Two minutes after Daddy and I get home, I hear a knockknockknock at the door.
“It’s Agnes,” I tell him, and I watch for his reaction.
“Well, ask her to bring her star book,” he says with a shrug.
Daddy’s in a good mood now. He hasn’t looked at his phone since Maeve called it a contraption. Well, maybe he did in private, but not in front of me, anyway.
When I open the door, Agnes smiles big.
“Billie flew!” she says, opening her arms up in a big circle and flapping them wildly.
“What? Really?” I ask, grabbing my coat. “Be right back, Daddy!”
We race to the elevator and head to the tree, where the strawberry carton is now empty.
“She got more and more feathers and I spent the morning down here watching and finally she just hopped off the side and flapped and flapped!” Agnes is doing the waving-flying thing again with her arms, and she looks like a rainbow spinning top in her colorful scarf.
“That’s so amazing,” I say. And it is. Agnes saved this bird.
“I can’t wait to tell our class about it,” she says.
I take a deep breath and hope everyone will think it’s as cool as I do. They will . . . right?
We head back inside.
“My mom’s working, and I have to be quiet,” says Agnes. “What can we do?”
“Can we get your star book so we can map out my ceiling?” I ask.
“Sure!” says Agnes. We enter her apartment, and I see her mom frowning at a glowing laptop on the dining room table.
“Hi, Mrs. Davis,” I say hesitantly, pausing as Agnes rushes into her room because I’ve been taught to always greet grown-ups.
She looks up, still frowning, but her mouth quickly breaks into a warm grin. “Mattie!” She closes the laptop. “I’m so glad to see you. Agnes has been telling me about your adventures with Billie and how you’ve nursed her back to health.”
“It’s mostly Agnes,” I say, because that’s true.
“You’re a good friend,” says Mrs. Davis, and something in her eyes makes me shift my weight. I am dying to disappear into Agnes’s room, but I’m stuck. “I’ve seen a change in my daughter since you and your family moved in,” she continues. “Agnes is more herself, more relaxed. Having you around seems like it’s done more for her than even her therapist can.”
I’m silent. I don’t know what to say. I thought therapy was for grown-ups who had, like, really hard things happen to them. Also, does Agnes want me to know about that?
“That’s good,” I say finally, looking around the room and avoiding Mrs. Davis’s intense eyes. If they’re this strong with glasses covering them, I’m glad she doesn’t wear contacts.
Suddenly Agnes rushes out of her room. “Got it!” she says. “Let’s go, Mattie.” She pulls me away and through the door and we both yell “Bye!” to her mother and get a “Have fun, girls” in response.
Daddy and Agnes and I sit down on my bed with her book and my package of glow-in-the-dark stickers. I try to forget what Mrs. Davis said to me because I don’t want to be as important as therapy. I’m only in sixth grade.
“We don’t have enough to do the whole sky,” Daddy tells us.
Agnes says, “Of course not! There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on all the beaches on the planet.”
I think that’s amazing, and Daddy nods at her. “That’s right, Agnes,” he says. Then he looks at me. “Well, pick the constellations you want most.”
“I’m a Gemini, so definitely that,” I say.
“I’m a Libra!” Agnes shouts.
“Leo.” Daddy raises his hand. “Your mama’s a Scorpio.”
“And Grandmother Maeve?” asks Agnes.
“Gemini, like Mattie,” Daddy says.
“Let’s start with those four,” says Agnes, turning to the Gemini page of her book.
The funny thing about these constellations is that they look nothing like what they’re supposed to be. The Gemini twins are just two sort-of rectangles. The Leo is hardly a lion—more like a jumble of half circles. But I want my sky to look real, so when Daddy holds me up to reach the ceiling and dot it with a pencil, Agnes stands right beneath us and directs my marks.
“Over to the left two centimeters. No, that’s two-point-three centimeters, more right. No, up just half a centimeter. That’s down! The other up. There!”
We do this maybe thirty times. I still have no idea how much a centimeter really is, but Agnes keeps talking that way, and it seems to amuse Daddy—he’s smiling. His arms must be tired from picking me up and putting me down, but he doesn’t say that.
When we’re done, Agnes and I lie back on the bed. “I can’t tell which one’s which,” I whisper.
“That’s how the real sky is,” Agnes says.
I scrunch up my eyes and try to find her stars. “Where’s the Libra again?” I ask.
“There,” she says, sitting up. Her fingers trace a path quickly, and I can tell that she really does see it up there in the jumble of stickers.
“Wait till they’re glowing at night, Mattie,” says Daddy. “Agnes, you did a great job!”
He puts his hand on her shoulder for a squeeze, and I jump up quickly when she flinches so much it shakes the bed.
Daddy pulls away and looks at Agnes, but she smiles as soon as he removes his hand. Then she says, “Thank you, Mr. Markham.”
There’s a long minute of silence, and I wait for Agnes to explain. “She doesn’t like to be touched,” I say finally.
“Ah . . . okay,” says Daddy. “I’m gonna get some coffee.” Then he turns and walks out of the room.
My heart hurts for a minute. Why didn’t Daddy just know about Agnes, like Mama did? I don’t know who to be mad at, so I just feel bad.
But when I look back at Agnes, it’s like nothing happened. Like she didn’t just pierce our fun, starry day by acting nuts.
“Why are you so weird sometimes?” I ask her. I say it gently, because I’m honestly wondering.
Her face is blank, like she doesn’t understand the words that came out of my mouth.
But then she says, “I’m just me, Mattie. And me is okay!”
It sounds like something a parent—or maybe a therapist—tells you over and over until you repeat it in your own head, and then out loud. It’s like the real Agnes isn’t in there for a second.
Agnes’s mom knocks later, and when she comes in, she and Daddy talk quietly in the kitchen. But it’s right next to the living room, where Agnes and I are watching videos of the night sky on YouTube, so I’m not sure why they think we can’t hear. Agnes keeps talking about the telescope she wants, but I’m concentrating on her mom’s voice. Mrs. Davis is saying that Agnes has a “social disorder” and “anxiety” that has gotten worse since they left Boston. Daddy asks when Agnes’s father is moving here, and Mrs. Davis says, “He isn’t.” That makes me sit up in my seat, but when I look over at Agnes to see if she heard, she starts talking louder. Then I can’t make out what her mom is saying.
I wonder what a social disorder is, and what exactly anxiety means, but if I ask with those words, Daddy will know I was eavesdropping.
Then Mrs. Davis comes into the living room and says, “Come along home, Agnes.” Just before he shuts the door behind them, my dad tells them that Agnes is welcome here anytime.
Sunday is nice because Mama and Daddy are both at home for once, and we “snuggle down” to watch a movie with hot cocoa and popcorn since it’s snowy outside. Daddy even makes Mama laugh twice.
But then Daddy gets a call from the office, and I wish he didn’t have to go. He leaves in a hurry after saying to Mama, “Thanks for understanding,” and she comes back to the living room with a smile on her face. I think since she has a job now too, she’s less upset when Daddy has to work.
She starts making dinner, and the pots bang together with happy clinks, and I ask her to play a game after we eat.
While we lay out cards for Double Solitaire, I say, “Anxiety means, like, when you worry about stuff, right?”
“That’s right,” says Mama, and I hear her being careful with her voice. “But there’s nothing for you to worry about, Mattie. We’ll be fine now that I’ve got a job at the bakery, and what’s happening with your grandmother is natural and . . .”
She stops talking because she sees that I’m staring at her with my mouth open. I was going to ask about whether people get therapy for anxiety, like even kids, but suddenly I’m not thinking about Agnes anymore.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Mama says. “I’m rambling.” She runs a hand through her hair. “I just don’t want you to think anything’s wrong. Everything will be all right.”
I hold back from telling her that she just put a lot more wrong in my head. “Okay,” I say.
“Where did that question come from, anyway?” she asks.
“Nowhere.” I nod and slap the table to signal we can start the game. We put aces in the middle and shuffle through our extra cards. While I line up my piles, I’m thinking about how small our apartment is. It seemed fancy at first, with the elevator and the doorman, but maybe we live here because we don’t have enough money to have a house in Pennsylvania. And what exactly is “happening” with Maeve? As we slam down our cards as fast as we can, I’m slower than usual, but Mama doesn’t seem to notice.