The Incredible Magic of Being

by Kathryn Erskine

  “Oh, that’s so nice of you!” Mom says. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  Joan glares at Mom so hard I can hear the Shut up coming out of her eyes.

  “I owe my life to your son,” Mr. X says. “I can live with the addition.”

  “I’m sorry about your boat,” I say.

  “That’s OK, kid,” he says, and I grin, because he sounds exactly the same in this universe as he did in the other one.

  “You can help me build another one. And then you can get in the water with it.”

  I’m not grinning anymore because now he sounds TOO much like the other Mr. X. “That’s OK, I don’t—”

  “I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  Joan is chuckling. A nurse tells Mr. X he has to get off the phone so we say goodbye.

  I tell Joan I don’t want to get in a boat again. I mean, I know I’ve done it but it was not the best of experiences, especially the shipwreck part.

  Joan shrugs. “That’s one way Mr. X and I are the same. We don’t take no for an answer.”

  She’s right because I try saying No, a lot, but Joan won’t accept it. She says the whole boat experience will be just great.

  Mom raises her eyebrows at Joan. “What about Mr. X’s other plan?”

  Joan is not smiling anymore. “That’s a definite no.”

  “What plan?”

  Joan walks off.

  Mom sighs and tells me what it is. Sirius. “Mr. X has pretty much convinced me,” she says, “but not Joan.”

  “Why not? That’s so unfair!” I can’t help sounding a little whiny.

  Mom sits me down at the kitchen table to explain. She takes a deep breath. “When Joan was your age she had a dog she loved.”

  “Then why doesn’t she—”

  “And her father ran over it with their car and killed it.”

  “Asciugamano,” I whisper.

  “I know,” Mom says.

  “But it was an accident,” I say.

  “Well … ”

  “It wasn’t an accident?”

  “Maybe—her father drank. A lot. And he was probably drunk when he did it.”

  “Wow. Well, that explains the whiskey bottles she carries around.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When I meditate, Joan has a sack of whiskey bottles on her back.”

  Mom bites her lip for a moment. “Her burden,” she whispers.

  I nod. “I’m really sorry about her dog. And her dad.”

  “Me too,” Mom says and gives me a hug.

  I go out to my tree room. I understand why Joan is upset at the thought of a dog, but I bet she’d really love Sirius. And I bet it’d be good for her. Plus, I’d have a friend.

  Pookie isn’t around because she’s always babysitting to make money to buy me a new telescope. No one even told her she had to. But she says she’s only babysitting kids who aren’t sick, and preferably kids who aren’t like her brother, but then she went Ha-ha! so I know she’s kidding and things are back to normal, only better.

  POOKIE AND COMETS

  We’re friends again. Just like that! Sometimes the problems are actually the answers. They’re loud and scream-y because they’re trying to tell you what to do. You just have to listen and figure out what they’re saying.

  Turns out, Pookie really was the Oort Cloud, hurling rocks at me like comets. It’s almost like she found my comet for me. It’s not the same as a real comet. I know that. I’m not stupid. But I used to think I had to have my name on a comet so I could live forever. I’m not so sure I need that anymore.

  I’m updating my chart of Messier Objects. I’m at the constellation Leo now. It’ll be nice having a telescope again. And it’ll be nice having Mr. X again, for real. Pookie and I are friends now, but once school starts I’ll hardly see her, especially since she’s going to join the drama club and she’ll be at rehearsals all the time.

  That’s when I hear the barking.

  Coming out of the Subaru that just drove up.

  Joan’s Subaru.

  I run down to greet her.

  “You got a dog?” Mom and I say at the same time.

  Joan gets out of her car and shrugs. “I don’t know what came over me. I went to say no and then … I couldn’t.”

  I open the back door and a full-grown black Lab jumps out, practically knocking me down, and kisses me all over.

  It’s hard to talk when a dog is kissing you all over your face, but I still manage to say, “He’s perfect, Joan! How did you know?”

  “Your friend told me.”

  “Mr. X?”

  She nods.

  “You talked to him?”

  “No. It was a Vulcan mind meld.”

  “Really?”

  She shakes her head and laughs. “Of course I talked to him, kiddo.”

  She roughs up my hair and I give her and Sirius a hug at the same time. “Are you OK with him now? Mr. X, I mean?”

  “Sure,” she says with a wink. “We Merchant Marines have to stick together.”

  Sirius kisses me again and I look at his face and here’s what I see, other than drool and tiny tufts of hair that stick up from the tops of his ears, which is pretty adorable. His eyes look like the cosmos. No, really. They look like the beginning of that Neil deGrasse Tyson show, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, where you think you’re looking at the universe but really it’s an eyeball.

  Magic.

  We throw the toys Joan bought for Sirius, and when a tennis ball ends up in the lake he runs right in without a second thought. Like it’s air. Or nothing. I can’t believe it.

  Joan shrugs. “My dog used to do that.”

  And then Sirius starts swimming in circles barking and, I swear, smiling! And he won’t get out!

  “He really loves the water!” Mom says.

  Joan’s mouth drops open. “That’s what my dog did, too.”

  I squeeze her hand. “It’s magic.”

  She nods slowly. “I think so.”

  “Did you guys tell Pookie?”

  They look at each other and shake their heads.

  When Pookie gets back from babysitting, Sirius finally gets out of the water. He shakes himself off on Mom and Joan and me, then pads over to Pookie and sits down in front of her.

  “A dog?”

  Sirius licks her hand and she pulls it away.

  “We got a dog?”

  Sirius licks her other hand.

  “Hey!”

  He dashes to the front porch and comes back with her goggles in his mouth.

  “OK, that’s weird,” Pookie says. “He’s winking at me.”

  “Really?” Joan says. “My dog used to do that! He wants you to go swimming with him!”

  Pookie looks at Joan. “Wait. You’re OK with a dog? Even after … you know, when you were a kid?”

  Joan shrugs. “It feels like Leo has come back again.”

  “Leo?” I say. “Leo? M65 and M66! I was just writing that in my chart.”

  They all look at me.

  “It’s a sign,” I say. “And also, his name is going to be Sirius Leo.”

  “Works for me,” Joan says.

  “Pookie,” Mom says, “are you going to be OK with this?”

  Sirius Leo winks at her again. “Well, I’m not sneezing. Maybe I outgrew my allergies.” He drops her goggles on her feet. She rolls her eyes. “I guess we’re going swimming now.” She says it like she’s annoyed, but she’s smiling. So are the rest of us.

  I’m hugging Mr. X by the dock as we watch Sirius swim in circles.

  Mr. X grunts. “I just have one question for you.”

  I nod my head into his stomach. I can’t explain how I knew he was having a heart attack except … “It’s the magic of the universe.”

  “That’s how you knew I pinch my nose?”

  “What?” I back up from him so I can see his face. “Oh, that’s obvious. With all the hair in there, how could you not?”

  He makes his rumbly sound, but only so
ftly and not in a mad way. “The other part,” he says, “I know is magic.”

  I hug him tighter and this time he actually hugs me back.

  “I heard you saying, You have to live,” I tell him. “That’s what kept me alive in the lake.”

  “I heard you,” Mr. X says. “That’s what kept me alive when I was having a heart attack.”

  I shake my head. “You said it first.”

  “I don’t know which one of us said it first, but the important thing is it worked.”

  I smile. “It’s the magic of the universe.”

  “Now I believe you, kid.”

  “You’re a uni-sensor, too.”

  “Julia would roll over in her … star. I could never sense anything—when she got new clothes or re-covered the sofas or dropped big hints about her birthday.”

  “She believes it now.”

  “I think she does.” He looks out over the lake and smiles.

  It wasn’t the view of the lake Mr. X missed. It was Julia. Family is what he was missing. And now he found us. We can all be family even if we’re from different sperm banks.

  Sirius dashes out of the water and over to where Pookie is standing in the driveway, looking out to the road.

  “Something’s up,” Mr. X says. “Dogs always know.”

  I’m uni-sensing something important, too. “Why don’t you go help Mom and Joan with the burgers and I’ll go check it out.”

  I walk over to Pookie. In my new board shorts Mom bought me. I know! Board shorts. Who would’ve thought? And they’re blue like the sky. And maybe even the water. Pookie got some, too, but hers are black. We also have matching T-shirts from Joan that say THE GOOD THING ABOUT SCIENCE IS THAT IT’S TRUE WHETHER OR NOT YOU BELIEVE IN IT. I’m not sure Joan really believes everything that happened, but at least she’s being a good sport about it.

  Sirius leans up against me when I reach them. “Who are you waiting for, Pookie?”

  “You’ll see.” Sirius licks Pookie’s hand, and instead of saying, “Ew!” she scratches him behind his ears. “I hope they come,” she says softly, but I hear her.

  “Who?”

  But Pookie runs to the end of the driveway because a Jeep is coming down the road. She waves her arms and the Jeep pulls in. Two ladies step out and both of them hug Pookie and she doesn’t even seem to mind hugging them back even though they are complete strangers.

  Sirius is barking and we’re both standing right behind Pookie now and one of the ladies, who reminds me of someone, is staring at me.

  “I’m Trieste Sciacchitano,” she says.

  “Whoa, Mr. X’s … ”

  “Sister,” she says.

  “Wow.”

  “And this is Beth, my wife.”

  “Cool!” I say. “This is a real party! Does he know you’re coming?”

  “We haven’t seen each other in over fifty years.”

  “What!”

  Pookie pushes them both toward Mr. X’s house, just like she did with me before we knew him, and Trieste and Beth seem just as reluctant.

  “It’s OK,” I say, “he’s grump-ish but underneath he’s friendly.”

  “Hasn’t changed a bit, then,” Trieste says.

  As Sirius leads them over to the others, Pookie explains to me that Mr. X had a problem with his sister being gay and that’s why Joan didn’t care for him.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think he’s like that anymore.”

  “I don’t think he is, either, but his sister needs to see that.”

  I stare at her and say, inside my head, Sometimes sisters need help seeing things.

  Pookie rolls her eyes but she’s smiling. “I know.”

  We kind of hold our breath while we watch the awkward handshakes and then Joan says something and everyone laughs, and they all hug and start talking at once.

  “Whew,” I say.

  “No kidding.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “Mom and Joan gave me Internet again because I’m doing something”—she raises her eyebrows—“positive with it—making the B&B website and reservation system. So I looked for her on Facebook. It took all of two minutes.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know. So much for privacy.”

  “I’m glad you found her, though. Are you … going to look for your dad?”

  She shrugs. “Maybe. It’s not like I’m desperate or anything.”

  I feel this big sigh of relief and happiness inside. I think it’s my heart smiling. “You want to look through my brand-new telescope that you bought me?”

  She musses up my hair and smiles. “Sure, squirt.”

  We walk down to the dock where we put my telescope tonight because we’re actually using the fire pit for a fire. It’s awesome. The darker it gets, the brighter the flames are.

  Sirius joins us but runs off the end of the dock and splashes into the water for another swim. Mr. X says I’m going to be doing that soon. Ha!

  For the first time ever Pookie actually looks through my telescope and how I know is this: She’s amazed at what she sees.

  I don’t even get mad when she says, “Why didn’t you ever tell me about this?”

  I just say, Asciugamano! inside my head and tell her about the Messier Objects.

  MESSIER OBJECTS

  Life is pretty messy but it’s pretty magical, too. We spend so much time looking past the messier objects to find something better that we don’t appreciate how amazing the messier ones are. Sometimes the messier objects are the ones you needed all along, you just didn’t see it.

  “So,” Pookie says softly, “where’s Cassiopeia?”

  I point the telescope there and she stares through it for a long time.

  The grown-ups finally get curious and come over, too, and take turns looking at the Orion Nebula and other cosmic phenomena.

  “Wow,” Trieste says, “I’m learning so much!”

  “Me too,” says Mr. X, even though he’s looking at his sister and not through the telescope.

  “At dawn we can see the Dog Star,” I tell everyone.

  “At dawn I’ll be asleep,” Pookie says.

  “I’ll be up,” Mom says. “I love the Dog Star.”

  And when she says that, Sirius barks from the water.

  “Magic,” Joan says.

  Eventually, everyone drifts over to the campfire to make s’mores except Mr. X and me.

  I’m looking up at the Wild Duck Cluster where my grandfather is and I uni-sense him wanting me to look over at Mr. X, which I do and guess what? Mr. X is looking up at the stars, too. I grin and he whips his head around to stare at me and grumble.

  “Did you have a nice chat with Julia?” I ask him.

  “Go eat your s’mores,” he growls, but his face is a little pink and his lips are almost smiling.

  I’m still smirking at him and his mouth smiles all the way. He pinches his nose to try to cover it up, but I can see the smile he’s hiding.

  “Just don’t burn the marshmallows,” he says with a wink.

  For a second I wonder if he’s my grandfather and he’s come back because nobody really leaves. And then I realize it doesn’t matter because he’s here now, I’m here now, and we’re friends—actually, we’re family.

  Looking over at the others in front of the fire, I see them laughing. Pookie notices me and holds up a s’more, waving it. I grin back, call Sirius, and run to Mr. X. I grab his hand and we go join our family around the fire that’s glowing like the Orion Nebula, throwing out sparks into the night like brand-new stars.

  MORE FARTS FROM JULIAN

  EYE MAGIC

  Sometimes when I’m looking at something I wonder if everyone sees it the same way, or if anyone sees it the same way as me. And how would we know since we can’t trade eyeballs?

  Did you know that some people can’t see color at all? It’s true. They can only see in black and white, which is called achromatopsia (ay-krome-uh-TOP-see-uh). Some of them live on a tiny island in the Pacif
ic Ocean called Pingelap (PING-ga-lap, which is fun to say), and they’re OK with having achromatopsia. I guess if you’ve only ever seen in black and white, you don’t know what color is, so you don’t know what you’re missing.

  It’s like when you watch a black-and-white movie that’s so good you think it was in color but really it was just your imagination that turned it into color.

  Maybe that’s how people with achromatopsia see their world. Like magic.

  KITCHEN SCIENCE

  Making slime, and rock candy, and eruptions with baking soda and vinegar is awesome. Putting marshmallows or Peeps* in the microwave and watching them explode is the best, even if your mom makes you clean the microwave afterward.

  *If they’re your sister’s Peeps you should ask first. (She’ll say no, which is why I didn’t.)

  NOT-SWEAR WORDS

  Everyone gets frustrated, and sometimes people feel like swearing, which will only get them in trouble. The trick is to find a not-swear word instead and (bonus!) increase your vocabulary. There are millions of possibilities. When I get tired of asciugamano, maybe I’ll use the Arabic word for towel instead, munshifa, which sounds like min-SHE-fah. That feels pretty good to say.

  You can even use proper nouns, like Kinshasa. That’s the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Here are some more awesome capitals that are fun to say. If a grown-up glares at you and says, “What did you just say?” you can tell them the name of the capital’s country to impress them, and also not get in trouble.

  San Salvador! San-SAL-vuh-door! (El Salvador)

  Helsinki! Hel-SINK-ee! (Finland)

  Jakarta! Juh-KAR-tuh! (Indonesia)

  Bratislava! Brah-tis-LAH-vah (Slovakia)

  Lusaka! Loo-SAH-kah (Zambia)

  If you know someone who gets in trouble for swearing, you can share this idea with them. I should probably share it with Joan.

  LEBRON JAMES AND SIR ISAAC NEWTON

  Newton was this British physicist who came up with three laws of motion to explain things like basketball, even though he didn’t know about basketball yet because it hadn’t been invented. His laws still apply. (Everybody knows who LeBron James is, and if you don’t, you can probably guess from context clues.*)