A Little Bit of Spectacular

by Gin Phillips

  “That’s Lowell running away from the neighbor’s dachshund,” said Mrs. Halley. “That dog chased him around the house until he jumped on the dining table. I’ve never laughed harder in my life.”

  She must have noticed the look on my face.

  “Everything up there is a story,” she said. “From our life. My own version of constellations. I want him to know I remember.”

  “What’s that one?” asked Amelia, who hadn’t once looked away from the lights overhead.

  “That one?” said Mrs. Halley, pointing. “That’s my niece climbing a tree. We joked that she had squirrel genes.”

  “And that?” I asked, noticing what looked like a castle.

  It turned out it was a castle, a famous one in Spain where the Halleys went for their honeymoon. We kept asking questions, and she kept answering us, telling the story behind each picture. I don’t know for how long. You can’t measure time when you’re in the middle of a universe. Hours and minutes don’t work the same.

  “Do you like it?” Mrs. Halley asked finally.

  I turned to her and her face was reflecting the bright light like a moon. Her eyes held a thousand stars in them. The lights—stars or constellations or whatever—weren’t just above us. They were shining down on us, sinking into our skin. Star tans, I thought. We’re getting star tans. Right then I could believe that when we left this greenhouse, our skin would still glitter like the night sky.

  “Oh, yes, I like it,” I answered. “And I know your husband likes it wherever he is. It’s the most amazing gift I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s not just for him,” she said. “It was for me, too. It’s a nice reminder.”

  “Of him?” I asked.

  “Yes. But it’s not like I could forget him. No, what I needed reminding of was that if I didn’t like my view, I needed to look harder. I could stare up at an empty sky, or I could look hard enough to find some stars.”

  I breathed in the smell of decaying potatoes, and all of a sudden it didn’t seem so bad. I thought that instead of potatoes, I got a whiff of dried roses and the perfume of gardenias. I stared up at the web of lights over my head, and I could see the black sky beyond them. I thought I understood what Mrs. Halley was saying. You could look up and see an empty black sky if you wanted—you could think of the darkness as a huge, frightening thing. Or you could look for stars. You could even make stars.

  That was the trick. Something as big as a sky—or a bad sickness or a dead father—could seem overpowering. It could seem like it would crush you. But you couldn’t let it. You had to find the magic in things. It didn’t have to be aliens or mysterious societies. The magic could be in anything. It could be anywhere. Magic could be lighting up greenhouses, or hopping like a frog across Amelia’s backyard, or flickering like a candle while you built a LEGO tower with your totally healthy mother. Maybe all you had to do was look.

  Amelia and I could only stay a few minutes in the greenhouse that night. We promised Mrs. Halley a longer visit next time. But for just a little while—before we sped back to Celestial Realm to meet Gram—we pulled together chairs and tilted our heads back. We propped our feet on the edges of an empty flower bed, and we stared up at the lights.

  Chapter 12

  AFTER THE LIGHTS WENT OUT

  A couple of days later, I went to Rachel’s birthday party. Rachel opened the door and said hello, but then her mother called her from the kitchen, so she waved me toward another room and said to help myself to snacks. She disappeared through an open door and left me to walk into the den alone. My tennis shoes made little squeaks on the floor, and I spent those first few steps wishing Amelia had been invited—it would have been nice to have her next to me. Without her I was nervous. Were my shoes too loud? Was the snow globe a stupid present? Would I freeze up? Had this whole party been a terrible mistake?

  I barely looked around the den when I got there. There were balloons. There were a table of snacks and a table of presents, plus a few girls sitting on the sofa and another group standing by a fireplace. I smiled at no one in particular and took my time setting my birthday present on the table with the other presents. I fixed the bow. I straightened the tablecloth. Out of the corner of my eye, I could recognize a couple of girls from homeroom, but none of them were looking at me.

  I decided to go pour some lemonade. That would eat up a few minutes.

  But then, on my way to the ice bucket, I had another thought. I didn’t really have to find ways to fill the time. I didn’t have to wait for someone to talk to me. If I’d just turn around and walk up to those girls, I could be my old, unfrozen self. Or maybe a whole new self. No one was stopping me.

  I did turn around. I took a few steps and then I was there by the fireplace, and all I did was say hello.

  “Hey, Olivia,” said a girl from homeroom. Her name was Tearra. “Do you know everybody?”

  I said I didn’t and they told me their names, and someone asked me where I was from, and someone else said her sister went to college in Charleston. And, after that, the words came easy.

  A couple of hours later, I sat in the dark with six other girls, my fingers still a little sticky from chocolate cake, and watched a movie about a boy who traveled around the world in a giant balloon. The balloon floated across the screen, and, next to me, Rachel’s eyes reflected tiny squares of light as she looked at the television.

  “Did you see the one about the three kids who climbed Mount Everest?” she whispered to me.

  “Nuh-uh,” I whispered back. “But in real life the youngest person to reach the top of it was a thirteen-year-old guy. He was trying to climb the highest mountains on every continent.”

  “Sweet,” she said.

  I didn’t feel frozen at all.

  A shout from the TV hushed us, and we let ourselves fall back into the movie. We looked down on the earth from the giant balloon, miniature trees and lakes and hills as far as we could see. Several pairs of feet partially blocked my view since all of us were sprawled over the couch and the chairs and the floors. We’d painted toenails earlier, so I watched the blue and yellow balloon sail over a sea of pink and purple toenails.

  To sit there with those girls, not the least bit nervous about whether or not I was saying the right thing, was magic. I could feel it inside me, filling me up like I was a giant balloon.

  • • •

  The next day, I went swimming with my mother. I watched her dive, slick as a dolphin, into the deep end, and when she swam up and broke the surface, she was laughing. She waved at me, dipped her head back in the water and made a face like it was so wonderful, so perfect that I’d be an idiot not to join her.

  So I did. I took small measured steps toward her—no running at the pool—and I walked right past the ladder. When I got to the edge of the deep end, I took a step back, grinned at her, and threw myself up in the air. I curled and tucked and slammed into the water with the best cannonball I’d ever done. I sank to the bottom, pushed off the cement, and knifed through the water into the air.

  “You drenched me!” squealed Mom.

  “You were already wet.”

  “Oh, really? That’s your argument?” She took a stroke toward me, and I took a stroke back. She had a sharklike look in her eyes.

  “Let’s see who gets who wet,” she said, leaping for me.

  She dunked me under, and as soon as I got loose, sputtering, I lunged for her. We were both spitting water and shrieking, and the water in my eyes made everything spin like I was on a merry-go-round.

  “Too slow!” said Mom in my ear.

  Her skin was warm and slick, and she was hard to get a grip on. She twisted away from me, and as she looked back over her shoulder, it occurred to me that she might swim forever. She was a mysterious and unexplained thing herself. I didn’t need to protect her. I needed to enjoy her.

  I took a deep breath, wiped the wate
r from my eyes, and leaped after her.

  ©Brady Daly

  GIN PHILLIPS

  won the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for her first novel, The Well and the Mine. Her debut children’s book is The Hidden Summer. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her husband, children, and dog.

  www.ginphillips.com

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