Nicole Melleby - How to Become a Planet

How to Become a Planet

Nicole Melleby

Algonquin Young Readers 2021

For Liz,
because I promised her outer space.

In 1964, two astronomers at Bell Labs in New Jersey started testing a horn-shaped radio antenna. They wanted to detect the natural radio waves produced by gas clouds in space.

Instead, they encountered something they couldnt explainlow-level energy, coming evenly from all directions in the sky.

Without realizing it, they had made one of the most profound discoveries in human history: Light from the big bang itself, released when the universe was only 380 thousand years old, less than one hundredth of one percent of its current age.

Timothy Ferris, Dark Universe, The American Museum of Natural History

Criterion #1

A planet must orbit the sun.

Pluto was on the phone with the Hayden Planetarium Astronomy Question and Answer Hotline, trying to find out how to create a black hole, when her mom broke down Plutos bedroom door.

Pluto wasnt allowed to lock her door, but that night the rule didnt stop her. She needed to keep everyone, everything, out so she could just... just stop. Just turn off the lights and shut her eyes and stop, which was something she had been thinking more and more about lately.

Hence, the black hole.

But she couldnt do that, couldnt stop or think or anything, with the way her mom was pounding on the door, shouting over and over, Open the door, Pluto! Let me in! Just open the door!

The voice on the other end of the phone was jovial and kind as they explained how black holes were created. But that wasnt right, wasnt what Pluto wanted. She knew how black holes were created in space. She knew that it took a dying star, an explosion, and a gravitational game of tug-of-war.

That didnt help her here, now.

Pluto felt heavy sadness, a weight that pushed down on her chest, and she could hear her mom sobbing as silent tears fell down Plutos cheeks. That weight, and Plutos reaction to it, was too much. Too dramatic. It was too dark in her bedroom, when it was sunny and spring through her window. She was too shut down for someone who confided everything to her mother.

Her moms voice, outside the door: Pluto, please. Please open the door!

The muffled voice on the other end of her phone: Can we help you with anything else today?

Plutos head rested against her cold wall, light gray and plastered with little glow-in-the-dark stars she had tacked on with her mom when she was four. She picked at one with her thumbnail, pulling it off and taking bits of gray paint with it. She couldnt explain what happened next, only that the sadness turned to anger in her chest, and she knew those little stars wouldnt help her. They wouldnt die and explode and suck her into their dense nothingness, and she was mad at them. She was mad at those little stars, and at the voice on the other end of the planetarium hotline, and at her mom, and at herself, and she needed the stars to come down. She needed them to stop glowing.

She dropped the phone and ignored her mom, and she pulled at those stars, one by one, yanking paint off the wall and throwing them away. It still wasnt enough to make everything stop, and she reached for the books on her bookcase, the astronomy ones her mom had bought her every year for her birthday, and she threw them, too, reveling in the sound of hard thumps as they hit the walls and the floor.

She reached for her brand-new book, too, the one about the Challenger sitting on her desk next to her moms old computer, the one her dad had sent to try to make her feel happy, which was ridiculous, really. The Challenger was a tragedy, and Pluto had enough of her own sadness lately. She held the book up as high as she could, but before she could launch it across the room, she heard a loud, splintering crackwhich was just as satisfying, reallylike something huge crashing down, down, down.

But it was just her wooden door, and then her moms arms were holding her tight.

When it finally came after one hundred and eighty long days, the first day of summer break didnt matter to Pluto. The countdown shed made with Meredith still read 34 Days Until Freedom!!! because Pluto hadnt been to school in over a month. She hadnt had to worry about end-of-the-year pool parties, or endless have a great summers, or Meredith begging her to just be her friend again.

And, finally, she didnt need to worry about school calling home, asking where she was, asking when she was coming, making her moms voice tremble as she spoke into the phone, I dont know. I dont know. I dont know what to do, either.

Instead, what Pluto did have to worry about was that her mom was already out of the shower, shuffling around in the bathroom they shared, nearly ready to start the day. The hall light was on, bleeding into Plutos bedroom, making the thick purple curtains that blocked out the morning sun null and void. If she had a bedroom door, she would close it to block out the light and the sound of her mom as she hummed while she got dressed.

But Pluto did not have a bedroom door, and hadnt had a bedroom door for a little over a month now.

Her mom stuck her head in the doorway. Hey, Shooting Star, she said, words mumbled as she spoke around the toothbrush in her mouth. Youre with me today, kid, so start making some moves.

Pluto and her mom both knew she would not be making some moves. Pluto resented the fact that her mom even suggested it, that her mom went about her morning as if nothing had changed inside Pluto, as if an endless month in bed could suddenly come to a stop without trouble.

When she didnt move: Plu, Im serious. As if that made a difference.

Pluto was serious, too. She needed to stay in bed, under her thick purple blanket covered in white little stars. Her mom had picked out the bed set the moment Pluto outgrew the small wooden crib with the solar system mobile. The blanket was warm, and it was soft, and it was not something she was willing that morning, or any other, to give up.

The bed shifted as her mom climbed in, smelling like the Taylor Swift perfume Pluto had bought her for Christmas last year. Her moms arms wrapped around Plutos middle, holding her close against the scratchy fabric of one of the low-cut tops her mom always wore that Pluto hated. Her moms breath tickled her ear. I dont want to pay for a sitter, Pluto. I want you to come with me.