“Jumping Jills! You can talk!” exclaimed Ben. I could see from his reflection in the telly that he was surprised, and that Travis was staring at my back. “But…why’d you call that star thing your mum?”
“Niyah! Was it really her?” whisper-asked Noah, his eyes so big and watery that I could see my whole face in them.
I nodded and turned around to look at Ben and Travis. I had to ask them something before Mrs. Iwuchukwu came into the living room, so I opened my mouth and promised my voice I’d be nice to it forever if it worked now.
“C-can I— Is there a computer in this house?” I asked. My voice felt strange—as if it didn’t belong to me at all, and had gone and brought someone else’s voice back instead. It sounded broken and quiet. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was I had a voice again and I could use it to find Mum.
I needed to find the website the newsreader had talked about! I needed to know where Mum’s star was exactly—and what the newsreader had meant by people helping to name it! If she was traveling across the northern hemisphere, that meant she was close by, because I knew from my star globe that we lived in the northern hemisphere too. Which meant that the constellations I could see from Mrs. Iwuchukwu’s window at night would be the exact same constellations Mum’s star would be traveling through right now.
Travis nodded. “I’ve g-got one for homework in my r-room,” he said, turning bright red.
“Is it to find that website the news was talking about?” asked Ben. “About the star?”
I nodded again. Ben frowned and began to bite his bottom lip. I could tell he was asking himself a lot of questions and that he would need to get some of them out.
“But…but why’d you need to find out about it? And why’d you call that star ‘Mum’? Your mum’s not really a star in space! She’s d—”
But before Ben could finish his sentence, Noah suddenly shouted, “Yes she is! She is a star!” then ran at Ben and gave him an angry push.
“Hey!” said Ben, looking confused and putting his hands out to stop Noah from pushing him again.
“You say sorry!” shouted Noah. His face turned as pink and as crinkled as the inside of a grapefruit and he began to hit Ben as hard as he could on the arm.
“Sorry! Hey, I said I’m sorry!” exclaimed Ben. “Ouch!”
I grabbed Noah’s hands. “Don’t hit him, Noah, he doesn’t know!” I said.
“But he said it’s not Mum!” cried Noah, looking at Ben with an angry frown. The curls on his head were shaking because his whole body was shaking, and his eyes were starting to get bigger and wetter.
Ben took a step back, looking confused.
Travis was frowning and making his eyeballs race around as he looked at me and then Noah and then Ben. Then quietly he said, “I’ll l-let you use the c-computer…if you tell ush?”
Nervously rubbing his arm, Ben nodded and took a step forward. “You can tell us,” he said. “We won’t tell anyone, promise.”
Trying to make Noah stand still, I wondered what to do. If I told them the truth, then Ben and Travis might think I was lying or being silly, because that’s what people think when they don’t want to believe you about something, even when it’s true. I know, because Grandma Irene and Aunt Kathy used to call Mum silly, and a liar whenever she tried to tell them the truth about why all our kitchen plates were missing again, or why she had to wear sweaters with long sleeves in the summer. And one time, when a policeman came to visit our house after Dad had moved the furniture so much that he broke the kitchen table and three of the chairs, the policeman had told Mum to stop being hysterical—which I know must be another word for liar because as soon as he said it, Mum went quiet and never asked a policeman for help with the furniture ever again. But Ben and Travis weren’t the police, or Grandma Irene or Aunt Kathy. There was a chance they might believe me.
I forced my throat to open again and said, “I’m a star hunter. And that star on the telly there, that’s our mum. She left us to go and turn into one a few days ago—I heard her, and so did Noah. I’ve been trying to find her, and she’s been trying to find us. And now she’s shown us exactly where she is so we don’t ever lose her again.” Noah held my hand and, puffing up his chest like a penguin, looked up at me as if he was scared and happy all at the same time. I smiled back. I had never said those words out loud before. But now that my voice was back, it felt good to say them with my tongue and hear the sounds they made too. It made me want to say them over and over and over again and even shout it all out! “I’m a star hunter and I’ve found my mum’s star!”
“You’re a what?” asked Ben, wrinkling his nose in confusion.
Travis pushed his hair behind his ears as if he wanted to be sure he was hearing things properly.
“A star hunter—grown-ups call them astronomers,” I explained.
“Oh!” said Ben. “But you can’t be an astronomer—you haven’t finished school yet!” And narrowing his eyes, he looked at me as if I might be an undercover spy who was only pretending to be ten.
Travis was staring at me with his mouth open. He looked as if he had suddenly found a cave full of invisible words and didn’t know what to do about it.
“You don’t need to finish school to be a star hunter,” I said, shaking my head and wondering if Ben and Travis had ever been to a library. “You can learn about how to become one from books and sometimes in school too.”
“Oh,” said Ben, frowning, but still looking as if he didn’t believe me.
“And anyway, I can’t wait until I finish school. I need to find Mum now so that we don’t ever lose her again,” I added.
“But isn’t your mum…” Ben’s frown changed from having two lines in it to three, and Travis closed his mouth and, standing up as straight as a ruler, looked at the floor. I suddenly understood what they were thinking.
“She’s not dead,” I said, feeling angry and sorry for them all at the same time.
“She ishn’t?” asked Travis, looking up, surprised.
“No. She’s out there,” I said, pointing through the two large glass doors of the living room.
Ben looked past my shoulder as if expecting to see a ghost, and his eyebrows began to rise like bread in an oven. “You mean…in the garden?”
Noah giggled and spread his hand across his face as if he couldn’t believe Ben was so silly.
“No,” I said, trying not to laugh too. “I mean in the sky. I already said, didn’t you hear me? Mum had an extra-special heart, you see, which made it extra bright. And if you’ve got an extra-bright heart, when you have to leave, your heart gets taken out of your body and turned into a star so that it can watch over everyone it had to leave behind but who it didn’t want to leave at all. All the best people are up there—kings and queens and millions of people who were too special to leave forever.”
“You mean—like footballers and famous singers?” asked Ben, starting to look impressed.
“Yeah, maybe.” I shrugged.
“Cool…,” said Ben, nodding as if things were starting to make sense.
“But s-stars aren’t p-people. They’re just balls of gash…,” Travis said, looking at me. I realized he might be afraid to tell me in case I got upset.
“I’m not making this up!” I promised. “I read all about it. Some of the biggest star hunters and scientists say everything’s made up of dust from old stars—even us. And when we die, we get recycled too. If we’re ordinary, we just go into the ground and get recycled that way. But if we’re really special, we can get recycled right up there—back in space. It’s actually in the The Lion King too,” I added, suddenly wishing I could watch it again and show Ben and Travis what I meant.
“You mean the cartoon?” asked Ben, his mouth falling open.
I nodded, because my voice was beginning to hurt. I had made it work too hard since it got back to me, but I didn’t ever want to stop using it. I gulped hard and carried on talking. “It might be a cartoon, but it’s actually based on facts. In it they talk about the circle of life—and how everything is recycled—and that’s all true. And how stars aren’t just balls of gas. They need gas to keep burning, because that’s their oxygen. But all of them have a heart,” I said. “Even the ones that are so far away you can barely see them. Because after you die, if your heart is extra special, it gets thrown up into the sky and you stay there, and the rest of you goes into the ground. Why do you think all the stars have names and stories about them?”
“But that doesn’t…” Ben looked as if his mouth wasn’t working anymore and there were too many questions for it to say out loud properly. “But who’s taking out the hearts and doing all the throwing?”
“The star maker!” cried Noah, jumping up and roaring like a lion before he began running around the room.
Ben and Travis looked at him for a second and then looked back at me.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. And even the really old star hunters don’t know that! All I know is that Mum’s heart’s a star now. I heard Katie say so too. She was the woman who looked after us before we came here. She said it to the policemen—that Mum belonged to the heavens now and that she was going to be looking down on us forever. And one policeman said it was a shame some people got taken so soon, but that was the way of the world. So I’m not lying.”
Ben and Travis both fell quiet. I could tell they were thinking hard about everything I was saying. And I knew they wouldn’t be able to argue with me, because no one could argue with scientists and star hunters. Not unless they became one. And Ben and Travis weren’t star hunters like me.
Travis frowned so hard that it looked as if a caterpillar was wriggling across his forehead. After a few seconds he asked, “Wh-what does it s-sound like…you know? When s-someone becomesh a star?”
Noah stopped running around in circles and came and held my arm. I closed my eyes and thought about what I had heard. I could remember the noise of the explosion and how my ears had felt weird, and the strange whistling noise that had made me go deaf. And I could remember feeling dizzy because the earth under my feet seemed to be shaking, but I didn’t know how to describe all that. So I just said, “Loud, and scary.”
Travis nodded, and looked as if he was trying to remember something too.
“If she’s…you know, really a star, what are you going to do?” asked Ben.
“I’m going to follow her,” I said, and Noah nodded and pulled on my arm happily. “I have to find out which part of the sky she’s going to stop in and make sure it’s somewhere we can see her all the time. And where she can see us.” I secretly wanted to see if Dad was following her too—because if he was, then maybe he would find Mum at the same time as we found her and he could take me and Noah home. But for some reason, I didn’t want to tell Ben and Travis that.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” said a voice from the living room door.
We all turned around and Noah stopped pulling on my arm. Sophie was standing at the doorway, running her fingers through her hair as if they were a comb. Her eyes were shining and her mouth was laughing at me. She wasn’t in her school uniform anymore and was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with the faces of a pop band on it, who all looked as if they were laughing at me too.
“Your mum’s not a star!” she said. “She’s gone and she isn’t ever coming back! She probably did it on purpose too! I would, if I knew someone as stupid as you!”
For three seconds after Sophie finished yelling, nothing happened. It was as if her words had made us freeze like musical statues.
Slowly, I felt my mouth open and the words “You take that back!” burst out, and I heard Ben and Travis saying things too and I saw Noah running over to the doorway to kick and punch Sophie in the leg.
“Ouch! Stop that, you little brat!” shouted Sophie, pushing him onto the floor. “Mum! Mum! Look! Noah’s gone mad! Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum!”
“What? What’s happening here, eh?” said Mrs. Iwuchukwu as she came running into the room with her apron half-undone.
Suddenly, Sophie screamed.
Noah had slid along the floor and angrily bitten her on the leg.
“Noah! No!” shouted Mrs. Iwuchukwu, pulling him away. But Noah was crying and punching and shaking too much to hear anything.
“It’s—it’s my fault, Mum!” said Sophie, making a sad face and looking as if she was sorry. “Maybe I said something I shouldn’t have….”
“Noah, stop it right now!” ordered Mrs. Iwuchukwu, holding him tightly in a hug-prison. “Sophie, what did you say?” she asked angrily.
“I told them I was sorry they were missing their mum, and then…” Sophie shrugged as she rubbed the tiny teeth marks on her leg. “He just started kicking me!”
Remembering that my voice was back and that I could tell Mrs. Iwuchukwu that Sophie was trying to flip her switch again, I opened my mouth. But instead of making any sounds, it just kept on opening and closing, like a fish looking for food.
“Niyah, she’s lying!” cried Noah as he kicked out his leg, trying to make it reach Sophie from where he was standing. But Mrs. Iwuchukwu was still holding his arms and Sophie was too far away.
“See?” said Sophie, tutting.
“Noah, no! We never hit or punch or kick or bite here!” said Mrs. Iwuchukwu, bending down so that her face was near Noah’s. “Never! Now, Sophie didn’t mean to say anything that was upsetting and she’s sorry, aren’t you, Sophie?”
Sophie nodded sadly, but as soon as Mrs. Iwuchukwu wasn’t looking, she grinned.
Noah ran back to me and angrily wiped his eyes and face against my top.
Mrs. Iwuchukwu stood back up and looked at Noah and me, and then at Travis and Ben, who were both looking at the floor and trying not to look at anyone.
“Right! That’s enough for one night! Everyone upstairs, please,” said Mrs. Iwuchukwu, shaking her head at me and Noah. “Ben, Travis, finish up with your homework, then bed! Sophie—go and get started on your math homework, please. And, Noah, even though you’ve been a very naughty boy today, I know you didn’t know about the no-hitting and no-biting rule. So we’re going to make this the first and last time you ever do anything like that, OK? Now. You’ve both got a very important day tomorrow, so off you go to bed. I’ll be up in a few minutes to check on you. Chop-chop!”
Sophie ran ahead, thundering up the stairs, and slammed her door shut. But Ben and Travis silently shuffled down the corridor in front of us. I could tell they wanted to say something, but Mrs. Iwuchukwu was following us. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and, watching us go up, said, “No loud noises—and, Travis, no computer games!” before turning back toward the kitchen door.
As we reached the corridor at the top of the stairs, Travis stopped outside the light gray door that said travis’s room and, pushing his hair away from his eyes, turned around. “We’ll c-come and get you later—sh-sho you can go on my c-computer,” he whispered, his eyes getting wide again, as if they wanted to make sure I understood him.
“Yeah,” added Ben. “After Mrs. I.’s been in to check on all of us. So don’t fall asleep too early, OK?”
I nodded, and me and Noah watched them both open their bedroom doors and disappear.
“Niyah, are they our friends?” whispered Noah as we walked past Sophie’s red door that had a big poster saying keep out on it, and came to a purple one with a whiteboard saying aniyah and noah on it. The whiteboard wasn’t really white anymore, because you could see pink and green smudges from all the other names that had been written before ours, and then rubbed out.
“Yeah,” I said, opening the door and following Noah inside. “I think so.”
After I helped get Noah ready for bed and changed into my pajamas, we both lay down so that we could pretend to be asleep when Mrs. Iwuchukwu came in. It felt just like it did at home, on one of those nights when Mum would tell us to go to bed quickly because we could hear Dad’s car coming. We had to race each other and pretend we had fallen asleep right away so that Dad could see that we hadn’t broken any of his bedtime rules. But Noah and me had never pretended to be asleep together, so it was more fun this time. And less scary. Especially since we knew that Mum had broken all the planet’s rules to look for us, and that we weren’t ever going to be left alone again.
So holding on tight to Noah and my silver locket, I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for when Ben and Travis could come and get me.