Love, Stargirl (3 page)

February 18

Do you know what day this is, Leo? It’s First Kiss Day. Four days after Valentine’s. One year ago tonight. Outside my house. My happy wagon was full. I was so stuffed with happiness there wasn’t room for any more.

Today I took one out. It’s down to four.

February 22

Field trip assignment: Margie’s.

Margie’s little donut shop. It’s on Bridge Street between Pizza Dee-Lite and Four Winds Travel. The sign says
BEST DONUTS IN THE WORLD
!

I went for lunch. I had a powdered-chocolate and an old-fashioned. There are four counter seats and one small table. I sat at the table and watched the customers come and go. Margie said she didn’t mind, she was glad for the company. Margie is plump, like her crème-filleds, an explosion of bleached blond hair. She’s a talker. She talked to everybody who came in. She never stopped talking to me. By 2:00 p.m. I knew that she lets her underarm hair grow in the winter, that beans don’t give her gas but chickpeas do, and that the most glorious thing in her life is getting her feet rubbed.

I was surprised how many people eat donuts for lunch. The four counter seats were always occupied. Margie is taking donuts where no donuts have gone before. You want chicken soup for lunch? Fine, open a can. But you want
donut
soup? It’s Margie’s or nowhere. She’s also got donut pudding and a donutwich, and she says a donut pie is “in development.”

I had already started to write my poem, called “Donut Soup,” when I heard a loud thump and the door blew open and suddenly there was a girl in the middle of the shop, squatting, panting, facing the door, screaming red-faced at three boys on the sidewalk:

“Ya ya ya ya ya!”

The boys yelled back:

“Yer ugly!”

“Yer dead meat!”

“Everybody hates you!”

Margie came flapping her arms. “Scram!” The boys scrammed.

Turns out the girl works there. Not officially. She’s too young. Eleven. Gets paid in donuts. She comes in after school. Sweeps, dusts, washes, bags trash, bothers Sam the donut maker in back.

She came sweeping toward me. She stopped, stared. “Ain’t you eating?”

“Not at the moment,” I said.

“So you gotta go,” she said. “You can’t just sit here. Bums do that. You gotta buy something. This is a business. It ain’t the Salvation Army.”

“I’m not a bum,” I said.

“So buy something.”

So I bought another powdered-chocolate, just to keep the peace.

She went off sweeping but came back in a minute. “What are you writing?”

“A poem,” I told her.

“What about?”

“Donuts,” I said. “Or maybe you.”

She sneered. “Yeah, right.” Her short weedy hair looked like something Cinnamon would be happy nesting in. She wore a blue and red striped T-shirt and a yellow plastic Pooh Bear on a black shoestring necklace. “What’s your name?”

“Stargirl.”

She gaped. “
Stargirl?
What kind of name is that?”

“I gave it to myself,” I said.

She sneered. “You can’t name yourself.”

“I did.” She stared at me, blinking. The broom was still. “So what’s your name?” I said.

“I hate my name.”

“I won’t.”

“Alvina.”

“That’s cool,” I said. “It’s different. Old-fashioned.”

“Yeah, like a donut.”

“Alvina…,” I said, remembering. “Are you the girl who delivers Betty Lou Fern’s donuts each week?”

She glared. “What if I am? You got a problem?”

I put up my hands. “Hey, just asking.”

She pointed at my notebook. “That poem really about me?”

“Could be,” I said. “Not sure yet. I’m waiting to find out if you’re interesting or not.” I gave her a tilted squint. “Are you?”

“I’m boring.”

I laughed. “Nobody’s boring.”

“I stink.”

I laughed again. I took her arm and sniffed it. “You smell okay to me.”

“I’m ugly.”

“No you’re not. Don’t listen to those boys.”

“I hate boys.” She picked up the broom and held it like a machine gun. She stepped back. She sneered and raked the shop with her jittering broomstick-and-bullet chatter. “I’d kill them all. I’d line them up and mow ’em down. Every one. Thousands. Millions!”

“That’s a lot of ammo,” I said.

“I hate ’em,” she said, and went back to sweeping the floor.

I doodled poem lines for a while. I looked up to find I was the only one in the shop. Everyone else was in back. Then…

FIELD TRIP:

STOMPING AT MARGIE’S

The door opens slowly.

The boys come in, quiet,

sneaky, grinning.

They look at me, eyes asking,

Will you spoil it?

My eyes reply,
I’m the poet.

I’m writing this. You’re

living it.

One puts finger to lips:
Shhh.

I change my mind: “No!”

Too late—

fast as boys, they’re behind

the counter, scooping donuts, armloads,

squealing boy squeals,

Margie rushing in—“Hey!
Hey!
”—

the boys rushing out, donuts spilling—

one boy at the door stops, turns, drops

a raspberry-filled to the floor, raises his knee

to his chest, yells “Yee-hah!” stomps,

the donut squirting raspberry all the way

to the counter.

“Don’t try to save them,” says Margie.

“Throw them away.”

Alvina sweeps the fallen donuts with great care

into a heap.

She shapes, she molds the heap

with her broom.

She looks at the boys mocking

in the street, laughing,

gorging, spewing donuts.

The broom clatters to the floor.

She jumps,

both feet come down on the

pile of donuts,

up down

up down

she stomps the donuts like she

used to stomp puddles when she was

little,

stomp

stomp

stomp

while the boys, frozen now,

gape, open mouths full of

unchewed donut.

February 28

It snowed yesterday. Today the world is white. I put on my boots and walked to Enchanted Hill. It was as pure and perfect as a new sheet of paper. I took one step onto the field and stopped.

What was I doing?

The pure whiteness, dazzling in the sun, was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Who was I to spoil it? Snow falls. Earth says:
Here—a gift for you.
And what do we do? We shovel it. Blow it. Scrape it. Plow it. Get it out of our way. We push it to our fringes. Is there anything uglier or sadder than a ten-day-old snow dump? It’s not even snow anymore. It’s slush.

Was that beginning to be us, Leo? I’d rather never see you again than have that happen. We were once so fresh, a dazzling snowfield. Let’s promise to each other that if we ever meet again we will never plow and push our new-fallen snow. We will not become slush. We will stay like this field and melt away together only in the sun’s good time.

I backed off carefully, stepping out of the one footprint, and walked away.

March 3

I saw the first flower of the year today. A crocus, peeking out from under a bush, like,
Hello! I’m here!
A little purple dollop of cheer and hope. I cried. Last year at this time I was the crocus, popping out, blooming with love and happiness for you, for us.

To make matters worse, I was with Dootsie.

“Why are you crying?” she said.

I tried to smile. “Happy tears. First flower.”

She studied me, all serious. She shook her head. “Bullpoopy.”

In spite of myself, I almost burst out laughing. “Where did you get that from?”

“My father. He says it when I lie to him. I lie a lot.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Bullpoopy.”

“Okay, I’m lying.”

She studied me some more. Her eyes were watering. “It’s your boyfriend, isn’t it? He made you cry.”

“No.”

“Bullpoopy.” She stomped on the ground. She was angry. “He dumped you.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t speak.

“Yes he did! He
dumped
you!” And her little face collapsed and she burrowed into me and clung to me.

When I got home I took another pebble out. Three now.

March 6

ARIZONA PEOPLE I MISS MOST

1. You

2. Archie

To you Archie is the old “bone hunter” who retired from teaching and came to Mica. He talks with his beloved cactus, Señor Saguaro, and he invites you and other kids to his back porch, where he smokes his pipe and leads your meetings of the Loyal Order of the Stone Bone. He’s all that to me too—I still wear my fossil necklace—and he’s much more. You know, my mother didn’t recruit him to help her with my homeschooling. He volunteered. He’s the one who came up with the original shadow curriculum. Nothing I learned from him helped me when the State of Arizona came testing. He gave me more questions than answers. He made me feel at home—not in his house or even in my own, but in the wide world. He is like a third parent to me.

3. Dori Dilson

Some of the kids at Mica High turned against me. Some turned away from me. Dori was the only one who did neither.

March 10

Every day brings a new memory of something we did a year ago. A parade of unhappy anniversaries.

March 11

I had a dream last night that I was meditating in Archie’s backyard, under the outstretched arm of Señor Saguaro. Suddenly an elf owl flew out of the Señor’s mouth, and he spoke to me: “Bullpoopy.”

“Wait till I tell Archie what you said,” I said.

“Bullpoopy on him too,” the Señor said.

And then he spat at me. Something hit my cheek. It stung wickedly. I shrieked. I pulled it out. It was a cactus needle.

“That wasn’t nice,” I said.

“Ptoo!” He spat another needle. Pain in my neck. I pulled it out. And then they came and came: “Ptoo! Ptoo! Ptoo! Ptoo!” Prickly pain all over me, and every time I pulled one out, two more would hit, and they weren’t cactus needles anymore, they were tiny darts, tiny darts with red feathers sticking all over me, and the faster I pulled them out, the faster they came, and I couldn’t reach the ones in the middle of my back….

I woke up sweating, tingling. I put on my sweatpants, coat. No shoes. I tiptoed downstairs, out of the house. I rode my bike to Enchanted Hill. I walked to the center. The ground was cold and clumpy against the soles of my bare feet. I liked the feel of it. The hard, real
now-ness
of it.

I felt alone on the planet, drifting through the cosmos. With both hands I reached out to the night. There was no answer. Or maybe I just couldn’t hear it.

March 12

Dear Stargirl,

Hey, you’re a big girl now. Stop being such a baby. You think you’re the only one who’s ever lost a boyfriend? Boyfriends are a dime a dozen. You want to talk loss, look at all the loss around you. How about the man in the red and yellow plaid scarf? He lost Grace. BELOVED WIFE. I’ll bet they were married over 50 years. You barely had 50
days
with Leo. And you have the gall to be sad in the same world as that man.

Betty Lou. She’s lost the confidence to leave her house. Look at you. Have you ever stopped to appreciate the simple ability to open your front door and step outside?

And Alvina the floor sweeper—she hates herself, and it seems she’s got plenty of company. All she’s losing is her childhood, her future, a worldful of people who will never be her friends. How would you like to trade places with her?

Oh yes, let’s not forget the footshuffling guy at the stone piles. Moss-green pom-pom. What did he say to you? “Are you looking for me?” It seems like he hasn’t lost much, has he? Only…HIMSELF!

Now look at you, sniveling like a baby over some immature kid in Arizona who didn’t know what a prize he had, who tried to remake you into somebody else, who turned his back on you and left you to the wolves, who hijacked your heart and didn’t even ask you to the Ocotillo Ball. What don’t you understand about the message? Hel-loooo? Anybody home in there? You have your whole life ahead of you, and all you’re doing is looking back. Grow up, girl. There are some things they don’t teach you in homeschool.

Your Birth Certificate Self,
Susan Caraway

March 13

She’s right, of course. Every word is true.

It’s just not the whole truth. She doesn’t mention how you looked at me in the lunchroom that first day. Or how you blushed when your best friend, Kevin, said, “Why him?” and I tweaked your earlobe and replied, “Because he’s cute.” Or how nice you were to my rat even though you were terrified. Or how proud you were of me when I won the speech contest in Phoenix. Or how—I don’t know, how do you explain it?—how we just fit together.

OK, so you’re not perfect. Who is?

Sure, Susan makes sense. But my heart doesn’t care about sense. My heart never says:
Why?
Only:
Who?

March 14

Today, for the second time, I rode into the cemetery. It was getting dark. The man Charlie wasn’t there. I coasted along the winding pathways. Moonlight and tombstones. A vision came to me. I was in the graveyard of my own past. Under each tombstone lay a memory, a dead day. Here Lies the Day in the Enchanted Desert. Here Lies the Day We Followed the Lady at the Mall and Made Up Her Life. Here Lies the Day We First Touched Little Fingers, Stargirl and Leo’s Secret Signal of Love.

Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories. Moonlight spins a shroud about me.

March 15

My happy wagon is down to two pebbles.

March 16

I hate you!

March 17

I miss you!

March 18

I hate you!

March 19

I love you!

March 20