I shook my head. “Blah, blah, magic, blah, blah, love, blah blah, time travel. Boring.”

She laughed and pulled out her sketchbook.

“What are you working on?” I asked her. Blair was amazing at drawing. Better than she was at dance, even, but then—I hadn’t seen her in Coppélia yet.

“Fan art,” she said, showing me a picture of Padmé Amidala with a smirk on her face. “Don’t you ever just wish Anakin had stayed good, and they could have had their twins and lived happily ever after?”

“Um, no. Then we wouldn’t have Star Wars.” I flipped through her sketchbook. Pictures of Padmé, Katniss, Black Widow, Hermione and Ron, Aria from Pretty Little Liars, which Mom said I couldn’t watch but I sometimes did with Blair anyway. Some of real people—Misty Copeland, her idol. Mom, laughing. Aleksander, a scowl on his face. And then, over and over again, a character I didn’t recognize.

“Who is this?” I asked, pointing to her. She was a tall, thin girl, maybe Blair’s age, with a full, shimmery skirt and long curls.

“Oh,” said Blair, looking kind of embarrassed. “I made her up. It’s stupid.”

I kept flipping. “This is awesome,” I said, running my hands over the pictures. “What’s her name?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I can see her, but that’s all.”

She was in a spaceship, doing a pirouette on the moon, kissing a guy who looked kind of like Draco Malfoy.

Blair reached over and grabbed a handful of chips. They were sour cream and onion, our favorite. Was she already counting calories then, pinching her sides in her swimsuit? Had Anna Rexia been hiding under the dock and whispering up between the boards about trans fats? I don’t know.

“I love her,” I said. “She needs a name.”

“I think she’s a princess,” said Blair.

I nodded, stealing her pencil. I added some captions.

Princess Stardust flies to her home planet, Andor.

Princess Stardust and Antoine Moonbeard.

Princess Stardust dancing on the moon.

“Princess Stardust,” laughed Blair. “I like it.”

We made up an adventure for her, filling pages with sketches and words. She could go anywhere we wanted. We didn’t have to wait for Marvel or J. K. Rowling or the comic books to tell us what happened next. We dripped chip dust and Mountain Dew onto her sketchbook pages, but Blair didn’t care. She drew quickly and loved the stories I made up. We spent hours on the dock that day, getting so sunburned my mom had to go buy a real aloe plant for our backs.

From then on, Planet Pirates was our thing. Blair always started it, sketching out some comic squares of Princess Stardust, and I trailed closely behind, filling in the story. Jade might have floated away. But as always, Blair led, and I followed. She was my sister—I would have followed her anywhere.

15

AUGUST, PRESENT DAY

Twelve years old

It was the day before the eclipse, and you would have thought the president was coming to Moose Junction.