Title Page
Dedication
One: New Home
Two: Dear Stranger
Three: Double Scoop
Four: New Friend
Five: Quick Response
Six: Hi, Dad
Seven: Safe Place
Eight: Mrs. Button
Nine: Just Peachy
Ten: Sad Memories
Eleven: Wish Found
Twelve: Soup’s On
Thirteen: Part A
Fourteen: Closed Indefinitely
Fifteen: It Hurts
Sixteen: More Mysterious
Seventeen: Family Dinner
Eighteen: Big Dream
Nineteen: A Favor
Twenty: Taco Night
Twenty-One: Sea Turtle
Twenty-Two: Heart Change
Twenty-Three: Super Sneaky
Twenty-Four: True Confessions
Twenty-Five: Bike Ride
Twenty-Six: Nothing Extreme
Twenty-Seven: Crabby Crab
Twenty-Eight: Beach Wishes
Twenty-Nine: Pretty Magical
Thirty: Crater Lake
Thirty-One: Big Mistake
Thirty-Two: Scrambled Eggs
Thirty-Three: Just Different
Thirty-Four: Still Thinking
Thirty-Five: Two Wishes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Lisa Schroeder
Copyright
Casper, my old, white kitty, sat perched on my nightstand, studying me like I might unpack a can of tuna any second. Poor cat. No tuna here, just all of the moving boxes marked Juliet.
“I’m sorry, sweet boy, but you have to move.” I picked him up and kissed the top of his head before placing him on my green-and-purple striped quilt. I only had a couple of boxes left to unpack. I’d already made my bed, unpacked my books and put them in the bookcase, and filled the drawers of my dresser and desk. Now I reached into the box that held pictures and posters and pulled out a framed family photo taken at my eleventh birthday party last August.
As I put the photo down in its spot right next to my bed, I studied it and felt a pinch in my chest. Mom, Dad, my older sister, Miranda, and I all wore pointy red-and-blue hats and had party horns in our mouths. The picture captures a quick moment of a fun and busy day. Besides making me feel pretty ridiculous, the hat’s elastic strap had dug into my chin a little, so I hadn’t worn it long. None of my friends had, either. Well, except my best friend, Inca. She wore it the entire time because she’s nice like that. Pretty sure she didn’t want to hurt my feelings, even though the hats weren’t my idea in the first place. I’d only bought them because Dad had practically insisted on them and the horns when we went to the party store for invitations.
“Dad, no,” I’d said when he took them off the rack. “I’m too old for those.”
“Nonsense,” he’d said. “A party isn’t a party without them.”
Mom had spoken up in my defense. “Bruce, if she doesn’t want—”
He didn’t let her finish. “What’s the harm in getting them for people who want to wear them? It’s a party. We should have hats and horns. End of story.”
I’d glanced around, hoping no one was watching us. I hated when they argued in public. Hated it so much. But for once, I could put a quick end to it. “Okay, okay, let’s just go.”
When Mom showed me the photo, I couldn’t believe how happy we all looked. I asked if I could have a copy framed.
Now I loved it even more, because not only had we been happy, we’d also been together. A family.
I’d have worn one of those silly red-and-blue hats every day if it meant we didn’t have to move away from everything I’d ever loved. As if my parents’ split wasn’t bad enough, my mom had to freak out and move us four hours from the town where we’d always lived, and right in the middle of the school year.
Moving meant I had to say so long to the house I’d grown up in, to the art studio that had become like a second home, and to my favorite librarian, Mr. Richie. He gave me a bookmark with his picture on it so I wouldn’t forget him. At least that was one good-bye that made me laugh. Before I walked out of the school library for the last time, he told me, “Remember, Juliet, just like in books, everything usually works out in the end. And if it doesn’t, that means you simply haven’t reached the end yet.”
So here we were, in the old red cottage with faded white shutters at Mission Beach in San Diego. My grandparents have owned the rental house for years. We’d stayed here once, on vacation when I was five or six. My grandma had wanted to do some renovations in between long-term renters, so we came for a week before they started the work. Never in a million years had I imagined living here. First of all, it’s really small. Second of all, it’s really far away from the place I’ve always known as home—Bakersfield. And third, living on the beach always seemed to me like something mostly old people do when they retire.
Not that I don’t love the beach. I do. But living there year-round? I just wasn’t sure if I wanted sand in my life, in my fingernails, and in my underwear 365 days a year.
“How long are we staying?” I’d asked my mom.
“Indefinitely,” she’d replied.
That is one word that will never make it onto one of my favorite word lists. It’s so useless. Why not just say I don’t know?
Anyway, the house. My old room was double the size of this new one, and even worse, all three of us would be sharing one teensy-tiny bathroom. At least I had the freezing-cold ocean nearby to bathe in if we ran out of time in the mornings and I didn’t get my turn, right?
I know what you’re thinking. Why in the world am I complaining about living at the beach? The thing is, we could have been moving into Cinderella’s castle at Disneyland and I still would have been sad. Okay, well, maybe not too sad. Dole Whips in my backyard? Yes, please! But you know what I’m saying. Moving away—from your neighborhood, your school, your friends, your father—is hard. Plus, our family wasn’t a whole family anymore. I’d heard adults use that term “from a broken home,” but I’d never really understood what it meant. Until now. When your parents break up, everything feels kind of … broken.
Mom and Dad decided Miranda and I would visit Dad once a month in Bakersfield, and spend part of summer and winter breaks with him, too. I just kept telling myself I’d see him, and hopefully my friends as well, every time we went back there.
Still, it was a lot of changes at once. In one week, at the end of spring break, I’d have to start at a new school in the middle of the year when everyone but me knew how to find their classrooms and who to sit with in the cafeteria. All I’d have was a book with Mr. Richie’s bookmark to keep me company. Maybe the art room or the library would be open at lunch. I could only hope.
If only Mom had been willing to wait until the end of the school year to move. But she’d insisted that we needed to do it now. When I’d asked her why, she’d just said, “Trust me, Juliet, it’s for the best.”
Best? But why? And for who?
After I unpacked my boxes and hung up my favorite poster, Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night, I asked Mom if we could go down to the beach. She was busy putting dishes away in the kitchen cupboards.
“I can’t go with you now, but maybe Miranda can.”
“No!” my sister called from her room.
My sister loves me a whole lot, as you can tell.
“Can I go by myself?” I asked.
“I don’t know, honey,” Mom said.
“What’s the point of living near the beach if I can’t, you know, go to the beach?” I asked. “If all we wanted was to listen to the sound of waves, we should have bought one of those fancy sound m
achines.”
“She has a point,” Miranda called out.
Was that my sister, actually taking my side? What a miracle. I watched as Mom reached into a box of crumpled-up newspaper and pulled out a stack of plates.
“Oh, all right,” she said. “Just for a little while. Take my phone with you, just in case. If something happens, call Miranda immediately, all right?”
“You know, if I had my own phone …”
Mom gave me her “Don’t go there” look.
“It’s two o’clock on a Sunday,” I said. “The beach is going to be packed. What could possibly happen?”
She looked at me. “Honey, a lot of things can happen, unfortunately. Please don’t go in the water by yourself. And don’t talk to strangers. And—”
“Don’t get into creepy windowless vans?” I teased. “Mom, in case you’ve forgotten, I’m in sixth grade and I haven’t been abducted a single time.”
With a scowl she replied, “Don’t even joke about that. It’s not funny.”
I sighed. “Sorry. I’ll be fine. I promise.”
I picked up her phone from the counter, stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans, and headed toward the door. “The pass code is 123456,” she called out.
“Mom, are you serious?”
“I know. I’m not very creative. Hey, watch out for Casper, okay? He may try to sneak out with you.”
I looked around for him, but he was nowhere in sight. He was probably hiding under my bed, wondering how he’d ended up in this strange place. Well, that made two of us.
My dad and his ugly blue recliner that he’d never let Mom sell.
My best friend, Inca, and the way she makes me laugh like nobody else.
Going to see the peacocks at Hart Park practically anytime I wanted to. You know what you won’t find at the beach? Peacocks.
Mr. Richie and the best school library in the world.
Meek Pickles at the Haggin Oaks Farmers Market. I mean, where else can you get pickled carrots? They’re good, I swear!
The lines on the doorframe in our old kitchen that show how much Miranda and I have grown every year since we started walking. I saw them every morning as I got myself breakfast.
This list could be 77 items long if I wanted it to be. So I’ll just end with—basically everything.
Back in third grade, my teacher, Mrs. Arlington, called me “quirky” in my report card. To describe my personality. Mom said quirky isn’t bad, it just means I like to do things differently. Like, when Mrs. Arlington gave us an assignment to write a letter to our hero, I wrote to my cat. Everyone else wrote to an athlete or a movie star or to a special family member. In my letter, I made a list of seven reasons why my cat was my hero. For example, when I first wake up, and Casper is asleep at the foot of my bed, he lets me pet his super-soft belly and it’s the most comforting thing you could ever imagine.
I like lists; they make me feel good. But if I’d written to a movie star, I would have been lucky to come up with even one thing, much less a whole list.
Sometimes, though, I wonder if I’m too quirky. Or unusual—the word Mom uses when she talks about my art and lists. She says it’s “unusual” that I love messy art projects as much as I love organizing everything into detailed lists. To me, that’s like saying it’s unusual if you like both cats and dogs. Why not both?
For some reason, I was thinking about that as I walked out the door and down a path that runs across one quiet street before landing at the boardwalk of Mission Beach. It was pretty crowded—lots of people walking, running, and riding bikes. At least our cottage wasn’t super close to the amusement park. It’s always packed down there. I crossed over into the sand, and as I looked out at the big, blue ocean, the warm sun on my face, I felt a little bit better about life in that moment. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I’d make some new friends right away. Maybe the three of us would get along just fine without Dad around.
Or maybe I was unusual and delusional. That was probably it.
I kicked off my flip-flops, picked them up, and walked toward the ocean in the coarse, hot sand. It was a clear March day with hardly a cloud in the sky. I took a deep breath of the salty air and sat down. A few feet ahead of me, closer to the water, a dark-haired girl who looked about my age and a younger boy were making a fancy sand castle with large turrets and a moat around it. The whole thing looked like something you’d see in a sand castle–building contest. I turned and watched a teen girl play Frisbee with her black Lab. She’d throw the Frisbee at him and he’d jump up and catch it. They did it over and over again. It was amazing.
Mom’s phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out to see what was happening. It was a text from Dad.
That child support amount is unacceptable. Come on, Wendy. Be reasonable.
I rolled my eyes as I clicked off the screen. Please. Stop.
I’d heard them discussing child support on the phone the other night. It didn’t make me feel very good that they were arguing about this. About us. It reminded me of the time Mom and Dad fought over what kind of vacuum to get when ours broke. Mom wanted an expensive Roomba—the kind that moves around on the floor without anyone pushing it. Dad said he’d always kind of thought that Roombas were for lazy people. Oh my gosh, that made Mom so mad. She said they were for busy people, not lazy ones, and it was mean of him to call her lazy. He tried to explain that he didn’t call her lazy, he’d just said what he thought about the Roomba in general. Then they started arguing about that.
I felt bad for Mom. And now, I felt bad for my sister and me when they argued about how much money Mom should get for taking care of us.
I was tucking Mom’s phone back in my pocket when, out of nowhere, a girl wearing shorts and a polka-dot T-shirt plopped down next to me with a large beach bag. She pulled out two glass bottles and with a smile she asked, “Do you want one of these?”
The polka dots she wore seemed like a good sign—they almost matched the polka dots on my favorite pair of TOMS—but the bottles, I admit, confused me. They reminded me of the bottles used to serve water at my favorite Italian restaurant back home. I stared at her for a second. She had shoulder-length wavy blond hair, lots of freckles on her nose, and a really friendly smile.
“That’s nice of you,” I said, “but my bottle collection is out of control right now. So I should probably pass.”
She chuckled. “That’s funny. And hi. I’m Emma.”
“I’m Juliet.”
“Are you here on vacation?”
“No. We just moved in to one of the cottages.”
“Well, zippity-do-dah,” she said in a totally excited, singsongy voice. “You going to the middle school?”
If anyone else had answered that way, it probably would have sounded sarcastic. Mean, even. But all I could hear was happiness in her voice. And I wondered if maybe this girl might be quirky, like me.
I gulped, thinking about her question. Moving had kept me distracted, but it was getting harder and harder to ignore where I’d be in just one short week. “Yeah. Sixth grade.”
“Hey, me, too! I live in the tan stucco house with the mint-green trim. On the corner up there?” She pointed behind us, in the general direction. “It’s a big house. Because, you know, big family.”
“Like, how big?”
“My house or my family?”
“Your family.”
“One older sister, two older brothers, and my parents.”
I nodded. I felt a little jealous at the mention of the word parents.
“So why are you giving away glass bottles, exactly?” I asked.
She set them down in the sand. Her short fingernails were painted light blue. So cute! “You mean it’s not totally obvious? Okay, then. I read this book about a boy who put a message in a bottle and threw it in the ocean to see if someone would write him back. I thought to myself, ‘I have to try that!’ ”
Now she really had my attention. “Book? What’s the title?”
She shrugge
d. “I can’t remember. I’m really bad at stuff like that—details or whatever. But as soon as I read about it, I wanted to do it, too. Doesn’t it sound fun? Like, you can share a secret with someone you’ve never met before and maybe they’ll tell you a secret back. At least, that’s what I hope will happen.”
“But how will they tell you a secret?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be hard to get a bottle back to you?”
“In the book, the boy gave a home address, hoping he’d get a letter. Except my mom said that, for safety reasons, I should just put my email address.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling kind of silly I didn’t think of that. “That makes sense. Do you really think someone will find it and write back, though? What if you’re waiting and wondering about it forever?”
She tucked a stray strand of her wavy hair behind her ear. “I guess I don’t really know what will happen. All I know is just thinking about the possibilities makes me happy. So I’ve already won, right?”
I wasn’t sure I was hearing her correctly. This girl could be happy just by thinking something might happen? I wanted to ask her how that worked, but decided not to. She seemed really focused on wanting to get her note written.
Emma reached into her bag again and pulled out a couple of pads of paper along with two pens. “Write something good, okay?”
“Good?”
“Interesting, I guess. It doesn’t have to be a secret, but that’s what I’m going to do. It makes it more exciting, I think. Oh, and my mom said it’s probably best if we don’t give our names. She wants us to be extra careful. Obviously.”
I nodded as she handed me the paper and a pen.
Just then, a Frisbee landed right in front of us. We both looked up and saw the dog running over, the girl right behind him, yelling, “Rocky, wait!”
“Sorry,” she called out as she came and shooed him away, the Frisbee now in his mouth. “Threw it way too hard that time.” She squinted her eyes. “Oh, hi, Emma. Didn’t notice that was you.”
“Hi, June,” Emma said. “No worries.”
June stared at the bottles in the sand for just a moment before she turned and ran after Rocky. “See you later!”
See You on a Starry Night Page 1