Listening for Lucca (13 page)

“Allow me to assist you.” Sam bowed and proceeded to the produce section. He paraded about, making a show of selecting vegetables, and then returned to the counter. “Our leafiest lettuce.” He held it up and set it gently into a paper bag. “Our two most beautiful, beefy beefsteak tomatoes.” He nestled them in next to the lettuce. Then he held up two onions and extended them
in turn as he announced, “one white or one yellow onion.”

“Uh, yellow, please.”

He rang everything up, gave me change, rolled down the top of the paper bag, handed it to me, and said, “See you tomorrow.”

That night as the sun set, I sat in the window, holding the pen. Still afraid to put it to paper. What would I learn about Sarah? What would I learn about
us
?

I set the pen back down and went outside. I found Dad on the front porch and sat next to him on the floorboards.

“We’ll have to get some furniture,” he said. “So it’s nicer to sit out here.”

“It’s nice out here now, Dad. ’Cept for the mosquitoes.” I slapped at one on my elbow and left a bloody smear; she’d gotten me.

The arc of the moon appeared over the water, lighting a path. While we sat there, incredibly, the full moon rose so fast you could see it happen.

“Look at that!” Dad said. “Wish Lucca could see. Not that I’d wake him up. Not tonight, anyway.”

I pictured Lucca standing on the porch, saying, “Look at the moon!” I filled in his voice with an imaginary one, one that was a combination of the baby voice we used to
hear a long time ago and the toddler voice he uses to yell his happy sounds when he plays.

I took a deep breath. “Dad? Would you do anything for Lucca? Even if it was something hard and maybe scary?”

“What did you have in mind?”

What
did
I have in mind? I wasn’t even sure. But I’d been afraid to keep going, to find out. What if there were no answers here, but only questions?

It was Mom who met Sam at the door at four-thirty the next day, not me. I waved to him from the stairs. He smiled and waved back, while listening to Mom tell him some of the things that Lucca liked to do.

It was weird: Sam was in the house, but not to see me.

I headed back up to my room, where I stared at Sarah’s pen.

This whole thing was too creepy.

But something must have happened between what I’d seen and the way the family ended up, because Sarah had talked just fine so far. What was it? What had happened?

I picked up the pen. I could do this. I could find out what happened. I got my notebook, too, sat in the window seat, and tried to quiet my own thoughts, to open my mind.

But as I moved the pen across the paper, I got nothing but loopy scribbles.

Sam stayed for dinner.

“You guys have fun?” Mom asked him and Lucca when they came to the table.

Lucca nodded. Mom beamed at both of them. I made a face into my plate but no one noticed.

“Good,” Dad said. “Rice, Sam?”

“Thanks.” Sam took the spoon. The rice fell all over his plate instead of in a neat, round heap like I like to make. I looked back at my own plate when he noticed me looking at his.

“How do you like your school, Sam?” Dad asked.

“Fine. I mean, I’m glad it’s summer, but …”

“No, I get it.” Dad laughed. “I’m a teacher. I like the summer, too. Do you feel like you get a lot of homework?”

“Some days are really bad but most days are okay. It depends on your tracking.”

“We don’t have Siena’s tracking yet,” Dad said. “Her transcripts from her old school haven’t come yet.”

Mom made a “tut” of annoyance. Lucca echoed it over and over between eating individual grains of rice with his fingers. There was a general pause at the table while we listened.

“Well, anyway, Siena hasn’t gone to see the place yet,” Dad said.

“I could show you around,” Sam said to me.

“Okay.”

“That would be nice,” Dad said.

“I thought you weren’t interested,” Mom teased me, with raised eyebrows.

“Well, maybe I
should
go see it.”

Mom caught Dad’s eye. “I guess school’s more appealing with the right company.”

I ignored that. So did Dad.

“I can drop you off there tomorrow on my way to work,” Dad said. He looked at Mom.

“I’ll pick you up,” she said.

I hoped she’d be able to resist going inside herself.

The school was a low, sprawling brick building, only two stories in the tallest sections. Fields and parking lots surrounded it. It was the opposite of any school I’d ever seen in New York, where the closest thing to fields were paved recess yards and several floors were stacked on top of one another.

“Three towns use this middle school,” Sam told me. “About eight hundred kids.”

He led the way through the front door. No security.
That
was different.

There was a man walking in the hall. He had a little stubble on his face and he looked kind and happy.

“Hi, Mr. Walker,” Sam said. “Siena, this is our principal. This is Siena.”

“Hello, Siena, welcome.” Mr. Walker shook my hand. “Sam, I’d have thought you’d stay miles away from here all summer.”

“I wanted to show Siena around. She’s starting in the fall. She just moved here.”

Mr. Walker turned back to me. “Lovely to meet you. Take a look around. Glad you wanted to come by. I’d show you myself, but I’m late for a meeting. Sam will do a good job.”

We headed on our way. Every few rooms there were teachers having meetings in small groups. When Dad’s soccer camp was over, he’d go to plenty of those meetings at his new high school. One hallway had rooms with a couple of classes in session. “Summer school,” Sam whispered. I tried to get a look at the kids as we passed by.

Two kids never would have been able to show up and walk around my old school because they felt like it. Just that tiny thing made me feel good. It felt like kids were actually welcome at school, invited. The classrooms were bright and airy and some on the ground floor had extra doors leading right outside.

But mostly, I was enjoying the sound of Sam’s voice, and the fact that all his attention was focused on me.

Mom refrained from coming inside when she picked us up. She dropped Sam at Nielly’s and I went to the library.

I brought a new book home for Lucca, but at bedtime he handed it to Dad. He didn’t want me to read to him. He was still mad at me.

I went to my room again and sat looking at the pen. What had been going wrong? Was it just me being afraid? Was I not being open enough to see her story?

Don’t be afraid, Siena
, I told myself.
Knowing can’t hurt you
.

I got the pen and notebook and sat in the window seat.

I just had to let go. Of Lucca being mad. Of thoughts of Sam and school. Of everything. To just be open to Sarah.

I put the pen to the page, closed my eyes, and drifted.

“Get up.”

The next morning: I stood over Lucca, who was still sleepy in his bed.

I was going to make things up to him. I was.

“Get up, little brother.” I nudged him. He made a show of yawning and stretching. Then he noticed I was in my bathing suit and shorts. He hurried to get out of bed and get ready, too.

“We’re not going to our part of the beach,” I explained. “We’re going to go to the big beach. Where all the other kids are. It’s a day trip!”

Mom had not been especially pleased about my idea of a day trip without her. But I convinced her that it would be even
safer
for us to play where there were lifeguards and other families. And that compared to a few months ago, when she’d put me in charge of Lucca all the way to Florida, this was no big deal. “Keep your phone on,” she said, finally giving permission.

I packed us a picnic, a beach blanket and towels, and sand toys. I covered us in sunscreen, and then we walked out to the trolley.

It still runs, the summer trolley I saw in Sarah’s memory. The nearest stop was a couple of streets away.

I was a little worried that when I saw the trolley, I wouldn’t be looking at something that was physically in front of me, but would instead be seeing a flicker of the past. What if I had us board a trolley from years ago? What would happen to us then? But Lucca, who, as far as I can tell, doesn’t have my problem, gave a whoop and a holler when it was coming, and I let out my breath with relief to see it full of passengers with beach chairs and flip-flops and plastic beach buckets. Phew.