stargirl (16 page)

Who was the first to crack? No one knows. Did someone brush against her at the punch table? Pluck a petal from her flower? (One was missing.) Whisper "Hi"? This much is certain: a boy named Raymond Studemacher danced with her.

To the student body at large, Raymond Studemacher did not have enough substance to trigger the opening of a supermarket door. He belonged to no team or organization. He took part in no school activities. His grades were ordinary. His clothing was ordinary. His face was ordinary. He had no detectable personality. Thin as a minute, he appeared to lack the heft to carry his own name. And in fact, when all eyes turned to him on the dance floor, those few who came up with a name for him frowned at his white jacket and whispered, "Raymond Something."

And yet there he was, Raymond Something, walking right up to her-it came out later that his date had suggested it-and speaking to her, and then they were dancing. Couples steered themselves to get a better look. At the end of the number, he joined her in clapping and returned to his date. He told her the silver earrings looked like little trucks.

Tension rose. Boys got antsy. Girls picked at their corsages. The ice shattered. Several boys broke from their dates. They were heading her way when she walked up to Guy Greco and said something to him. Guy Greco turned to the Serenaders, the baton flashed, and out came the sounds of that old teen dance standard: the bunny hop. Within seconds a long line was snaking across the dance floor. Stargirl led the way. And suddenly it was December again, and she had the school in her spell.

Almost every couple joined in. Hillari Kimble and Wayne Parr did not.

The line curled back and forth across the netless tennis courts. Stargirl began to improvise. She flung her arms to a make-believe crowd like a celebrity on parade. She waggled her fingers at the stars. She churned her fists like an egg-beater. Every action echoed down the line behind her. The three hops of the bunny became three struts of a vaudeville vamp. Then a penguin waddle. Then a tippy-toed priss. Every new move brought new laughter from the line.

When Guy Greco ended the music, howls of protest greeted him. He restruck the downbeat.

To delighted squeals, Stargirl led them off the parquet dance floor onto the other courts-and then through the chain-link fence and off the tennis courts altogether. Red carnations and wrist corsages flashed as the line headed onto the practice putting green of the golf course. The line doodled around the holes, in and out of sidepools of lantern light. From the dance floor it seemed to be more than it was: one hundred couples, two hundred people, four hundred dancing legs seemed to be a single festive flowery creature, a fabulous millipede. And then there was less and less to see as the head vanished and the rest curled through the fringe of the light and followed, like the tail of a powder-blue dragon, into the darkness.

One girl in chiffon had a tiff with her date and ran off toward the first tee, calling, "Wait for me!" She looked like a huge mint-green moth.

Their voices came in clearly from the golf course. The laughing and yelping made a raucous counterpoint to the metronomic tock-tock-tock of the bunny's never-ending hop. Once, in the light of the quarter moon, they appeared in silhouette on a domed, distant green, like figures dancing in someone's dream.

And then quite suddenly they were gone, as if the dreamer had awakened. Nothing to see, nothing to hear. Someone called "Hey!" after them, but that was all.

It was, according to those left behind, like waiting for a diver in water to return to the surface. Hillari Kimble, for one, did not share that feeling. "I came here to dance," she declared. She pulled Wayne Parr along to the bandstand and demanded "regular music."

Guy Greco tilted his head to listen, but the baton did not stop and neither did the band.

In fact, as the minutes went by, the music seemed to become louder. Maybe it was an illusion. Maybe the band felt a connection to the dancers. Maybe the farther the line spun into the night, the louder the band had to play. Maybe the music was a tether. Or a kite string.

Hillari Kimble dragged Wayne Parr out to the middle of the parquet floor. They slowdanced. They fastdanced. They even tried an old-fashioned jitterbug. Nothing worked. Nothing went with the triple-thumping drumbeat but the bunny hop itself. Hillari's orchid shed petals as she beat her fist on Wayne Parr's chest. "Do something!" she yelled. She ripped sticks of chewing gum from his pocket. She chewed them furiously. She split the wad and pressed the gum into her ears.

The band played on.

Afterward, there were many different guesses as to how long the bunny-hoppers were actually gone. Everyone agreed it seemed to be hours. Students stood under the last line of lanterns, their fingers curling through the plastic-coated wire of the fence, peering into the vast blackness, straining for a glimpse, a scrap of sound. All they heard was the call of a coyote. A boy dashed wildly into the darkness; he sauntered back, his blue jacket over his shoulder, laughing. A girl with glitter in her hair shivered. Her bare shoulders shook as if she were cold. She began to cry. Hillari Kimble stalked along the fence, clenching and unclenching her fists. She could not seem to stand still.

When the call finally came-"They're back!"-it was from a lone watcher at the far end. A hundred kids-only Hillari Kimble stayed behind-turned and raced down eight tennis courts, pastel skirts flapping like stampeding flamingos. The fence buckled outward as they slammed into it. They strained to see. Light barely trickled over crusted earth beyond the fence. This was the desert side.

"Where?...Where?"

And then you could hear: whoops and yahoos out there, somewhere, clashing with the music. And then-there!-a flash of yellow, Stargirl leaping from the shadows. The rest followed out of the darkness, a long, powder-blue, many-headed birthing. Hop-hop-hop. They were still smack on the beat. If anything, they seemed more energized than before. They were fresh. Their eyes sparkled in the lantern light. Many of the girls wore browning, half-dead flowers in their hair.

Stargirl led them along the outside of the fence. Those inside got up a line of their own and hopped along. Guy Greco struck the downbeat three final times-hop-hop-hop-and the two lines collided at the gate in a frenzy of hugs and shrieks and kisses.

Shortly after, as the Serenaders gratefully played "Stardust," Hillari Kimble walked up to Stargirl and said, "You ruin everything." And she slapped her.

The crowd grew instantly still. The two girls stood facing each other for a long minute. Those nearby saw in Hillari's shoulders and eyes a flinching: she was waiting to be struck in reply. And in fact, when Stargirl finally moved, Hillari winced and shut her eyes. But it was lips that touched her, not the palm of a hand. Stargirl kissed her gently on the cheek. She was gone by the time Hillari opened her eyes.

Dori Dilson was waiting. Stargirl seemed to float down the promenade in her buttercup gown. She climbed into the sidecar, the flowered bicycle rolled off into the night, and that was the last any of us ever saw of her.

32 That was fifteen years ago. Fifteen Valentine's Days.

I remember that sad summer after the Ocotillo Ball just as clearly as everything else. One day, feeling needy, empty, I walked over to her house. A For Sale sign pierced the ground out front. I peered through a window. Nothing but bare walls and floors.

I went to see Archie. Something in his smile said he had been expecting me. We sat on the back porch. Everything seemed as usual. Archie lighting his pipe. The desert golden in the evening sun. Señor Saguaro losing his pants.

Nothing had changed.

Everything had changed.

"Where?" I said.

A corner of his mouth winked open and a silky rumple of smoke emerged, paused as if to be admired, then drifted off past his ear. "Midwest. Minnesota."

"Will I ever see her again?"

He shrugged. "Big country. Small world. Who knows?"

"She didn't even finish out the school year."

"No."

"Just...vamoosed."

"Mm-hm."

"It's only been weeks, but it seems like a dream. Was she really here? Who was she? Was she real?"

He looked at me for a long time, his smile wry, his eyes twinkling. Then he shook his head as if coming out of a trance. He deadpanned, "Oh, you're waiting for an answer. What were the questions again?"

"Stop being nutty, Archie." He looked off to the west. The sun was melting butter over the Maricopas. "Real? Oh, yes. As real as we get. Don't ever doubt that. That's the good news." He pointed the pipe stem at me. "And well named. Stargirl. Though I think she had simpler things in mind. Star people are rare. You'll be lucky to meet another."

"Star people?" I said. "You're losing me here."

He chuckled. "That's okay. I lose myself. It's just my oddball way of accounting for someone I don't really understand any more than you do."

"So where do stars come in?"

He pointed the pipe stem. "The perfect question. In the beginning, that's where they come in. They supplied the ingredients that became us, the primordial elements. We are star stuff, yes?" He held up the skull of Barney, the Paleocene rodent. "Barney too, hm?"

I nodded, along for the ride.

"And I think every once in a while someone comes along who is a little more primitive than the rest of us, a little closer to our beginnings, a little more in touch with the stuff we're made of."

The words seemed to fit her, though I could not grasp their meaning.

He saw the vacant look on my face and laughed. He tossed Barney to me. He stared at me. "She liked you, boy."

The intensity of his voice and eyes made me blink.

"Yes," I said.

"She did it for you, you know."

"What?"

"Gave up her self, for a while there. She loved you that much. What an incredibly lucky kid you were."

I could not look at him. "I know." He shook his head with a wistful sadness. "No, you don't. You can't know yet. Maybe someday..."

I knew he was tempted to say more. Probably to tell me how stupid I was, how cowardly, that I blew the best chance I would ever have. But his smile returned, and his eyes were tender again, and nothing harsher than cherry smoke came out of his mouth.

I continued to attend Saturday meetings of the Loyal Order of the Stone Bone. We did not speak of her again until the following summer, several days before I was to leave for college. Archie had asked me to come over.

He took me out back, but this time not to the porch. Instead he led me to the toolshed. He slid back the bolt and opened the door and-it was not a toolshed afterall. "This was her office," he said and gestured for me to enter.

Here it was: all the stuff of her activity that I had expected to see in her room at home, the "office" whose location she would not reveal. I saw wheels of ribbon and wrapping paper, stacks of colored construction paper, cardboard boxes of newspaper clippings, watercolors and cans of paint, a yellow stack of phone books.

Tacked to one wall was a municipal map of Mica. Hundreds of pins of a dozen different colors pierced the map. There was no indication what they stood for. A huge homemade calendar covered the opposite wall. It had a square for every date in the year. Penciled into the squares were names. Across the top of the calendar was one word: BIRTHDAYS. There was one dot of color on the whole thing, a little red heart. It was next to my name.

Archie handed me a fat family album sort of book. The homemade title said "The Early Life of Peter Sinkowitz." I flipped through it. I saw the pictures she had taken that day: Peter squabbling with the little girls over his beloved banana roadster.

"I'm to wait five years, then give it to his parents," said Archie.

He pointed to a filing cabinet in the corner. It had three drawers. I opened one. There were dozens of red hanging folders, each with a name tag sticking up. I saw "Borlock." Me. I pulled it out, opened it. There was the birthday notice that appeared in the Mica Times three years before. And a profile of me from the school paper. And pictures: candid snapshots of me in a parking lot, me leaving my house, me at the mall. Apparently, Peter Sinkowitz wasn't the only target for her camera. And a sheet of paper with two columns: "Likes" and "Doesn't Like." Heading the list of "Likes" was "porcupine neckties." Under that was "strawberry-banana smoothies."

I replaced my folder. I saw other names. Kevin. Dori Dilson. Mr. McShane. Danny Pike. Anna Grisdale. Even Hillari Kimble and Wayne Parr.

I stepped back. I was stunned.

"This is...unbelievable. Files. On people. Like she was a spy."

Archie nodded, smiling. "A lovely treason, hm?"

I could not speak. He led me out into the dazzling light.

33

Throughout my college years I visited Archie whenever I came home. And then I got a job back East, and my visits were less frequent. As Archie grew older, the difference between himself and Señor Saguaro seemed to become less and less. We sat on the back porch. He seemed fascinated by my work. I had become a set designer. Only recently has it occurred to me that I became one on the day Stargirl took me to her enchanted place.

On my last visit with him, he met me at the front door. He dangled keys in front of my eyes. "You drive."

An old tar pail rattled in the bed of his ancient pickup as he pointed me west to the Maricopas. In his lap he carried a brown paper bag.