"Star people are rare. You'll be lucky to meet another."
"Star people?" I said. "You're losing me here."
He chuckled. "That's okay. I lose myself. It's just my odd-ball way of accounting for someone I don't really understand any more than you do."
"So where do stars come in"
He pointed with the pipe stem. "The perfect question. In the beginning, that's where they come in. They supplied the ingredients that became us, the primordial elements. We are star stuff, yes?" He held up the skull of Barney, the Paleocene rodent. "Barney too, hm?"
"And I think every once in a while someone comes along who is a little more primitive than the rest of us, a little closer to our beginnings, a little more in touch with the stuff we're made of" (32. 17-23).
Here it is, folks, the key to understanding Stargirl, and maybe even ourselves. You see, humans are made of stardust. Nope, we're not crazy. It's totally the truth. Most of us go blithely through life having forgotten this awesome fact. But Stargirl hasn't forgotten. And this means she is more deeply connected to our past as stars than any of the other characters of the novel. She's Stargirl because she remembers: we are all made of stars.
The skin on his arms had become dry and flaky, as if his body were preparing itself to rejoin the earth… He asked for the bag. I was shocked at what he took from it.
"Barney!"
The skull of the Paleocene rodent.
"This is home," he said (33.13-17).
In this scene a much older Archie is burying the skull of Barney in a rock. He tells the skull that he is home, because he is back in the earth, where he came from. So instead of leaving earth for heaven when we die, Stargirl suggests we return to it.
"You'll know her more by your questions than by her answers. Keep looking at her long enough. One day you might see someone you know" (7.50).
Like a true sage, Archie is full of cryptic and confusing advice. Of course these instructions eventually become totally clear. So why not be clear in the first place? Well, like most good teachers, Archie knows that the way to help people learn is to help them understand that questions can be even more important than answers. Instead of wanting answers all the time, Leo should probably spend some time thinking about why he's asking these questions in the first place.