Lucy’s “Perfect” Summer (4 page)

Lucy didn’t answer, but she thought she knew. It would be like not being able to talk about God to anybody, just when God was starting to make sense to her. What if she couldn’t keep her Book of Lists where she talked to God?

She’d probably start throwing soccer balls at people.

“Okay, so, does she go through the beauty treatments or what?” Mora circled her hand for Inez to get on with the story. “It might be worth it if you came out looking like a model or something.”

Lucy definitely didn’t agree with that as Inez read about Esther’s beauty coach soaking her skin in oil of myrrh and her hair in cinnamon perfume. It sounded more like marinating a chicken than getting ready for some king she might not even like anyway.

Lucy was about to check out on this story and dream up some soccer strategies instead when Inez said,
“
Senor Mordecai, he knows that Senorita Esther, she is sick for her home. And so every day, he comes to the court to visit her.”

“Are you serious?” Mora said. “I wouldn’t be homesick. I would be totally loving it there!”

Lucy decided she would not be “loving it” at all. It sounded way too much like Aunt Karen coming in to do a makeover on her. She tucked her feet up under her and wished they could heat more water for tea and that the radio would come back on so she could at least hear Dad and know he was okay.

“All right,” Mora said, hands on skinny hips, “so does she get picked for queen or not?”

Inez closed the Bible and folded her hands neatly on top of it. “Next time,” she said.

“Hello! I’m dying here!” Mora said.

“You will not die, Mora,” Inez assured her.

Mora probably would have argued that, but a pounding on the back door lifted all three of them from their chairs and sent Marmalade skittering to try to squeeze behind the stove. With fear batting at her stomach, Lucy got to the door first and saw Mr. Auggy’s wet face smiling its small smile through the glass.

Inez had the towels ready before Lucy got the door open, but Mr. Auggy held onto the door frame like he was trying to keep from blowing away.

“Can’t stay!” he said. “I have a message from your dad.”

Lucy took a step forward, but Inez held her by the back of her T-shirt.

“He says to tell you he’s fine, but he’s stuck at the station. Can Inez stay with you?”

“
Sí, sí, sí
,” Inez said behind Lucy.

“Can you take me to my dad in your Jeep?” Lucy said.

Mr. Auggy’s small smile reappeared. “Even my Jeep won’t make it out here. I’m in my kayak.”

Lucy noticed for the first time that he was wearing a life jacket. That wasn’t something you saw too often in the desert. It was all way too scary.

“It’ll be all right, captain,” Mr. Auggy shouted over the wind. “You hold down the fort here, and your dad’ll be back as soon as he can.”

Why can’t you bring him home in your kayak?
Lucy wanted to say.
I need
my Dad.

But Mr. Auggy slogged off the side of the porch without hearing the exclamation points in her head.

3

Dear God: Why This Is the Longest Night Ever

1. Because Mora is talking in her sleep. Nonstop. Just like
when she’s awake, only she isn’t making any sense. Which isn’t really all that different from when she’s
awake.

2. Because there’s no place for my dad to sleep at the
radio station except on that lumpy couch that has
springs that poke you in the behind if you sit wrong.

3. Because —

“Ow!”

Lucy reached behind her and swatted at Lollipop with her flashlight. The kitty’s claws stuck to Lucy’s T-shirt, and she protested at being shaken off. Mora just kept muttering in her dreams.

Lolli keeps jumping on me, and Artemis Hamm is growling
under the bed, and Marmalade is pacing all around
looking for Dad. The only cat who’s quiet is Mudge. He’s
on top of the refrigerator.

Lucy shined her light on the Book of Lists again and chewed on the end of her pen. None of it would be so bad except for the fourth reason, and she didn’t want to write it down because then it would be real.

Du-uh. She was telling it to God, so it was real already.

4. Because I’m scared Dad will never come home like
Mom didn’t come home from Iraq. The radio station
might blow up like her hotel did — or it’ll sink into the
mud or something. Then I won’t have a mom OR a dad.

Lucy shivered and was about to let the tears come that she’d been holding back ever since Mr. Auggy was there, when a light flickered across her bedroom wall.

A J.J. light.

Lucy scrambled to the window and cupped her hands around her eyes. The rain had finally stopped, but the night was inky-black without the streetlights. That made it perfect for the big Maglite J.J. was swishing around into the darkness outside his room. Lucy dug her own flashlight out from under her mattress and flicked it on and then off and then on again. J.J. answered with a figure eight and seven circles. She didn’t know what that meant, but just having J.J. in his window was enough to make it better.

She was about to sink back to her bed when J.J. shined the light right into his own face so Lucy could see his mouth. He moved it slow and big like it was a piece of rubber. She was pretty sure it said, “Soccer tomorrow.”

Okay, so it was
definitely
better. She finally fell asleep hugging her flashlight and her Book of Lists and listening to Mora dream of beauty treatments.

Mora was still mumbling in her sleep when Lucy opened her eyes, but she knew at once that it was the tapping of pebbles on her window that had woken her up. She didn’t even have to look out to know that J.J. was hanging out at his front fence with a handful of stones and a half-grin.

But she got to her knees and peered through the window. She was correct, of course. He was standing on top of a pile of old tires stacked against the fence, jiggling pebbles in his hand.

‘I’ll be right out,’ she motioned to him.

She hopped out of bed and over Mora and into shorts and a t-shirt. Nobody stirred, not even a kitty or Inez. Still no sign of Dad.

The sun was shining, but the world did not look cheerful when Lucy met J.J. outside her gate. The streets were caked in mud and strewn with cottonwood limbs, and most of the lighter junk from J.J.’s front yard — rags and bicycle wheels and battered hubcaps — was hanging on his caved-in fence. A telephone company truck had already pulled up to a pole across the street, and Mr. Benitez, the grocery store owner, was stabbing his finger at the worker who climbed it.

“Look, we’ll get it done as fast as we can,” the man called down. “The storm took out all the lines in town.”

“I’ve got a business to run!” Mr. Benitez snapped at him.

“Join the club,” the man snapped back.

“Let’s get outta here,” J.J. grunted to Lucy under his breath.

“Yeah, seriously.” Mr. Benitez wasn’t all that nice when he was in a
good
mood. This probably wasn’t going to end well.

“I just have to go tell Inez where we’re going,” Lucy said. “I’ll be right back.”

If she couldn’t hear from Dad for a while, she’d better stay busy. Another hour in the house with Mora didn’t qualify as “busy.” It qualified as “nuts.” Besides, maybe she and J.J. could go to Dad themselves . . .

Lucy had a note composed in her head when she slipped back into the kitchen, but Inez was up, slicing into bread with a knife and into Lucy with her gaze. She didn’t even have any of the crusty sleep-things in her eyes that Lucy was still picking out of hers.

“It’s okay if I go check things out with J.J., right?” Lucy said.

“What things are these?” Inez bent her head over the loaf, but Lucy knew she was seeing right into her brain.

“The soccer field?” Lucy said.

“This is a question?” Inez said,

“The soccer field. We want to see what happened to it,”

“Only there.”

Lucy felt herself sag. “Maybe we’ll also go – “

“Maybe you will also come home after.”

Inez looked up, and her eyes got soft. “Senor Ted will come home,” she said.

How Inez knew she
was
planning to go out to the radio station
if
she found her bike, Lucy didn’t know. But somehow Inez did, and that was the end of it. With a glower at the top of Inez’s head as she went back to the bread, Lucy sighed her way out the back door. By the gate, J.J. was doing some glowering of his own, at his little sister Januarie who had joined him. But then, he was always glowering at her.

“I’m going with you,” Januarie announced. She had the kind of voice a Chihuahua would have if it could talk.

“No, you’re not,” J.J. said.

Januarie’s eyes narrowed in her round face, fringed in dark hair that wouldn’t stay in its ponytails. “Who’s going to stop me?”

J,J. looked at Lucy, who shrugged. Now that Januarie was nine, she was more annoying than she’d been at eight, but they couldn’t ditch her. With her and J.J.’s dad not allowed to see them because he was so mean to J.J., and their mom “not handling it well,” as Dad put it, everybody in town had to watch over Januarie. If either she or J.J. got into any trouble at all — like if J.J. got into a fight the way his dad always did — that would mean their mom couldn’t control them, and then Winnie the State Lady would come and put them in foster care. Lucy was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen, because J.J. would rather put up with Januarie than be like his father.

“You have to keep up on your own then,” J.J. said to Januarie as he strode off down Granada Street. “We’re not waitin’ for ya.”

Januarie’s chubby legs went into gear beside Lucy, and she was quiet until they got to Pasco’s Café.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“Didn’t you have any breakfast?” Lucy said.

“Like that ever made a difference.” J.J. clamped his jaw down. He was done talking, Lucy knew.

They stopped at Highway 54, and Januarie pulled the back of her hand across her sweaty forehead. “It’s hot. I wish we could ride our bikes.”

“I hope I even have a bike now,” Lucy said. If she did, she would be walking it home anyway. All the streets were layered in mud, and the broken branches had turned them into an obstacle course. They couldn’t have gone all the way out to Dad’s station even if Inez had let her. How was he supposed to get home?

And for that matter . . . Lucy stopped when they got to the other side of the highway. “How are we gonna get across the ditch?” she said. “The bridge is out, remember?”

“Jump,” J.J. said.

“What if I fall in?” Januarie said.

Lucy put her hand up. “Don’t answer that, J.J.”

As it turned out, the irrigation ditch had already shrunk to a trickle and a half, and it dug confused new paths around the hunks of fallen wood. They used them for stepping stones, though Januarie couldn’t seem to keep her feet out of the mud. She was trailing heavily behind them, wailing out complaints, as they rounded the bend to the soccer field. Once J.J. and Lucy were there, though, Januarie had no trouble catching up with them, because they could only stand and stare.

Their sign, so bright and proud the day before, was on its face in the mud, poles snapped in half. The bleachers were in splinters, scattered across their beloved field . . . or what was left of it. The center was crisscrossed in eroded rivulets. The sides had completely washed against the fence on one side and into the slivered bleachers on the other. Neither Lucy’s soccer ball nor her bike or J.J.’s was anywhere to be seen.

But the worst was the refreshment stand, which teetered at a slant like a dizzy old man. The roof was scattered in shards on the field and along the fence. Lucy imagined a giant school-yard bully, stomping through and tearing it all apart, just for spite.