Listening for Lucca (7 page)

“What grade are you in?”

“Eighth.”

“Me too. So’s Sam.” She nodded in the direction of a boy who was bagging up some groceries. “It’s his family’s store. I’m Morgan.”

“I’m Siena.”

“That’s unusual. Does it mean something?”

“It’s a place in Italy.”

“What, were you conceived there?”

This problem is a recent development in my life. When kids my age hear I have a place-name, they all want to talk about my conception. I would never ask about
their
conceptions. What, was it everyone’s business now? Wasn’t everyone conceived somewhere? What’s the big deal?

I rank it as part of the immaturity of middle schoolers. Everyone just wants to mention sex all the time, to make themselves seem to know something about it. I don’t really care about sex. Though I would prefer it if we didn’t have to talk about my
parents
having sex.

Note to self: don’t name your kid after a place. It’s no fun for them.

When we were younger, people just used to say, “Cool, Italy. Is your family from there?”

The answer to both questions is no.

“My mom researched art there,” I said. “She just liked the sound of it for a name. Thought it sounded certain and strong and brave.”

“So, are you? Certain and strong and brave?”

Strong or brave? I was even nervous having this conversation. Was I certain? If I had to ask the question, then I guess not.

But that wasn’t really this girl’s business, either. Whether or not I lived up to the sound of my name.

Sam had noticed us talking and came over.

“Welcome to Nielly’s!” he declared in the exuberant voice of a TV announcer, spreading his arms wide. Then he dropped them to hold one out to me. “Sam Nielly, at your service.”

Morgan smiled then, for the first time. For Sam, not for me. I looked at Sam as I shook his hand.

“This is Siena,” Morgan told him. “She’s named to be certain and strong and brave.”

“Oh,” Sam said. “I was just named third.”

“Third?”

“Yeah. I’m the third brother. Michael and Jack were already taken.”

“She’s not a tourist,” Morgan continued. “She moved in.”

“Where?” Sam perked up.

“Ocean Drive.” I kept our house number to myself. If
these kids didn’t like me and found out where I lived, they could come and throw eggs at my house.

“Wow, beachfront property!”

“It’s a dump,” I said, even though I loved the place.

“Well, in any case, you can’t live in this town and live too far from the water,” Sam said. “It’s just a short walk for me. Which house are you in?”

Maybe people didn’t really go around throwing eggs at people’s houses, anyway—what did I know? Mom would say I shouldn’t be so afraid of people my own age.

I took a deep breath.

“Fourteen forty-five. Do you know it?”

I was hoping they’d have some kind of story about my house, an explanation for the haunted feeling, in exchange for me giving up the number, but they both shook their heads.

“This is your family’s shop?” I changed the subject.

“Yep! Mom’s over there.” He pointed to a woman in a green store apron like Sam’s. “Dad grows the produce and Mom runs the shop. We’re all expected to help out. My brothers usually go with Dad and I help Mom.”

I was listening to Sam, I was, but I couldn’t help that a glint of sparkles caught my eye. I looked sideways to see what was glimmering like that. On the ground, caught in the sunlight—just past Morgan’s foot—a sparkly butterfly-shaped hair clip. All alone. Abandoned.

I stretched my foot out sideways, set my sneaker on top of the hair clip, and slid my foot back. I reached to pick up the clip.

“What are you doing?” Morgan asked. It must have been odd to have me practically kick her.

“Just picking this up.” I showed her the clip. “Is it yours?”

Morgan shook her big tangle of rust-colored curls. The hair ties she used were so fat I should have been able to guess that the butterfly wouldn’t have fit into her hair at all.

“Oh, that’s mine,” Sam said, running a hand through his shaggy bangs.

“Shut up, Sam,” she said.

“Are you going to keep it?” he asked me. “You don’t really strike me as the hair-butterfly type.”

I was tempted, but someone would probably come back looking for such a nice clip.

“No. Is there a lost and found?”

“We keep a box under one of the registers. Mostly gloves left over from winter.”

He led me over to the box. It
was
full of gloves and mittens, and also a small coin purse and a large gold earring and two paperback books. Ooh, a whole box of lost things.

Sam, made curious by my long pause to look at the box, gave it a shake. That woke me up and I dropped in the butterfly. Morgan was looking back and forth between us. Sam put the box back under the counter.

“It’s kind of special, right?” I asked. “So maybe only someone who asks for it and already knows what it looks like should get to see it. That way not just anyone could take it.”

“Yeah, sure, that makes sense.”

“If no one comes back for it, could I claim it?”

“I thought you didn’t want it,” Sam said.

“I don’t want to
wear
it,” I clarified.

“You’re an odd duck,” he said.

Uh-oh. Already labeled a weirdo and I’d known these kids for ten minutes. All I had to do was take too much interest in a stupid butterfly hair clip. Why hadn’t I been more careful? Things had been going so well, too; maybe I’d have passed for completely normal.

Then Sam said, “I get a break in half an hour. Have lunch with us?”

I went outside the store and sat on the wide porch steps.

Had that really been an invitation to lunch?

I opened my book and pretended to read, but I kept glancing up to watch the people walking by. Tourists walked slow and looked around a lot from under their sunglasses. They wore bright, clean summer clothes with the names of Maine towns printed on them. The people who lived here, at least as best I could spot them, walked more quickly and confidently and were more likely to be in cutoff jean shorts and worn-looking tank tops.

Being new, I wasn’t really a townie
or
a tourist.

Some other kids my age walked by. They looked at me but didn’t stop to say hi. I was relieved. I could only take
meeting so many new people in a day. I was already nervous enough about lunch.

The half hour slipped by. Should I go back inside? Would they laugh at me if they hadn’t really meant to invite me? Was it worth risking?

But I was still sitting there on the porch, so if they saw me they’d think I had at least
hoped
for a real invitation. Maybe sitting there, waiting, hoping, made me look like a loser. Maybe I should just go. Maybe Sam and Morgan were inside, eating already, laughing at me through the windows.

I turned to check. Someone came through the door, but it was only Sam’s mom, who started straightening the flowers, peering into the buckets to see whether they had enough water.

A minute later Sam came out, looking around. I snapped my head forward as if I’d been looking down the street and not into the store for him.

“Oh, there you are. I thought maybe you’d left.”

“Still here.”

“Oh, good. Mom, I’m on my lunch break!” Sam yelled.

“I’m right here!” she yelled back. “You don’t need to yell!”

“Sorry!” Sam yelled. He stretched out his hand to me and helped me up. I followed him back inside. Morgan abandoned her magazine and came to join us, looking unsurprised that I was still here.

“How much is lunch?” I asked Sam.

“Nothing. Not for my friends, anyway.”

I felt my face flush. Was he really calling me his friend already?

“I should probably pay. Why should your mom have to give us three free lunches?”

“It’s fine,” Morgan said. “She says she’d rather have us here eating than out making trouble where she can’t keep an eye on us.”

“Plus, she’d have to feed us all anyway if we ate at my house, so it’s no big deal,” Sam said. “Her only rule is we can’t eat all day. I have to take a designated lunch break.”

Sam handed me a green lunch tray while Morgan got her own. “You can take anything from the prepared foods, the fresh fruit, or snack stuff like chips. And you can go behind the deli counter to make a sandwich, but you have to put on gloves. We make the sandwiches for regular customers, but if you’re with me, you’re staff.”

“Okay.” It sounded fun to make my own sandwich. I put on gloves and made a fresh turkey on wheat, then grabbed a bag of chips. I filled up a plastic cup with water and joined Sam and Morgan at a table.

“Thanks,” I said to Sam, setting down my tray and sitting next to Morgan.

Sam examined my sandwich. “Looks good. Maybe I should hire you to make mine from now on.” Sam had peanut butter with grape jelly oozing out around the edges. Very sloppy. Where’d he get peanut butter and jelly? Morgan had a salad and had also found somewhere to get a
heaping bowl of pudding. Obviously there was a lot of exploring to do here.

“The lettuce on your sandwich—that’s from Dad’s garden.”

“Neat.” I chewed carefully. My stomach felt funny about the prospect of digesting something Sam’s family had grown. Ew, how personal.

“Did you get your tracking yet?”

“My tracking?”

“Yeah, which group you’ll take classes with at school.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t.”

“We won’t know if we’ll have anything together, then,” Sam explained. “Did you pick your elective? That’s outside tracking.”

“Oh, yeah, I picked Philosophy.”

“I thought about taking that, but I didn’t want to be with all those girls with black nail polish.”

I held my sandwich still in front of my face, the polish on my own nails dark against the tan bread.

“Oh. You’re one of them.”

“Not quite. It’s really dark purple.”

“Sure,” Sam said skeptically.

“Midnight Lilac, actually.”

“I like it,” Morgan said. “I’ll have to borrow it. Maybe then Sam will notice my nails, too.”

I didn’t know what the deal was between Sam and Morgan, so I tried to steer the conversation back. “Which electives did you guys pick?”

“Photography,” Morgan answered, picking up her spoon. “We both did. I don’t know, Sam. There might be girls with black nail polish there, too.”

Sam answered by “accidentally” squeezing a gob of peanut butter at Morgan. It plopped on top of her chocolate pudding.

“Oh, sorry, let me get that.” Sam reached across with a spoon, taking a heap of pudding along with the peanut butter. He grinned while he ate, scanning our faces to see if we looked grossed out. I did my best not to look bothered.

“Do you like it here?” Morgan asked me, ignoring Sam.

“So far.”

When I got home, Lucca was playing on the floor in the living room.

Lucca’s named for an Italian city, too. Mom thought it sounded shining and bright. I’m not sure if he lives up to his name yet, either.

“Hey, kid,” I said.

Lucca held his hands above his head and moved them in circles.

“Again?”

He nodded. I nodded back to show him I was still on it.

“I brought you this.” I pulled the lion book out of my tote bag.

He looked at the book for a minute without touching it. Once he’d studied the picture, I guessed he approved of it,
because he grabbed the book and climbed onto the couch, lying down on his stomach and looking through the pages. He wasn’t extending an invitation for me to read to him right now.

I headed into the kitchen.

“How was your day, honey?” Mom came over to hug me.

“Fine.”

I knew she would want to hear about Sam and Morgan, which made me not want to tell her. But better now than having her find out later and think I hid them for a reason like they’re troublemakers or something.

“I met some kids in town.”

“Oh? Nice kids?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s great!” She beamed at me, then pulled me in for an even tighter hug.

I pulled away. “I’m going to Mrs. Lang’s.”

“Who’s that?”

“The old lady who lives next down the beach.”