January 1

Dear Leo,

I love beginnings. If I were in charge of calendars, every day would be January 1.

And what better way to celebrate this New Year's Day than to begin writing a letter to my once (and future?) boyfriend.

I found something today. Something special. The thing is, it's been right in front of me ever since we moved here last year, but today is the first time I really saw it. It's a field. A plain old vacant field. No house in view except a little white stucco bungalow off to the right. It's a mile out of town, a one-minute bike ride from my house. It's on a hill--the flat top of a hill shaped like an upside-down frying pan. It used to be a pick-your-own-strawberries patch, but now it grows only weeds and rocks.

The field is on the other side of Route 113, which is where my street (Rapps Dam Road) dead-ends. I've biked past this field a hundred times, but for some reason today I stopped. I looked at it. I parked my bike and walked into it. The winter weeds were scraggly and matted down, like my hair in the morning. The frozen ground was cloddy and rock-hard. The sky was gray. I walked to the center and just stood there.

And stood.

How can I explain it? Alone, on the top of that hill, in the middle of that "empty" field (Ha!--write this down, Leo: nothing is empty), I felt as if the universe radiated from me, as if I were standing on the X that marked the center of the cosmos. Until then I had done my daily meditation in many different places in and around town, but never here. Now I did. I sat down. I barely noticed the cold ground. I held my hands on my thighs, palms up to the world. I closed my eyes and dissolved out of myself. I now call it washing my mind.

The next thing I noticed was a golden tinge beyond my eyelids. I opened my eyes. The sun was seeping through the clouds. It was setting over the treetops in the west. I closed my eyes again and let the gold wash over me.

Night was coming on when I got up. As I headed for my bike, I knew I had found an enchanted place.

January 3

Oh, Leo, I'm sad. I'm crying. I used to cry a lot when I was little. If I stepped on a bug I'd burst into tears. Funny thing--I was so busy crying for everything else, I never cried for myself. Now I cry for me.

For you.

For us.

And now I'm smiling through my tears. Remember the first time I saw you? In the lunchroom? I was walking toward your table. Your eyes--that's what almost stopped me in my tracks. They boggled. I think it wasn't just the sight of me--long frontier dress, ukulele sticking out of my sunflower shoulder sack--it was something else too. It was terror. You knew what was coming. You knew I was going to sing to someone, and you were terrified it might be you. You quick looked away, and I breezed on by and didn't stop until I found Alan Ferko and sang "Happy Birthday" to him. But I felt your eyes on me the whole time, Leo. Oh yes! Every second. And with every note I sang to Alan Ferko I thought: Someday I'm going to sing to that boy with the terrified eyes. I never did sing to you, Leo, not really. You, of all people. It's my biggest regret. . . . Now, see, I'm sad again.

January 10

As I said last week, I wash my mind all over the place. Since the idea--and ideal--is to erase myself from wherever and whenever I am, I think I should not allow myself to become too attached to any one location, not even Enchanted Hill, as I call it now, or to any particular time of day or night.

So that's why this morning I was riding my bike in search of a new place to meditate. Cinnamon was hitching a ride in my pocket. As I rode past a cemetery a splash of brightness...

 

Mandy Siegfried gives a multilayered portrayal of heroine Stargirl, who is sometimes a font of optimism and creativity and other times a girl with a broken heart. The story is told in a letter from Stargirl to her ex-boyfriend, Leo, telling him about her move from Arizona to Pennsylvania. Soon Stargirl meets the eccentric 6-year-old Dootsie, whom Siegfried depicts with an appropriately childish pitch. Then there's gruff Elvina, an 11-year-old bully and "doughnut angel," who delivers dozens of goodies to agoraphobic Betty Lou. These are a few of the quirky characters expertly portrayed by Siegfried. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

 

Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
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