Stargirl (3 page)

6

Hillari herself set the stage the day before. In the middle of lunch, she got up from her table and walked over to Stargirl. For half a minute she just stood behind Stargirl’s chair. Silence everywhere except for tinklings in the kitchen. Only Stargirl was still chewing. Hillari moved around to the side.

“I’m Hillari Kimble,” she said.

Stargirl looked up. She smiled. She said, “I know.”

“My birthday is tomorrow.”

“I know.”

Hillari paused. Her eyes narrowed. She jabbed her finger in Stargirl’s face. “Don’t try singing to me, I’m warning you.”

Only those at nearby tables heard Stargirl’s faint reply: “I won’t sing to you.”

Hillari gave a satisfied smirk and walked off.

From the moment we arrived at school the next day, the atmosphere bristled like cactus paddles. When the buzzer sounded for first lunch, we leaped for the doors. We swarmed into the food lines. We raced through our choices and hurried to our seats. Never had we moved so fast so quietly. At most, we whispered. We sat, we ate. We were afraid to crunch our potato chips, afraid we might miss something.

Hillari was first to enter. She marched in, leading her girlfriends like an invading general. In the food line, she smacked items onto her tray. She glared at the cashier. While her friends scanned the crowd for Stargirl, Hillari stared ferociously at her sandwich.

Wayne Parr came in and sat several tables away, as if even he was afraid of her on this day.

Stargirl finally came in. She went straight to the food line, blithely smiling as usual. Both she and Hillari seemed unaware of each other.

Stargirl ate. Hillari ate. We watched. Only the clock moved.

A kitchen staffer stuck her head out over the conveyor belt and called: “Trays!”

A voice barked back: “Shut up!”

Stargirl finished her lunch. As usual, she stuffed her wrappings into her paper bag, carried the bag to the paper-only can by the tray return window, and dropped it in. She returned to her seat. She picked up the ukulele. We stopped breathing. Hillari stared at her sandwich.

Stargirl began strumming and humming. She stood. She strolled between the tables, humming, strumming. Three hundred pairs of eyes followed her. She came to Hillari Kimble’s table—and kept on walking, right up to the table where Kevin and I sat with the
Hot Seat
crew. She stopped and she sang “Happy Birthday.” It was Hillari’s name at the end of the song, but true to her word of the day before, she did not sing it
to
Hillari—she sang it to me. She stood at my shoulder and looked down at me, smiling and singing, and I didn’t know whether to look down at my hands or up at her face, so I did some of each. My face was burning.

When she finished, the students burst from their silence with wild applause. Hillari Kimble stomped from the lunchroom. Kevin looked up at Stargirl and pointed at me and said what everyone must have been thinking: “Why him?”

Stargirl tilted her head, as if studying me. She grinned mischievously. She tugged on my earlobe and said, “He’s cute.” And walked off.

I was feeling nine ways at once, and they all ended up at the touch of her hand on my ear—until Kevin reached over and yanked the same earlobe. “This keeps getting more interesting,” he said. “I think it’s time to go see Archie.”

7

A. H. (Archibald Hapwood) Brubaker lived in a house of bones. Jawbones, hipbones, femurs. There were bones in every room, every closet, on the back porch. Some people have stone cats on their roofs; on his roof Archie Brubaker had a skeleton of Monroe, his deceased Siamese. Take a seat in his bathroom and you found yourself facing the faintly smirking skull of Doris, a prehistoric creodont. Open the kitchen cabinet where the peanut butter was kept and you were face to fossil face with an extinct fox.

Archie was not morbid; he was a paleontologist. The bones were from digs he had done throughout the American West. Many were rightly his, found in his spare time. Others he collected for museums but slipped into his own pocket or knapsack instead. “Better to sit in my refrigerator than disappear in a drawer in some museum basement,” he would say.

When he wasn’t digging up old bones, Archie Brubaker was teaching at universities in the East. He retired at the age of sixty-five. When he was sixty-six, his wife, Ada Mae, died. At sixty-seven he moved himself and his bones west, “to join the other fossils.”

He chose his home for two reasons: (1) its proximity to the high school (he wanted to be near kids; he had none of his own) and (2) “Señor Saguaro.” Señor Saguaro was a cactus, a thirty-foot-tall giant that towered over the toolshed in the backyard. It had two arms high on the trunk. One stuck straight out; the other made a right turn upward, as if waving “adiós!” The waving arm was green from the elbow up; all else was brown, dead. Much of the thick, leathery skin along the trunk had come loose and crumpled in a heap about the massive foot: Señor Saguaro had lost his pants. Only his ribs, thumb-thick vertical timbers, held him up. Elf owls nested in his chest.

The old professor often talked to Señor Saguaro—and to us. He was not certified to teach in Arizona, but that did not stop him. Every Saturday morning his house became a school. Fourth-graders, twelfth-graders—all were welcome. No tests, no grades, no attendance record. Just the best school most of us had ever gone to. He covered everything from toothpaste to tapeworms and somehow made it all fit together. He called us the Loyal Order of the Stone Bone. He gave us homemade necklaces. The pendant was a small fossil bone strung on rawhide. Years before, he had told his first class, “Call me Archie.” He never had to say it again.

After dinner that day, Kevin and I walked over to Archie’s. Though the official class convened on Saturday morning, kids were welcome anytime. “My school,” he said, “is everywhere and always in session.”

We found him, as usual, on the back porch, rocking and reading. The porch, bathed in the red-gold light of sunset, faced the Maricopas. Archie’s white hair seemed to give off a light of its own.

The moment he saw us, he put down his book. “Students! Welcome!”

“Archie,” we said, then turned to greet the great cactus, as visitors were expected to do: “Señor Saguaro.” We saluted.

We sat on rockers; the porch was full of them. “So, men,” he said, “business or pleasure?”

“Bafflement,” I said. “There’s a new girl in school.”

He laughed. “Stargirl.”

Kevin’s eyes popped. “You know her?”

“Know her?” he said. He picked up his pipe and loaded it with cherrysweet tobacco. He always did this when settling in for a long lecture or conversation. “Good question.” He lit the pipe. “Let’s say she’s been on the porch here quite a few times.” White smoke puffed like Apache signals from the corner of his mouth. “I was wondering when you’d start asking questions.” He chuckled to himself. “Bafflement… good word. She
is
different, isn’t she?”

Kevin and I burst into laughter and nods. At that moment I realized how much I had been craving Archie’s confirmation.

Kevin exclaimed, “Like another species!”

Archie cocked his head, as if he had just caught the sound of a rare bird. The pipe stem anchored a wry grin. A sweet scent filled the air about our rocking chairs. He stared at Kevin. “On the contrary, she is one of us. Most decidedly. She is us more than we are us. She is, I think, who we really are. Or were.”

Archie talked that way sometimes, in riddles. We didn’t always know what he was saying, but our ears didn’t much care. We just wanted to hear more. As the sun dipped below the mountains, it fired a final dart at Archie’s flashing eyebrows.

“She’s homeschooled, you know. Her mother brought her to me. I guess she wanted a break from playing teacher. One day a week. Four, five—yes, five years now.”

Kevin pointed. “You created her!”

Archie smiled, puffed. “No, that was done long before me.”

“Some people are saying she’s some kind of alien sent down here from Alpha Centauri or something,” said Kevin. He chuckled, but not too convincingly. He half believed it.

Archie’s pipe had gone out. He relit it. “She’s anything but. She’s an earthling if there ever was one.”

“So it’s not just an act?” said Kevin.

“An act? No. If anybody is acting, it’s us. She’s as real as”—he looked around; he picked up the tiny, wedgelike skull of Barney, a 60-million-year-old Paleocene rodent, and held it up—“as real as Barney.”

I felt a little jolt of pride at having reached this conclusion myself.

“But the name,” said Kevin, leaning forward. “Is it real?”

“The name?” Archie shrugged. “Every name is real. That’s the nature of names. When she first showed up, she called herself Pocket Mouse. Then Mudpie. Then—what?—Hullygully, I believe. Now…”

“Stargirl.” The word came out whispery; my throat was dry.

Archie looked at me. “Whatever strikes her fancy. Maybe that’s how names ought to be, heh? Why be stuck with just one your whole life?”

“What about her parents?” said Kevin.

“What about them?”

“What do they think?”

Archie shrugged. “I guess they agree.”

“What do they do?” Kevin said.

“Breathe. Eat. Clip their toenails.”

Kevin laughed. “You know what I mean. Where do they work?”

“Mrs. Caraway, until a few months ago, was Stargirl’s teacher. I understand she also makes costumes for movies.”

Kevin poked me. “The crazy clothes!”

“Her father, Charles, works”—he smiled at us—“where else?”

“MicaTronics,” we said in chorus.

I said it with wonder, for I had imagined something more exotic.

Kevin said, “So where is she from?”

A natural question in a city as young as Mica. Nearly everybody had been born somewhere else.

Archie’s eyebrows went up. “Good question.” He took a long pull on the pipe. “Some would say Minnesota, but in her case…” He let out the smoke, his face disappearing in a gray cloud. A sweet haze veiled the sunset: cherries roasting in the Maricopas. He whispered, “Rara avis.”

“Archie,” said Kevin, “you’re not making a lot of sense.”

Archie laughed, “Do I ever?”

Kevin jumped up. “I want to put her on
Hot Seat
. Dorko Borlock here doesn’t want to.”

Archie studied me through the smoke. I thought I saw approval, but when he spoke, he merely said, “Work it out, men.”

We talked until dark. We said “adiós” to Señor Saguaro. On our way out, Archie said, more to me than to Kevin, I thought: “You’ll know her more by your questions than by her answers. Keep looking at her long enough. One day you might see someone you know.”

8

The change began around Thanksgiving. By December first, Stargirl Caraway had become the most popular person in school.

How did it happen?

Was it the cheerleading?

The last football game of the season was her first as a cheerleader. The grandstand was packed: students, parents, alumni. Never had so many people come to a football game to see a cheerleader.

She did all the regular cheers and routines. And more. In fact, she never stopped cheering. While the other girls were taking breaks, she went on jumping and yelling. She roamed. Areas that had always been ignored—the far ends of the grandstand, the spectators behind the goalposts, the snack bar parents—found themselves with their own arm-pumping cheerleader.

She ran straight across the fifty-yard line and joined the other team’s cheerleaders. We laughed as they stood there with their mouths open. She cheered in front of the players’ bench and was shooed away by a coach. At halftime she played her ukulele with the band.

In the second half she got acrobatic. She did cartwheels and backflips. At one point the game was stopped and three zebra-shirted officials ran toward one end zone. She had shinnied up a goalpost, tightrope-walked out to the middle of the crossbar, and was now standing there with her arms raised in a touchdown sign. She was commanded down, to a standing ovation and flashing cameras.

As we filed out afterward, no one mentioned how boring the game itself had been. No one cared that the Electrons had lost again. In his column next day, the sports editor of the
Mica Times
referred to her as “the best athlete on the field.” We couldn’t wait for basketball season.

Was it a Hillari Kimble backlash?

Several days after the birthday song, I heard a shout down the hallway: “Don’t!” I ran. A crowd was gathered at the top of a stairwell. They were all staring at something. I pushed my way through. Hillari Kimble was standing at the upper landing, grinning. She was holding Cinnamon the rat, dangling by its tail over the railing, nothing but space between it and the first floor. Stargirl was on the steps below, looking up.

The scene froze. The bell for the next class rang. Nobody moved. Stargirl said nothing, merely looked. The eight toes of Cinnamon’s front paws splayed apart. Its tiny unblinking eyes were bulging, black as cloves. Again a voice rang out: “Don’t, Hillari!” Suddenly Hillari dropped it. Someone screamed, but the rat fell only to the floor at Hillari’s feet. She sent Stargirl a final sneer and left.

Was it Dori Dilson?

Dori Dilson was a brown-haired ninth-grader who wrote poems in a looseleaf notebook half as big as herself and whose name nobody knew until the day she sat down at Stargirl’s table for lunch. Next day the table was full. No longer did Stargirl eat lunch—or walk the hallways or do anything else at school—alone.

Was it us?

Did we change? Why didn’t Hillari Kimble drop the rat to its death? Did she see something in our eyes?

Whatever the reason, by the time we returned from Thanksgiving break, it was clear that the change had occurred. Suddenly Stargirl was not dangerous, and we rushed to embrace her. Calls of “Stargirl!” flew down the hallways. We couldn’t say her name often enough. It tickled us to mention her name to strangers and watch the expressions on their faces.

Girls liked her. Boys liked her. And—most remarkable—the attention came from all kinds of kids: shy mice and princesses, jocks and eggheads.

We honored her by imitation. A chorus of ukuleles strummed in the lunchroom. Flowers appeared on classroom desks. One day it rained and a dozen girls ran outside to dance. The pet shop at the Mica Mall ran out of rats.

The best chance for us to express our admiration came in the first week of December. We were gathered in the auditorium for the annual oratorical contest. Sponsored by the Arizona League of Women Voters, the event was open to any high school student who cared to show his or her stuff as a public speaker. The microphone was yours for seven minutes. Talk about anything you like. The winner would move on to the district competition.

Usually only four or five students entered the contest at MAHS. That year there were thirteen, including Stargirl. You didn’t have to be a judge to see that she was far and away the best. She gave an animated speech—a performance, really—titled “Elf Owl, Call Me by My First Name.” Her gray-brown homesteader’s dress was the color of her subject. I couldn’t see her freckles from the audience, but I imagined them dancing on her nose as she flicked her head this way and that. When she finished, we stomped on the floor and whistled and shouted for more.

While the judges went through the charade of conferring, a film was shown. It was a brief documentary about the previous year’s state finals. It featured the winner, a boy from Yuma. The most riveting moments of the film came not during the contest, but during its aftermath. When the boy arrived back at Yuma High, the whole school mobbed him in the parking lot: banners, cheerleaders, band music, confetti, streamers. Pumping his arms in the air, the returning hero rode their shoulders into school.

The film ended, the lights went on, and the judges proclaimed Stargirl the winner. She would now go on to the district competition in Red Rock, they said. The state finals would be held in Phoenix in April. Again and again we whooped and whistled.

Such was the acclamation we gave her in those last weeks of the year. But we also gave something to ourselves.