The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky (6 page)

• • • 16 • • •

On Monday, Ms. Byron tells us to crack open our math books. “Groups of three!” she shouts. “Hurry, hurry!” By now I'm not really all that upset about her nervousness. In fact, it doesn't seem like a bad thing at all. All that energy reminds me of a curious kitten who's always jumping and pawing at you, trying to get you to play.

I immediately push my desk toward Victoria and Lexie, slamming into them so hard that all three of our desks rattle like cymbals. I think I see Victoria and Lexie exchange an eye roll, but I brush it away like lunch crumbs caught in a skirt.

I pull out my ten-cent folder with loose-leaf paper inside and a plain old yellow number two. Victoria and Lexie pull out spiral notebooks plastered with glittery hearts and uncap matching pens with giant pink feathers poking out the back.

Lexie's bought the same school supplies as Victoria.
I try to tell myself it doesn't matter, even as my breaking heart insists that it does.

“I hate fractions,” Victoria moans as she clicks her pen in a rhythm:
click-click,
click
.
Click-click,
click
. Like a woodpecker.

Lexie's eyes immediately shoot toward me. She knows I love them. But it suddenly seems silly to admit that math is my favorite subject.

I already know the answers to the first four. I'm not exactly a whiz at math, but I've always been able to do fractions in my head. I imagine that I'm like Gus—I have a fiery welding torch in my hand, and I'm fusing the numbers together or cutting them apart.

Victoria starts to doodle right in the margin of her textbook. “This is impossible,” she moans.

Even though I've been trying to hold it in, my news is frothing and bubbling—like foam from a two liter of Coke that's fallen from a grocery bag and bounced down the front steps. It's spewing everywhere inside me, racing up my neck toward my mouth.

“Westartedworkingonourhouse!” I blurt, so fast my words pile on top of each other.

Victoria glances up at me like I've torn off all my clothes.

“We—Gus and I—started working on our house,” I say, slower this time.

Victoria frowns, letting her eyes trail across my plain green folder and my yellow number two, my discount-bin sweater, and my last year's jeans. She stares an extra-long time at the jeans Gus bought summer before last, big enough that I could get two winters out of them. He hemmed them, like he always does—and now that I've grown tall enough for him to take them down again, I've got little white circles around both ankles.

“How?” Victoria asks, still staring at those circles. It's as though she's asking those circles, not me. As though she's saying there's no way Gus and I could ever have the money to fix up our house.

“We've been making it beautiful—just like the committee wants,” I say.

“But—how?” Victoria asks again.

“We've got stained-glass windows—and a stained-glass front walk.”

“A stained-glass front walk?” Lexie repeats, rising up out of a slouch.

“It's the most amazing thing,” Irma Jean insists, swiveling in her chair to face our group. “I couldn't believe it when I stepped outside this morning and saw it.”

Victoria squints at Irma Jean. It's only a squint, but right then, it seems like she's saying Irma Jean is so far beneath her, she's got to really strain her eyes to see Irma Jean clearly.

That Victoria has some nerve!
I think as I tighten my lips and curl myself over my loose-leaf paper. I hate the way she can't seem to see any of the kids from Montgomery without seeing the bottom tip of her own nose, too.

Quick as a cat can flick her whiskers, I answer every problem in our math assignment, rip my paper from my folder, and toss it on top of Victoria's textbook.

“You can't do all those problems that fast,” she says.

“Go ask Ms. Byron if they're right,” I say. “After she tells you they are, I can explain them to you.”

While Victoria stomps toward Ms. Byron's desk with my paper in her hand, I'm left alone with Lexie. As the silence between us tightens, I have to remind myself that I can only miss three things about Montgomery. Just three.

• • • 17 • • •

At the end of the day, everybody rolls out of the Dickerson doors. I don't think I can roll today—I stomp instead, each step rough and jerky.

On the front walk, I watch Lexie get into the Coles' car again. I want to tell Lexie that if she lived a few blocks south, in my neighborhood, Victoria would probably be looking down her nose at her, too. But Victoria's got Lexie thinking she's as perfect as a brand-new piece of jewelry behind glass. So Lexie wouldn't believe me, anyway.

When I glance up, I see Harold and Irma Jean exchanging a look. The kind of look that says they've been talking about me. “I know,” I tell them. “I shouldn't have exploded at Victoria. But I couldn't help it.”

I glance down, cringing at the sight of our ankles. We all have the same mark of last year's jeans. “I
hate
those white circles,” I grumble.

Irma Jean flinches at my harsh tone. “What do you mean?”

“It's like we're branded,” I say. “It's like a mark that says the three of us are all from a poor neighborhood.”

“I never really paid any attention to them before,” Irma Jean confesses, leaning forward to point her head down toward her feet.

“Listen, Auggie,” Weird Harold starts, using that same, overly soft tone I've heard him use on his dad when he's about to try to talk him into something. “You and I both want the same thing.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I say, bristling.

“Sure we do,” Harold says, smiling at me from underneath a ball cap that says
BIGFOOT LIVES
.

“We want the House Beautification Committee to see the beauty in our homes,” Harold insists.

“I don't care about the committee as much as you do,” I say, my eyes zeroed in on the black car that's carrying Victoria and Lexie away.

“But
Victoria
's on the committee,” Harold reminds me.

I glance over at him, feeling my eyes widen.

“My dad's always saying you catch more flies with honey,” he says.

“Gus says that.”

“So . . . maybe we shouldn't fight with Victoria,” Harold suggests.

“I watched her,” Irma Jean pipes up. “She got real stiff when you stood up to her. Her whole body. Like suddenly, she became a brick wall.”

“I saw it, too,” Harold says. “So I was thinking—maybe Auggie shouldn't try to pick a fight. Maybe I shouldn't try to relay secret messages or start a petition. Maybe we need a better strategy. Maybe we need a little sugar.”

“Like—maybe if I invite them over!” I shout. “I could ask Victoria and Lexie both to come—as long as Gus and I had enough time to really work on our house first. Then they could see all the great things we've done to the place.”

He nods, smiling. “Now you're talking.”

“Like an open house!” I say. “You guys would be there, right? When Victoria sees our house, she'll know—we're not run-down people.”
And Lexie will remember that, too,
I tell myself.

“I could make new curtains for my own front window,” Irma Jean offers.

“Dad and I could clean up the front yard,” Harold chimes in.

“You said it wasn't about the rain barrels,” I remind him.

“It's not—but—” Weird Harold rubs his chin. “I think we have a better chance of impressing Victoria—and the House Beautification Committee—if we work together.”

“Almost like an open
neighborhood
,” Irma Jean marvels.

“What if they say no?” I wonder. “When I ask them to come over?”

“Tomorrow, at recess, we'll
all
ask them,” Harold says. “They won't be able to refuse if we all insist they come. In the meantime, the three of us can start working. Okay?”

Irma Jean nods and puts her hand out, palm down. Harold piles his hand on top of hers, and I put mine on top of Harold's, just like a team would before a big game.

• • • 18 • • •

“You really coming to work with me today?” Gus asks that afternoon, after we drop Weird Harold and Irma Jean off at their houses.

“Absolutely,” I say as we wave Irma Jean good-bye, and she scurries up her front steps. “Don't want you taking something to McGunn's that we could be using for our house.”

It's far warmer today than it really should be for September. But that's Missouri for you. People around here are always saying, “If you don't like the weather in Missouri, just wait five minutes and it'll change.” Once, when I was still going to school at Montgomery, the morning bell rang at the start of a sunny, early spring day. Soon after, the skies clouded up, and it rained so much that we couldn't go out for morning recess. By lunch, afternoon snowflakes were bouncing off our windows. We gobbled down our sandwiches and ran to the playground for a snowball fight. By the time we went home, the snow had melted, and the sun was back out.

I swear it's true. I've got yearbook pictures to prove it.

Old Glory rumbles and jiggles toward Gus's scheduled pickup.

“Hey there, Gus,” a man calls out from his front yard. He's wearing jeans and a white short-sleeved shirt that's unbuttoned to show off his undershirt. Kind of old-fashioned for men to wear undershirts like that. The only other one I know who likes them is Gus.

“Hey, Burton,” Gus says, waving as he steps from the truck.

A big
SOLD
sign is stuck into the middle of his yard, next to a pot filled with flowers that have sharp petals, like daisies, but in the same colors as autumn leaves. Mums, I think they're called.

“Really thought I'd have more for you,” Burton apologizes. He shuffles his feet, tucks his chin down toward his chest, almost as though to hide his embarrassment as he points at the cardboard boxes piled at the curb. “Don't know that you can get much of anything at McGunn's for this.”

I stand over Gus as he squats and riffles through the cardboard boxes. They're full of toasters and lamp parts and hair curlers and coffeepots and irons.

“Just a bunch of stuff I swore I'd fix someday,” Burton admits. “Stuff we plugged into the socket one morning, only to wind up getting showered with sparks and snaps.”

Gus nods, understanding.

“Got one more box in the house,” Burton says. “If you even want it.”

“Sure, sure,” Gus says, because he's a sweet guy. He'd never in a million years tell someone that their junk is too junky, even for a trash hauler.

As Burton disappears back into his house, I smile at Gus. “Look,” I say, riffling through the box. “This toaster still gleams, even if it can't toast a piece of bread anymore.”

Gus whistles as he slides the toaster from the box and holds it to the sun. “Sure does, Little Sister,” he agrees. “Almost need a pair of sunglasses to look at it.”

He frowns as he thinks. “There's only so much you can do with an old thing like this,” he admits. “It's not like we can cut it up like the stained glass—”

Suddenly, Gus stops talking. He flashes a smile so wide and full, it swallows the rest of him right up. “Can't cut it up,” Gus chuckles through that Cheshire cat grin, “unless you've got the tools to cut it with.”

“Like, say, an old welding torch lying around in a shed?” Now I've got my own Cheshire grin.

Burton and his white undershirt appear again, along with the last of his promised boxes.

“You sure you want this, Gus?” Burton asks, still embarrassed.

“You bet we do,” Gus says, taking the box out of Burton's arms with such care, you'd think it was filled with about fifty eggs.

“And if you find anything else in there, anything at all, even so much as a pencil that's been snapped in two, you give us a call,” I add.

Gus winks at me, his dark eyes shining brighter than the side of the toaster.

• • • 19 • • •

The door of the shed where Gus keeps his welding tools actually lets out a gasp when we open it. Like it's been holding its breath waiting for us to arrive.

I know exactly how that old shed feels. I can barely remember to breathe as Gus lowers one of his masks over my face and puts some fireproof gloves on my hands. I feel myself fidgeting anxiously as he pulls Burton's toaster out of the box. “When you look at this,” Gus says, “what can you see?”

“A flower,” I say. “With big pointy petals, like a daisy. If a daisy could be silver, that is.”

Gus smiles. “You got it,” he says. He puts a cutting tip on his torch, flips his own welding mask down over his eyes, and motions for me to stand back. Once I take a few backward steps, he angles the torch, slices the toaster in half, removes the guts, and cuts the outline of a daisy head.

I watch for a little while, then turn back to the big cardboard box. I pull out an old curling iron. “Here, Gus,” I say. “We can use this as the stem.” I open the iron and point to the part that clamps hair down. “Can you bend this like a leaf?”

“You bet,” Gus says. He uses his torch to remove the metal barrel from the handle. He exchanges his cutting torch for a welder that uses a flame to melt the daisy head to the stem. And he heats up the clamp on the old curling iron enough that he can bend it the way I described.

As quickly as Mrs. Pike can pull her twins apart when they start to fight, Gus and I have a whole flower—a silver daisy.

When we're done, we rush outside, where Gus holds the daisy up to the sun.

“Gus!” I shout. But I have so many thoughts swarming inside me, it's hard to pull the words apart to make sense of it all.

I grab some loose-leaf paper from my backpack and some old crayons from my room. I sit down on our front step and start to draw the wild pictures that are exploding in my mind like popcorn kernels.

I draw a giant rose that hasn't completely opened. The petals are all swirly and tight, like a family hugging each other at the bus station, crying because none of them want to let go. On the stem, I draw giant thorns so big, they look like nails. I draw a tulip, too, as bright as the ones that grew along our curb last spring. And I draw a forget-me-not with only one petal left—the one that says
He loves me.

“Can we make all of these, Gus?” I ask, handing him the drawings. “And—and can we make an iris, like at the Widow Hollis's place? And grass—like the kind in Mrs. Shoemacker's yard? Grass as thick as the carpet in movie stars' houses!”

Gus's Cheshire cat grin comes back. “Sure, Little Sister,” he says. The sweat of work makes him glisten like a tub full of pennies.

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