A Handful of Stars

by Cynthia Lord

  I snorted. “Ha! No way. I’d probably trip and fall across the stage, taking all the other girls down with me. We’d have a blueberry smoosh!”

  We both laughed. For that moment it felt fun and easy, two peas in a pod.

  “I hope Brandon comes to the pageant,” Hannah said. “I want to invite him, but I’m not sure if I dare.”

  I think NASA should name the next black hole after Brandon. Because every conversation gets sucked down into him before long. I don’t even see it coming when—slurp! We’re gone.

  “He came to the festival last year, so I was thinking I might ask him—”

  I wondered what Salma would paint today. Even though her bee houses showed bees and flowers, just like mine, hers surprised you. Was that why people liked them so much? Was that why that lady called it “art”?

  I sighed. I only knew how to paint things in a regular way. But we needed to sell lots of bee houses, so I hoped some people liked ordinary, too.

  By the time we got to the boat landing, Lucky was letting me lead. At the boat landing, sea lavender grows wild just below the high-tide mark. It smells both sweet and salty because the tide washes in and out of it every day. It’s pretty, with delicate, teeny-tiny, pale purple flowers. It dries well, so most people have a vase or a wreath of sea lavender in their homes to keep a bit of color through the winter.

  Maybe I’ll bring a sprig of it home with me to show Salma, I thought. She might want to paint it. I coaxed Lucky over all the rocks at the shore. “Come,” I told him. “It’s okay. I won’t let you get hurt.”

  Being at the ocean feels like you’re at the edge of the world with nothing but water straight ahead. It was so quiet I could hear an engine rumble, even though the boat hadn’t come into view around the point yet. A cormorant was perched on a ledge marker, and little sandpipers ran along the beach, staying just out of reach of the waves.

  Hannah gave me a pair of scissors and an empty bag. “Cut as low to the ground as you can so Mom’ll have good stems to attach to the wreath frames, okay?”

  “Okay.” I looped Lucky’s leash around my arm so my hands would be free.

  “Thanks for helping me,” Hannah said. “Last year, Mom sold wreaths at our church’s booth, but this year she’s renting one by herself. She has to pay a hundred dollars to rent a spot, but the wreaths don’t cost much to make. And she’s going to bake a bunch of blueberry pies to sell, too. She figures she’ll make back her hundred dollars pretty quickly.”

  Was Salma still raking or was she finished by now? Was she pretending the blueberry fields belonged to a queen today? A giggle bubbled out of me, because I realized Hannah was a blueberry queen and I was cutting sea lavender for her!

  “What’s so funny?” Hannah asked.

  “Um, I was just thinking of something.”

  Hannah nodded. “Brandon does this funny thing where he starts singing for no reason. It’s weird, but it’s also cute. One time—”

  Sometimes being with someone can make you feel lonelier than if you were by yourself. I wished I could close my eyes and when I opened them, I’d be back at the store painting with Salma.

  “—and he gave it to me.” Hannah looked at me expectantly.

  “Oh. Cool!” I said, hoping whatever he’d given her was a good thing—not the flu.

  I’d had enough. “Oh, wow. I think it’s getting late. I just remembered something I have to do!” I handed Hannah my full bag of sea lavender. “I hope this is enough for your mom. Wish her good luck at the festival for me, okay? Come on, Lucky. We’ve gotta go.”

  I snapped one little sprig of sea lavender to show Salma and led Lucky over all the rocks to the road. I didn’t look back, afraid that Hannah might be watching us go. Was she disappointed? Or was she just thinking of Brandon?

  As soon as Lucky and I were out of sight of the boat landing, we ran.

  When I got back to the store, Salma was already painting big and little purple circles on a bee house. She stopped to scratch Lucky behind his ears.

  “Lucky, lie down.” I stuck the sea lavender into a cup at the coffee station. “Sorry I wasn’t here when you got here,” I said. “What are you painting?”

  “Blueberries. You didn’t have purple paint, so I mixed red and blue.” Salma dipped her paintbrush into a puddle of purple paint. “And there really are purple blueberries. I’ve seen them. So why aren’t they called purpleberries?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, but wild blueberries come in lots of colors. Red, purple, pink, black, even striped sometimes. But most growers pick out any berries that aren’t blue.”

  “Why?” Salma asked. “Do the other colors taste different?”

  “No, but people think they aren’t ripe unless they’re blue. The different colors go into juice and wine, because then they get mashed up and strained and no one ever knows what color those berries were to start with.”

  “Then I’m not painting any blue ones,” she said. “That’s not fair!”

  I watched her painting purple circles. They needed something to look more like real blueberries. “You should put a star on top of each one,” I said.

  “A star?”

  “Wait here. I’ll show you.”

  I went up to the display of blueberries for sale and picked up one box. “I’m just borrowing this for a minute,” I told Mémère. “For art’s sake!”

  Through the plastic wrap on top of the box, I showed Salma all the little five-pointed stars, one on top of each berry. A whole box full of little blue-black stars. “Pépère said that the early Wabanakis called blueberries ‘star berries.’ They believed the Great Spirit sent them down from the sky once when there was no other food to eat.”

  “I’m going to paint yellow stars on my purpleberries so they look like stars in the sky,” Salma said. “Stars are one of my favorite things. I love how when you look up at night, it doesn’t matter if you’re in Florida or Maine or Michigan or anywhere, it’s the same stars. So when I miss someone, I look at the stars and imagine that person seeing the same ones as me. No matter where I go, I can think of them and they can think of me. They’re my star friends.”

  Salma’s head was tipped down as she painted, her long black hair shielding her face. “It must be hard to move so much,” I said.

  “I hate it,” she said. “I don’t feel like I really belong in the places we stay. And when I’m gone, my friends in Florida do things without me, and it’s hard to catch up when I get back. When I come home, it’s like we have to become friends all over again. Everyone changes so fast.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “My friend Hannah used to be my best friend, but now all she wants to talk about is a boy she knows. She’s changed so much that I don’t even know how to talk to her anymore. She came to see me today and asked me to pick sea lavender with her. That’s why I wasn’t here when you came.” I reached for the coffee cup with the sprig that I’d brought home from the boat landing. “This is what sea lavender looks like. Hannah’s mom makes wreaths of it to sell at the blueberry festival.”

  Salma looked interested. “What’s a blueberry festival?”

  “Oh, it’s like a fair that happens near the end of August.” I put the cup back on the coffee station. “Lots of people come. There’s a parade and a race and a blueberry queen pageant. And booths selling every kind of blueberry food there is: blueberry honey, blueberry tea, blueberry salad dressing, blueberry jam, blueberry pancake syrup, blueberry barbecue sauce—”

  Salma made a face.

  “Blueberry mustard, blueberry salsa, blueberry coffee. Not to mention all those pies and muffins. Some booths sell other things, too—like wreaths and potholders and—”

  “You should sell your bee houses!” Salma said.

  I shook my head. “I couldn’t do that.”

  “Why not?” Salma asked. “I’ll help you!”

  “But I’d have to rent a booth,” I sputtered. “And borrow a table. And probably do a bunch of other things that I don’t
even know about.”

  “The more houses you sell, the faster Lucky can have his operation,” Salma said simply. “Right?”

  My hands kept painting, but my mind was busy adding up the plusses and minuses.

  -1. I had enough saved for the booth rent, but it didn’t seem smart to give up a hundred dollars on just the hope of making more.

  -2. What if no one bought anything? I would die of embarrassment.

  -3. I’d never done anything like this before. I’d never even wanted to.

  BUT—

  +1. If I sold just four bee houses, I’d earn back enough to pay the booth rent.

  +2. If I sold five, I’d be ahead. I might sell a lot more than five, too.

  +3. Salma said she’d help, so I wouldn’t have to do it all alone. It would be fun to run the booth together.

  +4. Lucky might get his operation sooner. A lot sooner.

  I looked down at him beside me, those gray-blue circles on his eyes turning the world dark. And I knew I’d try anything for Lucky—even being a big-thinker for once.

  “Would you really help me?” I asked Salma quietly. “I’d need a lot of bee houses for a whole booth. And people seem to really like yours best.”

  “Sure.” Salma held out her pinky finger. “Star friends always help each other!”

  I grinned and crooked my pinkie around hers for a pinkie swear. “Yes, star friends always do.”

  When it was finished, Salma’s bee house was covered in different colors and sizes of blueberries, each with a yellow star on top. A bubbly, starry sky of blueberries.

  The berries on my bee house were perfectly round, stenciled blue. Suddenly, they looked too plain. I picked up my littlest brush and dipped it into Salma’s paint puddle. One by one, I went from blueberry to blueberry.

  Adding tiny purple stars.

  That night at supper, I told Mémère and Pépère my plan.

  “You’re twelve years old!” Mémère said. “It’s enough for you to sell your bee houses at the store.”

  I could feel myself sitting up straighter. “The more people who see them, the more chance I have to sell them,” I told her.

  “How are you going to get everything to the fair?” Mémère asked. “You can’t take it all on your bike.”

  I glanced at Pépère.

  “Oh no!” Mémère said, shaking her finger. “The festival is a big weekend for us at the store. I can’t lose Pépère that weekend.”

  “We could ask someone to help out at the store,” Pépère suggested.

  “You think this is a good idea?” Mémère snapped at him. “That’s just like you! Encouraging our kids to leap before they look. So they’re never happy with what they have!”

  The “our kids” hung in the air. She meant Mama and me. I looked down at Lucky on the floor beside my feet, his chest rising and falling in sleep.

  “You never know what you can do until you try,” Pépère said.

  I lifted my eyes. He was grinning at me. I grinned back, because I knew what we were both thinking: We outnumber her.

  Mémère must’ve known it, too, because she stopped arguing. “Well, it’s your money, Lily.”

  And it was a lot of money. I couldn’t think about it too much or I’d get scared.

  The next morning, I pulled in a deep breath and took a hundred dollars out of my money jar for Lucky. I wished Salma could come with me, but she was raking and I was determined to do this. I folded the bills up to fit in my pocket, just like it was something I’d do any day.

  It didn’t make my pocket bulge out too far, but it felt so strange to be carrying that much money. As I walked toward town, I wondered if everyone driving by would know something about me was different.

  Walking up the steps of First Parish Congregational Church, I imagined Mama behind me. She whispered in my ear, “Who cares what anyone thinks?”

  Mama never did, at least that’s what people say about her. Pépère said she had a laugh that carried clear across the store and everyone knew it was her. She wore long flowy skirts, even when they weren’t in style.

  I think beautiful people like Mama and Salma have an easier chance of getting away with being different, though. My looks must come more from my father, since no one else in my family has brown hair like me. All I know about my father is that he was a musician from New York and that’s where Mama met him. Maybe if things hadn’t turned out the way they did, I would be living there with Mama and him. But Mémère said he was never interested in having children.

  “Good morning, Lily,” said Mrs. LaRue, the church secretary. “What can I do for you, honey?”

  Mrs. LaRue isn’t just the church secretary; she’s also one of the organizers of the blueberry festival. She’s in charge of renting booths, and she’s always a judge at the pageant. Some people think it’s funny that we hold the pageant in a church. But it’s the only building in town with enough seats.

  “Um, hi, Mrs. LaRue. Is this where you can rent a booth for the blueberry festival?”

  She smiled. “Yes! What are your grandparents planning to sell?”

  “No.” I licked my lips. “The booth is for me.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out my folded money. “I have a hundred dollars. That’s what it costs, right?”

  Mrs. LaRue stared at the money in my hand. “Do your grandparents know you’re doing this?”

  I nodded firmly and passed the bills to her.

  “Well, as long as you have their permission.” Mrs. LaRue opened her desk drawer and took out a notebook and a receipt book. “What will you sell, dear?”

  “Bee houses and maybe some food. Definitely bee houses, though. That’s my main thing.”

  “How about if I put you down as Food and Miscellaneous?” Mrs. LaRue suggested.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Miscellaneous sounds good.”

  “You’ll be booth number twenty-eight,” she said. “The festival starts at nine a.m. on Saturday, but you can set up on Friday night. I recommend that you wait and bring your merchandise on Saturday, though, because no one will be there to watch over it all night. Would you like a brochure for the festival? It has the full schedule of events.”

  “Thank you.” I took the brochure and folded it to fit in my pocket. It didn’t take up as much room as all those bills.

  She winked at me. “I gave you an extra good spot, but don’t tell anyone, because I’m supposed to assign them in random order. See you at the festival.”

  Walking down the church steps, I felt like I was floating, my feet barely touching the ground. I’d really done it! Maybe Lucky could have his operation before school started!

  I couldn’t wait to tell Salma. I took the long road past the camp on the way home. I marched right by the NO TRESPASSING and ALL VISITORS MUST REGISTER AT THE SECURITY BUILDING signs with my head held high to the Winthrop Blueberry office to check in.

  Opening the door, I saw Mr. Winthrop himself at the coffee machine.

  His eyes widened to see me.

  “I’m here to see my friend Salma,” I said. “She’s a kid and she works here. The sign outside says I need to register.”

  They must not get many kids from town out visiting friends at the camp. Mr. Winthrop didn’t seem to know whether he needed me to check in or not—and he’s the boss! “Just go on ahead,” he said.

  When I knocked on the door at #57, Mrs. Santiago opened it, wearing a tank top and shorts. She put her finger to her lips. “Shh. Sleeping,” she whispered.

  Heat rushed to my face. Their whole cabin was only one room, so it was like I’d knocked on someone’s bedroom door.

  “Is Salma here?” I whispered. “It’s me, Lily, the girl with the dog who brought the pork pie. Well, it wasn’t the dog that brought the pork pie.” Why am I telling her this?

  Her dark brown eyes were kind and understanding. Maybe she wasn’t following everything I said, but she was listening like it mattered.

  “Lily!” Salma pushed her way past her mom. “I w
as just getting ready to come to the store!”

  “Shh!” Mrs. Santiago said.

  “My dad is taking a nap.” Salma grabbed my arm. “Come on! Let’s go to the playground.”

  I didn’t even know there was a playground at the camp. I followed Salma out behind the last line of cottages to three big swing sets, the strong metal kind, like we had at our school playground. On the first set of swings, three boys were swinging standing up. Two little girls swung on the second set, so Salma and I went right for the empty third set.

  “I had to come, because I couldn’t wait to show you something.” I pulled the brochure for the blueberry festival out of my pocket and sat down on the swing next to Salma. “I did it! I rented a booth at the festival.”

  Salma grinned. “That’s great! Now we just have to paint as many bee houses as we can.” She looked through the brochure. “Wow. I didn’t know there were so many things you could do with blueberries.”

  In the brochure there was even a photo of Hannah wearing her sparkly blue pageant dress and her Downeast Blueberry Queen crown. She looked extra fancy with two locks of her blonde hair curled, one on each side of her face, the rest of her hair in a wispy bun. Her whole face shone with a just-won, gleaming smile.

  “That’s my friend Hannah,” I said.

  “She’s pretty,” Salma said, admiring.

  I nodded. “The pageant is always on Friday night, and then the booths open the next day. I told Mrs. LaRue that bee houses would be our main thing, but maybe we should sell some food, too. Not everyone has a garden. But everyone likes to eat! So Mrs. LaRue wrote us down as ‘Food and Miscellaneous’ so we could keep our options open.”

  “What food would we sell?”

  “Maybe blueberry pies?” I suggested. “Lots of booths sell those. And I’ve had plenty of practice making them with Mémère.”

  “But if lots of booths sell them, ours won’t be special. We should make something different. Something no one else has,” Salma said. “How about blueberry enchiladas? Those are good, and I bet they’d be different.”