The Center of Everything (12 page)

Nero matches the sound. “I don't either, okay?”

So Ruby tells about Gigi's last day, about being so sad, about how she made her wish. All the while Nero has been coming closer, until finally he is sitting on the carousel too.

“I stood up there on that float and listened and all I heard was regular stuff. Nothing changed.” Ruby feels her eyes pricking up.

“You know,” says Lucy, after a minute, “it's still Bunning Day.”

“That's right!” Nero leaps to his feet. “The wish comes true before Bunning Day is
over!
There are still more than three hours left! You could try again!”

From the carousel, Ruby can see the schoolhouse float. There are people all around it, including an Event Staff person whose job it is to make sure nobody touches the fake school. “I couldn't get up there again. Nobody'd let me.”

Lucy follows Ruby's eyes. “Why do you have to do it up there?”

“That's why I was chosen Essay Girl. Because of the wish. It was a sign.”

“Maybe it was a sign that you wrote a good essay,” says Nero.

“Tell me again what your wish was,” Lucy says.

“I wished that I could go back and fix things—that I could do what I was supposed to have done and listen to Gigi and know what she wanted to say and what she meant and that our last conversation wasn't me not listening.”

Nero looks amazed. “You said all that ninety times?”

Ruby shakes her head. “I just wished everything was the way it was supposed to be.”

“Supposed to,” Lucy says. “So that's—”

“Yeah,” says Ruby. “Kind of a wasted wish.”

Nero looks puzzled but doesn't ask any questions. He just sits next to Ruby, who sits next to Lucy. Over at the new playground, moms and dads are gathering their children. “It's getting late,” they say. In a nearby tree, a crow caws and then lifts in flight.

Lucy's brow is squinched up—it is the same look that Ruby gets sometimes when she is working on a difficult math problem. “Gigi said, ‘Listen'?”

“She said, ‘Listen.'” Ruby hears it in her head again. What Gigi said. How it sounded. “And she made a little noise—like a gasp, but she did that a lot on the oxygen—and said, ‘It's all coming together.'”

“What does that mean?” asks Nero.

“I don't know. I thought I'd know when my wish came true . . .” It all sounds so stupid. The whole thing. Her wish and what she thought would happen. They must think she's completely nuts. So much for the girl who figures things out.

“You should try it again,” Lucy says. “Try listening again.”

“I don't—”

“We'll listen too. If you want,” says Nero.

Lucy takes Ruby's left hand and closes her eyes tight. Nero closes his eyes too, and a second later Ruby feels his hand on hers. She is suddenly spinny again, except different. Her feet are firmly on the ground. She is rooted to the carousel, held in place by the hands of her friends.

Ruby closes her eyes. She does not think it will make any difference, but if Lucy and Nero are willing to try, she supposes she could too. “Okay,” Ruby says. “I'm listening.”

In the distance she hears the sounds of little kids at the other playground. Laughter from the soccer field. The clank and clatter of folding chairs. People call to one another across the parking lot, and somewhere a bunch of kids are singing the gingerbread song. Then she hears Lucy, who cannot help but try out Gigi's lines.

“It's
all
coming together. It's all
coming
together.
It's
all coming together,” she whispers. Each time it sounds different. Each time it means something different. It's all coming
together.

If you were Ruby Pepperdine, you might feel a poke just then. You might hear Lucy whisper, “It's all coming together.” Hear how it makes the meaning change to something like it's all
about
coming together, which is something you can imagine Gigi saying. Like maybe that was what Gigi meant, and maybe that is what she would have said more clearly if you'd have just listened.

And maybe that is not what Gigi meant, and maybe you are making it up because you want so much for your wish to come true.

It's all
about
coming together. Ruby and Gigi. Gigi and all her organizations and groups and friends. All the people, all the places, all of Bunning coming together. Gigi
would
say this, Ruby knows with absolute certainty. Even if it was not what Gigi was trying to say that morning, it is something she would say, and mean with all her heart.

If you were Ruby Pepperdine, you might take a deep breath then.

You might listen extra hard.

And then you might open your eyes.

Over the years, Ruby will think about that moment. About Nero and Lucy and about whether or not her wish had come true and she had heard what Gigi wanted to say. She will wonder whether she had done what she was supposed to do. Sometimes she will think that she must have, and other times—like when she has fallen off her bike, or a boy has broken her heart, or she can't find her house key—she will think she must not have. But most of the time, she will think that there really isn't a supposed to at all. That all she can do is her best at any particular moment. And that sometimes that will lead to things feeling great, and sometimes it will not. And that is as supposed to as it gets.

That night, while the Bunning Day sky turned dark as the blueberry filling in a Delish donut, things went this way: Ruby sat in the middle of a blanket, her legs outstretched, leaning back on her hands. To her left was Lucy, just where she had always been. And to her right was Nero, whose parents said he could sit with his friends this year.

“Do you remember which one Leo is?” asks Lucy, staring up at the stars.

Ruby tries, but she cannot. She can find the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper and Cassiopeia, but she cannot find Leo.

“Who named the constellations, anyway?” asks Nero. “I mean, really. The Ancient Greeks, sure. But which ones? What were they thinking about?”

Ruby knows this. Gigi had told her. “They were characters from myths. From stories. The Greeks saw their stories in the sky. Probably the Mayans did too. And the Vikings.”

“Well, I'm going to make my own constellation,” says Nero. And he tries. But it is difficult to point out an entire constellation to someone else. Gigi could do it, of course, but Ruby is not about to suggest that Nero wrap his arm around her and point.

Finally, he finds a bright star—one that is a little bit purplish—and Lucy and Ruby and Nero all agree that they are looking at the same one.

“I'm starting there,” he says. “I'm naming that star.”

“Let me guess,” says Lucy. “You're naming it Nero.”

“It's a little flashy for me, actually. Looks more like a Lucy.”

“Oh,” says Lucy. She says it only once, but it seems to carry a bunch of meanings. “Okay. And that one to the right of it? That's Ruby.”

“And the one a little farther over that way,” says Ruby, pointing, “that's Nero.”

It is not so complicated keeping those three stars in their sights. Lucy, Ruby, and Nero. It is not so hard to imagine the invisible connections between them—though Ruby does not draw them straight, like the lines between the stars in Orion or Leo or Cassiopeia. Ruby's lines curve.

“Together,” she says, “they are the constellation ‘the Donut.'”

Nero laughs. “Take that, Callimachus,” he says, but nobody hears him. Instead, they hear a
BOOM
, which rattles in each of their chests and resets their heartbeats.
BOOM!
And a
screeeeeech
—and a bright light streaks high above them and crackles like a million billion stars—like a million billion stars exploding into being.

If you had been sitting on the blanket then, you might have seen their faces in the light of those stars, seen their eyes reflecting it all. Seen their mouths open in momentary awe. You might have felt like you understood something at that moment. At the beginning of The Hole Shebang.

Ruby Pepperdine, however, sees none of these things. Her eyes are looking up. Her ears are filled with the crackle of new stars.

If you stopped watching her, you might see it yourself. You might hear it, too. Hear it all coming together.

Listen.

I made up the story of Captain Bunning's invention of the donut hole after hearing about Captain Hanson Gregory, a Maine sailor who, legend says, in 1847 rescued his own donuts in a manner similar to the one described in this book. Other stories claim that Captain Gregory simply got fed up with the undercooked middles of his donuts and proposed eliminating the situation altogether by cutting holes in the dough cakes before frying. There is evidence of holed donuts in times prior to this as well. Should you be spurred to a life of donut-centric archaeology as a result of the desire to learn the true origins of the donut hole, I wish you a fruitful and delicious career.

Since you know now that I made up the whole Captain Bunning donut thing, you've probably figured out that there is no Bunning, New Hampshire, either, and thus no statue and no bronze donut through which one might toss a wishful quarter. But here's the thing about wishes—they don't really require legends and rules and figuring out. All they need is someone to wish them.

Sometimes we don't even know how to wish for the things we need most. When I was a sixth-grader, I could not have known to wish for all the wonderful people at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt who have made my writing career so fun. Thankfully, the wish wasn't required and I lucked out—especially with my editor, Jeannette Larson.

I also would not have thought to wish for all the talented writer and reader friends who critiqued this story and helped make it better: Myra Wolfe, Susan Stewart, Kelly Fineman, Leda Schubert, Ellen Miles, Loree Griffin Burns, and Kate and Ella Messner. I lucked out there, too.

I know that when I was young, I wished I'd grow up and marry a sweet guy and have a couple of nice kids. My reality turned out so much better than my wish. Julio, Jack, and Claire, you are not only sweet and nice, but funny, curious, inspiring, supportive, and rather good-looking. I am so grateful to be in your constellation.

 

Uncle Potluck said when he talked to the moon, the moon talked back.

Mama laughed. “Same old Potluck,” she said, but he'd already grabbed his hat. Already looked at Mattie, eyebrows up, saying, “It's hound dog true.” Already opened the door to the night.

Out they went, out past the bean tepees and tomato cages and the stone rabbit standing guard, Mattie matching Uncle Potluck's steps in the garden dirt. Out they went beyond the tangle of pumpkin vines and the backyard house Miss Sweet was renting.

“Few more days, you'll know this place by heart,” Uncle Potluck said. “Won't need me showing you the way.”

Mattie was not so sure. It was dark out here, without streetlights and golden arches and headlights graying up the sky. Uncle Potluck had grown up in this yard. Mama, too. Likely it would take till Mattie grew up before she could path her way through the night.

Up they went, up the rise to the edge of the woods, to the flat rock ledge by the apple tree. Uncle Potluck looked up and Mattie looked up, up to where the moon ought to be. Uncle Potluck whispered, “She's hiding behind the skirts of Mama Night, you know?”

Mattie knew.

Uncle Potluck leaped up on that rock. Put his hat to his heart. “Miss Moon,” he called. “Miss Moon, come on out, sweetheart.”

Uncle Potluck waited and Mattie waited till a breeze came by, thinning the clouds.

“You've got to trust the moon, if you want the moon to trust you,” he said, handing Mattie his hat.

He wanted her to talk, Mattie knew. Wanted her to introduce herself, say something fine, but Mattie could not find a word in that dark.

She put on Uncle Potluck's hat, let it fall down over her eyes.

What did Mattie have to say that would interest the moon?

 

 

 

One

 

 

T
HE STICK MAN HAS BOLTS
of cartoon electricity shooting out of him.
Attention! Avertissement!
it says over his head.
Atención! Achtung! Do not use ladder in electrical storms. May cause severe injury or death.

Mattie is glad she is not in an electrical storm. She does not want little bolts of lightning to shoot out of her. Of course, she's just standing at the bottom of the ladder, holding it two-hand steady, eyes level with the warning labels pasted to its metal sides. It's Uncle Potluck up top, like the stick man, so probably Uncle Potluck would get the death. Mattie'd only get severe injury, she figures, and for a minute she thinks about what kind of injury that might be. Lightning could split a tree, she knew. Maybe it would split her. Take a leg off or something. Or maybe she'd singe all over, like a shirt ironed too hot. Either way, it is good they are inside, she tells herself.