Disclaimer: I don't own Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli.

Summary: "Star people are rare. You'll be lucky to meet another." ( story collection)

Story: She was walking in the desert one night, looking up at the sky.

Kevin jumped in. "So… you change your name whenever you get tired of it?"

"When it doesn't fit anymore. I'm not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn, I outgrow it, I change it."

"So why Stargirl?"

"Oh, I don't know." She petted Cinnamon's nose with her fingertip. "I was walking in the desert one night, looking up at the sky – like," she chuckled, "how can you not look up at the sky! – and it just sort of came to me, fell on to me."

It came to her when she first stepped foot in the desert.

She was looking for enchanted places in her new home.

Hullygully ate dinner like everyone else. She ate it with her family just like everyone else. After she was done, she walked out of the house as her mother collected the dishes on the table to wash them. When her mother asked where she was going, she turned to her and gave her the smile she always wore on her face.

"I'm going to look for enchanted places."

"It's dark out. Are you sure?"

The girl paused before nodding. "I'm sure."

Her mother told her to be home before it gets too late and she agreed.

It was nightfall when she made her way out of her neighborhood and on the road. In all honesty, Hullygully did not know where she was going. People often say to "follow your heart" or "listen to what your heart is saying." Hullygully did both of these things as she walked. She did both of these regularly every day, even though she probably didn't realize it and neither did the people who surrounded her.

Hullygully did both of these things at the same time.

The girl walked among the stores, reaching into the highway. She saw the edges of the desert that day, but she had turned around to walk back because it was getting late.

She didn't find her enchanted place that day.

The next day, in the afternoon, Hullygully made her way back to the highway.

This time, she kept going forward.

She felt as if she was stepping into unknown territory. Her first real connection with the sands of the sun, the cactuses of the rain. In the sun she felt the sunflower on her canvas bag bloom and shimmer with the desert heat – the desert sun. The bag felt light on her shoulder and in the midst of it all, she took up her ukulele and began to strum it. Soon, she began to sing along to a melody she did not know, with a beat she did not recognize.

She went up to a cactus and sang to it, briefly fingering a red flower that was blooming on its arm. She skipped and she danced, her head thrown back to the blue sky singing as loud as she could because she knew that no one in the world could hear her except the cactuses, the sand, and the sun.

And then Hullygully got quiet.

The strumming of the ukulele and her singing stopped. Slowly, she took her canvas bag off and placed it down lightly on the ground. And then, walking a little ways away from it, she sat down and crossed her legs in an Indian-style. She closed her eyes and lifted her face up to the sky, thinking… waiting.

Disappearing.

She goes through a myriad of different ways she could erase herself in this moment – this place. She tried the eraser method, feeling the connection with the ground and the air and the sun, slowly fading away every time the eraser brushed past her hands and feet, feeling them slowly dissolve into nothing. She shut down her thoughts after her senses were gone, forgetting about what happened to her after fourteen years of living.

Hullygully sat down in golden silence before her eyes opened once more. She picked up her belongings and left the desert once more.

She wasn't sure if she found her enchanted place that day.

Days passed and Hullygully found herself going back to the desert. The nighttime was when she felt the desert was more alive. The cactuses cast a shadow on the ground in the setting desert sun and the sands shifted with the wind and the rays of it ricocheting off of the Maricopa mountains in the distance. The movements pieced together like a song of the desert and Hullygully even took out her ukulele to strum and hum along. She did it lightly so as not to disturb the harmony that the matter already connected with one another.

And then it rained.

There was only a small moment of surprise that emitted from Hullygully, but then she smiled. She stopped strumming the ukulele and made her way over to the exact same spot that she had gone to on her first day to the desert and the other days afterwards. She put her possessions gently on the ground and then began to dance among the raindrops.

That's when she heard the croaking.

The mud frogs that lay buried underneath the ground sprung up like a flower blooming once more after winter had passed. Hullygully had paused to observe them for just a moment until all of the frogs began to croak. At first they were all uneven beats and sounds but as time passed their sounds began to mingle and join with one another. Canons and rounds began to form, low notes and high notes began to mesh, dancing off of the sun and the rain and the cactuses all at once.

And Hullygully began to dance to the sounds that they were making, getting lost in the music of natural sounds and voices, closing her eyes as if doing so intensified the sound and the unity between their rhythm and beating hearts.

But as she finally opened her eyes to the sky, they landed on the stars in the heavens and in the rain she smiled. She became still and she felt that the stars were falling on her although they were mere drops of rain from a rare rainfall in a place called Arizona.

And she felt the world fall on to her as the rain began to slowly stop and the voices of the mud frogs began to diminish one by one. The word whispered to her in the desert wind and she reached her hands up to the sky as if tracing the word she heard in the sky using the stars.

Stargirl.

"My name is Stargirl."

A/N. I'm re-reading Stargirl again and I found out why I enjoy writing stories about it now. Some points of the book are so clear, yet vague at the same time leaving a lot of room for reader imagination and such. This is one thing that I kind of thought about after reading it for the first time. I'm not saying that this is what happened exactly, but… Well, you know. I know Cinnamon is kind of missing from the whole picture, but I kind of wanted the whole thing to focus on one character - Stargirl.