Read Online Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli - Free Book Online

She did not play with her rat. She just ate and talked with the girls at her table.
    As the lunch period was ending, she got up but did not head straight for the exit. Instead she detoured in the direction of my table. I panicked. I jumped up, grabbed my stuff, blurted “Gotta go,” left Kevin with his mouth hanging, and took off. Not fast enough. Halfway to the door I heard her behind me: “Hi, Leo.” My face got warm. I was sure every eye was turned to me. I was sure they could all see the card in my pocket. I pretended to look at the clock. I pretended I was late for something. I ran from the lunchroom.
    I lurked in the shadows for the rest of the day. I went straight home after school. I stayed in my room. I came out only for dinner. I told my parents I had a project to do. I paced. I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. I stared out the window. I laid the card on my study desk. I picked it up. I read it. I read it. I read it. I played “Hi, Leo” over and over in my head. I tossed darts at the corkboard on the back of my door. My father called in, “What’s your project, darts?” I went out. I drove around in the pickup. I drove down her street. At the last intersection before her house, I turned off.
    For hours I lay under my sheet of moonlight. Her voice came through the night, from the light, from the stars.
    Hi, Leo.
    In the morning—it was a Saturday—Kevin and I went together to Archie’s for the weekly meeting of the Loyal Order of the Stone Bone. There were about fifteen of us. We wore our fossil necklaces. Archie wanted to discuss the Eocene skull he was holding, but all the others could talk about was the game. When they told Archie about the tomato, his eyebrows went up, but other than that, his face did not change. I thought,
This is not news to him, he already knows
.
    Archie spent the whole session that way, nodding and smiling and raising his eyebrows. We dumped our disappointment on him, the devastation of the loss. He said very little. When it was over, he looked down at the skull in his lap and patted it and said, “Well, this fellow here lost his game, too. He was winning for ten million years or so, but then the early grasses started growing up around him, and he found himself in a different league. He hung in there as well as he could. He scored his points, but he kept falling farther and farther behind. The opposition was better, quicker, keener. In the championship game, our boy got annihilated. Not only didn’t he show up for class the next day, he never showed up, period. They never saw him again.”
    Archie lifted the snouted, fox-size skull until it was side by side with his own face. A good minute passed as he said nothing, inviting us into our own thoughts. Faces staring at faces staring at faces. Tens of millions of years of faces in a living room in a place called Arizona.

16
    Monday. Lunch.
    This time I stayed put when Stargirl came toward my table on her way out. My back was to her. I could see Kevin’s eyes following her, widening as she came closer. And then his eyes stopped, and his mouth was sliding toward a wicked grin, and it seemed like everything stopped but the clink of pans in the kitchen, and the back of my neck was on fire.
    “You’re welcome,” I heard her say, almost sing.
    I thought,
What?
but then I knew what. And I knew what I had to do. I knew I had to turn around and speak to her, and I knew she was going to stand there until I did. This was silly, this was childish, this being terrified of her. What was I afraid of, anyway?
    I turned. I felt heavy, as if I were moving through water, as if I were confronting much more than a tenth-grade girl with an unusual name. I faced the gaudy sunflower on her canvas bag—it looked hand-painted—and at last my eyes fell into hers. I said, “Thanks for the card.”
    Her smile put the sunflower to shame. She walked off.
    Kevin was grinning, wagging his head. “She’s in love.”
    “Bull,” I said.
    “She