He makes a little choky sound like he’s swallowing his cry and letting a laugh come out instead. He looks around, blinking, until his eyes settle on the boat. He juts his chin toward it. “Maybe someday you’ll try that out.”
I shake my head and think of a way to deflect but I can’t so I just repeat myself. “I was looking at the Beehive Cluster last night and your boat is named Beehive. Isn’t that magic?”
“Coincidence.”
“Or maybe it’s the universe talking to us.”
He shakes his head. “Coincidence.”
“It’s not a coincidence. Nothing is a coincidence.”
“You sound like Julia. Everything happened for a reason.”
“She’s right!”
“Coincidence,” he says again, like the conversation is over.
But it isn’t.
“It’s not a coincidence.” I have to prove that to him. Suddenly, I have a thought. “What was your dog’s name?”
He looks confused. “Which one?”
“The one you have all those pictures of. No, wait—don’t tell me. I’ll tell you.” I think for a moment about the star cluster that comes after Beehive in the Messier Objects. Beehive is M44 and M45 is … “I’ve got it! Your dog’s name was Taurus.”
His eyes get wider than I’ve ever seen and his face gets paler. It’s like I can see right through him.
Finally, he makes his rumbling sound. “I must’ve mentioned his name.”
“No, you didn’t. We’ve never had a conversation about your dog. I’d remember because I love dogs. And Taurus is exactly the kind of dog I want. A black Lab! See? It’s the universe talking to us!”
Mr. X rolls his eyes.
“And your wife’s name was Julia and my name is Julian. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Not really.”
“And we think the same way—you just said so yourself! We must’ve been thrown together for some reason, Mr. X. The universe is trying to tell us something!”
“OK, then, what’s the universe saying?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s because the universe isn’t talking to us.”
“Maybe it is and you’re just not listening! Maybe you’re doing this.” I close my eyes, put my hands over my ears, and go, “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA,” really loudly.
As loud as I am I can hear him saying my name, several times, so I finally stop.
“I think someone’s calling you.”
And then I hear it, too.
Mom.
In a panic.
“Asciugamano! I have to go!”
Mom is out front and grabs me in a big hug, then drags me up the stairs into the front hall like outside is too dangerous. She’s crying.
“It’s OK, Mom. I’m sorry, I was—”
“Julian!” Pookie comes flying in, dripping wet from the lake. “Are you OK?”
“Yes! I just didn’t hear her so I didn’t come right away. That’s all.”
For a moment Pookie actually looks relieved, and sweet, like she used to. Then she glares at Mom. “Jeez, Mom, do you have to go into a panic any time he’s out of your sight? You freaked out everyone in a three-mile radius.”
Mom has stopped crying and is staring Pookie up and down. “I told you not to come into this house tracking in sand. Now clean that up.”
Pookie’s eyes narrow. “Yes, master.”
Mom takes a deep breath to let out the power of the universe so I quickly say, “What’s for dinner?” I’m not even hungry but I’m deflecting.
Mom’s teeth are clenched and she’s still glaring at Pookie as she says, “I don’t know.”
I pat Mom’s hand. “I know! I’ll make dinner! Beans on toast. It’s a British treat. Well, maybe not a treat, but it’s a meal for”—I stop myself before saying for poor people because that might upset Mom—“for British people. And us, too.”
Pookie stomps to the front porch and grabs a beach towel from the railing and cleans up her drippy spots, which is actually really good timing for her because Joan drives up and now she’ll think Pookie has been working all day instead of being a princess.
“How’s my family?” Joan asks, breezing into the kitchen.
Pookie stomps up the back stairs.
Mom sighs, pulling Joan toward the front porch.
“That good, huh?” Joan says.
“I’m making dinner, Joan,” I call after them. “It involves beans so you’ll like it.”
“Thanks, kiddo!”
Beans are the only vegetable Joan will eat. She has what Mom calls a limited palate, which means her favorite foods are mac and cheese and hamburgers. And French fries, but she only gets those when we’re out somewhere without Mom.
Mom and Joan talk quietly on the front porch and even though it’s worse not knowing what people are saying than actually hearing them, I try to tell my stomach not to get upset and focus on dinner.
It’s pretty easy to make beans on toast. You get the bag of green beans out of the freezer and put them in the microwave until they’re soft, which is about as long as it takes to make toast because our toaster is old and tired. And maybe I burned the toast just a little. Then you pour the beans on top of the toast and you’re done!
When I call everyone to dinner, Pookie takes one look at her plate and fake pukes. “Mom! Joan! We aren’t really supposed to eat this, are we?”
I’m expecting Mom and Joan to roll their eyes at her, but their eyes are focused on my beans on toast.
“Julian,” Joan says quietly, “I think it’s supposed to be baked beans, not green beans, that go on top of toast.”
“It’s not even toast!” Pookie says. “It’s mushy burned bread that’s disintegrating in bean water!”
I look down at my plate and realize it doesn’t look too appetizing. It smells weird, too.
Mom takes a bite, chews slowly, and looks thoughtful. “It’s sort of like green bean casserole, without the mushroom soup or onions. I think it’s fine.”
Joan stares at Mom. “I think it was a good try.”
“We can eat it,” Mom shoots back.
Pookie pushes her plate over to Mom. “You can eat it!” She storms off to the back stairs again.
“Wait!” I call after her. “We can have marshmallows instead!”
“Julian,” Mom says, “that’s only for—”
“Special occasions, I know. This is special.”
“Yes, it is,” Joan says. “Get the marshmallows. Please.”
The only thing better than marshmallows is marshmallows plus something else, like in s’mores, but we don’t have Hershey’s bars or graham crackers. It’s still a pretty good dinner, though, because Mom only makes me eat a few healthy things, like carrot sticks and hummus and cherry tomatoes. Mostly I eat marshmallows.
“Oh,” says Mom, “I meant to tell Pookie I found a camp”—she looks at me and smiles—“thanks to your suggestion.”
“Can we afford it?” Joan asks.
“It’s free. She’ll be a volunteer at an animal therapy camp for kids who are suffering from”—she hesitates, then smiles—“kids with special needs.”
I feel my stomach jumping. “Wait. Mom. You’re going to let Pookie work with kids? With special needs?”
“Yes, I think it’ll be good for her.”
I’m not so sure about that. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be good for the kids.
“I hope she’ll make some friends,” Mom says. “You need to have something to do, too, Julian.”
“I have stuff to do. I’m looking for a comet, I’m keeping track of all the Messier Objects that are in the way, just like Mr. Messier, because I can actually see them now, I’m charting where Sirius is in winter and spring so you guys can find me—it—and I’m making friends with Mr. X … eventually.”
“That’s nice, honey, but don’t you want us to find friends your own age for you?”
See, that’s the problem with Mom. She thinks it’s her job to find me frie
nds. Doesn’t she think I can do that myself? And I already am. Mr. X. “You don’t need to find friends for me, Mom.”
“He’s fine,” Joan agrees. “He’s always been good at amusing himself, unlike the Princess of Darkness.”
Mom’s voice sounds pleading. “But he needs a little friend.”
“You mean, like a dog?” I know that’s not what she means, but that’s what you get for saying I need a little friend like I’m four years old. “How about it, Mom? You said you didn’t want to have a dog in the city, but we’re in the country now.”
“Julian, honey, you know your sister’s allergic.”
“She’s allergic to life. And how is she working at an animal camp if she’s allergic?”
“It’s horses,” Mom says, “and it’s not the same as living with them. Some of our guests might have allergies, too. I worry that a dog might make people think this place isn’t hygienic.” She chews her lip. “And everything is in too much of an uproar right now. I can’t handle that.”
I look to the person who can handle anything. “Joan?”
Joan is sitting hunched over with her head down. “I defer to your mother,” she mumbles. Then she pushes away from the table and walks out to the front porch.
What? Joan has an opinion on everything and she’ll tell you what it is, too. I defer to your mother is not one of them.
I stare at her through the screen door and see Mr. Hale, the lawyer, walking up the stairs as Joan tries to walk down.
He hands her some papers and she squints at them. “Boy, you don’t waste any time, do you?”
Mr. Hale shrugs and nods to us through the screen door. When he sees me he waves. “It was very kind of you to pass on that book and write such a nice letter.”
I stand up. “You read my letter?”
“Yes. He wanted me to. You know, he doesn’t like kids much, but you’re an exception. I hope you keep up this friendship.”
Mom stares at me with her mouth open. “Julian, I didn’t know you’ve been—” She runs to the screen door and pushes it open to talk to Mr. Hale. “Is your client safe? Mentally stable? Any criminal record?”
“Mom!”
Mr. Hale shakes his head. “He’s harmless, just a sad, broken old soul. It’s as if he has nothing left to live for.”
“Oh, well, that’s fine, then,” Mom says.
“Mom!”
“I mean,” she says quickly, “it’s probably fine for you to be friends.”
As soon as Mr. Hale leaves, Pookie comes pounding down the stairs and through the pantry. “What was all that about?”
Mom ignores her and turns to me. “You should’ve told me you were talking to Mr. X!”
“Why?”
“I’ve never met him. I need to screen the people you meet. He could be dangerous!”
Pookie rolls her eyes. “He’s our next-door neighbor.”
“Yes, but we don’t know him.”
“Mom. I was just on his patio. I could yell and you could hear me.”
“Really, Mom,” Pookie says, “you could expand the kid’s bubble just a little.”
“I didn’t ask you for parenting advice,” Mom snaps.
“Maybe you should,” I mutter.
Mom doesn’t hear me even though I kind of wish she would. I say Thank you to Pookie with my eyes and she shrugs You’re welcome back. She even almost sort of smiles at me even though other people might call it a grimace.
“I’m going to give this Mr. X a call right now”—Mom rummages through the slips of paper on her desk, muttering about his phone number—“and next time he’s out, you come get me. Do you understand?”
“Not really, but OK.”
“Joan?” Mom says in her Aren’t you with me on this? voice.
Joan comes in from the porch and sits down at the kitchen table, staring at the papers from the lawyer. And swearing. It starts as a whisper but gets louder.
Mom clears her throat and even though Joan looks over at us, Pookie and I have learned that if your mouth drops open, Joan will stop swearing. If you keep your mouth closed and make your eyes look bored you can really increase your vocabulary.
Joan swears one more string of amazing words and slaps the papers down on the table. “We have twenty days to respond.”
I look from Joan to Mom, and back to Joan again. “What does that mean?”
“It’s nothing to worry about, Julian,” Mom says, punching numbers into her phone. “It’s time for you to go to bed.”
It’s not nearly time for bed. It’s not even dark. She’s just trying to get rid of me.
I hear her talking to Mr. X on the phone as I leave. “I hope our Julian isn’t bothering you. I didn’t know he was—” Pause. “Oh, well, thank you. He’s a sweet boy. But if he—” Pause. “Ohh-kay, you have a good night, too, bye.”
I’m going to have to learn to talk grump-ish like Mr. X, because somehow he stopped Mom from going on and on. That is a real skill.
I hang out by my telescope and watch the sunset while I wait for it to get dark. The sunset is pretty amazing. I like how the oranges and reds get deeper and more intense like orange and red dwarf stars, but I still wish it’d hurry up. When it finally does, I spend a long time looking for a comet.
No luck. I go back to my tree and practically stumble over a rock I haven’t seen before. When I pick it up I can tell it’s special. I shine my flashlight on it and guess what? You can see the whole universe in this rock. No, really. There are streaks like pulsars and deep dark dense places like black holes and you don’t know what’s inside, really, except, well, the whole universe. Rocks make up the universe, so if you hold a rock in your hand you’re holding the universe.
I climb up to my tree room, lie down, and rest the rock on my chest. It’s not heavy but I can feel it. It calms me down but I still can’t sleep.
I’m thinking about how we have twenty days to respond to something, even though I’m not sure what it is we’re responding to because Mom wouldn’t say. Grown-ups always think it’s better to hide things from kids but it’s not. It makes it worse. You’d think they would’ve figured that out by now. Don’t they know that imagination is more creative than anything real? All I know is that it has to do with Mr. X and I feel kind of bad about it because he’s my friend. I also feel bad because being Mr. X’s friend is like being a traitor to my family. I’m worried about whose side to be on.
I worry about stuff sometimes. A lot. That’s why my therapist gave me a smiley face pillow to throw at the wall. Throwing anything against a wall is violent, and somebody or something is going to get hurt. What was he thinking? I worried about hurting the smiley face guy. And if I didn’t throw the pillow against the wall, then I had to worry about what my therapist would think of me for not throwing it against the wall. Sometimes I’d like to throw worry against the wall, but then I’d worry about that, too.
I’m also worrying about how it’s all my fault that Pookie is going to be at camp being dramatic with a bunch of special needs kids because she’ll probably yell at them and make them all cry. The only thing I can do something about is the kids. I say a kindness meditation for each of them.
KINDNESS MEDITATION
This is how you say it:
May I be happy*
May I be well
May I be safe from inner and outer danger**
May I be strong
May my life unfold with ease and grace
*You can say meditations for other people, too, you just put their name in where it says I. You should always start with yourself, like putting the airplane oxygen mask on yourself before helping others. That’s because you can’t help others if you’re full of pain, or you can’t breathe.
**This means not worrying yourself to death from the inside. And also that no bad guys attack you from the outside.
Since I don’t know how many kids Pookie is going to be terrorizing at the camp, I say the kindness meditation thirty times to be sure to cover them all. I also
don’t know any of their names, so in place of the name I just say victim.
I wake up in the middle of the night and see Mr. X’s patio light on. I don’t see Mr. X so I go look through my telescope. I have eighty-six Messier Objects now. No comet. When I give my eyes a break and look over at Mr. X’s patio, he’s there, sitting hunched over on the bench, so I go join him.
“Hi, it’s me again.”
He sighs. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
“I’m not a very good sleeper.”
He grunts. “Me either.”
I hold up the rock I found and smile. “This is awesome. Did you know you can see the whole universe in a rock?”
He shrugs. His eyes look so sad my throat is starting to hurt. I don’t even mind that he’s pinching his nose.
“Mr. X, do you want to find a comet with me?”
“No.” His voice is so dull and quiet it’s like he’s not even alive.
“I could put your name on it and then you could live forever, too.”
He doesn’t respond.
“You’re allowed to put two names on a comet, you know.”
He stares straight ahead at where the water would be if our addition wasn’t in the way and pinches his nose.
I stand there for a minute in case he changes his mind, but he doesn’t. “OK, wish me luck.” I start to leave but then turn back. “I’m sorry about our addition. I hate the water, but if I loved lakes, I’d be pretty upset about our house blocking the view.”
Slowly he turns his head to look at me and blinks. “Why do you hate the water?”
“You can drown in that stuff.”
He shifts a little on his bench. “You can also swim in it.”
“If you know how to swim.”
“You really don’t know how to swim?” He sits up straight and air hisses out of the cushion.
I start rolling and unrolling the straps of my life jacket. “I’m not interested.”
“How old are you?”
“Nine-point-six-three.”
He stares at me.
“It’s approximately nine and two-thirds. Rounding up.”
The Incredible Magic of Being Page 7
