The Incredible Magic of Being

by Kathryn Erskine

  “Come up here and help me!” Mom yells. “And bring a bucket and towels!”

  Pookie swears some more, grabs the kitchen towel and a bucket from the pantry, and stomps up the stairs.

  Mom’s cell phone rings and I automatically run to the kitchen table, grab it, and start to bring it to her. Then I see who’s calling. Mr. X. I stop and put her phone down on the kitchen table, harder than necessary, because I’m mad. How could he tattle on me like that? The more I think about it, the madder I get.

  I stomp over to Mom’s desk, grab a pad of paper and a pencil, and go to my tree room.

  Hi, Mr. X,

  It’s me, Julian. I’m really mad at you. I’m so mad that I’m slowing down my words by writing because if I said them out loud they’d come out too fast and I wouldn’t be able to keep the mean things inside. They’d scream at you like they want to right now except I keep stopping and holding my hand up in the air to give it time to think about the consequences. Plus, I have an eraser, just in case.

  I thought we were friends. Why did you have to go and talk to Mom about swimming? I TOLD you she would freak. Now she’s going to be all helicopter-y again and it’s all your fault.

  Why would you even DO this? You KNOW I always wear a life jacket. Which Sirius is going to wear, too, because you do NOT just throw a dog into water to make him swim. That’s mean and even unconstitutional (Eighth Amendment—cruel and unusual punishment, look it up). I’m not even sure I can trust you with a dog time-share.

  Your former friend,

  Julian

  It’s a good thing I’m so mad because my angry legs march me to his front door where I drop my letter without second-guessing myself.

  But underneath the mad is sad because not only is Mr. X my former friend, he was also my only friend.

  When Joan gets home that night she can tell I’m in a bad mood so she asks what I’d like to do and finally I can ask her to look through my telescope but OF COURSE it’s cloudy.

  It is really not my day.

  So she says, “Let’s watch Apollo 13,” which is one of my favorite movies, even though it’s scary, because it has a happy ending and also because it’s true.

  Apollo 13 was a manned space mission that went wrong. There was an explosion in the main command module that made it lose oxygen and electricity, and the three astronauts had to get in the freezing cold lunar landing module to save all the power in the command module so that maybe, hopefully, it could get them back to Earth.

  Then they had a risky maneuver of using the moon’s gravity to help fling them back to Earth again while they sat shivering for days wondering if they’d make it or not. It took the NASA engineers and the astronauts working together to solve the problem.

  But it wasn’t just them. People all over the world were hoping and praying for those three guys, even people who didn’t like Americans, because once you’re in outer space you’re not a nationality anymore, you’re just human, and all humans are going to root for you because we’re all on the same team.

  THE CONSTELLATION HUMANITY

  There isn’t really a humanity constellation, but I like to think it’s out there somewhere. That way we’re all together, even when someone dies. They’re still part of our universe. They’re real. We still remember them and think about them. Memories and thoughts are real. Just because they don’t have physical shape doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Things we can’t see and touch are still real, like the air we breathe.

  When people die they’re not really gone. Not completely, anyway. You can still talk to them. Plus, everything they did changed the course of human events, or at least the course of events in your house. That’s true even for people you didn’t actually know. Like Abraham Lincoln who wouldn’t let our country divide over stupid issues like keeping people enslaved which was a crazy idea to begin with, or Jane Addams who helped immigrants and women and even got the Nobel Peace Prize, or Percy Lavon Julian. They’re called inspirations because if they could do something cool, even if it was really hard and took a lot of work and they failed a ton of times but they went back and tried some more until they got it, then we can all do that.

  And if we all did that then this world would be a MUCH better place because it wouldn’t be just the famous people persevering and contributing, it’d be everyone. That would be a REALLY magical universe.

  I wonder if the whole world rooting for me would be enough to get me to learn to swim, without drowning.

  Maybe it would.

  But I still don’t want to risk it.

  Mr. X hasn’t shown his face for days, which is pretty smart on his part because I’m still mad at him.

  I don’t normally like running errands but when Joan asks me to join her I decide to go because it’s better than helping Mom with projects or going nowhere on my bike or thinking about Mr. X and how I don’t have a friend anymore. At the last minute, Pookie decides to come with us because otherwise Joan will buy the wrong brand of something. So it probably won’t be as fun as it could be.

  As we’re about to pull out of our driveway, Mr. Hale drives by and parks in front of Mr. X’s house. Joan hits the brakes and grumbles. “He’s always doing that. They’re plotting, I guess. Well, we still have two weeks before court, gentlemen, so—”

  Pookie makes her orangutan noise. “Do you want me to drive since you’re obviously not?”

  We peel out of the driveway and end up at the Sav-U-More with the grotto. Joan says I can visit the BVM. Pookie snorts and rolls her eyes, but I run down the path to greet the BVM anyway.

  She’s still waving so I wave back. She looks a little bit like Mom, only paler.

  “Hi, BVM. I like your blue bathrobe. Mom has one just like it.”

  She doesn’t say anything. I wasn’t really expecting her to.

  “Do you think we become stars after we die? Me too. Do you think we can pick which one we want to be in? I mean, if I really, really, really want to be in Sirius, that’s OK, right?”

  She doesn’t answer. Maybe she’s thinking. It looks like she’s smiling at me, so I’m uni-sensing yes.

  But when I start complaining about Mr. X and what a rat he is she stops smiling and says I have to go. I guess she doesn’t like mean thoughts. “So-rry,” I mutter, but she says I have to go because I need to take care of my sister.

  Why does she say that?

  I don’t know, but it makes me nervous and I run up the path as fast as I can.

  I head for the store, but what I see beyond the store stops me. It’s Pookie, bending over a red Camaro, and a boy looking at her butt.

  What’s weird is that even though Pookie says sporty cars are stupid, she’s now leaning on it, staring at the cool stripes on the side.

  The guy is grinning and also snuffing up, wiping his nose with the back of his hand, which would normally gross Pookie out but she doesn’t even seem to notice.

  He’s staring at her shorts. I never got why Mom had such a fit about writing on the backs of shorts. Until now. It’s taking him forever to read one word. I want to shout, “Sound it out! It’s not that hard! East-ern!”

  When she finally turns around and looks up at him, he doesn’t actually look at her. Well, he doesn’t look at her face, more like her chest. I’m worried because Pookie seems to be enjoying it. She’s smiling so much her mouth is open and his head is over hers so that if a booger fell out of his nose it would land right in her mouth. Gross!

  I walk up next to her but she doesn’t even notice.

  “Nice wheels,” Pookie says.

  “Thanks. You drive?”

  “Don’t have my license—yet. My parents are SO overprotective.” She rolls her eyes.

  That may be true, but that’s not why she doesn’t have a license. She’s only 14.2.

  “Well, if you ever need a ride, I can take you. I live right there.” His head jerks to the right but his eyes never leave Pookie’s chest.

  I step between them. “That’s OK, we have a Subaru Outback an
d it has EyeSight and all kinds of safety features so—”

  “Who are you?”

  Pookie makes a low, warning orangutan sound.

  “I’m her brother, Julian. Who are you?”

  “Julie-in?” He smirks like that’s a funny name, which makes me mad. Percy Lavon Julian is no one to make fun of!

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Trey,” he says.

  “Tray? Like in a cafeteria?”

  “Shut up!” Pookie hisses.

  “At least I’m named after someone famous, Percy Lavon Julian—”

  “I said, shut up!” Pookie hisses, louder.

  “Joan wants you,” I say, although I don’t know why that came out of my mouth.

  She starts to answer but Joan’s yell interrupts her. “Pookie!”

  “I’m busy!”

  Joan narrows her eyes, tilts her head, and puts her hands on her hips. “I need to ask you something.”

  Pookie turns away and looks at Trey’s car.

  “Fine,” Joan says, “I’ll buy the generic.”

  Pookie makes her full-blown orangutan noise and hurries over to Joan while Trey keeps reading EAST-ERN on her butt.

  I step in front of him to block his view. “See that lady my sister’s talking to?”

  “What of it?”

  “That’s Joan. She was a Merchant Marine.”

  He doesn’t look impressed.

  “She could arm wrestle anyone at the fire station. And usually win.”

  He shrugs.

  “She can bench-press three hundred pounds.”

  He’s starting to look a little impressed.

  “If you touch my sister, Joan will kick you in the nuts.” I’m not sure Joan would actually do that, but I’m not sure she wouldn’t, either.

  Pookie starts walking back to Trey, smiling at him.

  He hurries to get inside his Camaro, revs the engine, and drives away.

  Pookie glares at me. “What did you say to him?”

  “Nothing.”

  She grabs my arm.

  “I just told him who Joan was.”

  “Thanks for ruining any chance I had of having a friend!” She lets go of me and pushes me away.

  “WE used to be friends,” I remind her.

  “Right, used to be. Past tense! I am SO done with you, Julian.”

  It’s the first time she’s called me Julian in forever. I thought I didn’t like it when she called me squirt or freak or stupid, but at least she was being my sister. Now she’s talking to me like I’m a stranger, or in a different universe.

  “Kids,” Joan calls, “come get these bags in the car.”

  Joan fills up the tank and asks, “Who was that boy?”

  “Trey,” Pookie mutters.

  “Ray?” Joan says.

  “TRAY,” I tell her, “like in a cafeteria.”

  “Treeeeey,” Pookie says, rolling her r’s—or maybe she’s gritting her teeth.

  “Ah,” says Joan, “Treeeey, like in a French cafeteria.”

  Pookie storms to the front passenger seat of the Outback and slams the door while Joan winks at me.

  I try to smile but it doesn’t work.

  As we pull out of the Sav-U-More, Joan says, “Hey, you kids want to stop for ice cream?”

  “No, thank you!” Pookie spits out.

  I shake my head.

  “Boy, you two are a barrel of fun.”

  Which reminds me of the Barrel of Monkeys game Pookie and I used to play. It was just a bunch of plastic monkeys you could hook together by their arms and tails, but we’d dangle them from our ears or put them places to surprise Mom and Joan like inside the fridge or shower, or hang them from the car’s rearview mirror.

  I look at Pookie and wonder if she’s remembering that, but she’s staring out the window so I can’t even see her face.

  After unloading the car I escape to my tree room, but before I climb up I stop because there’s a puffy envelope on the ground. From Mr. X.

  When I open it, two things fall out:

  A pair of swim goggles, which I let stay on the ground

  A metal tag shaped like a fire hydrant with SIRIUS etched onto it that makes me smile

  It’s weird how you can have the best and the worst gift in the same package.

  There isn’t a note, but I know it has to be from Mr. X. It means we’re getting Sirius. But only if I swim.

  M51

  I think it’s pretty magical that the very next Messier Object I record is M51 in the constellation Canes Venatici, which means hunting DOGS. The part that makes me queasy is that M51 is the WHIRLPOOL Galaxy. I hope there’s no connection.

  When I go inside the next morning, Joan is swearing and banging around upstairs, Mom is muttering and banging around in the kitchen, and Pookie is moving her stuff into the pantry. She’s stacking up mac and cheese boxes to make room for her DAD picture frame that doesn’t have a picture inside, just a piece of paper that says ROOM ESSENTIALS 8 X 10.

  “What’s going on?”

  Pookie stops long enough to make a face at me, and not a happy one. “Joan is”—she rolls her eyes—“fixing the toilet. So I’m moving down here while she works on it.”

  “Oh. She might fix it,” I say.

  “Right, when we land on Mars.”

  “Actually, that’s already happened. We landed Viking probes on Mars”—Pookie is glaring at me so hard I finish with—“but I know what you mean.”

  Occasionally Joan can fix things just fine, but most of the time she spends days taking something apart, another day swearing at it, and then we call a professional. Mom ends up clearing away Joan’s mess and saying something like, “Well, at least you gave it a try,” except it comes out sounding more like, “Well, that was a complete waste of time,” and then Joan gets mad and goes out for a walk, which she normally never does so at least it’s good for her health.

  I shrug. “Well, the weather’s nice now.”

  Pookie snorts. “Then Joan can have a nice walk.”

  I find the pliers and sit down at the kitchen table to put Sirius’s tag on my safety bracelet.

  That’s when Mom finally notices me. “What’s your new charm?”

  “It’s not a charm. It’s a tag. For Sirius.”

  Mom scrunches up her face because she doesn’t understand.

  “It’s the name of my dog,” I explain, “when we get one.”

  “What!” Pookie yells from the pantry. “Doesn’t anyone care what I think? The world stops spinning if Julian even sneezes but if I’m allergic to dogs it’s OK because we have to do whatever Julian wants?”

  “I never said—” Mom begins but Pookie interrupts her.

  “You make me go to a stupid camp to take care of sick kids—like I don’t do that all the time at home! Then—”

  Mom starts to interrupt but it doesn’t work.

  “—you take away my room—”

  “It’s temporary,” Mom snaps, “and I thought you didn’t like your room.”

  “It’s a stupid room but it was mine! So I’m sleeping in a pantry? My dad would at least give me a bedroom! And now we’re getting a dog even though I’m allergic! Am I invisible here?”

  Mom starts to answer but stops suddenly. I think she’s looking at the dog tag again so I hold up my arm for her to see it, and to deflect her from arguing with Pookie. She grabs my wrist but looks farther up my arm.

  “What’s that?”

  I shrug. “A bug bite, I guess.”

  “Aren’t you using the mosquito net?”

  “Yes.” That’s mostly true.

  She stares closer at the bump. “How could this have happened?”

  Pookie walks into the kitchen, holding out her arms, which are covered in bites. “It’s called Deadwater, Maine.”

  Mom doesn’t even look at Pookie. I wish she would. It’s making me nervous the way she’s staring at my one bite.

  “Antibiotics,” she breathes, finally dropping my arm and ru
nning to the kitchen cabinet. She starts opening cabinet doors frantically and slamming them shut. She swears under her breath and runs past us through the pantry, up the back stairs, yelling for Joan.

  Pookie rolls her eyes.

  I wonder if I’m going to die. I thought I had more time. My family doesn’t even know how to find Sirius yet!

  Joan has antibiotics in her kit, but Mom is practically crying in the two minutes it takes for Joan to find them. Mom watches me swallow one.

  “It’s going to be OK,” Mom says, still breathless. “It’s going to be OK.”

  I’m not sure if she’s saying it to herself as a mantra, or to me. Either way, it makes my heart jump around in my chest, which is definitely not good for it.

  When Mom and Joan start arguing, I feel sick. Mom wants Joan to give me a shot. Joan says that’s only for emergencies.

  “It’s always an emergency when it comes to Julian,” Pookie says, to no one in particular.

  Mom’s and Joan’s words swirl around some more. Mom wants to get me to a hospital, stat.

  Joan says she’s overreacting.

  “Ya think?” Pookie says. “That’s a first!”

  When Joan tells her to stop and Pookie says something rude, although to be fair it’s an expression she learned from Joan, both Mom and Joan start yelling at Pookie, which gives me time to slip outside.

  But I can’t help thinking that Pookie’s lip quivered a bit when they were yelling at her even though she kept unpacking her books and sticking them around the DAD picture frame. And how come, if Pookie’s arms are covered in bites, they aren’t worried about her even a teeny bit?

  Although Pookie is difficult, which is the nice way of saying a galactic pain in the butt, she’s still my sister. She saved my life. A lot. When I was five, I was trying to fly so I jumped off the roof of the garage even though Pookie yelled at me to stop. She ran and caught me just in time so she ended up with a concussion and broken arm instead of me. When I was seven, I almost fell out of a moving car that was too old to have safety features and the door I was leaning against opened and I saw the road headfirst but just before I hit, I felt myself sucked back into the car and it was Pookie pulling me inside. And last year some kids tried to beat me dead because I’m a freak and Pookie screamed in like Wonder Woman, or maybe more like a Dementor, and scared them all so much they ran away and had to wait until the next day to apologize.