Girl Who Read the Stars

by Skylar Dorset

  And anyway, I get to have Trow in front of me every single morning in homeroom. Plenty of time to get to know him better.

  Which is weird, because I’ve never been interested in a boy before. I mean, not like Trow. I’ve seen cute boys before, but I’ve never been thinking about the next time I’m going to talk to them. And I’ve only said a few sentences to him. What’s up with that? What’s up with me?

  I can’t balance during tree pose because my focus is so off, and Mom says later, “Your poses were a little messy tonight, kiddo.”

  “Yeah,” I say with a little sigh and pull a glass of apple-infused water over to me. “I know.”

  Mom looks at me closely. “Was it a good first day at school?”

  I think of Trow. I don’t even know how to begin to bring up Trow, what to say about him. What could I possibly say? There’s a new boy in homeroom. I like him. Oh my God, that sounds so vapid and stupid, like I’m a teenager on some MTV reality show or something.

  I look at Mom and say honestly with a little smile, “Yeah. It was actually a really good day, Mom.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Operation Trow isn’t going so well. Not that I actually know what its objective is, mind you. I’m not good at that kind of planning. I try to read the stars about it, about him, but I’ve never been able to read other people’s stars, just my own. Mom can read other people’s stars. I’ve asked her to teach me how to do it, but she says not to worry about it. Worry about it. Like I’m sitting around at night fretting about Mom reading other people’s stars. It’s not like people believe in witches anymore in this day and age; she’s not going to be burned at the stake. And anyway, it’s not like she can actually tell the future. She usually just says things like, It doesn’t seem good, but it’s all fuzzy. What good is that? I love Mom, but really, anybody can make up something like that.

  But anyway, back to Operation Trow. I consider it while I’m supposed to be doing shavasana at the end of yoga class the next day. In my head, I have a clear mental list of the ingredients for Operation Trow. Although “ingredients” makes it sound more like a recipe than an operation. What are the components of an operation? Steps? That’s boring. Surgical instruments? More likely.

  The surgical instruments of Operation Trow are: Smile. I’m good at smiling. Mother says I’m like Mom and I smile all the time, so that’s good. Do not be high-pitched like a Sophie pack girl. Yup, I can handle that as well, since high-pitched is just so not me. Invite him to yoga. That’s kind of the only thing I can think of to do. I feel like other girls go out for ice cream and stuff. They pop in and out of the sushi and crepe and pizza places on Wickenden Street, twirling hair and flirting and having dates. They go to WaterFire and sit hand in hand, watching the bonfires up and down the river that slices through Providence. It all seems super cute and romantic, and I’ve tried a million times to imagine myself in that situation and can’t. I am Merrow Rodriguez-Chance, with two mothers and rainbow-colored hair and split-personality clothing and a hippie yoga studio. I don’t think I’m allowed in normal-people places like everyone else. I just don’t fit there.

  Trow isn’t in school the second day or the third. This is really throwing a wrench into the Operation Trow ingredients/surgical instruments/plans, such as they are. I wonder if he’s ever coming back.

  On the fourth day, I am sitting in homeroom doing three-part breaths and counting the number of red cars going by outside, just to have something to do—because homeroom is such a waste of sleeping time, let’s face it—and then there’s a little rippling breeze of squealing from behind me, sweeping through the Sophie pack girls, and then there’s Trow. He settles into the seat in front of me with no warning, and I sit up straight, annoyed, because I didn’t have time to implement my Operation Trow surgical instruments, damn it.

  Sophie comes over, complete with pack, of course. They really are mostly a package deal.

  “We missed you!” squeals Sophie. “Where were you? Were you sick?”

  “No,” replies Trow. He sounds abrupt. I am delighted. I refuse to consider that maybe he sounds abrupt because of my wishful thinking.

  If he really does sound abrupt, Sophie doesn’t notice. “Don’t worry,” she continues. “I made sure I was taking really good notes for you.”

  “Thanks,” says Trow.

  I stare at the back of his head and wish that I could see more. It’s so frustrating that Rodriguez comes after Reading alphabetically. Why couldn’t his name have been Roswell or something?

  The bell rings, and Señora Trillo calls us to order. Sophie and the pack girls scatter to their seats, and we all go through the routine of attendance—Señora Trillo says, “Good to see you back,” when Trow says, “Here”—and announcements, and before I know it, homeroom is over and I haven’t gotten a chance to implement any of Operation Trow.

  He stands up and slings his backpack over his shoulder, and I know this is my last chance—until tomorrow, yes, but it feels more dramatic than that, last chance—so I blurt out, “Hi.” Did that sound ridiculous? I bet that sounded ridiculous. “Hello,” I correct myself. And now I’ve greeted him twice, which makes me sound like even more of an idiot, but I still hear myself saying, “Hi,” again, as if that’s going to cancel out the last two stupid greetings I made. Operation Trow is turning out to be a disaster. I should abort Operation Trow, I think.

  Then he looks up at me. And smiles. He looks tired, but he has such a lovely smile. He’s smiling at me even though I’m an idiot. I bet he smiles at everyone like that. He’s probably just that nice. He seems like he’s just that nice. But still. I like the smile. It’s a glorious smile. He should stop smiling like that—he’s going to snarl up traffic with a smile that beautiful, because everyone will stop to stare at him.

  “Hey,” he says.

  I remember belatedly that Operation Trow is supposed to involve me smiling. Not just staring at his smile foolishly. So I smile. Sometimes we make ourselves smile during yoga. It’s supposed to relax the body more, trick our brains into thinking we’re happy, concentrating on the many muscles involved in a smile instead of the muscles being a bit uncomfortably forced into chair pose. When I smile now, it is not a smile of effort. It is not many muscles working together; it’s just one muscle—it is just a pure smile. It is the easiest smile of my life. Trow is so easy to smile at.

  “Hi,” I say again, and I’m so busy enjoying how much his smile makes me smile that I don’t even realize that I’ve stupidly greeted him yet again.

  He gives me a little half wave and goes out to start his school day, as if we did not just have a truly momentous moment together.

  And then I admit that I may be in trouble.

  • • •

  So I tell my mom that night. We are closing up the yoga studio, and Mom is saying that we’re almost out of wheatgrass and we need to get some. I am standing on the narrow, tree-lined street, looking out at the Providence skyline. I love the yoga studio at this time of year, when the days are on the wane but not yet abysmally short. When we leave, we can stand here on the edge of a gently sloping hill and the sun is just tipping beyond downtown, red just escaping to splash over the sky.

  Mom hits the unlock button and her car chirps at her where it’s been parallel parked in front of the studio. This is two-hour parking here, but the cops look the other way for us. Mom says it’s because Mother is such a hotshot lawyer; Mother says it’s because Mom is a good flirt.

  “I think I’m in trouble,” I hear myself say, and then I get in Mom’s car.

  After a moment where I think she must be frozen with shock, Mom gets hastily into the driver’s seat. “What?” she exclaims. “In trouble how? You can’t just say something like that and then get into the car! I thought your aura was off. It’s been off for days. I knew it! I told Marty, but she said I was reading it wrong. I know I’ve been making some mistakes lately, but I’d never mess
up your aura. What is it? What have you done? Don’t worry, don’t panic about it. We’ll fix it. Let’s take a three-part breath.”

  I look across at Mom as she sucks in the beginning of a three-part breath, and I love her so painfully much. Her short, shaggy blond hair is an artless mess all over her head, and her yoga shirt has slid off of her shoulder and her pale blue eyes are full of concern. My mom has the most beautiful eyes. I’ve always been sad I didn’t get them.

  “I’m not really in trouble,” I say, and I realize I’m grinning, and I can’t help it. I just thought Mom freaking out so immediately was cute—what can I say? I have the best mom. “It’s just that there’s a boy.”

  “Oh.” Mom relaxes and gives me a knowing smile, and this is kind of why I didn’t want to tell her. Knowing smiles. Like everyone else in the world knows more about all this stuff than I do. Okay, maybe that’s true, but I don’t like to admit it. “A boy. I knew there had to be something.” Mom turns the car on and maneuvers it out of the space.

  “No, you didn’t,” I say affectionately.

  “I was reading your stars. And there was something. Something I couldn’t quite see. Had to be this boy.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say, dubious but indulgent.

  “So. Tell me about him. What’s his name?”

  “Trow.”

  “Trow.” Mom draws her eyebrows together. “That’s an unusual name.”

  “You named me Merrow.”

  “Yeah, but I’m me.”

  “Well, I think it’s a nice name. It suits him. Trow Reading. Isn’t it nice?”

  Mom smiles, like his name is funny or something when it’s just nice. But she says, “It is. So tell me what you two talk about.”

  And then I feel like an idiot.

  Because…we don’t talk, really. Almost not at all. And how can I like him so much when I almost never talk to him? I don’t want to be one of those Sophie pack girls who just likes a boy because he’s cute, even though Trow is undeniably cute. But no: I should have a reason for liking him. Shouldn’t I?

  If he came to yoga, I think, frowning, I could get him to go for a smoothie afterward, and then we would find out how much we have to talk about.

  “He’s just nice,” I say, because I feel too stupid to say that we’ve never really talked.

  “Nice is a good start,” Mom says, and looks at me and grins.

  CHAPTER 4

  As time wears on, the novelty of Trow seems to wear off for basically everyone but me. Sophie and the pack girls stop squealing around his desk every morning, which is good, because it means I can have him to myself, but I’m frozen in this weird inability to not sound stupid when he talks to me. This is new for me, because I’m not usually like that. In fact, I’m never like that.

  But I guess I don’t usually spend a lot of time trying to talk to people. Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve never really exerted effort into getting to know someone before. That makes me sound like a snob, and I’m not, really. I just…was happy how I was. I never met someone before who I looked at and thought, You. I want you to be part of my life.

  And that’s how I feel with Trow.

  I try to read my stars for signs, but I feel like my stars are a mess. Actually, I can’t see anything at all. I run the astronomy charts, and I turn over the tarot cards, and I sprinkle salt and pepper the way Mom taught me, and everything is fuzzy and unclear.

  Every once in a while, Mom says, “How are things going with that boy?” and I’m torn between wanting to die of embarrassment and wanting to ask if she reads anything clearer in my stars and cards and spices than I do. But most of the time when Mom says she reads things clearly, what she says is stuff like, It’s pretty clear the crow will fly counterclockwise. Unless he doesn’t because the river is by the blue car.

  Mother is intrigued by “the boy,” but I refuse to talk about him. Because now that I haven’t done anything further when it comes to him, I wish I hadn’t mentioned anything to Mom at all. If I had a time machine, I’d go back and stop myself from ever mentioning Trow. These are the things I’d do with time travel. It’s probably why human beings shouldn’t invent it.

  Trow comes to his seat in homeroom most mornings. He’s absent a lot, but on the mornings when he’s there, he comes in and he says hello to me and he usually manages one of his gorgeous smiles, and I say hi back—usually only once, so I suppose that’s an improvement—and then that. Is. It. I know: it’s super humiliating.

  And then one day, what happens is this: Trow finds me meditating.

  I don’t really eat lunch in the cafeteria. I don’t like it in there; it always feels too close and humid and loud, too much nervous energy being expended while people try to flirt with each other across tables and friend groups. To me, navigating the cafeteria is like trying to dash across a six-lane highway. Good luck with that.

  So I have an apple and I meditate. I think the principal lets me do this because she thinks it’s part of my religion. She seems to think we are Wiccan or something like that. We’re not, but when I said I wanted to meditate during lunchtime, she acted like it was a religious requirement and agreed to allow it. (I didn’t lead her on in this; I just didn’t correct her. I’m not the daughter of a lawyer for nothing, I’ll have you know.)

  I’d like to meditate outside. Outside is the best place to meditate for me. But we’re not allowed outside during the school day for safety reasons, so I just duck into a classroom and meditate there.

  And that’s where Trow finds me.

  I’m not really meditating. I’m supposed to be, but I’m sitting in a classroom, thinking about Trow.

  And that’s when Trow walks in. I would have thought I’d summoned him if I didn’t know that I have absolutely no witchy powers. No useful ones, anyway. Because being able to read messy stars is neither a witchy power nor useful.

  Trow draws to a stop two steps into the classroom, spotting me. “Oh,” he says. “I…didn’t… Sorry. I’ll—”

  “No,” I blurt, and I’m pleased that finally I was able to get out something to him other than mumbled greetings. “You can stay. I mean. Yes. It’s fine.” Why can I not stop talking and saying stupid things?

  Trow regards me for a second. Then he says, as if making a decision, “Okay.” I’m sitting at a desk; he walks over to the teacher’s desk and perches on top of it, so that we’re facing each other.

  I smile at him (Operation Trow chief ingredient/surgical instrument: smile at him) but I can’t think of anything else to say. This is apparently my curse when it comes to Trow.

  “So.” He sends me that smile he has again. His smile is slow, his lips curling into it a half second after it lights up his eyes. It is also almost always weary, like he smiles reflexively because if it took any more effort, he wouldn’t bother. “What are you up to in here?”

  Thinking about you is the real answer, but at least my mouth is finally intelligent enough not to say that. “Meditating,” I reply.

  Trow lifts his eyebrows at me above his brown-green-blue eyes. “Meditating,” he repeats. He sounds a little bit amused, but not in a mean way, not like he’s mocking me.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Meditating. Have you ever done it?”

  He shakes his head at me. “Where did you pick up meditating?”

  “It clears your brain,” I tell him. “Gets rid of the clutter so you can think.” I do it a lot. In fact, I have to do it before I sit and try to read my stars. If I try to read stars without clearing my brain, I just get a muddle. Granted, my stars have been in a muddle for a little while now, but it used to be that I could at least get pretty clear feelings from them. Like how I knew this was going to be a good year: I saw it in the stars. And then I met Trow and it seemed like it was going to be a good year and then the stupid stars shut up.

  “Huh” is all Trow says.

  Maybe he sounds c
urious. Does he sound curious? I can’t tell. I wish I could tell when it comes to Trow.

  “Come and try it,” I hear myself say, and then I try to pretend I’m not shocked by the words coming out of my own mouth. Shouldn’t I have control over that stuff?

  But Trow says, with one of his slow-curling smiles again, “Okay.”

  Okay. He said okay. What the stars am I supposed to say now?

  He slides off the teacher’s desk and comes to sit in the desk next to mine, and I stare across at him. I’m so used to sitting behind him, to seeing nothing but the back of his head. Now I’m right next to him and I can see every freckle across his face, every individual color in his rainbow eyes.

  It’s easier sitting behind him, frankly. I half expect, in my crazy blurting-out state, to say to him, Could you turn around? I prefer to face your back—your front is too distracting.

  But what I manage to say finally is “Oh,” and I wonder how long I’ve been staring at how beautiful he is. I clear my throat and try to remember how to meditate. Yeah, sure, Mom taught me how to meditate when I was still an infant, she claims, and I still do it every day, but Trow makes me forget how to do basic things like breathe, never mind meditate.

  “Close your eyes,” I say.

  “Okay,” he says, smiling again, and closes his eyes.

  Well, good. That makes things a little bit easier, not having that gaze on me.

  “Are you closing your eyes?” he asks.

  “What?” I say, alarmed. I don’t want to close my eyes. I want to have the luxury of sitting here and admiring him without being worried about him looking back at me.

  “Are you closing your eyes too?” he repeats, eyes still closed.

  “Why would I close my eyes?”

  He opens his eyes now. “Aren’t you going to meditate too? Isn’t this your meditation time?”

  “Well, I don’t have to—”

  “I don’t want to sit here and meditate by myself while you stare at me. Seems weird.” He does look vaguely uncomfortable at the prospect. He doesn’t squirm but he looks like he could.