Lucy’s “Perfect” Summer (13 page)

“So this week’s VIP award goes to a young man you’ve just seen demonstrate those very qualities — ”

“What?”
Rianna dug her fingers into Lucy’s collarbone. “A
boy.
I should have known.”

Rianna jerked back onto her seat, and Lucy let out a long breath.

Beside her, Kayla gave the tiniest of sniffs.

Well, well.

Rianna didn’t have that much to say during morning practice, which made everybody’s life easier. Maybe she would pout for the two weeks that were left of camp. Or maybe she’d be mad enough about not getting the award to quit completely.

And maybe the soccer ball would turn into a giant scoop of chocolate ice cream — because when they broke for lunch and Lucy was trying to get her shin guards off so she could go and meet J.J., Rianna elbowed herself right in beside her.

“I have an idea,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” Lucy said.

“Eat with me, and I’ll tell you about it. You’re going to want in on it.”

“Is it about flopping?” Lucy said.

The words were out before she could catch them, and once they escaped, she was glad. It was the first time she’d seen Rianna surprised.

The startle in her eyes passed quickly, though. “I’m over that,” Rianna said. “This is about the award.”

Lucy stuffed her shin guards and cleats into her backpack and stuck her foot into one of her tennis shoes.

“Hawke’s gonna give it two more times,” Rianna said. “You and me deserve it, and I know how we can get it.”

By cheating?
This time Lucy didn’t say it out loud. Her lips were too stunned to move. Was this girl for real?

Rianna stood up. “We can’t talk about this here. Let’s go over to — ”

“I’m already eating lunch with somebody else,” Lucy said. She jammed her foot into her other shoe and didn’t bother to tie it before she left the bench.

“Are you serious?” Rianna planted herself in front of Lucy. “Don’t you get how huge this is?”

“Guess not,” Lucy said.

She tried to dodge around Rianna, but she obstructed her. Lucy wished there were referees for conversations.

“If we get VIP awards from this camp, it’s like an automatic acceptance into ODP.” Rianna put her face close to Lucy’s. “There is major competition for that — I’m talking, major. We can’t just be great players, which we already are. We have to — ”

“I have to meet somebody for lunch,” Lucy said.

Rianna slitted her eyes down to dashes. “This is a one-time offer, Rooney. I’m not sharing this idea with anybody else — just you. Don’t you get it?”

“No,” Lucy said. “I don’t.”

She used her best shimmy fake and got around Rianna this time. She was two steps away when she felt the grab at her arm.

“Let go,” Lucy said.

“Don’t think you’re gonna tell Coach Neely I have a plan.” Rianna squeezed. “I’ll know who did it — and I told you, you don’t want me for your enemy.”

“Actually, I think I do,” Lucy said. “Because that would mean I’m not anything like you. Now let go — ”

“No — ”

“Let her go.”

Rianna whipped around, once again in a spasm of surprise. J.J. stepped forward. His fists were clenched, and his jaw was twitching. Lucy hadn’t seen his eyes flash that way in a long time.

He looked like his father.

“It’s okay, J.J.,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, this is between me and her,” Rianna said. “She doesn’t need her boyfriend to rescue her.”

“Let go,” J.J. said. Anger snarled in his voice, and Lucy’s stomach tied itself into a knot.

Rianna spit out a laugh. “What are you gonna do about it?”

J.J. took another step forward.

“Don’t,” Lucy said. She wrenched her arm from Rianna’s grasp. “We’re done here.”

“You just remember what I told you, Rooney,” Rianna said.

Lucy turned away and took J.J. with her. When they couldn’t hear Rianna breathing like a bull any more, he put his mouth close to her ear.

“I know who that is,” he. hissed into it.

“It’s Rianna Wallace,” Lucy said.

“Whatever — she’s the one I heard talking to that other girl. The one who said she’d cheat to ‘show Hawke.’ ”

Lucy stopped and got closer to J.J.’s face, until she could see the tiny beads of sweat under his eyes. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. She has that spitty laugh. What did she tell you?”

“That you were right,” Lucy said. “Everybody isn’t honest.” She shook her head. “But J.J., you can’t get in trouble over this, okay? You can’t.”

She looked back over her shoulder. Rianna was gone, but the knot in Lucy’s stomach was very much still there. The same knot she’d felt yesterday when she saw Mr. Cluck.

Somebody had to do something. She just wished it didn’t have to be her.

10

When Dusty’s mom pulled up at Lucy’s side gate that afternoon to drop her off, Dad’s assistant, Luke, was letting him out too.

“Isn’t your father home early?” Mrs. Terricola said.

Carla Rosa gave an I-have-bad-news nod. “Guess what? My dad only comes home early when he’s had a bad day. Really bad.”

“It’s only a bad day when my dad
does
come home,” Januarie said.

“Thanks,” Lucy said as she climbed out of the SUV. Her stomach was still in that knot, and nothing they were saying was making her feel better.

“Come over later if you can,
Bolillo
,” Dusty said through the window. “We can watch a DVD or something. I miss you.”

Lucy nodded. She’d love to go over to Dusty’s and pretend she was just a normal kid whose worst problem was deciding what movie to watch, but the slump of Dad’s back told her even
Monsters, Inc
. wouldn’t do it. There was no sunshine in the smile he tried to arrange on his face.

“Hey, Champ,” he said when she slid under his arm inside the gate.

“Are you sick?” she said.

“Do I look sick?”

“Kind of. Not like you have the flu sick. Worried sick.”

Dad attempted a chuckle and waved in the direction of the patio table. “I guess that’s where that expression comes from. Sit with me, Luce.”

It was hot enough to cook pancakes on the cement, but Lucy parked herself in a chair under the umbrella and felt her stomach go into a square knot. The only reason to talk out here instead of inside under the ceiling fan was so Inez and Mora wouldn’t hear. That couldn’t be good.

Dad took a long time getting situated in his chair with his legs folded just so before he finally said, “Did you listen to me on the radio the day of the storm?”

“Until the power went off,” Lucy said.

“How was I? Honestly.”

Lucy rewound the memories. So much had happened since then, it seemed like two birthdays must have passed. All she could remember was that he didn’t sound like molasses pouring.

“Different?” Dad said.

“Yeah. Like maybe there were so many things going on you couldn’t — I mean, there
was
a storm — and, like, everything was confusing.”

“Exactly.” Dad rubbed his whole face with his hand like he was washing it off. “Luke wasn’t there, so I was on my own.”

“Then you did good!” Lucy said.

“For a man who can’t see.”

“Right.”

“And that isn’t good enough.”

Lucy got up on one knee. “Who says?”

“The new people who just bought our station.”

“I don’t get it,” Lucy said.

But actually she did. What Dad was about to say crept up on her like a snake. She knew it was going to bite her.

“Did you get fired?” she said.

Dad’s eyes darted until they found someplace close to hers. “Not yet,” he said.

“Are you
going
to get fired?”

“Maybe.”

“Dad, that’s not fair!” Lucy’s voice wound up to the top of the umbrella. “You’re the best! You can’t help it if you can’t see!”

“And neither can they, Luce.”

Dad stretched his hand across the table. She was in no mood to be calmed down, but she stuck hers under it anyway. She was sure he could feel it going stiff as a chicken claw.

“Here’s the deal,” he said. “The old owners were fine with Luke always being there to help me. They probably wouldn’t even have minded what happened during the storm. But things have changed — ”

“This is what you told me to be ready for,” Lucy said. And she wasn’t. Not even close.

“The new owners have given me three choices,” Dad said. “I can improve my technical skills so I can handle my broadcasts on my own, if necessary, or I can transfer to another station where I’ll be part of a larger team, although I won’t have my own show like I do here. Or — ”

“Or you can get fired,” Lucy said.

Dad nodded.

“So really you only have two choices.”

He nodded again.

Something tickled at the back of Lucy’s brain. “Where’s the other station that you would be transferred to?”

Dad cleared his throat. “El Paso.”

“No way! Aunt Karen will never leave me alone then!”

“I didn’t think you’d be too crazy about that idea. But I’m not sure you’re going to like the other one any better.”

Lucy sank back on her foot. “About you learning new technical stuff? Why?”

“It means I’ll have to go to a school in Albuquerque — a special school for the blind — and stay there for six weeks.”

“I’d go with you, right? Since it’s summer.”

Dad gave her hand a squeeze. “The next class doesn’t start until the end of August, just when you start school again.”

“Then what — ?” Lucy closed her eyes, but everything looked just as confused behind them.

“You would stay here. With someone, of course.” Dad tried the smile again. “Not that I don’t think you could make it by yourself. You run this place anyway, but Sheriff Navarro would have me thrown in jail. Then we’d really be in trouble.”

They were already in the biggest mess Lucy could think of. What kind of choice was this? Leave her friends and her team — which she already knew from soccer camp was like having a stomach virus that never ended —
and
be around Aunt Karen all the time, or stay here, away from Dad, with some babysitter.

“Could Inez live with me?” she said. “That could work, couldn’t it?”

“I’m sure she’ll do what she’s doing for us now, but she has her farm and Mora to take care of. I can’t ask her to rearrange all of that.”

“Then who?”

“I don’t know, Luce. I’m still praying about it. In the meantime, I just want you to keep being the best Lucy you can be, okay? And pray — will you?”

Lucy nodded.

“I hope that’s a yes,” Dad said.

“It is,” Lucy said.

“We’ll get the right answer.”

Dad didn’t add that everything was going to turn out perfectly. They both knew that wasn’t how God worked. If it was, Mom would be here and Dad would be able to see and the three of them would be firing up a grill to cook hot dogs instead of having this conversation.

“We’ll get through it, champ,” Dad said. “Now — tell me about your day.” He made the sandpaper chuckle work this time. “I bet it was better than mine.”

Not much. In fact, it was too bad to talk about right now.

“I learned how to do a diving header off a corner kick,” she said instead.

“Is that good?” Dad said.

“Oh, yeah,” Lucy said. At least something was.

Tuesday morning, Dusty was in the very back seat of Veronica’s van when they picked up Lucy for camp, and she motioned for Lucy to join her. Veronica was in the front seat, making a huge deal out of not speaking to her mother, and Carla Rosa was in the second seat, “guess whatting” Januarie about something. It didn’t seem to matter to her that Januarie was fiddling with the contents of her backpack and showing no signs of listening at all.