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What Stars Are Made Of

Sarah Allen
Contents (63)
  1. An Anti-Grinch Gets Excited
  2. My Best Friend Is a Room
  3. Home Is Where the Bach Is
  4. X’s and O’s
  5. Better Than a Puppy
  6. My Sister Is Sick and It’s a Good Thing
  7. A Shot a Day Makes the Doctor Say Yay
  8. Growth Hormone and Marmalade
  9. Silent Questions
  10. No Payne, No Gain
  11. How Not to Make Friends
  12. Art Show
  13. Seventh-Grade Writing
  14. Beach Bum
  15. First Draft
  16. The Doctor That Isn’t Mine
  17. Audacity
  18. Friends and Consequences
  19. Some Dead White Dude
  20. How Grown-Ups Listen
  21. Second Draft
  22. Houston, We Have a Problem
  23. What’s in a Name?
  24. Textbook People’s People
  25. Twitterpated
  26. Out Loud
  27. Thanksgiving Break
  28. Silence
  29. Sound
  30. Eleanor Roosevelt
  31. Gray Walls and Gas Masks
  32. Long Distance
  33. Doctor Who Was Right
  34. The Impossible Dream
  35. A New Doctor
  36. NLD
  37. There’s a Monster at the End of This Brain
  38. Master Plan
  39. The Day
  40. The Night
  41. Hospital
  42. Waiting
  43. Big Doctor Words
  44. Doctor Who Was Wrong
  45. Septal Defect
  46. Waiting Again
  47. A Glass Box
  48. My Body Versus Me
  49. Home Is Where the Heart Is
  50. My People’s People
  51. First Period
  52. She’s Got the Whole World in Her Head
  53. What Brains Are Made Of
  54. One Month Later
  55. When I Showed My Family the Email
  56. On an Ordinary Sunday
  57. What You Do with History
  58. Seventh/Eighth-Grade Division Winner of the Smithsonian Women in STEM Contest
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. CHAPTER ONE
  61. CHAPTER TWO
  62. About the Author
  63. Contents
What Stars Are Made Of by Sarah Allen

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Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

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To Martine, who saw the story I really wanted to write and showed me how.

And to all the girls like Libby.
I wrote this for you.

An Anti-Grinch Gets Excited

I was born with a heart three sizes too big.

No, really. Like an Anti-Grinch. Like it was already shouting, I’M JUST TRYING REALLY HARD OVER HERE.

Mom tells me she was very, very scared for her baby girl. But twelve years later, I’m still here.

There were a whole buttload of other weird things happening to me when I was born, too. But it’s not like that’s what I go around thinking about all the time, especially on a day when my mom and dad tell me they have a surprise unbirthday present waiting for me after school.

This is what happened when I woke up this morning:

Mom made chocolate Malt-O-Meal for breakfast. That is my all-time favorite food.

Dad looked up from his book and grinned at me—a mysterious grin like he was hiding a secret.

Then Mom put a bowl of the delicious, steamy Malt-O-Meal in front of me and said, “Guess what, Libby.”

I was already on my third bite so I had to swallow before I could say, “What?”

“We’re not going to tell you what it is, but there is going to be a surprise waiting for you when you get home from school today.”

I put down my spoon. “You’re buying me a puppy, aren’t you?”

Dad laughed, looking back at his book. “Honestly, I think you’ll like it as much as that.”

So it was something good. Really good. Maybe a safari in Botswana? Maybe it had something to do with my big sister, Nonny, who lived in Chicago with her husband, Thomas. Maybe it was a pet iguana? A pet iguana would be one of the most unique pets ever. I would name her Rosalind after Rosalind Franklin. She’s a scientist too many people don’t know about. When I come across important, special, underestimated people like Rosalind, I collect them in my head and they become my friends. Then I have a whole squad of friends going around with me wherever I go. I talk to them a lot. I ask them questions, I tell them what I’m worrying about, and I try to figure out what the best of them would do.