The Ferris wheel whirls, laughter pooling around each compartment, and the massive steel rods twinkle against a backdrop of glowing clouds. 

Mom was never much of a stargazer, but one time when we were out at the lake, she pointed out Big Dipper and Little Dipper. “That’s you and me,” she said. And I smiled because I liked thinking of the two of us up there, forever in a bowl of constellations.

The Dippers are gone tonight, just like Mom, and things are different than they used to be. My socks don’t match, and my ponytail is lumpy and crooked. 

Somewhere not far off, roller coaster wheels cling-clang, but I don’t turn to see the squealing riders. I watch a crispy brown leaf get pushed across the blacktop by wind. School Counselor says to do this–to focus on an object when you feel out of control. You should notice little things about it and take belly breaths until magically you feel calm again.

Eh. She’s a nice lady. She has stickers in her office, and even though I’m getting old for that, I like how she fusses over me picking out a good one. I wait until I’m down the hall and almost back to class before throwing it in the bin.

I’m not surprised when watching a leaf doesn’t help. It zips away, and I’m still on the bench, my arms wrapped around my waist. The smell of funnel cake hits, and my stomach turns inside-out again.

A hand falls on my shoulder. “You feelin’ better, kid?” 

I look up. Oscar wears a big frown.

“Yikes. No, you’re not.”

He plops beside me on the bench where he’d told me to “stay put” a minute earlier. “Here. I bought you water. Sip slowly. Hydration’ll help.” He hands me a cold sweaty bottle and, under his breath, adds, “It’s helped me through a few puking sessions, anyway.”

He says things like that sometimes, and I can’t picture it. Oscar wouldn’t get sick on a Tilt-a-Whirl. He can ride his bike ten miles and then gobble down four of Tammy Timer’s tacos. 

Granddad was supposed to be my legal guardian, but that was before he moved into the place with the nurses so–here we are. It’s Oscar and me.

It’s okay to FEEL YOUR FEELINGS! says School Counselor. I don’t know what feelings to feel, but I wish I could ride the Tilt-a-Whirl without public humiliation.

Oscar doesn’t know how to cook chicken nuggets in the oven without burning them, and he lets our laundry get backed up until it’s a stinky mountain in front of the machine. I never tell anyone about that junk because he lets me hang up pictures with thumbtacks in his apartment. I don’t think I’m supposed to do that since Oscar rents, but he’s never said I shouldn’t. 

Cold swigs of liquid roll across my tongue and trickle down my insides. It doesn’t happen right away, but eventually the sickness starts washing away. 

Oscar checks his phone; I kick my legs.

“You’re not green anymore,” he says.

“I never want to eat funnel cake again,” I say.

“Just not right before the Tilt-a-Whirl. It was a hard-won lesson.” His mouth crooks into a smile, and I smile a little back.

But I will never eat funnel cake again. I don’t care what he says.

I’m glad when he stands. “Come on. Let’s head back to the car. I think we’ve shown the carnival what we’re made of.” (Vomit. I showed the carnival I was made of vomit.) 

We weave through the crowded rides area before marching down a row of colorful booths. Pop a balloon and win a prize. I don’t ask to play even though the prizes are plush bunnies and smiling sunshines. I don’t really like them. Not much.

Besides, $1 per balloon dart. The Ferris wheel was eight, EIGHT, bucks a person, and Oscar’s throat did a bobbing thing when he pulled out his credit card.

I’m too old for toys. 

When Oscar suddenly halts, I do too. He stands on one foot and looks at the bottom of his shoe. “Ah man. I stepped in gum.” 

There’s a black-pink wad stuck to the shoe, and he gently kicks his foot against the ground, trying to scrape it off. I fold my arms and wait. “I use the curb to get mud off my shoes sometimes. Maybe you could–”

I’m cut off when a sing-songy voice behind us says, “Oscar!” 

He and I swing around.

Against the carnival backdrop, a woman, a man, and two teenage girls float toward us. (I mean, I guess they’re plain old walking but–they could be floating. They’re steps are so smooth! I wonder if they’re being carried by an invisible cloud.)

“Oscar, I thought that was you!” The woman beams. I don’t think he’s fully remembered who she is yet when she sweeps in to give him a hug.

She passes close by me with her Mom Smell: laundry soap and hairspray.

The man smiles, at least two layers of dimples carved under a thin silver beard. The teenage girls wear pretty sweaters and have ripped jeans that I think are meant to look cool. The older one watches Oscar like he’s a cookie, and it’s after-school snack time.

They’re hard to dislike and impossible to like. I bet the dad goes to all the kids’ games and recitals. I bet the mom makes them all wear perfect outfits for Christmas photos.

Oscar is nice. He always is. “Hey! How great bumping into you guys…”

The man says, “Just the other day, I was asking Lillian about your dad. How’s he doing?”

“Mm. He’s okay. We finally got him a private room.”

The woman pouts. “Oh no. Bad roommate?” 

“Er, I think Dad was the bad roommate. He was convinced the other guy was stealing from him and watching him sleep. The nurses got tired of the arguing.”

 The man itches the back of his head. “It’s good you got that sorted out.”

“Yeah.”

Here it comes: the squirmy pause. Oscar and I are used to it, but I bet these people aren’t. 

“And this”–the woman looks at me like I’m a critter she’s just met in the forest–“must be Evie.”

“That’s right. Evie, you remember the Wymans? They used to live next door to Granddad?”

I don’t. I lift a shoulder.

The woman tilts her chin. “I heard a little rumor that you’re living with your uncle,” she says.

She waits, and I don’t think she asked me a question, but she looks like she wants an answer because she’s just smiling and smiling. So I say, “Yep.”

“You’re very lucky to have him to take care of you.”

Here we go. 

People love smooshing this point into me. I am lucky but also…what could I do if I was unlucky? What could Oscar do?

The man chuckles all Santa-like and claps Oscar’s shoulder. “Everyone must think you’re her cool big brother!” He grins like we’re all in on the same secret. Like it’s funny.

Oscar’s mouth goes tight for a second, like he’s annoyed, but I don’t think anyone else notices. Then he and I trade tiny smiles, and I know him well enough to know he’s not annoyed with me, whatever it is he’s thinking.

People usually think he’s my brother or cousin. My grandparents had wanted more kids after my mom was born, but it didn’t happen. Then, one day when my mom was fifteen-years-old, Oscar was born.

Twenty-one years-ish later, here he and I stand.

It sounds like a lot of happy events, but there are some sad ones pretzeled in there, and I guess they’re the reason I sometimes feel like there’s a little storm cloud rolling across my heart.

People always make a big deal over Oscar. “He’s so mature!” “What a standup kid!” “He’s so smart, so gifted…”

I wonder if that’s what this man and woman are thinking. Then I run through the other usual thoughts in these situations: how I hope they don’t ask about my dad or why he’s still in California and hasn’t come to get me. I’m more than halfway through elementary school–I deserve a little privacy.

“How old are you, kiddo?” the man asks me.

“Nine and a half.”

The woman looks at Oscar. “Have you finished school yet? I thought you were pre-med. Is that still happening?”

Oscar’s eyes flick sideways–almost to me but not quite. “Ah.” He stuffs hands in his pockets. “Things are moving along but…there are new plans.” 

I’m not stupid. I know he wanted to go to medical school. He’s some kind of nerdy science genius.

“You can take a few years off and then go back,” the man says, still jolly.

“Yeah.”

“Lots of people take time to regroup before getting advanced degrees.” 

“For sure.”

Oscar wants to stop talking. Inside, he’s so fried that his smile is about to ooze smoke. 

He is finishing college. He is. He graduates in December. He doesn’t talk about medical school or anything that comes next, but then, I don’t know why he’d tell me about that stuff. Everyone says it’s “for the grownups to worry about.”

“I hate to say it but…” He gives a head shake. “We should get going. The Tilt-a-Whirl kicked my butt.” He puts a hand to his stomach.

He doesn’t wink at me or anything obvious but–

It’s nice when he doesn’t tell them I barfed.

We go home, and there’s a new movie on the kids app he installed a couple of months ago. Of course, I’m way too old for cartoons, which makes me sad, but Oscar turns it on anyway. I pretend like I don’t care, but then the show starts, and I guess it’s interesting enough, so I snuggle into the couch.

“It’s Saturday night,” he says. “Movie night.” He says I should go to bed by eight-thirty on school nights, and it must be annoying being Responsible. 

I make it a little ways into the movie, to the part where the girl has lost her pony and decides to set off into the mountains. I don’t know how it happens, but my eyes drift shut and a little while later, Oscar whispers, “Yo, Evie… Wake up… Hey, kid. Go brush your teeth and get to bed.”

The movie credits play. I guess I missed it, which feels like a bigger loss than it should. I’ll never know if the girl found her pony.

Anyway, I’m tired, so I brush my teeth in about four seconds and then shuffle off to bed. Sometimes we don’t get answers to all of our questions.

When I wake up the next morning, I smell food, and I don’t know if or when Oscar slept, but he’s awake, sitting on the green bench in the living room and tying his shoes into messy bows. “Oatmeal’s in the microwave,” he says. He’s got a job selling phones in a tiny store. He wears a robin’s egg-blue shirt with his name tag on it.

“I forgot you have work today.” This is a sad and terrible thing. I like that he’s around more during the weekends.

“Just from ten to two. You’re gonna go over to Ms. Laurie’s for a few hours.”

Ms. Laurie lives across the hall and smells like onions. She has two cute dogs and lets me eat peppermints from her big candy dish. Sometimes she’ll play checkers. I still don’t know if Oscar has to pay her to stay with me or if she just likes me well enough.

“You can zap the oatmeal for thirty seconds if it’s cold.”

“Where are you going now?” I ask. It’s not even eight–too early for him to leave for work.

“Out to the car for a few minutes. I gotta replace the wiper blades. It won’t take long.”

“Oh. Okay.”

When the door clicks shut behind him, a lonely feeling spreads. I march to the microwave to heat up breakfast, but I’m actually thinking of carnival lights and the Tilt-a-Whirl, of the happy Wyman family and why you sometimes can’t see the Big and Little Dippers.

That mom at the carnival had looked at Oscar and said you were pre-med. Is that still happening? And I just wanted him to say YESSSSSS (if it’s what he really wants) and not have anyone think about how I need glasses, or that my dad’s not returning texts and calls, or how Teacher says I’m “bright but very, painfully shy” (Note: It’s painful for her, but I’m fine with it.).

I want Oscar to be happy, and I want people not to ask questions like, “Are you okay?” without even knowing what that would mean–to be okay.

I forget my oatmeal and suddenly swivel back to my room. It’s the second bedroom, the one where Oscar’s old roommate used to live. I have my purple baby blanket on the bed, and that doesn’t even embarrass me. Not at all. I think about Mom wrapping me in it and being so happy to hold me.

I march to the closet where I pull back the folding doors. There’s a box I stashed under a basket of socks not too long ago.

It wouldn’t look like much to anyone else. I guess that’s how you know something is special. When you touch a boring-looking object and feel ghosts shiver in your hand. 

Inside, there are a couple of notes Mom snuck into my lunchbox; there’s a plastic beaded necklace I got on Halloween in first grade, a star card from my preschool teacher, and a certificate I got at the end of dance camp. I shove them aside and lift up the tiny porcelain piggy bank with the words “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” painted in flowery red letters across one side.

It was Mom’s. One of her favorite childhood objects. She bought it when she was a teenager, on a school trip before Grams died. I run my fingers over the cool ceramic, and the pig smiles at me.

I miss her so much. When I was little, I’d fall down at the playground, and my bruise would eventually get better. A skinned knee would heal.

It’s a lot, realizing some cuts and scrapes don’t get better. They change, and you find ways for the changes to be nice, but they don’t get rid of the hurt. You keep the hurt because it’s part of you, too, and all of you is important. Everything you’ve got and everything you’ve lost.

What I keep thinking about is how Oscar wanted to go to medical school. How he did everything right, and I did nothing wrong, and here we are. (I’m FEELING MY FEELINGS, Counselor.)

When things change next time, I want them to be good changes.

I cross my legs and hunch over the piggy bank, picking and pulling at the little plastic circle on the bottom. 

And–man. They made good piggy banks in Mom’s day. I can’t get it open. I spend a while there, picking and clawing and trying but–nothing. Finally, there’s nothing else to do. I stand and sigh. I lean against the closet door frame and look down at This Little Piggy who left his heart in San Francisco.

He triple-dog dares me.

My toes curl into the carpet as I look around. I should probably be quiet. Oscar will be back any second, and he’ll try stopping me, but he shouldn’t. I know what I want to do. 

With This Little Piggy tucked in my arms, I walk to the sliding glass doors and slip out onto the patio.

We’re on the first floor. Oscar has one aloe vera plant outside, and it’s dying, but I bet I could bring it back with a little water.

I lift my hands high and throw the piggy hard onto the concrete.

Shards fly at my feet, and the shattering sound is a burst of ear glitter. Amid the broken bits of glass, a few coins flicker; green bills flutter. I collect the money and take it into the living room.

Ninety-four dollars and seventy cents: that’s a lot. It’s all I have.

I walk down the hall again, but this time turn into Oscar’s bedroom. I don’t usually go in here. He’s never said I shouldn’t, but it’s his space, and I figure he doesn’t have much of that anymore. 

He hasn’t made his bed. The navy comforter’s in a heap on the top sheet and mattress, and it’s a little messy, but a window’s cracked and the fresh air smells nice.

I walk up to his dresser and plonk down the bills and coins I collected from my bank. I don’t know if Oscar will want to use them for medical school. Maybe not. He’ll give the money back to me, I’ll grumble and cross my arms. I might hide some of the bills around the apartment and say, “Fine. Let’s save it for Disneyland.”

It’s just, they’re are only a few ways I can say it. We’re not the Big Dipper or Little Dipper, Oscar and me–

But we’re points of light.