That Girl Lucy Moon Read online

  But then, a few days into popularity, Lucy passed Thomas Duke and Ben Furley in the hallway. Thomas and Ben eyed her up and down and flashed a rating of six out often, instead of the usual two or three. Lucy felt a surge of pleasure. She thought, I'm up three points! Wasn't Zoë a seven?

  That was a shock. The blinders fell off Lucy's eyes, and she saw what an absolute dolt she had become. Was this what she wanted deep down—to be popular?

  Of course not, Lucy told herself, stopping abruptly in the middle of the hall, so that a girl with a stack of library books nearly slammed into her. "Watch it!" the girl said. Lucy ignored her and continued thinking: Lucy wanted the truth set free. This was the story of kids getting arrested for sledding on Wiggins Hill!

  Then she admitted more: okay, yes, she had harbored the idea that putting out the flyer would force kids to make up their minds about her. But she had honestly thought she was kissing her chances of a junior-high social life good-bye.

  Yet, instead, she had stirred the populace. She was good at this. This was what adults meant when they called kids "talented," or "gifted," right?

  Lucy had never thought about it this way. In elementary school, Lucy's need to take action had been something she did impulsively, almost a gut instinct. She did it in order to release the pressure that injustice created inside her. Still, maybe it was more than that. . . .

  But the bell rang and interrupted her thoughts. Lucy dashed up the stairs, late for class.

  Lucy's popularity lasted nine school days, and when it was gone, Lucy found herself relieved—though she had to admit life in junior high had gotten a bit better. She had gained some respect—kids acknowledged her existence, and Lucy didn't end up the butt of jokes, or as a living, breathing morality lesson. (Let this True Loser be an Example to Ye!) The oddballs accepted Lucy on her own terms (and not just as a friend of Zoë's), so Lucy had people to talk to during lunch. And whenever kids wanted to talk about Wiggins Hill, they came to Lucy.

  Lucy would have thought these changes perfectly rosy, but around this time, there were some bumps in her friendships. Zoë, for instance, was becoming more and more impatient with the Wiggins Hill talk. She'd tap her foot and grab Lucy by the shirt and say things like, "We're late, come on," when they weren't late at all. Finally, Zoë blurted: "I wish they'd remember that I had something to do with that flyer, too." Then she looked at Lucy. "You don't remember it either, you know. It doesn't help." Lucy tried to protest that Zoë had it all wrong, but by that time Zoë was down the hall, and anyway (though Lucy felt ashamed to admit it), she knew Zoë was right. Lucy saw the truth flash like a bit of metal at the bottom of a creek: deep down, Lucy wanted every bit of the attention for herself. It wasn't as though she denied Zoë's role if it came up—Lucy simply didn't mention it.

  Lucy thought in her defense: well, why couldn't Zoë let her have all the attention? Was that too much to ask? Had she been blind when everyone was ignoring her? It seemed pretty clear that Zoë couldn't take it when Lucy got more popular. Maybe Zoë didn't care about Lucy's welfare.

  No, Lucy thought. It wasn't true! Zoë was her best friend—The End. Lucy apologized.

  Then there was Sam Shipman and Lisa Alt.

  Lucy had been genuinely surprised when adults found out about The Turtle Rock Times Shuts Its Eyes. Her stomach rolled like a log the first time she overheard the true story of the arrested sledders told by an adult drinking tea at the Rossignol Bakery. Soon after this, Lucy heard adults talking about the arrested sledders at the gas station, and twice in Clare's Meats & Foodstuffs. Once she heard an adult actually say, "My kid brought this flyer home from school called The Turtle Rock Times Shuts Its Eyes. . . ."

  Lucy hoped that Lisa Alt and Sam Shipman's parents hadn't seen the flyer, but one day Lisa came to school looking glum and told Lucy that her mom and dad had found out and grounded her for a month. "They said it didn't matter that my name wasn't on it; by the details, it's obvious that it's us—which is true because everybody at school figured it out. . . ." Lisa must have seen the look on Lucy's face, because she added, "It's okay. I don't care. I mean, who wants to be quiet about getting stuck in that tree on Wiggins Hill?

  "Anyway, I guess I'm lucky," she said. "Sam got it worse. He's grounded, and his dad won't take him deer hunting. His dad told him that a kid unable to follow orders shouldn't be out in the woods with a rifle."

  That explained the frost Lucy felt from Sam. They'd talked a lot lately, and the more Lucy talked to him, the more she liked how his smile seemed to burst upon his face like a firecracker. But then suddenly he went cold, avoided her. Lucy swore he glared at her in the hallways. Now, finally, she understood what was going on. He could have told her! If she'd known, she wouldn't have tried to get his attention by throwing spitballs in social studies, causing Ms. Kortum to assign one hundred lines of "I will not throw spitballs in class," due tomorrow. Sam had smiled at her then; Lucy glared in return. And the whole thing was over deer hunting! Like he was missing something by being stopped from killing a graceful, sentient creature? Lucy filed the friendship under "good riddance."

  And so, Lucy was glad that November had come so she could shift her focus in another direction: "Killing Season," more commonly known as "Deer Hunting Season."

  Lucy shared her dislike of deer hunting with a small chunk of the Turtle Rock population, including city folks (who didn't have a family tradition of hunting) and schoolteachers (who hated how their classes emptied out in November, causing endless paperwork of makeup assignments and tests). However, most people who did not care for the sport simply tried to ignore it. That's how a person got along with others nicely, without too much fuss. But Lucy rarely felt she could let the season go by without something to counter the blaze-orange celebration. One year, she and Zoë secretly stuffed the Rossignol Bakery's hunters' boxed lunches with flyers, hidden under the napkin, describing the last moments—millisecond by hideous millisecond—of a deer's death. (They were so successful in making chicken and tuna fish croissants unappetizing that Lucy and Zoë were forever banned from touching the hunters' boxed lunches.)

  This year, though, Lucy and Zoë were going simple. They tied blood-red bandannas around their necks. The bandannas would stay on until the season closed (exceptions: showers and sleep). Anyone asking about the bandanna would get an earful of deer-hunting "facts and massacres."

  This year, Quote and Edna joined them. Of course, Quote didn't say anything she was supposed to say. Asked about her red bandanna, Quote settled on an ominous: "'For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak.'" She'd pause and add, "It's from Hamlet."

  After about a week of this, Lucy couldn't stand it anymore. "Why can't you just do it right?" she pleaded.

  "It's Shakespeare," said Quote, as if that explained things. "When jour words have lasted hundreds of years, I'll use them, okay? But since you can't appreciate my contribution, I'm done." Quote took off the bandanna and dropped it at Lucy's feet, adding: "'The smallest worm will turn being trodden on.'" Then she pivoted on her tiny, pointy shoes and strode away. Quote, Lucy decided, had style.

  And with this, Lucy and Zoë's life at the junior high settled into a comfortable rhythm: they ate lunch with the oddballs. They walked down to the Rossignol Bakery together after school. They wished it would snow again so they could go sledding. And they told each other everything. (Or almost everything.)

  As for Lucy's life at home, well, that had changed. Lucy could not figure out why, but every time her mom left on a trip, the silence of their little red house seemed to sneak up and surprise her. After returning from the Rossignol Bakery in the early evening, Lucy would see their red house a block away, and swear she could smell simmering onions and hear the chop, chop, chop of her mom's knife as she made dinner. When her mom was home, Lucy would barrel through the front door, pull a kitchen stool up to the counter, and talk and talk and talk. But with her mom gone, Lucy opened the front door and heard nothing, except the rattle of the refrigerator. Lucy felt a pang of missing her mom. It had gone away quickly enough at the beginning, but it had begun to grow stronger as her mom's trip extended into November. (The month she said she'd be home!)

  Lucy checked the mail pail every afternoon. Every three or four days, Lucy would find a postcard or a letter from her mom. Her mom also phoned two or three times a week. Lucy wished her mom would get a cell phone so they could call her, but her mom didn't like to be interrupted. She said cell phones "impinged on her creative space."

  So Lucy was left with her dad, which was kind of like being left with a relative seen only on major holidays, maybe like an uncle who is an officer in the army and is used to a little authority. Lucy's dad worked as the postmaster at the Turtle Rock post office, and he stood six-foot-ten with a barrel chest. When he was angry (which was not often), his voice shook the house down to its foundations.

  But the worst was this: as soon as Lucy's mom left on her trips, Lucy's dad doled out rules for Lucy to follow. The nine thirty bedtime was only a start. He had rules about phone calls, the radio, TV, and the stove. Shoes, boots, coats, and backpacks were not to be left "lying around" downstairs. At the dinner table, Lucy needed to say "please pass . . ." and "thank you" after her dad handed over the dish. He expected Lucy to keep an eye on the garbage cans and to empty them when they got too full. The sidewalk and driveway were to be shoveled and her room picked up. He even had rules about her shirts—no words. (This happened after he saw her go out with a T-shirt that said "Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History.") Lucy wondered what he was afraid of—that she would tear up the carpet and chew the furniture?

  But all was not lost. Until her mom returned, Lucy committed to a tried-and-true strategy: obey the rules and blend. Lucy's dad lived in a kind of self-contained ecosystem, and as lon
g as Lucy didn't interfere with its cycle of life, all was well. For instance, here is what Lucy's dad did on Saturdays: he ate his cereal. He rinsed his bowl and set it in the sink. He went for a bird walk. When he returned, he sat at the kitchen table and wrote bird names in his bird journal. Then he tossed a load of clothing in the washing machine and went to Clare's Meats & Foodstuffs for groceries. For lunch, Lucy and her dad ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. (They ate in silence punctuated by the slosh of milk going down her dad's gullet.) After lunch, her dad picked up a magazine, stretched out in his lounger, and started reading. That's where he stuck (body to lounger, hand to magazine) for the rest of the day.

  So Lucy kept her grades up, told him where she was going, wore plain clothing, went to bed by nine thirty, and kept the volume on her radio low. Believe it or not, this left Lucy free to do what she wanted. Lucy had no idea if he'd heard about The Turtle Rock Times Shuts Its Eyes, but he hadn't said anything, and she wasn't going to bring it up.

  The only thing Lucy absolutely hated was the food situation. Lucy opened the refrigerator after her dad's first trip to Clare's Meats & Foodstuffs, and it was so empty, white, and glowing, Lucy swore it looked like a portal to the pearly gates. Two gallons of milk? That's it? Then Lucy opened the freezer and saw frozen foods of nearly every persuasion (low-cal, low-carb, vegetarian, vegan, soy, and family-size). Lucy moaned.

  "You have to teach him how to cook," Lucy said to her mom during one of those October phone calls. "First it was Puddle Jumper Cafe Pizza until it fell out my ears. And now it's frozen food. Mom, tell him about nutrients! Tell him how food can't be kept forever and still be good to eat! Tell him cardboard is for boxes, not for twelve-year-old girls to consume!" Lucy's mom laughed and said she'd mention it to Dad, but did Lucy know that her cookbook was sitting on the shelf in the kitchen?

  "I can't cook!" said Lucy. She hated it when her mom turned the situation around on her. She had a legitimate problem, something that needed fixing by an adult! And anyway, her mom knew what kind of kid she'd given birth to—and Lucy wasn't a chef.

  "Well," her mom said slowly and with a little amusement in her voice, "maybe you and your dad could make something together."

  "Mom, it would interrupt his magazine time," said Lucy. "He reads all night long—The Overachieving Birder, or Scientists at Rest, or Centuries of Post Office Delivery."

  "Have you asked?"

  "No," said Lucy. And she didn't want to ask. If she did, her dad would find something else Lucy needed to be responsible for, and he'd give her a rule explaining how and exactly when it was to be done.

  Of course, there was the added problem that she'd have to find the recipe and write down every single ingredient. And she couldn't write any ingredient on a shopping list without checking to see if they already had it on a shelf somewhere. For everybody's information, Lucy's mom didn't know how to keep an organized pantry—the dried basil could easily be behind the bin of corn flour or sideways underneath a bag of dried apricots! Lucy had important things to do, and cooking was what parents did, not kids.

  Lucy determined to eat the frozen food.

  It was in November, during one of these meals, that a car drove down Fifth Street and pulled into the Moons' driveway. Lucy was picking at a Frozen Fiesta dinner (third this week), and her dad was scooping up a gluey hump of his Manly Lumberjack Meal. Lucy heard the car and jumped up to look out the window. She sat down, dejected.

  "Finish your dinner, Lucy—every bite," her dad said pointedly.

  So Lucy put another brown forkful of "Tostada-arriba! Hot! Hot! Hot!" in her mouth, tried to keep her tongue off it, and then washed it down with milk. Her whole body shivered. Yuck.

  That was when the knock came at the front door.

  Her dad wiped his mouth, opened the door, and there stood Mr. Gustafson, the owner of Gustafson's Wild Nature Gallery. He owned the store directly below her mom's downtown photography studio.

  "Oh, it's a bad time," said Mr. Gustafson. He glanced at Lucy and the frozen-dinner trays on the table. "I'll come back. I shouldn't interrupt your dinner hour."

  "We're finished," said her dad.

  Lucy thought about throwing the rest of her "Tostada-arriba!" in the garbage as soon as they were out of sight.

  Her dad glanced at her. "You eat up, Lucy."

  Then Lucy's dad ushered Mr. Gustafson into the living room.

  Lucy sighed and stared at the last lumps of tostada— pasty lumps, speed-bump lumps, maggot-rump lumps. Her throat closed up like a camera shutter. Rot! Rot! Rot!

  Lucy listened to the conversation in the living room as she stared blankly at the food before her. Mr. Gustafson was looking for Lucy's mom, but when he realized that her dad couldn't help him, not even with a phone number, Mr. Gustafson sighed loudly and said, "I guess I've got to talk to you, then." Mr. Gustafson continued on, talking about an "opportunity" and that the "Turtle Rocks Arts Committee has chosen the gallery as the location for traveling exhibitions." And then something "unfortunate" and "I need the studio space."

  What? Lucy gulped down the last tostada lump, turned her chair toward the living room, and leaned in to listen.

  "You need the wall space?" her dad said. "I'll have to ask Josephine how she feels about taking down her portraits."

  But Mr. Gustafson continued: "No, not that. I need Josephine to move out of the space. I'm talking major renovation, Don. I'm expanding. I'm going to renovate the gallery and the studio into one space. It'll be beautiful. But, unfortunately, I need Josephine to move out ASAP. I was real lucky and got the contractors. So the good news is that everything will be renovated for a holiday exhibition called 'Snowy Wilderness.'You guys should come to the opening."

  "You want her to move out?" said her dad. "Do you know how much money and work she's put into that place? She put in walls, a darkroom, a special sink. . . . There's the rent, too. Now you're giving her a few weeks' notice and she's not here to say anything."

  "I've given that some thought and I want to pay for the remodeling she did. I can offer a thousand dollars."

  "A thousand dollars doesn't come close."

  "Okay, thirteen hundred, then. But I need her out of there 'cause I've got an opportunity that's never going to come this way again." Mr. Gustafson laughed a little laugh.

  There was a pause.

  Mr. Gustafson broke the silence. "No joke," he said. "It's Miss Wiggins. She's putting up half and she says it's now or never. You know how she is—she loses interest if you don't snap up her offers. So thirteen hundred or nothing. Sorry."

  There was another pause.

  Mr. Gustafson added: "Take the fixtures. I'm not going to need them."

  "Pitiful, Jerry—it's pitiful. I can't believe you'd do this to her—-years, Jerry—it must be six years since she moved in."

  "Don, I'm sorry, but she was renting, you know? Her lease ran out a year ago, and we never renewed it. It's tough luck for poor Josephine that this is the way it worked out. What more can I say? Look, I gotta go now."

  "That's all you're going to say? Your final words on the subject?" said Lucy's dad.

  "I gotta go with the times," said Mr. Gustafson. He glanced at his wristwatch. "Oh, jeez, I got to run."

  "You run, Jerry," said her dad.

  Mr. Gustafson didn't even say good-bye to Lucy as he sprinted out the front door.

  Lucy waited for the screen door to slam behind him and then ran into the living room.

  "We've got to get in touch with Mom," said Lucy, a little desperately. "He can't just take away her studio!"

  Her dad looked down at her and ran his hands through his hair. "You know what I think about you listening in on adult conversation, Lucy."

  "But, Dad," Lucy said. "Do you know where she is? We've got to call her."

  Her dad sighed. "I don't know where she is," he said. "I'll tell her when she calls." He put his hand on Lucy's shoulder. "Lucy, this is business for an adult, not for a child. This is my business. Are we clear?"