Stargirl Monologue

Since a child, Stargirl had always seemed a bit… off. Her parents seemed to adore her weirdness, they even seemed to encourage it at times. To demonstrate, her parents called her Pocketmouse. They used it to so much that even she started referring to herself as Pocketmouse instead of Susan. But did her parents ever do anything about it? Of course not. She kept the nickname, until she changed it to Mudpie. Then Hullygully. And then Stargirl. But at the time, I knew her as Mudpie.
She was my cousin from my mother’s side. My mother loved to spend time with the family so needless to say, I got to spend a lot of time with her. However, much to my mom’s dismay, her family moved away seventeen years ago. Yet I still have many memories with her, some

strange and others great. As bad as some were, I have to admit they were all equally entertaining. Therefore I decided to share my tales in this journal, as I may forgot them in the near future.
The first story was in the summer, when I was seven years old. One day, my mother had the brilliant idea of a family campout. My dad’s family lived somewhere else whereas our closest relatives were my mom’s. Therefore we spent the afternoon planning and calling everyone.
Three days later, our family went to pick up my Aunt, Uncle, and Mudpie. Our van had three rows of seats, and I was to sit in the last row with Mudpie and a cooler. When we finally arrived to their house, I quickly crawled to the car window, raised my head, and peered out. A small, furry face with beady eyes stared back at me. I lost my grip on the window and went flying backwards, while screaming something about a monster. Two seconds later the van door flies open, revealing Mudpie and a white rat. Mudpie was wearing a pilgrim dress, a large, black varsity jacket, neon green knee-high socks, and a variety of multi-colored bracelets on her left hand. I had gotten used to her strange sense of style and paid no attention to that but instead to the poor furry thing held in her arms. She climbed into the car and sat next to me. Mudpie waved at me and held out the rat. “Mom said I could bring him! Do you want to touch him! He can clean your ears!” I declined and scooched away from her.
We were ten minutes in the trip before I heard Mudpie complaining.

She started going off about how she wanted to go outside and play. Mind you, there was a shower of rain going on. My uncle told her to be quiet. Five minutes passed and she started to whine again. Her dad was about to tell her something but he closed his mouth and handed her the newspaper he was reading. Mudpie yanked the newspaper out of his hand. She scanned the pages of the newspaper, looking for something. She seemed to have found it; I could tell by the way her smile grew wide.
My curiosity got the best of me so I leaned over to see what she was reading. The gears in my seven year old head stopped turning once I saw that she was reading the fillers. “Seriously? That’s boring. There’s nothing to be excited about.“ In case you do not know, fillers are things that are not good enough for an entire story. For example, someone’s dog is missing, if so and so is having a flea market, etc.
She ignored me and shoved the newspaper in my face, which slapped my right cheek in the process. “Look.” Her tiny finger pointed to a paragraph at the bottom of the page. I recall it talking about a lady who had died due to health complications. I felt bad as she was a close family friend to all of

us.
“That’s sad.” I commented. “What’s sad?” my mom chimed in, turning her head around. “Irene died…” I replied. She sighed and said “I know, I- “ She was interrupted by a large honking sound. “ We’re here!” My Uncle shouted and swerved into the parking lot. Mudpie and I walked out along with the others.
We headed down a trail where the sites were located. I was absolutely starving and Mudpie and I began asking my dad when we were going to eat. My dad, who seemed perfectly happy and sane before we mentioned it, faintly mumbled “ When your other cousin arrives. “ We grumbled and trudged along the trail behind him.
While we were walking we passed by a bulletin board. It was nothing special, just a normal board littered with your typical job offers, flyers, and other miscellaneous papers. Mudpie thought otherwise, and stayed behind. “ Come on, Mudpie! “ I urged, tugging on her wrist; she would not budge. Defeated, I layed down on the wood bench besides the board. “ What’s so special about it? “ I asked her in an accusing tone while looking up to her face. She cocked her head “ What do you mean? “ My eyes slanted “Well, I mean, it’s just a billboard. People don’t actually read them because it’s weird and boring. You’re weird.” Clearly, my insults were not up to par when I was seven years old. To my surprise, she smiled. “ It isn’t boring. You can tell a lot about a person by what they put on the board. Here, look at this. This lady looking for someone who can bake a cake for her. In her description, she says that she needs it to serve at least 35 people. It has to be pink, three layers, and it must come with sixteen candles. From this I can tell that the lady needs a birthday cake for her daughter’s sweet sixteen.”
I had no words. She took that as a victory and took off in a sprint towards her parents, bracelets moving and slapping against her arm. Coughing up the dust she left behind, I ran behind her.
By the time we caught up to our parents, they were finishing setting up the tent. The campsite was beautiful; it had two picnic tables, some logs, lush grass, and a rushing stream of clear water running through the left side.
Afterwards we lumbered over to the picnic table to get rest. I spent the time talking to my other family members until I noticed that Mudpie was missing. My head wildly turned side to side.
Not a second later, I saw her walking up to our table with a big cardboard box. Suddenly, everyone’s attention was on her. She opened the box to reveal a grand assortment of bags filled with cookies, each with a ribbon and a letter tied to them. We were all hovering over the box now, inhaling the sweet, warm, and buttery scent of the cookies within. Just as we were about to take them, we heard a rumbling sound behind us. Our heads whipped around, wondering who would dare interrupt our cookie feast.
A golf cart, with camouflage printing, and a large united states flag wrapped on the handles, was going towards us. As it was getting closer, we could hear the faint sound of country music blaring on two large speakers set in the back. I could make out two large, bulbous shapes within the golf cart.
“Sammy!” My mom cried. Meet Samantha, my aunt, and Pete, my cousin. I hardly saw the brown-haired pair however the few times that I did, I could not talk to them as they were always stuffing their face with some sort of sugar conjunction. Mudpie, being naive as always, asked why they were wearing multiple yoga balls under their clothes.
With much difficulty, they finally got out of the golf cart and shuffled to us. Samantha, panting and wiping her forehead, said “ What a workout! “. Like a predator spotting some prey, she saw the cookies. Mudpie’s mom tried to go in for a hug but Samantha dodged it and desperately wobbled over to the box with the gracefulness of a walrus. Next she grabbed a handful of the bags and plopped down to the picnic bench, taking up all the seats. “I sure deserve this.” she said, sighing. She vacuumed up the cookies with her mouth. Likewise, Pete did the same, taking even more bags than his mom. When we arrived at the picnic table, the only thing left in the box was, well, the box.
“Um, excuse me-“ Mudpie tapped on Pete’s shoulder. “These were supposed to be for everyone.” He ate his last cookie and lowered his several chins to look down to her. “These were just left here. If you wanted them so badly then you should have ate them first.”
Mudpie drew in her eyebrows yet said nothing, she wordlessly turned around and stomped over to the tent, shoulders high, with the newspaper shaking in her trembling hand.
I thought nothing of it and I asked if we could eat now. Besides, if Mudpie was that hungry, she would have stayed… right? We each brought food for our own family, so we each had a cooler. Mudpie and my parents went to another table to eat.
However, that was not the case with my aunt. Apparently, she told me before I walked off, she brought two large suitcases with food. When I asked her where they were, she said that they did not fit the golf cart and that she left them at the entrance of the park.
She did not want to go get them herself, oh no, she wanted Mudpie and I to go get them because we were young and therefore had the most strength. I tried to talk myself out of the situation but it was no use, I was doomed to carry 30 pounds plus of pure junk-food. I slowly went to Mudpie’s tent and told her the situation. No emotion was shown in her face while I told her everything. When I was done, Mudpie leaned over and whispered “I have a plan.”
We sprinted to the entrance and there were the two suitcases. We each carried one and headed back.
“You know how Irene died? I finished reading the filler and it said she was obese and over time stuff blocked her arteries. I’m scared. I feel like our cousin and aunt could die like her. They look obese too.” Mudpie said with a grimace, “ We need to do something about it. “ I gave her a curious look and she continued. “What we are going to do is dump out their food so they stop getting fat!” Mudpie meant no malintent, in her perspective she was only trying to help them.
The plan was in action; we took a different route and went behind the tents, and all the way over to the river. We glanced over behind our backs to see Pete and Samantha talking and huffing with their arms crossed, probably complaining about us.
Once we got to the river, we opened the luggage and started to toss the food out like a twisted version of the boston tea party.