or not.
But why would my parents be arguing about my necklace? I’m now standing in the center of the labyrinth, where everything is supposed to be clear. But it’s not. I can’t wait till tonight so I can talk this over with Eta and Glenn and Peggy,
my three best friends. I just wish they could talk back.
But that’s what happens when you all live on different planets.
BREE
2
Melanie sticks her head in my room. “Are you ready, Bree?”
“Five more minutes.” I squeeze past her and duck into the bathroom. She follows me and hops up onto the counter to watch me put on my makeup. I never mind when she does this. I figure as her older sister, it’s my job to educate her in the ways of the world. She’s only eleven and doesn’t wear makeup yet (although a little blush wouldn’t hurt), but our mother’s certainly not going to teach her. Mom loves to tell us how she hasn’t worn makeup since her wedding. I guess scientists don’t need to look good.
When I get to the part with the eyeliner, Melanie scrunches up her face as usual. “Doesn’t that hurt?” she asks.
I shake my head. “It doesn’t hurt today, it didn’t hurt yesterday—when you also asked me—and it won’t hurt tomorrow.” I finish lining my eyes, smudge ’em a little, and turn to her. “See how my eyes look even bigger now?”
She nods slowly, but then says, “And big eyes are good? Why?”
This girl is hopeless. “They just are,” I tell her. “Who would want small eyes?”
“Not me?” Melanie asks.
“Exactly. Now let’s go.”
My best friend Claire and I are going to a free lecture at the community center called “Breaking into Modeling.” My parents would never let me go, so I haven’t told them about it. They think I’m taking Melanie to the library, which I am, but only because it happens to be inside the community center. Melanie has been checking out books lately about kids whose families move. She even requests them from other libraries. She actually believes that my parents will eventually get the big grant that they’ve been waiting for, and then we’ll have to move so they can do their research. Our parents have been warning us about it for three years now, and there’s no sign of any grant. I panicked for a few weeks, but now it’s like that old story about the boy who cried wolf. I think Melanie uses it as an excuse not to have to work on being popular right here and now. Plus, I think they’ve given up on that one and have some other project in mind. I may be the dumbest in the family, but I know peo-ple’s patterns of behavior. The excited whispers when they think we’re asleep, the late-night phone calls, the computers and printers going at all hours. It always leads up to some big new project. When you have parents who are scientists, you get used to them being in their own worlds. It’s no big deal. I have more important things to worry about. Besides my job this summer, I have lots of plans. There are pictures of models to clip from magazines for my Wish Book, boys to follow around in the mall, and sleepovers with Claire and the rest of the A-Clique.
It’s one of those perfect summer days, with no humidity to swell up my hair. I take a deep, happy breath of the clean air as we head into town. A good hair day is worth its weight in gold. When we’ve gone a few blocks, Melanie says, “I had one of them again last night, didn’t I?”
She’s talking about night terrors. They’re like nightmares, except she’s not dreaming at the time. It’s like some weird screaming state that you can’t wake her out of. Then she doesn’t remember much in the morning. Mom and Dad have done a lot of research on it but haven’t found a cure. The doctors say people usually outgrow it. It’s weird that a kid who is so relentlessly happy all the time screams in her sleep.
“Yeah, around midnight. I found you in the corner of the living room and brought you back to bed.”
“Thanks.”
I’d been finding Melanie in corners of our house since she was four. This is why whenever Claire and I have sleepovers, they’re always at her house. Claire has been my best friend since that time in second grade when her nanny forgot to pick her up after dance class and I found her crying into her tutu. But we both know that if one of us is going to make it as a model, it will be me. Claire isn’t very tall, and she has a crooked nose, which she’s going to get fixed as her sweet sixteen present. She always forgets to use conditioner, and really, that’s the most important part of washing your hair. She’s the most popular girl in our grade though, because she’s super rich and her mom used to be in horror movies before she met Claire’s dad and became respectable.
We meet up with Claire at the corner of Main and Tanglewood, a few blocks from the building. Melanie doesn’t bother to ask why Claire’s joining us. She’s a go with the flow kind of girl, which is yet another reason why I know we can’t be related by blood. I like to have everything completely planned out. That way I always know what to wear.
“Total ten today,” Claire says, falling in step with us.
I’m wearing the white tank dress that shows off my tan. “Thanks,” I tell her, “you too!” Really though, she’s more like an eight.
Once inside I tell Melanie I’ll meet her in the lobby in an hour. She skips off without a backward glance. It is majorly embarrassing having a sister who skips in public. Claire and I hurry into the large room where the meeting is about to start. The air is heavy with per-fume. Perfume is the one beauty product I just don’t understand. It was invented back when people couldn’t take baths so they could cover up their smell. But now all you have to do is use a shampoo that smells good. I make a mental note to tell that to all my customers at the store this summer. A woman at the door hands us index cards and tells us to fill out our name, age, and home phone number.
The small room is packed and we have to squeeze into the back row. I immediately recognize the B-Clique from school sitting right in front of the podium. Figures they’d be here. They’re pretty enough, but if they were so great, they’d be in the A-Clique. There are even some people in the audience who are at least thirty. Don’t they know their modeling days are long behind them? A woman who looks like she just stepped out of the pages of Vogue gets up and says, “Modeling is fifty percent looks, fifty percent attitude, and one hundred percent awesome!” We all clap. She continues, “It’s also a lot of hard work. You can’t go out with your friends every night and dance till dawn, then try to rely on makeup to cover those puffy eyes. You can only drink coffee or soda through a straw. People don’t hire models with brown teeth.”
Two heavyset women next to me start grumbling. “I’m not drinking my coffee outuva straw!” The other nods, and they get up noisily and bang through the back door. Like they would have had a chance anyway.
A lot of the Vogue-lady’s speech is about signing with a reputable modeling agency, and other things my parents won’t even consider until after high school. I’ve told them repeatedly that most supermodels start by fourteen or fifteen, but being the brainiacs that they are, they refuse to discuss anything that would ruin my education. But she also tells us how we’re supposed to walk (one foot directly in front of the other, heel to toe, like walking on a high beam), how to hold ourselves (eyes looking forward, neck long, back straight), and what to think about while our pictures are being taken (exude a “cool sense of peace and confidence”). The last thing she says is, “Now look around this room. The odds are that only one of you will make it.”
I could SWEAR she winked at me when she said that!
“Keep in mind,” she continues, “there are other perfectly wonderful careers out there where you can make a ton of money, see the world, and have fabulous friends.” She smiles broadly as she says this, but it’s pretty clear she doesn’t believe it. Neither do I.
We walk out of the room slowly, heel to toe, heads high, smiles bright, all cool peacefulness and confidence. “This is harder than it looks,” Claire says out of the corner of her mouth. I would nod, but our heads are supposed to be stationary at all times. As we enter the lobby I almost collide with a man awkwardly holding up a big blueprint with one hand. “It’s not going to work,” he yells into a cell phone. The blueprint flaps angrily and interrupts my cool peacefulness.
To my horror, I catch sight of Melanie doing cartwheels across the far end of the lobb
y. That girl will be the death of my social life. I untangle myself, ignore the guy’s rude grunt, and lead her out of the community center by the elbow. Claire hurries after us, used to Melanie’s weird behavior by now. “You can’t do cartwheels in public,” I whisper loudly. “Don’t you want to have friends?”
“I have plenty of friends,” she says, smiling that easy grin of hers.
I sigh. “Don’t you want to have friends whose idea of a good time isn’t solving quadratic equations and then having Scrabble tournaments?”
Melanie opens her mouth to respond, but right then our parents pull up in their embarrassing beat-up brown van. They use it to haul their equipment, even though I have begged them to get a car I wouldn’t be mortified to be seen climbing in or out of.
“Hop in, girls,” Dad says cheerily, leaning his head out the window as the engine idles loudly. That van does everything loudly.
Melanie runs toward the car, but Claire and I take a step back. The B-Clique girls who were at the seminar might be watching, and even though I’m pretty sure my position in the A-Clique is secure, people have been demoted for much less. Emily Flanders got booted all the way from A to C because she wore white pants after Labor Day.
I look from side to side. The coast seems clear, but I’m not taking any chances. “I’ll see you at home later,” I call from the safety of the sidewalk.
Mom leans across Dad and says, “Get in the car, Bree. We need to talk.”
“I can’t,” I tell them. “Claire and I have plans. Important plans.” We had been planning on going back to her house and practicing our new walk. Her house is, like, mansion-huge, perfect for walking down pretend runways.
Claire takes a step away from me. “It’s okay, Bree. I’ll text you later.”
Before I can protest further, Claire takes off down the block, putting as much distance as possible between her and the van, which is now spewing out black exhaust. Can’t blame her, I suppose. I’d do the same thing if it were me.