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 caught my eye. It was a man sitting in a chair in front of a gravestone. At least I think it was a man, he was so bundled up against the cold. The bright splash was the red and yellow checked scarf he wore around his neck. He seemed to be talking. Before long I found myself back near my house, in a park called Bemus. I climbed onto a picnic table and got into my meditation position. (OK, back up...I'm homeschooling again. Gee, I wonder why – my Mica High School experience went so well! Ha ha. So I have to meet all the state requirements, right? – maths, English, etc. Which I do. But I don't stop there. I have other courses too. Unofficial ones. Like Principles of Swooning. Life Under Rocks. Beginner's Whistling. Elves. We call it our shadow curriculum. ((Don't tell the State of – oops, almost told you what state I'm living in.)) My favourite shadow subject is Elements of Nothingness. That's where the mind wash comes in. Totally wiping myself out. Erasing myself. (((Remember the lesson I gave you in the desert?))) Which, when you think about it, is really not nothing. I mean, when I'm really doing it right, getting myself totally erased, I'm the opposite of nothing – I'm everything. I'm everything but myself. I've evaporated like water vapour into the universe. I am no longer Stargirl. I am tree. Wind. Earth.) OK, sorry for the detour (and parenthetical overkill)... So there I was, sitting cross-legged on the picnic table, eyes closed, washing my mind (and getting school credit for it!), and suddenly I felt something on my eyelid. Probably a bug, I thought, and promptly washed away the thought, and the something on my eyelid just became part of everything else. But then the something moved. It traced across my eyelid and went down my nose and around the outline of my lips. Then a voice, woman's, harsh: "Dootsie!" Then: "Hello. My name is Dootsie. I'm a human bean. What are you doing?" I opened my eyes. A little girl was sitting cross-legged in front of me. A lady was hurrying towards us, appearing stricken, saying, "I'm so sorry. My daughter gets away from me sometimes. I'm really sorry." "It's OK," I said. I was groggy, like waking up. I looked at the little girl. Dootsie. "I was meditating. I was being nothing." Dootsie frowned. The sun brought rusty highlights to her curly hair. She reached out and touched me again. She laughed. "You're not nothing." She poked my knee. "You're right there." "To me I was nothing," I said. "It's hard to talk about." She frowned again. Suddenly her mouth and eyes shot open. "You pretended!" I nodded. "Sort of." She studied me. "Are you a magician?" "Nope." She beamed. "I'm a magician!" "Really?" "Aren't I, Mummy?" "A regular Houdini." Dootsie climbed down from the table. "I can make myself disappear. Watch." She squeezed her eyes shut. She whispered something I couldn't make out. She stood at attention and turned around three times. She whispered again. A slow-moving grin came over her little round face. I looked around. "Where are you?" She giggled. "I'm right here. You can hear me but you can't see me." I swished my hands in front of me. "Hello?... Hello?... Dootsie?... Are you there?" Dootsie's eyes goggled. She whispered, "Mummy...she doesn't even hear me!" Her mother winked at me. "Dootsie...say something to the nice girl so she'll know you're there." Suddenly Dootsie's eyes double-goggled and she shrieked, "A mouse!" and came leaping at me, very visibly. Cinnamon must have wondered what all the talking was about. He had poked his head out of my coat pocket, and before I knew it, he was cradled in the little girl's hands. "Actually, he's not a mouse," I told her. "He's a rat." She rubbed her cheek against his cinnamon fur. "Put your nose up to his," I said. She did. Cinnamon's tiny tongue came out and kissed her on the tip of her nose. She squealed. While Dootsie was nuzzling Cinnamon, her mother held out her hand. "I'm Laura Pringle." We shook. "Stargirl Caraway." Dootsie gaped. "Stargirl? That's your name?" "Sure is." "You're new in town?" said Mrs Pringle. "Since last summer," I said. "We live right over there" – I pointed – "Rapps Dam Road." "Not the house with the brown shutters, by any chance?" "Exactly." She smiled, nodded. "My brother. Dootsie's uncle Fred and aunt Claire. They used to live there. Dootsie knows your house as well as her own." Dootsie held out Cinnamon. She whined, "Mum-mee...she has a rat and the best name and she sits on tables. I want to be her!" Cinnamon was getting fidgety. I took him back. "Hey, I was just thinking I want to be you. I mean – 'Dootsie'? Names don't come any cooler than that. Plus, you can make yourself disappear. You are so cool. Do you take a cool pill every morning?" She looked at me all serious. She shook her head. "No." "So I guess you're just naturally cool, huh?" She nodded. "I guess." "Tell you what," I said. "I've never been cool, and I've always wanted to be. So how about we trade places? You be Stargirl and I'll be Dootsie." Her eyes rolled up to the trees. Her finger pressed her bottom lip. "Not yet," she said. "I want to be Dootsie some more." She thought again. "Till I'm ten." "Okay," I said, "when you're ten we'll switch." "Okay." We shook on it. Then Mrs Pringle said it was time to leave me in peace, and off they went, Dootsie whining, "I want a rat!"
