Listening for Lucca (8 page)
Read Listening for Lucca Online
Authors: Suzanne LaFleur
Mom gave me raised eyebrows, and then thought better of it. She was probably thinking,
Why would you hang out with an old lady now that you’ve met people your age?
And then changed her mind to
Well, okay, I won’t bash your choice of friends, I’m just glad you’re interested in talking to
someone.
I headed out and down the beach.
“Hello, Siena!” Mrs. Lang opened her screen door when I knocked.
“Hey.”
“What have you been up to?”
“I walked into town. Went to Nielly’s.”
“Oh, wonderful! Did you like it?”
I nodded. She smiled back at me.
“Today’s beverage is lemonade in summer citrus glasses.” I followed her inside and she set out special glasses with lemons and limes and oranges on them. She got the Uno cards from a drawer in the hallway. We sat down at her kitchen table. I shuffled the cards and dealt and she got to go first.
She put down a red card, and I had one, luckily.
“Are you sure you don’t know more about my house?” I asked. “Something weird’s going on there.”
“What do you mean, weird?”
“I just feel like there’s something from a long time ago that was … unfinished, or incomplete, or something. Kind of like ghosts. Not too spooky or scary, just … a feeling. A feeling that kids feel, not grown-ups.”
Mrs. Lang put her next card down. “No ghost stories that I know of. And nothing strange has happened while I’ve lived here.”
I lowered my eyes to search my cards before having to draw new ones.
“Oh, you’re disappointed!” she said. “Let me ask my friend Ella Mae. She’s lived here forever. Maybe she’ll remember something from before I moved in.”
We played three games of Uno—she won all of them—and then I had to go.
“I’m glad you were able to come by,” Mrs. Lang said at the door. “Come again soon.”
“I will. Thank you for the lemonade.” Maybe she’d have some information for me next time. Clues, at least. I felt a small pang of guilt; she’d enjoyed the visit just for the company and I’d wanted something else out of it.
It was funny how I felt much more comfortable with her than I had with the kids my own age. That probably meant we did have some sort of friendship.
As I walked home I wondered if the brother and sister I’d seen on the beach had been tourists and since gone home. But why would they have been way down on this part of the beach?
I got home just as Dad was taking the chicken off the grill. As we all sat down inside, Mom asked, “How was your first day of camp?”
“Fine. The kids were pretty rambunctious. Want to come tomorrow, Siena?”
“Maybe.”
“How was
your
day?” he asked me. “Mom says you met some kids.”
Of course she would have told him first thing. She must have been ecstatic—we hadn’t even been here a week and already her plans for me were apparently working.
“Yeah. Sam and Morgan. At Nielly’s.”
“Boys or girls?”
“One of each.”
“Which is which?”
“Sam’s the boy.”
Mom was looking at us like this was an odd conversation. Dad said, “I met two girls today called Mack and Jack. Short for MacKenzie and Jacqueline.” He put a piece of chicken on my plate as Mom started serving salad. I took the macaroni and cheese bowl and scooped some out for me and Lucca. I plopped his in a big circle on his plate and squirted ketchup on it to make eyes and a mouth: a smiley face, the way he likes his mac and cheese.
After it got dark out, it suddenly felt like there was nothing to do. Lucca was sleeping, and Mom and Dad were watching TV in their room. I sat in my window seat with my library book for a few minutes, but couldn’t get into it. I kept feeling the hairs on my neck standing up; I’d look around and forget about the book. I ended up staring out at the dark water, lit only by the stars and moon. I’d never spent much time looking at the night sky back in the city. The stars faded behind the city’s own lights as if they didn’t even exist.
Mom had suggested writing stories about our house to settle my feelings. But making things up wouldn’t solve anything. She didn’t understand that this problem was
real
.
Then I remembered the sensation of my hand being guided across the paper to write something unexpected. Goose bumps formed on my arms.
I walked over to the shelves Dad had put up, where I’d arranged my collection and set the pen the other night. I turned it over, studying it.
SEA: Sarah Elizabeth Alberdine
. Who was that? Was it someone real, someone trying to talk to me?
Was that possible? How would that
work
?
Maybe if I used the pen again, I could write something else. That strange feeling of not being connected to what was being written … I shivered, remembering.
But this might be the way to learn something. It was the best option I had, at least.
I found a fresh notebook and went back to sit in the window seat, the notebook on my knees. I tried to clear my mind.
I wrote.
And read:
The morning light came in my window as I woke up
.
The light was fresh and clear, the beautiful sunshine of a summer morning. I was in my bed, not in the window seat, and it was time to get up for the day. The birds were up already, I could hear them.
But it was nighttime!
I shook my head and the darkness outside became apparent once more. I was back in the window seat, and the stillness of the night had returned, except for the gentle rushing of the waves.
I struggled to breathe. I put my head down on the notebook.
This wasn’t normal. It just wasn’t.
But I needed to be brave if I was ever going to figure this out. What had happened at our house, why we were here, what it really meant.
I lifted my head.
What if the past was something I could decide to see, when I wanted to?
I’d still be sitting here, holding the pen and notebook, after all. I wasn’t really going to go anywhere. At least, I didn’t think I was.
I took a steadying breath, picked up the pen, and put it on the paper.
The morning light came in my window as I woke up, shining on my blankets and wallpaper and my dolls sitting on their small bench. The flowers on my blankets and wallpaper are pinks and peaches and creams; they turn pretty in the sunlight
.
I climbed out of bed, untwisted my nightgown, and opened my door
.
Other people were awake. Vicky came up the stairs, carrying a basket of dried bed linens, just taken down from the line outside
.
“I see you’ve decided to get up. About time.”
I would have buried my nose in the basket of sheets
to smell the sunshine on them, to feel their warmth, but I could tell Vicky wouldn’t like my nose buried in the sheets she’d just washed and folded
.
Vicky doesn’t like that I can sleep all morning. She says it’s lazy. It’s not my fault I stay asleep so long. She won’t wake me up because it’s not her job, and, because it’s summer, no one else is going to be waking me up
.
“Your mother’s having breakfast.”
I went downstairs to the dining room and found Mama reading the morning paper. Without looking up, she said, “You should get dressed
before
you come to breakfast.”
“Good morning, Mama.” I sat down, helping myself to toasted French bread, scrambled eggs, and fresh fruit from the serving dishes
.
I spread thick gobs of butter on my bread, then spoonfuls of jam, and was on my third piece when Mama again revealed that she was paying attention to me from behind the newspaper: “Eat some eggs and fruit, too.”
She folded the paper and set it aside, watching me eat. She kept on the face she’d been wearing to read the news: a frown wrinkled across her forehead. She poured me a glass of juice
.
I gulped down a ball of half-chewed bread. “No bacon today?”
“No bacon today. Vicky said we ran out of stamps for it, but she should be able to get some more this week.”
I gulped some juice
.
“Take smaller bites and eat more carefully,” Mama said
.
“I’m sorry, Mama. Where’s Joshua?”
“Mowing lawns to make a little money.”
I sighed. Joshua, usually busy these days. But it would get hot in the afternoon; he’d come home and probably want to go swimming
.
“What are you going to do today?” Mama asked
.
“I don’t know.”
“No? I do.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Apparently you’ll be playing with your cousin. She’s been outside all morning.”
I laughed. “Really? Why didn’t she just come inside?”
“I invited her to, and she said she’d rather stay out there if it’s all the same. I said I’d send you along.”
Jezzie comes over a lot. She has no brothers or sisters, so my aunt and uncle send her here to be around kids, to play and learn about sharing and things like that. Not that it’s done her much good so far. Mostly she comes here to boss me around. My school friends don’t live close enough for us to play together much in the summer, so I see an awful lot of Jezzie
.
“Are you finished eating?”
“Yes. No, wait.” I took one more piece of bread, gooped it up, and stuffed it into my mouth in a few bites
.
“Slow down with the bread and butter,” Mama said. “Especially the butter.”
“Is it like bacon?”
“Yes. We’re going to have to get you fake butter.”
“Fake butter?”
“Margarine. It comes white and you have to stir the yellow in.”
“Really?” I looked at the butter. How could you stir yellow in? “Does it taste the same?”
Mama shrugged:
I don’t know.
“You’ve had enough to eat. Get along now.”
I went right out on the porch, holding a piece of crust Mama hadn’t noticed I’d snuck, still in my pajamas
.
Jezzie lay on her stomach on the porch swing, rocking it gently with her feet. She’s a bit bigger than me. She has long hair that makes me think of that last streak of pink in the sky over the ocean before the sun sets. It’s not that color, but that color must be hiding in there somewhere
.
“I thought you’d never get up,” she said. “We can go pick strawberries next door. Nobody’s home and nobody’s watching them—I’ve been keeping an eye out. For heaven’s sake, why aren’t you dressed yet?”
I shrugged and crunched on the toast. Mm-mm, butter was good!
Jezzie took my free hand, dragged me back upstairs to my room, and found clothes: my short, raspberry-colored dress; white socks; black shoes. She knows my closet and bureau better than I do, she’s pawed through them so many times. Luckily, nothing I have fits her, and the only thing she can “borrow” are hair ribbons
.
Jezzie does not return the things she “borrows.” None of my hair ribbons, and not the black knight she took from Joshua’s chess set. Boy, was he mad about that. But he was even madder when the next time they tried to play a game, she insisted on being the white pieces, because who wants to be down a piece? Clever, see, because Jezzie is good at using the knights in chess, too. I handed something to Joshua; he smiled when he saw it, and beat Jezzie using the rocking horse from my dollhouse
.
Jezzie helped pull on my clothes and took care of all the buttons, like I was a baby. That’s the way she always makes me feel. I let her dress me because there’s no getting in Jezzie’s way
.
She paused to press on her ears. Something’s wrong in there—she gets infections; they ring and buzz. Mama told me they are very painful to her
.
Then Jezzie pulled me down the stairs and out across the yard, and through some trees and bushes until the house was out of sight and we were in someone else’s yard
.
She pointed to some low plants in rows. “Go ahead. The redder the berries, the better.”
We picked small, round strawberries, soft and ripe, and ate as we picked. They were probably the most delicious, sweetest things I’d ever eaten
.
“Lordy!” she exclaimed. “Be careful. You have strawberry juice all over your clothes!”
Jezzie didn’t let me eat them all, though; she made
sure I was piling handfuls of them into her handkerchief (the red one, so her mother wouldn’t ask about the stains) for her to tie up and sneak home for later. I knew she’d eat them all by herself and not give any to me, so I stuffed as many as I could into my mouth
.
Jezzie took my sticky hand and dragged me all the way back to my yard. At the water pump she splashed my face, hands, and dress. “Leave me alone,” I said. “Stop it!”
“But look what you did. Everyone will know that you’ve been naughty. Is that what you want?”
My heart thudded; she was right. But neat Jezzie, who had tucked away the bulging handkerchief somewhere, had not a trace of strawberry on her. I let her clean me off. She dropped my arm and pressed on her ears again
.
“What if someone sees us cleaning up?” I asked
.
“Easy. We’ll tell them you got muddy and we had to wash you up. Actually, that’s what you should tell them if they ask why you’re all wet.”
Jezzie smoothed her hair behind her ears. She wasn’t wet at all. No one would know that she had ever done something wrong
.