Charlie had read that the birth of stars was both violent and beautiful. He could never understand how those two things could be true at the very same time. The swirling of the cosmic dust, the intense pull of gravity, the heat, the eventual collapse.
But now he understood.
Life was like that, too. The great moments with Mom could coexist with the ones he’d rather forget, but wouldn’t. They’d push in on him and shape him, and after the force and the heat, he’d come out changed. Made of the same elements but different.
The blasts slowed—first separated by a few seconds and then a few more. Charlie timed it on his watch. One whole minute. Then two.
He looked up. Elliott was splayed out facedown on the other side. And Frank stood, his back to the wall, arms at his sides, as if he were riding one of those centrifugal force machines at the fair. His mouth was open wide and his eyes directed skyward.
Slowly, Charlie eased himself off Imogen. Her hair, full of static, stood up almost straight on end. He knelt down next to her. The echoes of the blasts still rang in his ears, and he couldn’t quite figure out how loud he was talking, but he tried to whisper, “Are you okay?”
He held his breath.
Imogen picked her face off the ground. It was red and splotchy and there was a print on her skin in the shape of the floorboards. But she smiled, just a little, and nodded. He touched her shoulder and wasn’t sure he could let go. She was real and she was there and Not-Mom—
Instinctively, he stretched his arms out to shield Imogen in case Not-Mom had somehow survived, ready to steal more of their real memories. But all that remained next to the golden telescope was a small pile of ash.
Charlie jumped up and pumped his fist in the air. “We did it!” he exclaimed.
He imagined this was better than winning States for Mathletes. Imogen was okay, and while his body was sore and achy, he still had all his limbs!
And Frank, who kind of resembled a fish with his open mouth, blinked once or twice. And Elliott and Ruby—
Elliott had crawled over to Ruby, her hand buried in her fur, her face hidden.
“Elliott?” he called. His voice still felt too loud. Too loud.
Elliott didn’t turn around. She just shook her head once.
“Ruby?”
He waited. He waited for her tail to wag or her head to lift or her tags to jingle. But she didn’t move. She didn’t move and at once, Charlie was on the floor next to Elliott, and his hand was in Ruby’s fur. Her soft white-and-black fur that looked like stars in the sky.
He worked his way to her heart. And left his hand there. Waiting. Waiting for the rise and fall. Waiting for a sign that she was okay.
It didn’t come.
He felt Frank’s hand on his back and Imogen’s arm around his waist. “I’m sorry, Charlie,” Frank said. His voice was hoarse. And after a moment Elliott’s hand found his and she closed her fingers around his fingers. Charlie eased his head down so that his face was next to Ruby’s.
“You saved me,” he whispered. “You saved me.”
His eyes prickled and burned, and soon there was a small rivulet of water running down his nose and into Ruby’s fur. And Elliott’s hand remained intertwined with his.
Life and death.
Beauty and violence.
MADE OF STARDUST
Charlie wanted to take Ruby with them. But it would have been impossible. She was too heavy, and it was too sad. So instead, they brought her outside and placed her in a space between the trees where she was in full view of the stars above, all of them back in their rightful places. Charlie knew she would have liked that.
They stopped at Frank’s house first. Now that Not-Grandma was no longer a threat, he had something he needed to get: his gray cap. Charlie watched as Frank hugged it to his chest. But Frank didn’t put it on—not yet.
Then they walked back to Elliott’s house together, leaving the bikes behind. There was no need to rush now that the memories had been returned and the Echoes had been destroyed. Imogen had grabbed onto Charlie’s hand tight. She was practically cutting off his circulation, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was that they were together. Safe.
The hatch was waiting for them.
Charlie lifted Imogen in first, and then he helped Elliott in. They clung to either side with their arms. Frank wiped his palms on his pants and went in next. He let out a worried sigh.
“It’ll work,” Charlie reassured him. It had to work. They had come so far.
Charlie was the last in the hole. He swung there a minute, his legs free, and then said, “On the count of three, everyone. One, two, three.”
All four of them lifted their arms, but they only bounced back up. Imogen whimpered.
“It’s me,” Frank said. His voice shook. “It’s not letting us back because of me.”
Frank tried to climb out of the hatch, but Charlie wouldn’t let him. “We’re all in this together,” he said. He took a deep breath, though his arms were hot and tingly. Getting mad wouldn’t solve anything. “Let’s try again. One, two, three.”
Again, the hatch rejected them. He had to think. This was a place of inverses, of opposites. Addition and subtraction. Multiplication and division. To open up the hatch, Imogen had declared that she didn’t want to live with Charlie and Dad, that she only wanted to be with Mom. Elliott had done the same thing with Jack.
Charlie had to say good-bye to what he couldn’t have again and hello to the possibility of tomorrow. “I want to be with Dad,” he started. “With Imogen and Frank and Elliott. With the Mathletes.”
Imogen caught on. “And the play,” she said. “I want to be Dorothy again.”
“I want to be with all of you,” Frank said. “With my mom and dad.”
“I don’t want to be anywhere but in the real world,” Elliott said. “The four of us together.”
Charlie braced himself again. This had to work. It had to. “Okay, one more time. On the count of three. One, two, three.”
This time, when they let go, the hatch opened up and they zoomed through to the real world that awaited them on the other side.
Charlie was the last to emerge from the hole in the floor. Two hands wrapped around his and pulled him up the final bit, just when he felt like his noodle arms couldn’t get him the rest of the way up. He landed in a heap on the floor and for a second, he let his cheek smoosh against the carpet.
He lifted his head and looked around the room. Imogen, splayed out on Elliott’s beanbag chair. Frank and Elliott standing over him, grinning. Frank was still a bit paler than he used to be, and when he’d pulled Charlie up, his grip wasn’t as strong. But there was the smallest spark of the old Frank in his eye and in the cap that had now taken its rightful place back on his head.
The clock on Elliott’s dresser glowed 11:11. When he was younger, if he was up late enough, Mom would tell him to make a wish. And at this very moment, if he had been Before Charlie, he would have wished that Mom was still alive.
But this wasn’t before, and he wasn’t the same. So instead, because Mom always said that for wishes to come true they had to be heard, he said this: “I wish that everything would be okay.”
Charlie knew that the word okay was a variable. When he was four, okay meant that he was supplied with a constant stream of watermelon Popsicles (the kind that pushed up out of their wrappers) and could go down the slide at Tiny Meadows as many times as he wanted. When he was nine, okay meant that he had the socks with the googly eyes and the felt spikes down the back for the Fifth Annual Crazy Sock Day at school and that he always got to eat his bag of chips before his sandwich at lunchtime.
And now, at twelve years and a month, okay meant that he and Imogen were together, that Dad would finally become a dad again, and that they would never forget Mom. Charlie knew that the memories of her might fade—even the brightest stars blinked out—but there were parts of Mom that were still a part of them.
The way Imogen liked to fold her pizza and how s
he bit on her pencil when she was thinking and the color of her hair and the way she loved words. And the way Charlie always seemed to trip over himself and the 100 percent probability that he would burn the cookies because he was too wrapped up in something else to check on them.
There had been this science special they had watched in class, and the narrator, in his booming narrator voice, said, “We are made of stardust,” and then went on to explain how we are composed from the building blocks of stars—that the very elements that make us up, carbon and iron and oxygen, all were formed in the heart of a star.
Charlie and Imogen were made of stardust from Mom’s burning constellation, which still pointed the way home.
OKAY
Frank, Imogen, and Charlie had left Elliott at her house with hugs and the smell of popcorn coming from the kitchen. Her mom was making it; it had been one of Jack’s favorite things. Elliott thought maybe she and her mom could talk about it.
Now the three stood on Frank’s front porch, staring at the door. The house was dark. Even the outside lights hadn’t been turned on. But, even so, they could still see the tattered green Find Frank ribbon that his parents had tied on one of the posts.
“Question,” Frank said. He turned to look at Charlie, shoving the hand that once hovered over the door, ready to knock, into the pocket of his jeans. “Am I ready?”
Charlie threw his arm around Frank’s shoulder. “Short answer or long answer?”
“Long.”
Charlie grinned. He could have guessed that. “Here’s what I know. I know you’re my best friend and when you were gone, I couldn’t stand it. Sometimes I’d pick up the phone to call you and you wouldn’t be there. And we couldn’t be on Mathletes together or see the monster movie marathon together or any of that stuff. I’m ready to do all of that again with you.” He paused. “And I think you are, too.”
In response, Frank pulled Charlie into a hug.
“Remember,” Imogen chimed in. “There’s no place like home.”
Mrs. Talley would have been proud. Imogen sounded like she really meant it.
Frank laughed. “Is this when I’m supposed to click my shoes together three times?”
Charlie shook his head. “You don’t have to. You’re already there.”
Frank took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell. A chime sounded and a light flicked on. They could hear footsteps on the staircase and the click of the door as someone unlocked it.
Charlie squeezed Frank’s shoulder a little tighter.
The door opened.
Charlie had never been more thankful to see the house. His house—stuffed full of mistakes and disappointments and unfolded laundry.
But also Mom—even though she wasn’t there anymore, the house was still full of her. The red door, the flowers in the window box, the pictures, and the memories they’d made and the people she loved so much.
This house was real.
The front door was unlocked and the house was quiet except for a small sound coming from the family room.
Dad was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking.
“Dad?” Imogen said. He looked up.
“Charlie, Imogen,” he cried.
Imogen ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck. “We’re here. We’re home.” She scooched next to him on the couch, leaving only a little space between them.
“I got your message,” Dad said. “I came home as soon as I did. I drove around the neighborhood and I couldn’t find you. I thought I’d lost you.”
Charlie covered Imogen’s legs with Mom’s favorite blanket—the one he and Frank had accidentally unwound and then tried to knit back together with disastrous results. Imogen still had a smudge of ash on her ear, and the hair on the left side of her face had some weird kink to it from when she had lain on the ground.
Charlie went to shake the memory of that from his head but then stopped and nudged Imogen over just a bit with his shoulder. She folded up her knees, making room.
And they sat there—Charlie and Imogen and Dad—somehow fitting on a couch that had once seemed too small.
“Me and Imogen,” Charlie said after a minute or two of quiet. “We’re still here, Dad. We still need you.”
Dad pushed his glasses back up his nose.
Charlie continued but concentrated on the TV straight ahead of him.
“A lot’s happened to us. To our family.” Charlie paused, wondering how much to say. “To me and Imogen. I wonder if it’s been some kind of sign or message or something. From Mom or maybe even the universe. And Mom always said when the universe talks, you better listen.”
“Your mother was a smart lady.” Charlie could hear a smile in his voice.
And because it was one in the morning and he was tired, Charlie let it go at that, but he could feel the space between him and Dad and Imogen shrink even further. It could’ve been because the couch was old and saggy and two of the springs underneath the seat cushions were broken.
But Charlie was certain it was due to something else.
If Dr. Miller could have seen him now, he wondered what she’d write in her notebook.
Brave, maybe. Okay kid. On his way.
STELLA
It had been three days since the hatch disappeared. Elliott’s had disappeared, too. They still put heavy things over the space where they used to be, though, just in case.
Charlie rode past the bakery on the way to Elliott’s in the afternoon after school. Her schedule wasn’t quite as busy anymore, she told him. He stopped, leaning his bike against the light pole outside the bakery that had just pinged on. He cupped his eyes and leaned against the glass. Maybe Edna was still there. But now all he saw were empty display cases where cupcakes and homemade candies once sat. The door was covered with brown packing paper with a sign in the middle that said Coming Soon. Someone at his lunch table said it was going to be a taco place. He’d have to tell Frank about it. Dr. Miller said he was coming back for a half day next Tuesday. He was going to start out slow before coming back to school full-time. But he was going to the Mathletes’ lunch practice. With Charlie.
Charlie liked tacos. They reminded him of the Mexican fiesta nights they used to have and how Mom would play mariachi music from the record player as they danced around the kitchen. It was a memory worth holding on to.
He just wished he could’ve had the memory of saying a proper good-bye to Edna, too.
That night, Charlie, Dad, and Imogen sat at the kitchen table. Charlie smiled as Imogen waved her fork in the air, bits of corn flying out of her mouth as she recounted some dramatic story from play practice that day. She wasn’t Dorothy anymore, but Mrs. Talley had fit her in again, and Imogen was thrilled. Dad didn’t say much, but he did compliment the potatoes—the kind that Charlie had made from the box. One day, Charlie would learn how to make Mom’s, but for today, this was enough.
Later, just as Imogen had passed him the last dish to rinse off in the sink, there was a knock at the door. Charlie glanced at the clock—8:05. Imogen threw the towel onto the counter and sprinted to the door. “I’ll get it,” she yelled.
Charlie set the dish on the drying rack and followed her down the hall.
Imogen stood in the front entry, door wide open to the yard and the street beyond that and the night sky just beyond that. But he didn’t see anyone.
“Is someone there?” Charlie asked. He followed with: “Did we get a package?” even though it was too late for deliveries.
“Kind of,” she said. She pointed toward the front step. “Look!”
On the porch was a brown woven basket lined with a blanket. And on that blanket sat a tiny black dog with a ruby-red collar. It looked up at them with its big eyes in a way that almost seemed familiar, reflecting the stars above.
“It looks like she’s been dusted with powdered sugar,” Imogen exclaimed. She knelt down and gently gathered the puppy in her arms. Charlie touched it, right under its chin. The dog closed its eyes and seemed to m
elt into him, just as Ruby had. “Dad! Dad! There’s a dog at our door, and I really think we’re meant to keep it. People don’t leave puppies on your porch randomly, you know!” This, Charlie knew, was true.
Imogen and Charlie charged into the family room, nearly tripping over a startled Dad, who clicked off the TV. Imogen almost shoved the puppy in his face. Dad and the puppy stared at each other, sizing each other up. Then, in the very next moment, it licked him right across the nose with its impossibly long tongue.
A sound came from Dad’s mouth that Charlie almost didn’t recognize. It took him a second and then it registered—Dad had just laughed.
Imogen turned a silver disc hanging from the collar over in her hands. “Her name is Stella,” she said.
Stella. Star. Charlie rushed back to the door and onto the front porch.
“Edna!” he called.
And at the far end of the street, just before the road disappeared over the hill, Charlie could have sworn he saw an old woman hunched over a bicycle. And if he squinted just right and turned his head twenty-seven degrees to the left, he thought he could see her gray hair polka-dotted with white.
As she disappeared into the horizon, Charlie looked up into the sky. There was a cluster of stars he hadn’t noticed before. He’d have to check his star map later, but he was sure of it.
He thought back to that one conversation with Elliott in her room about naming the constellations. Charlie had found his.
Ruby the brave. Imprinted in the sky.
Hers was a story worth telling.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book wouldn’t be a book without the support, enthusiasm, and hard work of a whole team of people. I would like to offer my thanks and gratitude to:
My agent, Victoria Marini, who is made of magic—the good kind. For your support, guidance, and belief in me and in Charlie Price, I am so grateful.
The Remarkable Journey of Charlie Price Page 17
