What Stars Are Made Of

by Sarah Allen

  Sitting around the table was the first time I noticed how much Nonny’s baby bump was beginning to show. It was full-on cantaloupe size now, and bumped the table when she sat down.

  “Incoming!” she said, and we laughed.

  We talked about the baby a lot. I liked talking about her. But sometimes there was this thing that happened. Sometimes Nonny would get this sort of dazed smile and she would say something new her pregnant body was doing—her back was starting to ache, she was feeling too hot most of the time—and then Mom would join in and talk about when she was pregnant with Nonny or me and how she could tell differences, like how I was so much more wiggly, and Mom and Nonny would both talk and talk. Then after a moment one of them would glance over at me, and if I caught the look in time it was like they were remembering that I wouldn’t ever have kids like that, wouldn’t ever feel what they were feeling. And when they looked at me like that, I remembered, too.

  Nonny also told us how Thomas was doing, how hard his job was. How he asked about their baby every day.

  Dad and Thomas wouldn’t ever get pregnant, either, I thought. I mean, that wasn’t quite the same thing, but when I imagined Dad with a big, stretched belly, it made me laugh.

  The dinner of yams and turkey and stuffing was delicious of course, but the real best part of my family’s Thanksgiving is the pies. I mean, that’s just how it works when your mom owns a bakery. She’s a little bit insane, and every year she makes an entire pie for each one of us. The whole house smells sugary and the kitchen counters are smooth with grease.

  Here’s what she makes:

  Pecan for Dad. Sturdy, filling, and a bit nutty.

  Very berry for herself. Sweet, lively, and with plenty of cream on top.

  A light, delicate, smooth, and perfect lemon meringue for Nonny.

  All-American apple pie for Thomas. (She made it even though Thomas wasn’t there. We sent a Marco Polo of all of us taking a bite.)

  And a time-honored, sweet-but-savory, faithful pumpkin pie for me.

  Nobody ever wants to share theirs, but it’s epic how much pie we go through in one sitting.

  I’d texted Talia over the break, working on our plan for the day Mr. Trent Hickman came to town. I wanted to text her and invite her over for one day during Thanksgiving break, but this voice in my head kept saying, What if she doesn’t want to come over? Then that night, while we were watching Babe and trying to digest all that pie, she texted me again:

  Talia: I’ve got news, and it’s good and bad. Guess what day Poetry Out Loud is.

  Me: Don’t tell me. Jan 26.

  Talia: Yup.:):(??

  I leaned back against the couch and tried to focus on the movie. Changing plans didn’t work so well in my brain, and not having Talia with me for the master plan was not a good change. Sometimes, though, when I forgot about the plans for a second and thought about something else, then when I came back to the plan, everything fit a little better in my brain again.

  If nothing stops me, even this, I thought, then you’ll make sure nothing hurts Nonny or her baby, right, Cecilia? You’ll help me bring Thomas home?

  About ten minutes later I texted Talia back:

  Me: You go win that. You’ve got to. And I’ll go win this. And thus ends step one in our master plan to rule the world!

  Silence

  In Ms. Trepky’s homeroom, sometimes we have silent reading time. It’s actually pretty quiet compared to other classes when we’re meant to be having silent preparation time of some kind, because Ms. Trepky’s good at that, but there’s still the occasional rustle and whisper that goes on.

  Ms. Trepky was at her desk doing her own reading, and Talia was out for a bathroom break. I thought I heard something going on behind me, but I tried to focus on my Eleanor Roosevelt book.

  The rustle behind me kept happening, but I couldn’t make out what it was until finally I heard my name. I turned around. Angie and Patreece were sitting behind me, and when I looked back at them, they laughed.

  “We’ve been saying your name for, like, five minutes,” Angie said. “Couldn’t you hear us?”

  “Are you, like, deaf or something?” Patreece said.

  “Ladies,” said Ms. Trepky.

  Angie and Patreece snickered one more time, then looked down at their books. I realized that they weren’t saying my name in a get-my-attention way. They were saying it in a teasing way.

  I went back to reading. I had my own work to think about. Cecilia? And … Eleanor, too, if you’re there? I’m gonna keep reading and focusing on you guys, because what those girls are whispering definitely doesn’t matter, right?

  I was glad when the bell rang.

  I took my lunch to the library, like usual. Talia had been spending quite a few lunch periods with Mr. Gradey and the drama teacher working on her Poetry Out Loud piece. I thought it was fantastic that she was entering, and that she was already working so hard. I knew she was going to win. But even though I tried not to, I couldn’t help thinking that the library wasn’t quite as good a best friend as it was before. It was still pretty great, of course, but it wasn’t quite as good at telling jokes and showing me new rap songs and helping me with my master plan.

  I ate my lunch and wrote down some ideas in my notebook. Talia had mentioned that her grandma in Samoa wasn’t doing so well, and I knew she was worried about that, too. I didn’t quite know how to tell her I missed her, not when she was so busy, and so sad about her grandma. I didn’t quite know how to say that when she was ready, when she wanted to talk about her grandma and be worried, or when she’d won her contest and wanted to be excited, I’d be in the library.

  Sound

  Sometimes it’s snow that signals the beginning of the Christmas season. Sometimes it’s decorations, or special chocolates in the stores.

  For me, when we get Mom’s old record player and box of Christmas records out from the attic, that’s when I know Christmas is coming.

  It’s when John Denver and Rowlf the dog start singing about having a “merry little Christmas.” That’s when I know it’s really happening.

  It’s when Mom and Nonny sit at the piano and play along with the records and I watch from the couch and we sing along, especially, this year, to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” because next time around Mom really will be a grandma and that is totally crazy.

  But this year, a small but dark buzz of worry glommed onto the back of my brain, like one little seagull trying to snatch your sandwich on an otherwise blue-sky, pristine day at the beach. Like the clock Cinderella must have heard ticking down the minutes toward midnight at the best night she’d ever had. That same clock must have been tick-ticking in my head.

  Because on these days we played good music and ate delicious food, and everyone was laughing and happy. There were songs coming from the record player and the piano and I wanted to listen, without any distraction, but underneath that music a worry kept counting down in my head. A baby was coming. The baby of my perfect, wonderful sister, so of course the baby would be perfect and wonderful, too, and probably also really good at piano. And maybe Mom and Nonny and the new baby would all play piano together, because of course the baby will learn how to play the piano very easily and very early. I bet she could even be a prodigy. But if I sort of can’t play the piano so great, how can I be the Best Aunt Ever to a piano prodigy?

  Plus there’s something that might even be worse.

  Because what if it’s the opposite? What if I fail my deal and she is born with something wrong? Wrong with her heart or her brain?

  What if she is born with a missing piece?

  A missing chromosome?

  Would it be my fault?

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  We did our Historical Figure presentations the week before Christmas break. I’d been spending my lunches working by myself on my letter to give to Mr. Trent Hickman when he came to Boulder, but of course I hadn’t forgotten my presentation.

  Talia went first, and read a wonderfu
l poem she’d written about Langston Hughes, and taught us some of his style and about the Harlem Renaissance. I knew she’d wanted to do someone from Samoa, but there weren’t any in our textbook. More people missing, I guess. I told her she could find a world-changing Samoan for next semester’s presentation, and I thought it was pretty smart of Ms. Trepky to make us look outside the textbook for people to study.

  Then Dustin played a video he’d made about Buffalo Bill, and even though it was silly and goofy and went on too long, he remembered to teach us actual things about Mr. Bill, like how he fought for the Union in the Civil War.

  And I did my presentation on Eleanor Roosevelt. I used a PowerPoint, because PowerPoints make me more comfortable.

  When I pulled up the first picture of Eleanor Roosevelt, though, Dustin and his cronies snickered from the back row.

  “Something’s wrong with that lady’s chin,” Dustin said. “Is that why you picked her?” More snickers.

  Then I had something that maybe could be called a Silent Moment. I don’t mean I suddenly went deaf. What I mean is that it felt like I could see everybody in the room as if they were moving in slow motion, slow enough for me to read their faces. I saw Dustin look back and forth at his two buddies and I knew he was saying whatever he thought might make them laugh, might make them think he was cool. Ms. Trepky was standing in the back of the room, and I saw her look down at Dustin, ready to stop the nonsense. Except then she looked at me and I knew she was asking me a Silent Question, asking me if I wanted to respond to the Nonsense Boys myself.

  I did.

  “Well,” I said. “Since you’re kind enough to bring that up, I’ll start with a quote from Ms. Eleanor Roosevelt, who, if you’ll remember, was First Lady of the United States.” I clicked ahead in my PowerPoint to a page with a big block quote. “She said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.’ And so I think, since we’re trying to figure out these historical figures like they were our best friends, what I think is that if Eleanor were here right now, she wouldn’t care at all what you thought of her chin. And not like she was trying to ignore it and she secretly did care. No, what I think is that if she heard you say that, she might look at you and smile and maybe even blow you a kiss with that weird mouth and then go back to talking to people who had more interesting things to say.”

  Dustin’s face was red, and his shoulders slumped. I did feel a tiny bit bad for being mean like that. Only a tiny bit, though, because saying those things out loud made me realize something. It made me realize that sometimes I only pretended not to care when people whispered my name and I couldn’t hear, or about my neck being thick on the sides, or being one of the slowest runners in PE. I wanted to know how to really not care. How to spend more time thinking about more important things. Like Eleanor.

  Ms. Trepky was smiling.

  I finished my presentation on Eleanor Roosevelt.

  I got an A.

  Gray Walls and Gas Masks

  Here’s something I learned: Sometimes what a place looks like on the outside changes depending on how you feel on the inside.

  To explain what I’m talking about, let me tell you about the Denver International Airport.

  Some airports are big, and some are small. Some are square and glass, some are brown and flat. Some, like the Denver airport, look like a long spiky row of white circus tents.

  There are quite a few unique things about the Denver airport. I looked it up once.

  The Denver airport is the biggest airport in the country, by almost two times, and is the third largest in the world.

  There’s a blue stallion statue near the entrance that has sort of devilish eyes and it fell over and killed its sculptor while it was being made. There are also psychedelic murals throughout the airport, many showing crowds of people with strange faces and rainbow-colored clothes jammed in with jaguars and tropical flowers. On one, there’s a Nazi soldier in a wrinkly, pale gas mask, next to a letter from a little boy who died at Auschwitz. I don’t know why a painter would want to paint that. Or why airport staff would want to hang it on the wall.

  The Denver airport is a weird airport.

  Sometimes you’re in a strange gray place with even stranger paintings and statues and it feels like you’re in a horror movie and the painted people are watching you.

  And then someone you love comes, like maybe your sister’s husband who the whole family is there at the airport to pick up, who your sister hasn’t seen in months. And then it’s him in his jeans and T-shirt and your sister’s arms wrapped around his neck being reflected in the shiny chrome walls, and in the reflection you see him bend down and give her pregnant belly a big kiss, and the rainbow-clothed people look happy, too, and even when you remember the horse statue out front it doesn’t seem so demonic, just a little mischievous.

  It cost two billion dollars more than they expected to build the Denver airport. I think it was worth it.

  Long Distance

  A short while after our Historical Figure presentations, Talia left. Another person at the Denver airport, going instead of coming. Her grandma in Samoa was getting worse. Maybe even dying. So her whole family was spending a few weeks there. They were spending Christmas there. She wouldn’t be back until January.

  It made me feel stupid for not inviting her over during Thanksgiving break. Or on a weekend. Why hadn’t I invited her over already? Now I wouldn’t be able to for the rest of the month.

  Now I would be working on my plan alone.

  Having Thomas home made everyone happy. He and Nonny stayed next to each other all the time, holding hands, talking, eating. Trying not to worry too much about work and money, from what I could tell.

  Nonny said she was trying to enjoy the time they had before he had to leave again.

  She said she hated long distance.

  Doctor Who Was Right

  Dad and I are staunch buddies, that is absolutely true, but there are a lot of ways we are very different. Dad likes to go on runs in the cold, early morning before he goes to school, and to me that sounds like the absolute worst thing ever. I can barely make a lap around the gym in PE. Dad’s hands are always moving, sketching, fiddling, and in his classroom he has some absolutely amazing paintings that look like Monet could have done them. Me? Nothing I draw or paint turns out looking like I intended it to. I can manage to mess up stick figures.

  There’s one special thing that Dad and I have in common, though. One show we look forward to watching together, just him and me.

  Doctor Who.

  It’s sort of a tradition for me and Dad that we watch every Christmas special in the series on Christmas Eve.

  Mom and Nonny put up with it.

  In one of my favorite episodes, the Doctor is talking about how life isn’t simply good or bad, but a pile of good things and a pile of bad things. And the good things maybe don’t solve the bad things, but the bad things don’t make the good things unimportant.

  I think about that a lot.

  Here are my Christmas Piles.

  Good Pile: Mom and Dad holding hands on the couch, barely able to keep their eyes open because they’re so tired. Thomas tugging Nonny under the mistletoe every chance he gets. Homemade snickerdoodles. Rolos in my stocking. A book about Rosalind Franklin, the woman who helped discover what DNA looks like (my parents know me pretty well). Baby Cecilia somehow knowing it was Christmas, too, and dancing around so fierce in Nonny’s tummy we all got to put our hands on her belly and feel the baby kick. When I felt it for the first time I said, “Hello, Cecilia, welcome to the family!” Then Nonny’s smile when she opened the music box I ordered online. When you opened the lid a miniature solar system emerged and began orbiting. And it played a Celtic Woman song.

  Here’s the Bad Pile: I bought Mom a candle and a pretty cookbook, and she said she loved it, and it’s not that I don’t believe her, but what in the world can a person get their mother for Christmas that lives up to what they deserve? Pretty much nothing, especially when
you’re only twelve years old. Nonny got a little sick late in the afternoon and nearly threw up, but she drank some water and we relaxed on the couch and she said she felt better. I kept imagining all the things that could go wrong. There were so many ways Nonny or her baby could get sick. I tried not to worry too much, because it was Christmas, but that small worry cloud hovered there right outside my periphery nonetheless. (Nonetheless was a Hard Reading Word in English class last month.)

  The worst thing was that Talia’s grandmother died on Christmas Eve. When Talia texted me about it, I sat on my bed staring at my phone for five minutes. It didn’t seem fair. I had to ask my mom about what to say back. I couldn’t use a Silent Question with this one because I needed to say something. With Mom’s help I wrote: I’m really, really sorry. That’s so sad. I’m thinking about you and I hope you and your family are okay and get to spend some good time together.

  She texted back: thanks. She didn’t text me for a few days. I didn’t blame her.

  There were so many big things happening: Nonny’s baby, Talia’s contest, Mr. Trent Hickman coming … every one of those things; plus, thinking about what Talia was going through seemed like its own Mount Everest. Putting those things together meant that on Christmas night when we were eating our billionth snickerdoodle and deciding which Christmas movie should be our grand finale and I settled onto the couch under my dad’s arm, I never wanted to crawl back out again.

  “Dad?” I said. “Is Talia going to be okay? I mean, I know not really, but … do you think there’s still enough Good Pile stuff?”

  Dad squeezed me tight. “That bad, hard thing is going to always be there,” he said. “But absolutely the good things are always there, too. Talia’s got at least one especially good thing that I’m aware of.”