Just two weeks before, Nick had found out that she knew his name, and now he was loopy with love. Nick was floating. He floated up the white light that washed his sheets and slept on the moon. In school, Nick was a yellow balloon, smiling and lazy, floating above the classrooms. He felt a faint tug on his string. Far below, Joe was calling, "You're in love, dude!" Nick merely smiled and rolled over and drifted dreamily out a window.

This state lasted until lunch, when suddenly Nick became self-conscious. He was certain that everyone in school knew. They would be waiting for him, turning as Nick entered the lunchroom, staring. Nick was uncomfortable in the spotlight, always had been. He was happy to stay behind the camera and let Joe take the bows out front.

So Nick hid for those thirty-five minutes in the gym equipment room. He sat atop a rolled-up wrestling mat, kicking a volleyball against the opposite wall. He had nothing to eat-he had intended to buy-but he wasn't hungry.

After school they found each other, not that they had to look.

She took Cinnamon from her bag and put him on her shoulder. "Shake paws with Nick, Cinnamon."

Cinnamon and Nick shook paws.

"Do you believe in enchanted places?" she said.

"You talking to me or the rat?"

She smiled. She dazzled. "You."

"I don't know," Nick said. "I never thought about it."

"I'm going to show you one."

"What if I don't want to see it?"

"You think you have a choice?"

She grabbed his hand and almost pulled him off his feet, laughing out loud, and they flew across the school fields, swinging hands for all the world to see.

They walked for miles, out past the business park, MicaTronics, the golf course, into the desert. "Look familiar?" she said.

By now, Cinnamon was riding Nick's shoulder. And he was carrying the ukulele, strumming nonsense. "It's where we came that day," Nick said.

She gave a snort. "We? I was coming out here, you were half a mile behind." She poked his shoulder. "Sneaking after me." She poked Nick again, hard this time, but her eyes were twinkling. "Stalking me."

Nick acted horrified, hurt. "Stalking? I was not stalking. I was just lagging behind a little, that's all."

"Following me."

He shrugged. "So?"

"Why?"

Nick could feel a million reasons, but there were no words to express them. "I don't know."

"You liked me."

Nick smiled.

"You were smitten with me. You were speechless to behold my beauty. You had never met anyone so fascinating. You thought of me every waking minute. You dreamed about me. You couldn't stand it. You couldn't let such wonderfulness out of your sight. You had to follow me."

Nick turned to Cinnamon. He licked his nose. "Don't give yourself so much credit. It was your rat I was after."

She laughed, and the desert sang.

To the person who expects every desert to be barren sand dunes, the Sonoran must come as a surprise. Not only are there no dunes, there's no sand. At least not the sort of sand you find at the beach. The ground does have a sandy color to it, or gray, but your feet won't sink in. It's hard, as if it's been tamped. And pebbly. And glinting with-what elsemica.

But you don't notice the ground much. What you notice are the saguaros. To the newcomer from the East, it's as simple as that. The desert seems to be a brown wasteland of dry, prickly scrub whose only purpose is to serve as a setting for the majestic saguaros. Then, little by little, the plants of the desert begin to identify themselves: the porcupiny yucca, the beaver tail and prickly pear and barrel cacti, buckhorn and staghorn and devil's fingers, the tall, sky-reaching tendrils of the ocotillo.

Nick and Stargirl walked a weaving line around the plant life, up and down washes and gullies, the Maricopas looming lavender in the distance.

"When you turned and ran that day," she said, "I called after you."

"You did?"

"I whispered."

"Whispered? How'd you expect me to hear?"

"I don't know," she said. "I just thought you would."

Nick strummed the ukleule. He squared his shoulders. Giving a rat a ride improves the posture.

"You're shy, aren't you?" she said.

"What makes you think that?"

She laughed. "Were you embarrassed when I pulled you along after school today? All those kids looking?"

"Nah."

"Are you lying?"

"Yeah."

She laughed. Nick seemed to be good at making her laugh.

Nick glanced back. The highway was out of sight. "Do you have the time?" He asked.

"Nobody has the time," she said. "The time cannot be owned." She threw out her arms and twirled till her multicoloured skirt looked like a pinwheel taffy. "The time is free to everyone!"

"Sorry I asked," Nick said.

She hung her sunflower bag on a cactus arm and cartwheeled toward the Maricopas. Crazily, Nick felt like joining her. But told himself he couldn't because he was loaded down with a ukulele and a rat. He picked up her bag and followed.

When she decided to walk like a normal human again, when Nick told her she was goofy.

She stopped, turned to him, and bowed grandly. "Thank you, good sir."

Then she took his arm as if they were strolling down a promenade and she said, "Scream, Nick."

"Huh?"

"Just throw your head back and let it all out. Scream your ears off. Nobody will hear you."

"Why would I want to do that?"

She turned her astonished eyes on Nick. "Why wouldn't you?"

Nick pointed to Cinnamon. "If he screams first, then I will." And Nick changed the subject. "Are we ever going to get to this enchanted place?" Nick felt silly just saying the words.

"Just a little farther," she said.

Nick humoured her. "So how do you know an enchanted place when you come to it?"

"You'll see," she said. She squeezed his hand. "Did you know there's a country with officially designated 'enchanted places'?"

"No," Nick said. "Where would that be? Oz?"

"Iceland."

"Imagine that."

"I'm ignoring your sarcasm. I think it would be neat if we had that here. You'd be walking or riding along, and there would be this stone marker with a brass plate: 'Enchanted Site. U.S. Department of Interior.'"

"We'd litter it up," Nick said.

She stared at him, her smile gone. "Would we?"

Nick felt bad, as if he had ruined something. "Not really," He told her. "Not if there's a Don't Be a Litterbug sign."

A minute later she stopped. "We're here."

Nick looked around. The place couldn't have been more ordinary. The only notable presence was a tall, dilapidated saguaro, a bundle of sticks, in worse shape than Archie's Senor. The rest was gray scrub and tumbleweed and a few prickly pears. "I thought it might look different," Nick said.

"Special? Scenic?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"It's a different kind of scenery," she said. "Shoes off."

They pulled off their shoes.

"Sit."

They sat, legs crossed. Cinnamon scampered down Nick's arm and onto the ground.

Stargirl shrieked, "Stop!" She scooped up the rat and put him in her bag. "Owls, hawks, snakes. He'd be a tasty meal."

"So," Nick said, "when does the enchantment start?"

They were sitting side by side, facing the mountains.

"It started when the earth was born." Her eyes were closed. Her face was golden in the setting sun. "It never stops. It is, always. It's just here."

"So what do we do?"

She smiled. "That's the secret." Her cupped hands rested in her lap.

"We do nothing. Or as close to nothing as we can." Her face turned slowly to him, though her eyes remained closed. "Have you ever done nothing?"

Nick laughed. "My mother thinks I do it all the time."

"Don't tell her I said so, but your mother is wrong." She turned back to the sun. "It's really hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There's a whole commotion going on inside us."

"That's bad?" Nick said.

"It's bad if we want to know what's going on outside ourselves."

"Don't we have eyes and ears for that?"

She nodded. "They're okay most of the time. But sometimes they just get in the way. The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then-maybe-the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper."

The sun was glowing orange now, clipping the mountains' purple crests.

"So how do I become this nothing?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "There's no one answer to that. You have to find your own way. Sometimes I try to erase myself. I imagine a big pink soft soap eraser, and it's going back and forth, back and forth, and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, back and forth, and there they go-poof!-my toes are gone. And then my feet. And then my ankles. But that's the easy part. The hard part is erasing my senses-my eyes, my ears, my nose, my tongue. And last to go is my brain. My thoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head. That's the hardest, erasing my thoughts." She chuckled faintly. "My pumpkin. And then, if I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm gone. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl."

"And?" Nick said.

"And…I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, and I'm not really inside it either. The thing is, there's no difference anymore between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain." She smiled dreamily. "I like that most of all, being rain."

"Am I the first one you've brought out here?"

She didn't answer. She faced the mountains, bathed in sun syrup, her face as still and peaceful as I've ever seen a face.

"Stargirl-"

"Shhhh."

That was the last sound either of them made for a long time. They sat side by side, lotus style, facing west. Nick closed his eyes. He tried to be perfectly still-and promptly found out that she was right. He could immobilize his arms and legs, but inside him it was rush hour in downtown Phoenix. Nick had never been so aware of his breath and his heartbeat, not to mention other assorted grumblings and gurglings. And his head-it just wouldn't close down. Every question, every stray thought from miles around came wandering into his brain, sniffing about, scratching at his attention.

But Nick tried. He tried the eraser, but it wouldn't even wipe out the first toe. He tried to imagine he was sawdust blowing away with the wind. Swallowed by a whale. Dissolving away like Alka-Seltzer. Nothing worked. Nick could not make himself disappear.

Nick peeked. He knew he wasn't supposed to, but he did. Clearly, she had erased herself. She was gone. She was serenity. Her lips faintly smiling. Her golden skin. The glowing thread-ends of her hair. She seemed to have been dipped in sunlight and set here to dry. Nick felt a pang of jealousy, that she could be sitting next to him and not know it. That she could be somewhere most wonderful and he could not be there, too.

Then he saw the rat. He had crawled out of the bag. He was sitting on it much as them were, his front paws-Nick kept thinking of them as tiny hands, they were so human-like-dangling before him. He, too, was not moving. He, too, was facing the sunset, his pelt the color of a new penny. His peppercorn eyes were fully open.

Nick knew it must have been a trick she had taught him, or imitative rodent behavior. Still, he couldn't help thinking there was more to it, that the whiskered little fellow was having an experience of his own-which might include digestion in a critter's stomach if Stargirl's fears came true. As quietly as possible, Nick reached over and scooped him up. He held him in both hands. He did not struggle or squirm, but resumed facing the sunset with his tiny chin resting on his forefinger. In his fingertips Nick could feel his heartbeat. He drew him closer to his chest. Nick dared any varmint to come near.

Nick took a deep breath and closed his eyes for another try at enchantment. Nick didn't think he succeeded. He thought Cinnamon was a better eraser than he was. Nick tried. Nick tried so hard he almost squeaked, but he could not seem to leave myself, and the cosmos did not visit me. Nick could not stop wondering what time it was.

But something did happen. A small thing. Nick was aware of stepping over a line, of taking one step into territory new to him. It was a territory of peace, of silence. He had never experienced such utter silence before, such stillness. The commotion within him went on, but at a lower volume, as if someone had turned down his dial. And an eerie thing happened. While he never did totally lose awareness of himself, Nick believe he did, so to speak, lose Cinnamon. He no longer felt his pulse, his presence, in him hands. It seemed they were no longer separate, but were one.

When the sun fell behind the mountains, Nick felt it as a faint coolness on his face.

Nick didn't know how long his eyes were closed. When he opened them, she was gone. Alarmed, he jerked around. She was standing off a ways, smiling. Evening had come. While his eyes were closed, the mountains' dusky lavender had drifted over the desert.

They put on their shoes and they headed for the highway. Nick expected her to interrogate him, but she did not. One moment the moon was not there, and then it was, then one bright star. They walked across the desert hand in hand, saying nothing.


I think this is absolutely cute!

I've got my drama exam today! I'm performing my play to the examiner o.o

Nervous like lol.

10 reviews for next one please =)