The Incredible Magic of Being

by Kathryn Erskine

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1. Black Holes and Messier Objects

  2. Matt Damon and the BVM

  3. Time

  4. Orion

  5. The Cosmos

  6. Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Elephant in the Room

  7. Parallel Universes

  8. When Galaxies Collide

  9. Mr. X

  10. Uni-Sensing

  11. Magic

  12. Beehive Cluster

  13. Friends

  14. Flying Toilets

  15. Sirius

  16. Apollo 13

  17. Cafeteria Tray and the BVM

  18. One Small Step

  19. Gifted

  20. Survival

  21. Swimming

  22. Wimp

  23. Adoption

  24. Turing Test

  25. Tetralogy of Fallot

  26. Life

  27. The End of Orion

  28. Voyager

  29. Launch

  30. Landing

  31. Recovery

  32. Heart

  33. Shock Wave

  34. Science Magic

  35. Surprises

  36. Star Party

  More FARTS! From Julian

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  To the thinkers and dreamers—

  keep believing.

  —KE

  Magic is all around us, but most people never see it.

  Sometimes even I can’t.

  Like right now.

  I’m in the backseat holding my breath, leaning away from the black hole and trying not to get sucked in.

  The black hole is my sister. She didn’t used to be a cosmic phenomenon, but something happens to people when they become teenagers and their brains explode. Pookie’s went supernova. When she was twelve she was very high functioning, but now that she’s fourteen she makes this noise like an orangutan, wears earbuds and sunglasses even inside, and has a Moody Place behind the house where she goes when she’s mad, which is most of the time. I call her Spooky. Only in my head, though. I’m not stupid.

  “Mom! Joan!” Pookie yells. “Tell Julian to stop kicking my bag!”

  “I wasn’t kicking your—”

  Mom pumps the brakes. I think she’s doing it more to get our attention than for driving purposes. It makes me feel like puking again.

  “Julian, honey, try to stop jiggling your feet so much. Calming breaths, remember?”

  Joan looks back and gives me a wink that means, Hang in there, kiddo.

  I try to hold my legs still and take a really deep breath.

  “You don’t have to suck all the air out of the van, freak,” Pookie hisses.

  When I turn to answer my foot touches her KEEP OUT bag, which doesn’t even have anything good in it. I’ve checked.

  She makes her orangutan noise in my face, so I squish over to my side like a dwarf star resisting the gravitational pull of the black hole, even though my door smells like puke with a twist of lemon-fresh wipe because I threw up on it in Delaware. Or maybe it was New Jersey. Probably both. Plus Connecticut. Motion sickness is a problem I have. It’s why I don’t like car rides or boats. Especially boats. I’ve never actually been on a boat, but I want to puke just thinking about it.

  Plus, you can drown.

  Mom says you have to deal with your fears to overcome them. So I saved up my allowance and bought a life jacket, which I’m already wearing because our new house in Maine is on a lake. I saw it on Google Maps. The lake is way closer to the house than necessary, which means tsunamis. Technically they’re only in the ocean, but this lake is big and it’s close to the ocean. It could have a mini tsunami … a tsunamini.

  Pookie says I’m highly abnormal for a nine-year-old and should be put in a lab at Caltech and studied like a mutant rat.

  I think with a name like Pookie you should be careful what you say.

  My foot touches her bag again and I hope she doesn’t notice, but that’s like hoping Mom won’t notice if I bring a Labrador retriever home.

  Pookie points to my telescope on the seat behind us. “Touch my bag one more time and I’m throwing your stupid telescope out the window!”

  I hug my knees to my chest, take a deep breath, and remind myself that the magical thing about super massive black holes like Pookie is that they emit quasars, the brightest objects in the entire universe. I keep waiting for that to happen with Pookie, but I think this is one of those situations where I’d have to say, Don’t hold your breath.

  So I let my breath out, which makes her go all orangutan and snarl at me like I’m a worthless Messier Object.

  (FART stands for “Facts and Random Thoughts.” Plus, it’s fun to say fart.)

  MESSIER OBJECTS

  Messier Objects are not messier like my room, or Pookie’s that’s even messier. Mr. Messier was a French guy who was looking for comets, but certain objects—the stars and galaxies and stuff—got in the way, so he made this list of not comets so he wouldn’t get confused.

  Did you know that if you find a comet you get to name it after yourself? That’s what I’m going to do. Then I can live forever.

  No, really. I have a Dobsonian Orion XT8 telescope. It’s good enough to see the Dog Star (the best star in the whole universe), all the Messier Objects, and comets as long as you’re not in the city, where there’s too much light to see hardly anything.

  That’s how come I think it’s awesome we’re moving to Maine. No light pollution! I’ll find a comet pretty fast. Then I’ll have lots of time left over to show my family the magic of the universe. Once I figure out how to make them listen.

  Pookie screeches something in orangutan which I don’t catch, but Mom does because she’s clairvoyant that way, just like she knows when you’ve used the gas stove to make s’mores even if she was at work when you did it.

  She jerks the Odyssey into a gas station and market, and Pookie sprints to the outdoor restrooms. She stops at the dirty ladies’ room door that has no knob and turns back to glare at Mom as if Mom is sacrificing her to medical science.

  Mom puts her head down on the steering wheel and breathes like Darth Vader.

  Joan reaches over and squeezes her shoulder. Joan is a physical therapist as well as a paramedic, so she’s really good at squeezing shoulders.

  I look at the men’s room door to see if it’s any cleaner so Pookie can use that, but it’s even worse. That’s when I see the gas station sign and read it out loud. “Sav-U-More Grotto with BVM. What’s a BVM?”

  “Blessed Virgin Mary,” Joan says.

  Mom turns her head to Joan without lifting it from the steering wheel, and her voice cracks like maybe she’s about to cry. “What would the Virgin Mary be doing at a gas station?”

  “She’s probably in the grotto,” I point out. “That means a little cave.”

  “Oh,” says Mom, “that explains it,” and starts laughing, so I know the shaky voice isn’t crying, which is a relief until her laughing sounds kind of crazy.

  “Mom? Are you all right?”

  Joan starts laughing, too. “She’s just de-stressing from the long drive, kiddo. It’s OK.”

  Pookie sits down so hard the whole van bounces and slams the door. “It is so not okay!” She rips half a dozen wipes out of the Clorox container, and the lemon smell makes me want to puke again. She opens her mouth and takes a deep breath.

  My stomach gets tight and I can tell she’s about to go supernova, which might put Mom over the edge. I quickly say, “Matt Damon is trying to get clean toilets for everyone.”

  She stops scrubbing her hands and stares at me, but not with the mushy eyes she usually ha
s if I pull Matt Damon out of my back pocket. “Well, why isn’t he here?”

  “I don’t know, but the Blessed Virgin Mary is. Do you want to see her?”

  “Shut. Up.”

  “No, really.” I crane my neck, and beyond the men’s room I see a stone path and a little wooden sign down low that says GROTTO WITH BVM.

  “She’s down there. I’m going.”

  “Julian!” all three of them yell at once.

  “We have to meet the moving van,” Joan says, “and we’re late. It’s already there.”

  At least Mom drives past the path so I can look down to the grotto and see the BVM. She has her hand up, waving, so I wave back. It’s not much of a meeting.

  “I don’t see why I couldn’t have said a quick hello.”

  “It’s a statue, you freak,” Pookie hisses.

  Joan turns and glares at her. “Hey! Watch it.”

  “Mary could be magic,” I point out. “She’s very religious.”

  Pookie rolls her eyes. “We’re not even Catholic!”

  “We can learn much from those who are different,” Mom says.

  “A statue? Really, Mom?” Pookie turns her music up so loud I can hear it through her earbuds. I want to tell her she’s going to go deaf, but we’ve had this discussion before and she says she doesn’t want to hear it, which is pretty funny when you think about it because that’s exactly the point. She’s not going to hear it if she keeps blasting music at her eardrums because she’ll be DEAF!

  LIFE AFTER DEATH

  I want to talk to the BVM because I’d like to know if she can give me some input on what happens to you after you die.*

  *This is more of a random thought than a fact, but that’s covered in FARTs (Facts and Random Thoughts).**

  **I like to use asterisks because they remind me of stars.***

  ***Joan says when I write a real paper I have to use numbered footnotes because asterisks get confusing. I see her point.****

  ****But I’m still going to use them!

  Carl Sagan, this famous astronomer, said, “We are made of star-stuff.” That’s because stars have hydrogen and helium at their core, and those elements combine to make other elements, which are what we’re made up of. So I think when we die we end up in the stars. I can’t ask Carl Sagan because he’s already dead, probably in a star, but it makes sense. When we die we have to go SOMEwhere because there’s a scientific principle called conservation of matter, which means stuff doesn’t disappear, it just changes form. Like when you boil water and eventually the pot is empty because it all boiled away? It didn’t really go away. It turned into steam and now it’s in the air we breathe. See? The universe is full of magic.

  When I die, which I don’t want to but I know I will, I’m pretty sure I’m going to end up in Sirius, the Dog Star, because I have a special connection with dogs. They run away from their humans just to kiss me. When their humans say, “Hey! Come back here!” I tell them, “It’s OK, I’m going to die and be in the Dog Star! And your dog knows that so we’re bonding!” which calms the humans down because they stand really still and stare at me until their dogs go back to them.

  Anyway, I want my family to be able to find me when I’m up in the Dog Star, so they have to get better at looking through a telescope and seeing the Messier Objects before I die. Right now, all they say is, “That’s nice, honey” (Mom) or, “Those are some messy objects all right” (Joan) or, “This is so stupid! I can’t see anything!” (Pookie). I want to tell her it’s easier to see through a lens if you stop rolling your eyes, but if I did she’d go all supernova on us and then Mom would get upset and then Joan would get mad and then the Messier Objects might get blown out of the universe, so I have to be patient. When they learn where the Dog Star is they can talk to me even when I’m dead. It’s really important to talk to people after they die so they won’t be lonely.

  I know that because I’m a uni-sensor. That’s what I call sensing information from the universe. It’s not like someone’s actually telling me something. I just know. Pookie says I have Mutant Brain Syndrome and think too much. But I’m not actually thinking; stuff just comes into my head randomly. I don’t ask for it. Mom says I’m uniquely gifted and should cultivate my gift so I can do something amazing with my life. Joan says people should stop labeling me, and let me be a kid.

  I like Joan a LOT.

  Mom looks up at the rearview mirror, which is how she talks to me when she’s driving. “I’m sorry, honey. We’ll come back and visit later. Right now, we don’t have time.”

  Grown-ups always say, “We don’t have time” or, “There’s no time for that,” which isn’t actually true. Time is infinite. It’s a question of how you choose to use it.

  Time is really important, but nobody understands it. Not even physicists. They’re sitting around watching The Big Bang Theory and eating Go-Gurts waiting for someone like Newton or Einstein to have a brilliant moment and explain it to them.

  TIME

  There’s a physicist named Julian (like me!) Barbour who says there’s not just now, but lots of different nows. Which I guess means lots of different thens. And lots of different futures. I think that sounds cool. I’d like to hang out in some other nows, especially if they’re not inside this car and not next to Pookie, who just took her earbuds out and is glaring at me. I don’t know why. I didn’t even fart. That time.

  Mostly we think of time like this: “Yesterday I left my house in Washington, DC, and today I’ll get to my new house in Maine.” That’s the way Newton saw it, but then Einstein came along and said space and time are related. So, if I’d taken a spaceship from DC to Maine by way of another galaxy at almost the speed of light, then even if we all arrived at the same second, everyone else would’ve aged more in those two days than me. Isn’t that cool? It’s because by going through space so fast you kind of beat time.

  Actually, you bend it. Which I don’t quite understand, but that’s OK because even physicists get confused by this stuff.

  It’s too bad Mom couldn’t have used the warp speed method, because she looks five years older than yesterday. When I point that out, Pookie snorts and puts her earbuds back in but one side of her mouth curls up, which makes me happy because usually she doesn’t listen to anything I say anymore, and if she does she tells me I’m stupid.

  Mom does not smile, however. She’s so cranky she won’t even let me explain Einstein’s theory. I don’t like it when people won’t listen. “How about the block theory of time, then? It’s different from Einstein’s theory because it says the past, present, and future are all blocks and—”

  “Julian!” Mom says all shout-y, but Joan looks over at her and says, “Michelle” in her calm voice so Mom takes a deep breath. “Not now. Another time, OK?”

  But that’s just it. This might be the only now we have together. There may not be another one.

  “Your mother will never go for this,” Joan says.

  We’re standing in a super awesome tree house next to our new real house.

  “But it’s the perfect bedroom for me! I’m closer to the stars this way. It’s like being in my own planetarium.”

  She gives me a Yeah, right look.

  “I bet you could convince her. Look, I’m right next door. If you leave a window open I could yell and she could hear me.”

  Joan looks at the house, back to where we’re standing, and back to the house again like she’s measuring the distance.

  Joan is the newest addition to our family, but she understands me the best. She’s not all helicopter-y like Mom. In fact, when Mom gets too panicky, Joan does this great whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop helicopter sound and even though Mom glares at her, at least she backs off a little.

  “OK, kiddo, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Yes! I love Maine!” I yell at the exact same time Pookie yells from inside, “I hate Maine!”

  Joan sighs. “I better go help your mother.”

  Which is disappointing because I really wa
nted Joan to look through my telescope so I could show her the general vicinity of Sirius, the Dog Star. She’s the one most likely to actually listen to me and understand how important it is to see the magic in the universe. Plus, she helped me set up my telescope. It’s heavy and fragile because we got it off Craigslist and the mirror is a little loose. Joan has a lot of experience hauling heavy, fragile objects, which are injured people since she’s a paramedic. We set it up on a little patio in the middle of the yard where there’s a fire pit, but Mom says we’re not using that because fires are dangerous so it’s perfect for my telescope.

  ORION AND SIRIUS

  Orion is not just the name of my telescope. It’s also that cool constellation of the Hunter that’s easy to find because it looks sort of like an H . Orion has three Messier Object numbers: M42, M43, and M78. (There are 110 Messier Objects and they all start with M, which you can probably figure out why.) Orion’s sword, which is below his belt, contains the Orion Nebula (M42), which is where stars are born. No, really. And now I can watch the magic happen.

  Also, Orion’s belt points to Sirius, the Dog Star, which is in the constellation Canis Major (M41). If you count about eight belt lengths down to the left, there’s Sirius! It’s so easy even my family can learn, eventually.

  I want to keep looking at the universe, but I have to run inside because Pookie is heading supernova. Our new house has something called “Jack and Jill” bedrooms that are connected by a bathroom. She says it’s a violation of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment) for a fourteen-year-old girl to share a bathroom with her nine-year-old brother.

  “There’s no other option,” Mom says, holding her head and leaning against the kitchen counter. “We have a master bedroom and the Jack and Jills.”

  “And four more bedrooms!” Pookie says.

  “That brand-new addition is for the bed-and-breakfast. We’re renting them out.”

  “You’re not renting them out tonight!”

  “Those are your rooms, and you need to get used to it,” Mom says.