JAN 22, 1986

Dear Bridget,

T-minus six days until Challenger launch.

I went to my first astronomy class in the planetarium today.

It is the best thing ever, Bridget. Everything Joanie said it would be. NASA Bear liked it too. He did not want to leave. The only bad part was that you were not there with us.

While we were walking upstairs, the girl who is helping me told me where my name comes from. Not the story you told me, about why you picked it and why it was perfect.

She told me about supernovas.

A supernova is the name for a star when it explodes. That’s me. An exploding star.

After the planetarium, I could not think about school anymore. All I could think about was winning a contest and going to space and seeing a supernova up close and listening to “Space Oddity” and laughing with the stars.

Can I tell you a secret, Bridget? Not a big secret, like the Fox’s secret. Just a little secret.

Here it is:

Even though Billy and Francine let me watch TV after school, I miss when we had to sneak it. I miss when we had to stay up late being real quiet so we would not get caught out of bed. I miss when we had to tiptoe down to the living room in our pajamas to watch Christa McAuliffe on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, with the volume turned down almost all the way.

“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship,” Christa McAuliffe told Johnny Carson, “don’t ask what seat. Just get on.”

“No duh!” you said. Remember? You said “No duh!” and you laughed so I laughed and we both laughed so loud it woke up our foster mother and she sent us back to bed but even after she yelled at us I couldn’t stop laughing. NASA Bear was laughing too.

I miss that time for just us. I miss having a sister secret.

Here is another secret, Bridget:

I want to remember your eyes, but I can’t.

I can’t remember what color they were or the way they were shaped.

I can’t remember whether you had sleepy swollen bags under them the way Joanie complains she does. I can’t remember if you had laugh lines on the sides like Billy says Francine does. I can’t remember if they were the same as my eyes or different.

I can’t remember you smiling at me with your eyes, or winking, or blinking, or crossing them in a silly way, or rolling them up to the ceiling.

At school, Miss Chambers makes me look at her eyes. I hate it. I hate doing it, but I know what her eyes look like because I have to look over and over and over again when she says my name. Her eyes are plain boring brown and she wears Crayola Thistle eye shadow over the lids all the way to her eyebrows, which is weird. I try not to look too long.

Tonight at dinner, I looked at Billy and Francine’s eyes. Not while they were looking at me. Never while they were looking. But when they looked away, when they looked at Joanie or at their food, I checked their eyes. I like their eyes more than Miss Chambers’s eyes.

Francine’s are Crayola Midnight Blue like the deepest part of the ocean when the sun’s going down, way out where you could swim and not see your feet beneath you but you would know they are there, helping you tread water above the coral and rocks and sand and sharks and fishes and whales, not murky like pond water or clear like bath water. Dark, true, Midnight Blue.

Billy’s eyes are Crayola Raw Umber, the brown of my favorite kind of mud, the kind that squishes squishily between your fingers when you play in the woods after the rain, the kind of mud that feels refrigerator cool even on the hottest summer day, completely pure without twigs or leaves or worms. Perfect, deep, Raw Umber.

Billy and Francine smile with their eyes. They wink and blink but do not cross them at me like Alex when he’s being silly or roll them up like Mallory when she’s in trouble. Billy always wears glasses. Francine never wears Thistle eye shadow.

They do not make me look at them, but I looked today. I looked at everyone’s eyes today.

Alex’s eyes are Crayola Cornflower Blue, a baby blanket blue.

Mallory’s eyes are Crayola Forest Green, a Christmas tree green.

Joanie’s eyes are Crayola Raw Sienna, a fluffy bunny brown.

Francine’s are Midnight Blue and Billy’s are Raw Umber.

I even looked in the mirror, Bridget. I looked for a long time.

My eyes are Crayola Sepia, a Lincoln Log brown.

When I could not remember yours, I opened the bedside table where I keep The Little Prince. Under the book is your photographs folder. There are five pictures of you in there. One of you by yourself on a beach, one of you and that boy from the movies, one of you with your high school friends, and two of us together. In the beach picture and the one with your friends, you are wearing sunglasses. In the picture with the boy, you are both wearing baseball caps. And in one of the pictures of us together, the one from last year, your eyes are closed because you’re laughing.

The fifth and final photograph is from Mama’s house. You are sitting on a couch with me in your arms. I am a baby wrapped in a blue blanket. You have your curly hair in pigtails and you are smiling with missing teeth. I don’t know who took the picture but I know it wasn’t Mama because she is kneeling on the floor in front of the couch with her back to the camera, holding her hand up under my body like she thinks you might drop me, which is silly because you would never let me go.

I love this picture, but it is old and yellowed and faded like you left it in the sun too long, and it did not answer my question at all.

What color are your eyes, Bridget?

Do we have the same eyes?

I need to see. I need to know.

I miss you.

Love,

Your Super Nova