Prologue: Porcupine Necktie

Leo begins his story by telling about his uncle’s necktie, the one with the porcupine painted on it. Leo loved that tie and wanted one of his own, but he could not find one. When he was twelve, he and his family moved from Pennsylvania to Arizona. Uncle Phil came to say good-bye, wearing his porcupine tie. In a dramatic gesture, his uncle “whipped off the tie” and promptly put it around Leo’s neck as a going-away present.

Leo loved that tie so much he decided to start a porcupine tie collection. After two years in Arizona, his collection consisted of...one tie. Mica, Arizona, was apparently not a popular place for porcupine ties. On Leo’s fourteenth birthday, Leo’s mother submitted her son’s name and a brief biography to the local paper. Leo read that his hobby was collecting porcupine ties.

After school a few days later, Leo found a gift-wrapped package on his porch with a “Happy Birthday” gift tag on it. He opened it and discovered a porcupine necktie. He could find no name or other identifying marks on the gift to know from whom it came. It remained a mystery, and he had no idea then that “we were all being watched.”

Chapter 1

It is the first day of school after summer vacation. Leo Borlock is greeted by his best friend, Kevin, on their first day of eleventh grade with this question: “Did you see her?” Leo had heard nothing, but the rest of the school was buzzing with the news of a new tenth-grade student. Stargirl Caraway was her name, or at least it was the name she announced to everyone in homeroom that first morning of classes. Anyone who had not yet had the opportunity to meet the new girl certainly got to experience her at lunch.

Stargirl is dressed like a flower child from the sixties in a long, off-white dress with a flared skirt and ruffles at the neck and cuff. She has a large, canvas bag embellished with a giant, painted-on sunflower as well as a ukulele strapped across her back. Her hair is long, she wears no makeup, she has a dusting of freckles across her nose. Leo thinks her eyes are the “biggest he’s ever seen.”

Stargirl pulls a sandwich from her bag and starts eating, sitting alone at a table in a room where everyone else is crammed together. As the lunch period progresses, all eyes become fixed on the new girl as she blithely makes her way around the cafeteria. Suddenly the room is stunned into silence as Stargirl begins to strum her ukulele and serenade her classmates with the “Four-leaf Clover” song. Moving around the room, she finishes with a twirl and a flourish and marches out of the cafeteria, leaving everyone virtually speechless in disbelief.

Kevin and Leo host, produce, and direct an in-school TV show called Hot Seat. After seeing the mesmerizing effect of Stargirl’s performance, they are convinced she has to be the next guest on their show. They can already sense their future success, and they “slam hands” to seal the deal.