Love, Stargirl

by Jerry Spinelli

  “No,” I peeped.

  “Well, what do you want? You just want to watch me sleep?”

  “No.”

  “You want to talk?”

  I was shaking. “I think so.”

  “So talk. You did enough talking before. You follow me home and call me a thief. You lecture me in the library. Who do you think you are, some chief nun or something?”

  “No.”

  “So open your big mouth and talk.”

  I don’t know how long I stood there, trying to compose myself. I’ve never felt so brittle, so defenseless. It was all I could do not to burst out bawling. Until then I hadn’t realized what a fragile state I was in.

  When I thought I was under control, I did the hardest thing of all: I took a step forward. Then another. The closer I came to him, the clearer it became that the angles were all wrong. I was looming over him. So I sat down, cross-legged, on the warm, papery surface of the roof, about five feet from him. We stared at each other for a long time. In spite of what he had just said, we both seemed to understand that this was not the time to talk. Still staring at him, I reached down and pulled off my sandals and tossed them aside. I think I was making a statement, but I have no idea what it was. Eventually I took a deep breath…“I dreamed about you one night.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, sort of you. You were swimming in the canal. Dootsie said you do that—”

  “Once I did.”

  “—and I was watching you under the water. You were a dark, shadowy figure, but I knew it was you—and then it wasn’t you, it was Ondine, and then you again, and Ondine, back and forth….”

  “Ondine,” he said.

  “The book you were reading in the library that day.”

  He didn’t respond, just stared at me.

  “I got my own copy and read it in one sitting. I loved it.” He kept staring. “Don’t you love it?”

  “No.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “She’s stupid.”

  “How so?”

  “She thinks everything is wonderful. Everybody’s beautiful.”

  “Don’t you?”

  His answer was a snort. “She’s always singing. She’s too happy.”

  “Too happy?” I said. “Is that possible? Happy is happy, isn’t it? How can you be too happy?”

  “When you’re living in a fairy tale. When the world you’re living in is bogus.”

  “But it’s not all peaches and cream for Ondine,” I pointed out. “She gets sad.”

  “Not sad enough. She’s stupid. She’s not real.”

  Something suddenly occurred to me. “Perry,” I said, edging myself a little closer, “you never finished reading it, did you?”

  “It sucked.”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I have news for you,” I said. “In the end Ondine’s beloved knight—Hans, remember?—he dies.”

  “Good.”

  “And Ondine forgets everything about her time on earth with people and returns to the water.”

  “Good.”

  “Forever.”

  “Good.”

  The word hung in the night—good— like a second, bitter moon.

  “So why did you read any of it, then?” I said.

  He shrugged. “It was in front of my nose.”

  He lay back down, his crossed hands a pillow under his head. I was feeling a little more confident now, less uncomfortable, but still he wasn’t exactly a bonfire of warmth.

  “You know,” I said, “this is the second time this week that I’ve been up all night talking to somebody.”

  “That so?”

  “That’s so. And you’re dying for me to tell you about the other time, aren’t you?”

  “Can’t wait.”

  I told him all about the cereus and the night in Betty Lou’s backyard. “Betty Lou is the person whose donuts you stole from her porch that day. When Alvina came running after you.”

  “Who?”

  “Alvina Klecko. The girl who chased you. Who dumped the bucket of water on you at the pool.”

  “The girl with the fingernail.”

  “That’s the one. She says you come into Margie’s.”

  “Once in a while.”

  “To steal donuts?” My boldness surprised me.

  “She gives them to me.”

  “I think she has a crush on you.”

  “Sure.”

  “Really.”

  “She’s a little kid.”

  “She’s a growing kid.”

  “She’s a tomboy.”

  “She’s a tomboy becoming a girl. Look”—I counted off on my fingers—“she gives you donuts. She chased you halfway across town. She threw a bucketful of water on you. That, my dear Perry”—I unfolded one leg and poked him in the knee with my toe—“is love.” I quickly withdrew my foot, happy and relieved that he didn’t swat it away.

  “Alvina told me about boot camp,” I said. I looked at him. “Is it okay for me to know?”

  He shrugged. “Everybody else does.”

  His eyes gleamed in the moonlight. I inched closer. I looked at the starry sky. “I don’t know what else to ask.”

  “Try: Why did they send you there?”

  “Why did they send you there?”

  “Stealing.”

  I had to laugh. “Well, they sure knocked that out of you, didn’t they?”

  “They tried.”

  “Was it hard?”

  “What?”

  “Boot camp. Was it hard on you?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Up at four o’clock. Run five miles. Yes, sir. No, sir. Socks on the washline. Classes. Marching. Stand at attention.”

  “How long? One year?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And still you steal.”

  He spat across the roof. “Yeah.”

  I probably shouldn’t have prodded him, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. “So, what, it’s like at the library? If it’s in front of your nose, you grab it, right? Book? Donut? Caramel apple? Lemon? Whatever?”

  He sniffed. “Nobody gives it to you.”

  “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get caught again? Sent back?”

  “Nah.”

  “Maybe you should get a job. Make some money. Then you could—God forbid—pay for things.”

  “I got plenty of money. I’d rather steal.”

  Time to change subjects.

  “So, are you going to the Blobfest?”

  “You asked me that.”

  “I forget your answer.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybe for me. Dootsie will drag me if she has to. You going to enter the scary costume contest?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Dootsie’s going to be Mrs. Blob.”

  “Sounds like a winner.”

  “Any ideas what I should be?”

  “Yourself.”

  “I’m not scary.”

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  He didn’t crack a grin, but I laughed enough for both of us.

  I said, “I meditate.”

  He said, “I don’t.”

  “Didn’t think so. You’re not exactly the self-reflective type, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Afraid to be alone with yourself?”

  “Terrified.”

  “You seem so sure of everything. Got it all figured out, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “Tired of all my questions?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do I talk too much?”

  “Not for me.”

  “Really?”

  “I like people who talk a lot. Since I don’t.”

  “Well, then”—I threw up my arms—“I’m your girl!”

  Now why did I say that?

  His eyes opened. He was staring at me. I felt like he was seeing me for the first time. I felt floaty, like a balloon cut loose. I needed to come back down.

  “Ask m
e something,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “I’ve been doing all the asking. Now you ask me a question.”

  His eyes closed again. “Who dumped you?”

  Uh-oh.

  “Dumped me?”

  “Yeah. Who?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Your friend Pootsie.”

  “Dootsie.”

  “Dootsie. That day.”

  “I thought you two were talking about lemonade. I didn’t know you were gossiping about me.”

  “That’s all she told me. Your boyfriend dumped you.”

  Something sweet and sad trickled through me at the sound of his voice calling you my “boyfriend.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” I said.

  “How would you put it?”

  I was afraid he would say that. Ask me a question— me and my big mouth.

  “Nobody ever said, ‘I dump thee. Thou art dumped.’ He was under a lot of pressure. It just didn’t work out.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Maybe. Sometimes. I don’t know.”

  “What was his name?”

  Was that a faint smirk on his lips? He was enjoying this.

  “It wasn’t anything. It is.”

  “Is.”

  “Leo.”

  “Where?”

  “Arizona. I moved away.”

  “You loved him.”

  I said nothing.

  “Well?”

  “Well what? You just made a statement.”

  “You loved him? Question mark.”

  “Of course.”

  Please don’t ask….

  “Love him? Present tense.”

  I looked away. The edge of the roof seemed like the edge of the earth. We were on a raft among the stars.

  I toe-poked him. “I said ask me a question, not twenty questions. Plus, you’re too nosy—”

  “And you’re not?”

  “—and I’m not about to tell you every detail of my life on…”

  “On our first night.”

  I wasn’t going to say that. I wasn’t going to say that.

  “Plus, you’re having way too much fun. From now on, I’ll direct the conversation.”

  He gave a chuckly sneer. “Typical girl.”

  “Speaking of girls,” I said, “what about the girl at the pool? The one you were lying on the towel with.”

  “What about her?”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Stephanie.”

  Stephanie.

  “Okay…so…how about Ike? The bike and lawn mower repairman. Is that your dad?”

  “Yeah. What about Stephanie?”

  “What does Ike do in the winter? No lawns to mow.”

  “Snowblowers. What about Stephanie?”

  “What about her?”

  “Don’t you want to know more about her?”

  I shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Is she my girlfriend? Do I like her? Do I love her? Are we getting married? How many kids are we gonna have?”

  He was smirking again.

  “Funny,” I said. “I have a better idea. Let’s talk about my calendar. Bet you didn’t know I’m making a calendar.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “It’s not the kind you’re thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “The paper kind. You hang it on a wall.”

  “You read my mind. How’d you get so smart?”

  “I’m ignoring your sarcasm. My calendar is from before there was such a thing as paper. Ever hear of the Solstice?”

  He let out a long, bored breath. “Winter or Summer?” Surprise, surprise. “Winter.”

  “When the sun is over the Tropic of Capricorn. Shortest day of the year.”

  I think I just blinked and gawked at him for a while. He appeared to have gone off to sleep.

  “Am I boring you?”

  “Nope.”

  I’m not sure I believed him, but I went on and told him about my weekly work at Calendar Hill. “I’m aiming for December twenty-first, as of course you well know, Solstice expert that you are. I want to have a kind of—I don’t know—ceremony? Celebration? I want to give it a name. Got any ideas?”

  A pause for five seconds, and he said, “Solstar.”

  “Huh?”

  “Solstar. Stargirl. Solstice. Reversed.”

  I was overcome. Silly, I know—it was such a small thing. But hearing him say my name for the first time, a kind of thrill went through me. He was not as indifferent to me, not as bored, as he appeared.

  I cleared my throat. “I like it. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So,” I went on, “I’m going to have a tent, with a hole in it, exactly in line with the last spatula, pointing to the horizon, ready to funnel the first rays of the rising sun into my tent. A kind of tenty Stonehenge. I’m going to invite people.”

  I waited for him to ask me why I was doing all this. He didn’t.

  “It’s going to be the neatest moment,” I said. “Maybe I’ll write a poem. Or a song. I could play my ukulele. I could dance.” I got up. I danced. I danced out to the edges of the roof, where I could see the canal silvery in the moonlight. I danced a circle around him. When I was behind him, he did not turn to watch me, but he did sit up. When I sat back down, he said nothing. He looked at me and nodded.

  “So,” I said, “maybe you could come with me some morning when I go to plant a new marker.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or meet me there. I go on Thursdays.”

  “Maybe.”

  My sense is that after the second “maybe” we looked at each other for hours, but I guess it could have been only minutes, maybe less. Roof time is harder to track than sunrise time. Sooner or later I said, “Well…” I put on my sandals and stood. “’Night.”

  “’Night,” he said.

  I went to the edge. He was lying back down. “And I am not a typical girl,” I said, and I stepped onto the ladder and returned to earth.

  August 8

  A mockingbird has moved into our neighborhood. It perches atop a telephone pole behind our backyard. Every morning it is the first thing I hear. It is impossible to be unhappy when listening to a mockingbird. So stuffed with songs is it, it can’t seem to make up its mind which to sing first, so it sings them all, a dozen different songs at once, in a dozen different voices. On and on it sings without a pause, so peppy, frantic even, as if its voice alone is keeping the world awake.

  August 9

  Before I walked to Calendar Hill today, I asked my mother about our next-door neighbors, the Cantellos, and their porch light. I notice that it’s on every time I go to the hill. At first I had thought they left it on by mistake, but now I was beginning to wonder. “It’s no mistake,” my mother said. She said she told Mrs. Cantello about my Thursday early-morning ritual, so now Mrs. Cantello helps to light the way for me. Isn’t that nice?

  August 10

  I told Betty Lou about the rooftop night with Perry.

  “What about Leo?” she said. (I had long since told her about you.)

  “Leo’s there,” I said. “Perry’s here.”

  I also told Betty Lou about the mockingbird. “You’re so lucky,” she said. “I wish I had a mockingbird.”

  August 11

  Dear Archie,

  (Letter within a letter here, Leo, but you’re allowed to peek—as I said before, I have nothing to hide from you.)

  I met a boy. Perry. I don’t even know his last name. He lives behind a bike and lawn mower repair shop. (Remember what lawn mowers are, you desert dweller?) He has dark hair, blue eyes. Sometimes he sleeps on the roof. He seems to be poor. He scavenges in Dumpsters. He steals. He’s been in trouble with the law. He went to one of those so-called boot camps for a year. He sucks on lemons. He spits the seeds at me. He doesn’t talk much (though he did holler at me once). He’s often grumpy. But he was nice to my little friend Dootsie. Maybe the b
est thing I can say about him is that Dootsie really seems to like him. He reads. He introduced me to Ondine. He’s very smart, but it takes a while to find that out. Sometimes he acts as if he owns the world. He swaggers. When he climbs the ladder to the high dive at the pool, he doesn’t jump right off but stands there for a while, surveying his domain. He lay on a beach towel with a girl named Stephanie, but after he went in the water he didn’t return to her. My friend Alvina the Pip has a crush on him.

  “Do you?” I hear you say.

  I don’t know, Archie. I have something, but I don’t know what to call it. I spent almost a whole night on his roof with him (no hanky-panky). We talked…well, I talked mostly (except when he hollered at me). I danced for him. He gives so little that all he needs to do to make me feel good is to keep his eyes open.

  “What about Leo?”

  You’re not the first to ask me that. At the moment I must admit I’m just not thinking a whole lot about Leo. In fact, I’m deliberately not thinking about him. Every day when I wake up, the question is there waiting for me: What about Leo? But I turn away from it. I pretend I don’t hear. Do you think it’s because I’m afraid of the answer? I wish Dootsie could meet Leo in person. As it stands, she despises him because he “dumped” me.

  If this were happening in Mica, I’d be sitting on your porch about now, you and me on the white rockers, you puffing away on your pipe, the air smelling like cherries. You would listen and you would nod and smile and patiently wait until I was finished talking. You’d ask a few questions. Then you might say, “Why don’t we go consult Señor Saguaro?” And we would walk over to the Señor and you would speak to him in Spanish and he would answer and you would translate for me, and between the two of you—you and Señor Saguaro—you would make things a little clearer for me, you would show me the way.

  Your Pupil, Loving and Forever,

  Stargirl

  August 14

  Today was Charlie’s birthday. It says so on the tombstone he shares with Grace. August 14, 1933. Then the dash. Then the blank space, patiently waiting. I had been thinking of today for some time. I had gotten Charlie a gift. I wrapped it. White paper, blue ribbon.

  I had decided that today would be the day I would walk right up to Charlie and say something.

  I was about to head for the cemetery when Dootsie came bursting in: “Let’s go someplace!”

  Dilemma.

  On one hand, just the day before, my father had worked up a little pull cart for my bike, so I could haul Dootsie along when I took it out. Dootsie was rabid for a ride. On the other hand, it would be all I could do to fight off my terror and face Charlie—how could I manage Dootsie and her unpredictability at the same time? On the third hand, how could I say no to that begging little face beaming up at me?