I bounced over to baby Cecilia and gave her a gigantic smooch on the top of her head.

When Talia came over, I would be ready.

Watch out, Smithsonian, I thought. Libby has a brand-new plan.

What Brains Are Made Of

When Talia came over the next day for a sleepover, I told her my new idea.

She said it was audacious.

(And in case you were wondering, she is not scared of needles.)

I didn’t know if the Smithsonian people would think this project was as grand as getting someone in a textbook, but the idea was weird, and as fun to make as Mom’s cotton-candy pie. I had to at least try.

The plan was going to take all weekend. It was All Hands on Deck.

When you have a new audacious plan, you have to take it step by step:

1. Mom called Principal Lopez to make sure this plan would be okay. She said it would.
2. Dad went to the store and bought three long black poster boards. Put together, they were twelve feet long.
3. Dad also went to the printer’s and got nice copies of lots and lots of small, grape-size brain PET scans Talia and I had found on the internet. PET scans are a special type of picture that doctors take of someone’s brain, and they glow a plethora of neon colors—blue, green, yellow, orange. When we were laying out the pictures and the posters and everything, Dad started getting excited, talking to me about layout and composition.
4. And when baby Cecilia was sleeping, Nonny helped us cut out all those brains.

It took the entire weekend, but by Monday, I had my project ready.

And it was quite the project.

Imagine this: You’re walking down the hallway of your school, and you see a long, long black poster hanging on the wall by the front office. At first the poster looks like the night sky, with perfectly measured constellations. You see the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt and Capricorn.

When you step closer, you see that what you thought were bright neon stars aren’t really stars at all.

They’re brains.

Brains glowing in a black night sky.

Now that’s something you won’t forget.

And next to the brain-sky poster is another poster, a poster of a watchful, determined woman in black-and-white. You learn that her name was Cecilia Payne, and that she discovered what stars are made of. You learn about her job, about the people who helped her and the people who didn’t. You learn that stars are made of a bunch of whizzing chemicals, and that thoughts are made of that, too. Plus something neon colored and maybe a little bit magic.

Magic like black holes and dreams and heartbeats.

Magic like teachers and chromosomes and friends.

You might look at the constellations and think, What are MY stars made of?

One Month Later

From: Sabaa Bukhari <[email protected]>

To: Libby Monroe <[email protected]>

Subject: Smithsonian Women in STEM Contest Notification

Dear Libby Monroe,