The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky (14 page)

BOOK: The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky
7.5Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
• • • 47 • • •

I can hardly hold in everything I want to say to Victoria as the morning drags on. When Ms. Byron finally lets us out to recess, I race straight through the playground dust that Victoria and Lexie kick up with their shoes. They hop into swings, and I stand right in front of them, like a giant roadblock.

“I'm not going to leave without a fight, Victoria,” I say through gritted teeth. “We've got rights, too.”

“Oh, really? The right to be filthy little pigs?” Victoria snickers as she sways in her swing. She makes a little snort in the back of her throat and elbows Lexie, who's seated in the swing next to her. Lexie doesn't join Victoria in her laughter, though. Instead, she gives Victoria a rough glare.

“The right,” I tell Victoria, “to decorate the way we want to. The right to fix our own houses the way we see fit.”

“Auggie, Auggie, Auggie,” Victoria snickers. “Did you ever happen to notice that those—those—
things
in your yard are made of garbage? Ready for the scrap yard. Somebody else's used-up stuff. That's not decorating. That's turning your house into a junk heap.”

“No—it's—reinventing,” I protest.

When Victoria rolls her eyes, I go on, “What about everybody else on the street? Why are you going after them? If you don't like the way I decorate my house, fine. Come after me. Not the Widow Hollis and Weird Harold and Mrs. Shoemacker and Irma Jean's family. They're trying to patch what they have.”

“When something breaks, it's trash,” Victoria tells me. “A broken window or a ripped-up screen is trash. People shouldn't have trash on the front of their own house. Besides, your house is the
worst
—on the block, in the whole state, the entire country. It's got to be. Metal flowers on the roof? Heaps of junk all over your yard? Are you serious? If you cared so much about Serendipity Place, you wouldn't have a house like that. A house that ruins the whole neighborhood.”

On the opposite side of the playground, Ms. Byron begins to slowly make her way toward me and Victoria. From this distance, I know she can't hear us. But she can surely tell, by the way we're leaning into each other, heads jutted forward, pointing, jabbing back and forth, that we're arguing. I can see the unhappiness etched into her face.

“You know something, Auggie?” Victoria says quietly, without any hint of sarcasm or anger. Almost like she's a teacher lecturing me.“What we've been asking isn't even really that big of a deal. If you painted your shutters all those different colors, why couldn't you find a way to paint them all one color? I think you like being poor.” The word—
poor
—scratches. “You wear it like a badge,” she goes on. “Because being poor means you don't have to play by the rules.”

“The rules?” I say. “The rules should work for everybody, Victoria. No matter how much money you might have in the bank. Otherwise, the rules aren't right.”

• • • 48 • • •

We're eating off our TV trays in front of the news when our house starts to flash across the screen.

“When did they film this?” I ask Gus, clutching my stomach.

Gus only shakes his head.

“Well, I think they should clean that place up,” a girl says. Not any girl, though—a girl from Ms. Byron's fifth-grade class. One of the Dickerson kids who have spent the year cringing at Old Glory. She looks straight into the camera when she talks, so it's like she's getting after me and Gus right here in our living room.

“It's awful,” a boy says, dipping his head down so that he can speak into the reporter's microphone. That boy's face shocks me worse than a fraying electrical cord. Because he's
not
in Ms. Byron's class. I've never seen him before. Not ever. And I know our house has been in the paper—more than once, even—but I hadn't thought about everyone in town making up their minds about it without ever having met me or Gus. At that moment, the entirety of Willow Grove seems full of Victorias.

“Heck, I think they ought to leave Auggie and Gus alone,” another boy shouts, yet another face I don't recognize. But he's got white circles on his jeans.

“I believe we're famous, Auggie,” Gus says. He drops his knife onto his plate with a clank and droops into his favorite living room chair. He puts his TV tray to the side, which means he's done with supper. But he's hardly touched any of his food. In fact, his plate looks pretty much like it did when he sat down, except the cream gravy's not steaming anymore.

Seeing Gus so sad makes me put my knife down, too.

“Where do you stand on this issue?” the reporter asks a man in a suit jacket. I rub my forehead, because I already know what his answer will be. He'll say he hates our house. Because our city is divided right down the middle—between people like me who have worn jeans with white circles, and people who never have. The white-circle people side with me and Gus, and the ones who have the kind of clothes that could only hang in the closets of fancy new homes think that Gus and I have been asking for trouble all along.

“Well,” the man begins. I've been so intent on staring at his suit instead of his face, it takes his name flashing along the bottom of the TV screen for me to realize who it is:
Edward Cole
. I clutch my stomach and groan. Victoria's standing at her father's side, staring seriously into the camera.

“As the head of the House Beautification Committee,” Mr. Cole says, “I have always believed that the Joneses should be required to clean up their property. The Joneses have flown right in the face of everything our committee stands for. In fact, all the committee wanted in the beginning was for Mr. Jones to use clear glass to repair his windows. Instead, Mr. Jones brought heaps of broken and useless junk home and cluttered his roof and his lawn. Now, I'm a reasonable man. I know that Mr. Jones hauls trash for a living, but he certainly doesn't have to bring his work home with him.”

“In fact,” Victoria adds, flashing a beautiful, white-toothed smile for the camera, “the committee and I have a special name for the Jones house. Since it's completely covered in junk, and since it sits on a corner, we all call it the
junk-tion
of Sunshine and Lucky.”

The reporter offers a chuckle.

“The Jones house is not the only property in Serendipity Place in violation of current codes,” Mr. Cole goes on. “Because the residents have neglected their homes and refused to fully comply with repeated warnings, we have been forced to officially blight the entire area.”

Gus groans and slumps over the worn-through arm on his chair, and I have to go outside to get a breath. That name that Victoria has given our house doesn't just sting, it kills. I feel my heart coming apart in my chest.

I stagger to the end of the yard, wishing for a way to dull this ache. I open the gate and stand on the sidewalk, feeling my lungs tighten with fear, until a tiny bicycle bell rings, a few feet down the street. When I look, Victoria is steering her bike in circles with one hand and holding a can of soda with the other.

“Judging by the way you look, I'd say you saw the news,” Victoria taunts. “My father's going to clean up this neighborhood. He's going to replace all these run-down houses with a community center. He's going to make it so pretty. And then he's going to run for mayor. And then he's going to run for governor. And then I'm going to live in the governor's mansion.”

She brings her bicycle to a stop at my curb and knocks her head back, emptying her soda can. “Here,” she says, holding the can toward me. “For your house. While you still have one.”

I narrow my eyes at her and knock the empty can into the street.

• • • 49 • • •

“What are you going to do?” The words reach out the very next afternoon and tap my shoulder, gently. Gus has just dropped me and Irma Jean off after school, and I'm standing in the yard, staring up at my house.

When I turn, I find Irma Jean standing beside a figure—the one twirling her wig around her finger.

Her house is quiet, because her parents are surely at City Hall, which is also where Gus has gone almost every day for the past week. Everyone from Serendipity Place is trying to work something out, as though their words are actually hammers and wrenches with the power to fix this problem.

Irma Jean slides an old beat-up brown paper bag from her backpack. She pulls out a brownie as thick as two stacks of playing cards. “Go on,” she says. “I was saving it for an after-school snack. Now you can have it.”

The brownie makes my mouth water like a hose with a hole in it. Irma Jean doesn't think words at the City Hall are strong enough to save us. She wants to bribe me into telling her my secret plan.

I stare at Irma Jean's feet to keep from looking at her hopeful face. The grass is beginning to sprout green around the feet of every single figure. March feels like a fragile blue egg—only, instead of a bird that's crawling out, it's spring.

“Gus seemed like he was in an awful big hurry today,” Irma Jean presses.

“Triple pickups,” I say. “Spring cleaning's started.”

“Is he still trying to get the money for the fines?”

“Yes,” I sigh. “Yes, he's still trying to get the money for the fines.”

“Do you think he'll get enough?” she asks, quietly.

Her words poke straight into my doubt. “Probably not,” I admit.

Irma Jean shrinks. She uses the toe of her right sneaker to scratch her left ankle. I watch her toe move up and down over the white circle, thinking about how glad I'll be when it finally gets warm enough to wear shorts.

“Bet you've got another idea,” she whispers. “Come on—tell me. I wish—” Irma Jean's voice gets real far off. “I wish I could help, you know?”

“You do?”

Irma Jean nods. “Honest.”

“Okay. Okay, maybe,” I say. “You could be my cover while I'm gone.”

“Gone?”

I nod. “To California.”

“California?”

“My mom's in California,” I remind her. “Everyone says so.”

“But what good is she going to do?” Irma Jean asks. “Are you sure she wants—” She stops short. “I mean, she left. Why would you think she'd want to see you now?”

A hard little lump of anger glows hot inside my chest. “She can help me,” I insist defensively. “Besides, I write her letters all the time.”

“Yeah, but does she answer?”

I make a face at Irma Jean that shows how much her question hurts. “Chuck told me this story about how he and Mom once tried to hitchhike, when they went out to change the world. So I'm going to hitchhike out to California,” I explain.

“No, you're not,” Irma Jean says, her mouth hanging open.

“I'm going to hitchhike out to California. And I'm going to bring Mom back so she'll help me stand up to that committee. Nobody in this whole world is braver than my mom, Irma Jean. She could stare down poisonous snakes. And when she was young, she wanted to change the world. If anybody can scare that stupid House Beautification Committee away, change things for the better, it's my mom.”

Before Irma Jean can argue with me, I say again, “You can cover for me.”

Irma Jean starts to turn a sickly green, right above the spot where her jean jacket hugs her neck. “I can?”

“Sure,” I say, motioning for her to follow me toward my front door. “You can pretend I'm over at your house. For a little while. Then, after I'm long gone, you can let Gus know that I'm okay. That I'm with my mom.”

“I don't know,” Irma Jean moans.

She's still whining as we weave between the figures that have completely crowded our front lawn. “I don't know, Auggie,” she says again as she follows me inside my house.

I toss my books on the front hall table and head straight for the closet, in search of supplies for my trip. But the door is locked. Like always. Like I should have known it would be. But I give it a good kick just the same.

I head for Gus's room, where I tug his ancient suitcase out from behind his shoes. It's been so long since Gus has taken a vacation anywhere that when I open it, I find a dead spider who'd managed to crawl in through a crack. I dust her cobweb out with my hand, then drag the suitcase up to my room.

“This is so dangerous, Auggie,” Irma Jean insists as I start tossing my early spring sweaters inside. “What if you get hurt?” she presses. “What if something happens?”

“Something
will
happen if I don't go, Irma Jean,” I say, snapping the suitcase shut. “We'll lose our house. So will you. So will everyone in the neighborhood.”

As I stomp down the stairs and out the front door, Irma Jean admits, “I don't like this.” All the way to the corner, she whimpers like a left-behind dog.

“Irma Jean!” I snap. “I don't care if you like it or not. I can't do anything without a plan, all right? And getting my brave mom is my plan. So maybe it's not the most perfect plan in the world. But it's all I've got!”

• • • 50 • • •

Irma Jean's eyes are still pleading with me as I turn away. I throw my thumb right into the air to let all the drivers know that I need a lift. Instantly, tires squeal to a complete halt. Before I even look to see who's stopped for me, I tell Irma Jean, “I'll be back soon.”

I've only started to reach for the door handle when a pair of hands clutches me by both shoulders and yanks me away.

“Hey,” I moan as Irma Jean waves for the truck that's stopped to take off down the street again.

“You have to know how risky that is,” she snaps at me.

“I have to do something,” I shout. “We're going to be homeless, Irma Jean. All of us. I have to go get my mom. She's the only person I know who can fix this.”

“Here,” Irma Jean says, reaching into her backpack. She pulls out a wad of dollar bills.

“What's this?”

“My birthday money from my grandma and my aunt and uncle. I've been carrying it to school to keep Cody Daniel from stealing it. Use it as bus fare.”

I feel a grateful ball of tears swell in the back of my throat.

“You think it's enough to get to California?” she asks.

I'm not sure it is, but she's so sweet to give me her birthday money, I nod like it's all I'd ever need in the world. I hug her a thank-you.

I head down to the corner bus stop. I sit on a bench, waiting, feeling as serious as a math teacher. I begin to wonder how I'll ever get to the West Coast. But then I figure if I keep changing buses, one after another, stop after stop, I'll get there.

When a bus sighs at the curb, I hoist my suitcase up the steps and slam some money into the slot. I hurry to a seat before the driver can question me.

I ride toward the edge of town—a quiet, lonely section where weeds grow up around the corners of abandoned factories and boarded-up filling stations, while the neon lights of liquor stores flicker angrily.

The bus ambles past the half-burned-out letters of a sign flashing
VACANCY
and a motel with a pool so filthy, it looks like a lake of motor oil.

We ride until a green
CITY LIMITS
sign looms large at the end of a broken sidewalk.

I figure this must be a good place to change buses, head from one city into another.

My suitcase bangs against my legs and the edge of the bus seats as I walk down the aisle toward the door. I'm still ready to find my mom. But I'm nowhere near California. Knowing how long it's taken to get to the edge of town makes California feel as far as the North Pole.

My heart pumps. I don't know when another bus will come by. What happens when I need to sleep?

I stand at the bus stop for what feels like months, feeling tiny and alone. The world is enormous around me, filled with shadows and mysteries and dangers.

As I tremble, terrified of the who-knows-what that lies ahead, a white car screeches to a stop next to my curb. And a man gets out and heads right toward me.

BOOK: The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky
7.5Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Bleeding Hearts by Rankin, Ian
Bitten by Violet Heart
A Gentleman's Game by Greg Rucka
Storm: Book 2 by Evelyn Rosado
Supernatural Born Killers by Casey Daniels