Listening for Lucca (15 page)

I took out the pen and my notebook.

“Siena … Siena?”

I looked around and there was Sam, right in front of me.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his face scrunched up with worry.

“Writing.” I tried to steady my breath. I felt woozy and put my head between my knees. It was not good to be interrupted while I was inside Sarah’s mind, apparently. “I’m fine.” I slowly sat back up.

“But I’ve been saying your name for like five minutes. It was like you couldn’t hear me.” Sam looked alarmed. “You just kept writing.”

Great. Sam would think I was crazy, just like the kids at my old school. And he’d probably tell everyone about it. The same thing here all over again.

“I guess I just got really involved in the story.”

Sam gave me a look. “It seemed like something more than that.”

Sam pushed too much. I’d only known him a week, and yet he wanted to know things, to come over, to call. Maybe it was safer just not to have friends. They only turned on you.

“What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Today was my day to play with Lucca, remember? I just finished. Your mom said it was okay to find you.”

I looked back at him. There
was
something about him that I trusted. He was nice about Lucca, and
to
Lucca.

“How was Lucca? He seemed okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

Sam stared at me, not about to let me off the hook.

Okay.

“If I tell you, promise you won’t think it’s weird?”

Sam nodded. “Tell me.”

I thought carefully about what version of the truth to give him, and how much. “I think my house is haunted.”

“That’s cool,” he said very casually.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I’m as open to a good haunted house as the next guy. But what, are you being possessed to write?”

“No, it was my idea to start writing … but I don’t control the story at all. It’s like I’m just witnessing it, from the eyes of one of the characters. And it turns out the character lived here.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so.”

Sam watched as I closed the notebook and set it beside me on the window seat. He was much more serious than usual. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Outside?”

“Okay.” Was he creeped out?

He watched me set the pen on the shelf.

“Hey,” he said, seeing my collection, “this is that thing you found at the store.” He picked up the butterfly hair clip.

“Yeah.”

“You really aren’t going to wear it.”

I shook my head. “I won’t ever wear it.” I took it back and put it on the shelf.

“What’s this other junk?”

“It’s not junk … it’s just stuff I found. Stuff that didn’t belong to anyone anymore.”

Sam didn’t say anything else. He led the way downstairs.

“We’re going for a walk!” I called to Mom.

“Dinner’s at six!” she answered.

“Are you staying for dinner?” I asked Sam.

He hesitated; then, “Yeah, okay.”

We sat down on the beach. Sam waited for me to talk. When I didn’t, he asked, “Well, what is it?”

“What is what?”

“What you collect?”

“You just saw it upstairs.”

Sam laughed. And laughed. I whacked his arm.

“Ow!”

“Why are you laughing at what I collect?”

“Oh.” He stopped laughing. “It’s totally random. Looking at it, you would never know, not in a million years, what it’s a collection of.”

“I told you, it’s left-behind things. Things people didn’t want anymore.”

“That’s a weird thing to collect.” He paused. “Tell me again what happens? When you write, I mean.”

I kept quiet for a minute, watching the sand dance across the beach in the wind. Finally I said, “I think it’s all connected, the visions and what I collect. There’s something left behind in the house … memories, feelings … and I don’t want to leave them alone. Like I don’t want to leave those little things I find alone.” That wasn’t answering him, exactly.

The wind picked up and whipped around us.

“I don’t get it,” Sam said. “What happens to you.”

Well, I didn’t get it, either.

We didn’t talk for a few more minutes.

“So, how was playing with Lucca?” I asked finally.

“Good. We used his train set like last time.”

“He seemed happy?”

“A little tired, but fine. Why are you so worried?”

“Mom and Dad had a big fight last night, about Lucca. About him not talking. He heard it.”

“Oh,” Sam said. “Does it bother you a lot, about Lucca?”

I sighed. “Kind of.”

“Why?”

“Because … well, it’s my fault Lucca’s the way he is.”

“Your fault?”

I made a small noise like a hiccup, and Sam scooted over and found my hand in the sand. He squeezed it. Our skin felt gritty and clammy; his hand was warm.

“He used to say things. Little things, like single words, two- or three-word sentences. He could name pictures of things in books or make the noise an animal makes. But he used to come to me all the time, to read books, to play, and it was annoying. He was noisy. I would be trying to do my homework or trying to talk to Dad. One day, when it was just the two of us, I yelled at him.” Tears were sliding down my cheeks now. “To shut up and go away. I don’t know how long it was after that, but he did shut up. And he didn’t talk at all anymore.”

Sam was shaking his head. “But brothers and sisters don’t stop talking to each other forever because they yelled at each other once. My brothers and I would never talk to each other if that was the case. We tell each other to shut up all the time. Everybody does that.”

“And I try …” I hiccupped again. “I try so much to show him I’m sorry, that I didn’t mean it. I play with him and take care of him and read him stories every night.”

“He knows, then. See, you have nothing to do with it. It’s not your fault.”

I brushed the tears off my cheeks with the back of my other hand so I wouldn’t get sand in my eyes.

“Well, it’s like a piece of my brother is lost, and maybe,
if I can’t get it back but I take care of all these other things that are lost, Lucca’s missing piece will come back to us on its own.”

Sam and I sat, looking out at the water. Eventually he showed me his watch; we got up and walked back to the house.

Sam kept holding my hand. It was nice, not just the feel of his hand, but that when I told him about these things, he didn’t run away. It was better than nice. Even if it seemed like he didn’t one-hundred-percent believe me or think I was normal. He was still here.

He was still here.

Warmth flooded through me.

I suddenly thought of the difference between Sarah and Jezzie—Jezzie, who was grown up enough to be interested in kissing. Kissing. I gave Sam’s hand a squeeze, imagined turning to him to kiss him.

But I couldn’t do that, could I? Not if he belonged to Morgan.

It was raining. A perfect afternoon for reading and writing and thinking.

But Mom had other ideas.

“I have to do errands—boring ones, like picking out paint colors—and I thought Lucca would have more fun not going and he could stay with you.”

“Great.” I wouldn’t mind spending time with Lucca—but Mom made it sound like a chore, one she didn’t even ask me if I wanted to do.

So trancelike writing was out. It was so hard for people to get my attention once I started, Lucca probably wouldn’t be able to.

“Get your rain boots,” I told him. “Raincoat. Umbrella. We’re going outside.”

“Is that the best idea?” Mom really meant,
I don’t think that’s the best idea, but I’m going to pretend it’s up to you to decide
.

“It’s an excellent idea. It’s not cold out. We’ll go to Mrs. Lang’s.”

Mom decided she’d lost the battle.

“After the paint store, I’m going to the grocery store. I plan to have dinner on the table at six.”

“We’ll be back by five,” I promised.

I didn’t have cutesy plastic rain gear like Lucca—fireman’s-red everything—but I put on my older sneakers and a Windbreaker with a hood. He made it back to the front hall in five minutes, looking excited.

“We’re going to my friend’s house,” I explained as we walked down the beach along the water. Lucca seemed to like sinking his boots into the wet sand and listening to them squelch as he pulled them up. “She’s old. Really nice. You’ll like her and I think she’ll like you.”

By the time we got there, Lucca’s boots were a muddy mess, and my sneakers would probably only be used for rainy days at the beach from now on. We stood with our feet on Mrs. Lang’s doormat while we waited for her to answer the bell.

“Hello!” she said, very happy to see us. “You brought someone with you.”

“This is my brother, Lucca.”

“Hello, Lucca. Well, come in!” Then she laughed. “And
welcome
in!”

“Shoes off first,” I said. Lucca took off his boots and I airlifted him into the house. Then I wriggled out of my own shoes. “We went on a muddy beach walk.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Lang. “I used to like those. Now it makes the old bones too cold.”

Lucca hung his coat on a chair and began to explore the house. He’s okay at that. He doesn’t touch anything, only looks.

“He’s part of the long version,” I said to Mrs. Lang, “of why we came here. The doctors thought it might help him for our family to move away from the city.”

Mrs. Lang nodded. “Usually when something is wrong, people go to a city to see the doctors. Those must be very good doctors you went to.”

“What do you mean?”

“They could have said he needed to come in every week, even if it wasn’t true, just to get your money. If they want to send you away, it’s a sign that they really care.”

I hadn’t looked at it like that before.

We watched Lucca zoom through the hallway and then disappear into another room.

“So what’s the matter with him? He looks perfectly healthy to me.”

“He doesn’t talk.”