Listening for Lucca Read online

  “And I try …” I hiccupped again. “I try so much to show him I’m sorry, that I didn’t mean it. I play with him and take care of him and read him stories every night.”

  “He knows, then. See, you have nothing to do with it. It’s not your fault.”

  I brushed the tears off my cheeks with the back of my other hand so I wouldn’t get sand in my eyes.

  “Well, it’s like a piece of my brother is lost, and maybe, if I can’t get it back but I take care of all these other things that are lost, Lucca’s missing piece will come back to us on its own.”

  Sam and I sat, looking out at the water. Eventually he showed me his watch; we got up and walked back to the house.

  Sam kept holding my hand. It was nice, not just the feel of his hand, but that when I told him about these things, he didn’t run away. It was better than nice. Even if it seemed like he didn’t one-hundred-percent believe me or think I was normal. He was still here.

  He was still here.

  Warmth flooded through me.

  I suddenly thought of the difference between Sarah and Jezzie—Jezzie, who was grown up enough to be interested in kissing. Kissing. I gave Sam’s hand a squeeze, imagined turning to him to kiss him.

  But I couldn’t do that, could I? Not if he belonged to Morgan.

  15

  It was raining. A perfect afternoon for reading and writing and thinking.

  But Mom had other ideas.

  “I have to do errands—boring ones, like picking out paint colors—and I thought Lucca would have more fun not going and he could stay with you.”

  “Great.” I wouldn’t mind spending time with Lucca—but Mom made it sound like a chore, one she didn’t even ask me if I wanted to do.

  So trancelike writing was out. It was so hard for people to get my attention once I started, Lucca probably wouldn’t be able to.

  “Get your rain boots,” I told him. “Raincoat. Umbrella. We’re going outside.”

  “Is that the best idea?” Mom really meant, I don’t think that’s the best idea, but I’m going to pretend it’s up to you to decide.

  “It’s an excellent idea. It’s not cold out. We’ll go to Mrs. Lang’s.”

  Mom decided she’d lost the battle.

  “After the paint store, I’m going to the grocery store. I plan to have dinner on the table at six.”

  “We’ll be back by five,” I promised.

  I didn’t have cutesy plastic rain gear like Lucca—fireman’s-red everything—but I put on my older sneakers and a Windbreaker with a hood. He made it back to the front hall in five minutes, looking excited.

  “We’re going to my friend’s house,” I explained as we walked down the beach along the water. Lucca seemed to like sinking his boots into the wet sand and listening to them squelch as he pulled them up. “She’s old. Really nice. You’ll like her and I think she’ll like you.”

  By the time we got there, Lucca’s boots were a muddy mess, and my sneakers would probably only be used for rainy days at the beach from now on. We stood with our feet on Mrs. Lang’s doormat while we waited for her to answer the bell.

  “Hello!” she said, very happy to see us. “You brought someone with you.”

  “This is my brother, Lucca.”

  “Hello, Lucca. Well, come in!” Then she laughed. “And welcome in!”

  “Shoes off first,” I said. Lucca took off his boots and I airlifted him into the house. Then I wriggled out of my own shoes. “We went on a muddy beach walk.”

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Lang. “I used to like those. Now it makes the old bones too cold.”

  Lucca hung his coat on a chair and began to explore the house. He’s okay at that. He doesn’t touch anything, only looks.

  “He’s part of the long version,” I said to Mrs. Lang, “of why we came here. The doctors thought it might help him for our family to move away from the city.”

  Mrs. Lang nodded. “Usually when something is wrong, people go to a city to see the doctors. Those must be very good doctors you went to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They could have said he needed to come in every week, even if it wasn’t true, just to get your money. If they want to send you away, it’s a sign that they really care.”

  I hadn’t looked at it like that before.

  We watched Lucca zoom through the hallway and then disappear into another room.

  “So what’s the matter with him? He looks perfectly healthy to me.”

  “He doesn’t talk.”

  “Oh, is that all?” Mrs. Lang laughed again. “No matter! All in good time! Let me see if I have any snacks that a little boy would like.”

  She found a bag of those vanilla cookies with vanilla cream—I like those so much more than Oreos—and fruit punch.

  “I even have plastic kid cups,” she said, collecting three from a cabinet. “I bought them because I kept knocking my water glass off my nightstand and thought I should have something around that I couldn’t break.”

  “That’s smart.” Then I noticed another cup, a small metal one, on the windowsill among seashells and little potted plants. It looked tarnished.

  “Hey, where did you get this?” I picked it up. There were letters inscribed on its side, though they were hard to make out. It was oddly familiar.

  “I found it on the beach years ago. Probably long before you were even born.”

  I held the cup for another minute.

  “Are you all right?” Mrs. Lang asked.

  “Yes. Can I have this?”

  “What?”

  “I think I know who it belongs to.”

  “You do?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  Mrs. Lang shrugged, which was not an answer.

  Lucca returned to the kitchen.

  “Want to play our game?” Mrs. Lang asked.

  “I don’t know that Lucca can handle Uno,” I said. “But he loves Memory, if you have regular cards.”

  “I do,” she said, “in the same drawer as the Uno cards.”

  I went to get them in the hallway. I could hear Mrs. Lang talking to Lucca about the cookies. Something she said made him laugh.

  I came back with the cards and we all spread them out facedown on the table.

  Lucca is extraordinarily good at Memory. We played for an hour and he won every game.

  When we walked home in the rain, I could feel the little metal cup in my Windbreaker’s pocket.

  After dinner I found Mom washing pots in the kitchen.

  “Where’s the stuff you use to shine the old spoons?” I asked.

  “Silver polish? Why?”

  “I want to clean this up.” I showed her the cup.

  “Look in the big drawer.”

  I rummaged until I found it. Mom handed me a rag and gave me instructions, and I rubbed the polish into the cup until it shone.

  As I did, the letters became clear. SEA. The ones on my pen.

  My hands holding the cup went cold. It was the one Sarah had hidden on the beach for the treasure-hunt game the day of the dance, the one that her brother had never gone to find. But here it was, real, as real as the wallpaper.

  I brought it upstairs and set it on the shelf with the other abandoned things. It seemed to belong there. It had come home after a very long time.

  The open window made my curtains billow, as if I was being called to come sit in the window and learn more of Sarah’s story.

  Okay.

  So I sat, held on to my pen, and let myself go.

  Jezzie was back and Joshua was not.

  It was a rainy, sticky sort of summer day. She announced that she wanted to work on sewing and make a little purse. I said okay, if she would help me thread the needles so I could sew, too. I got out our basket of fabric scraps and brought it to the parlor. She chose and laid out the pieces for her purse, designing a patchwork.

  “That looks good, Jezzie.”

  “What will you make?” she asked.

  “A dress f
or my doll.” I picked out a couple of pieces to give it a patchwork look, too. I’m not good at sewing things, but if I made it a very plain-shaped dress—with no sleeves—it could be okay.

  Mama came in while we were working and sat with us.

  “Look what I’m making, Mama!” I held up my sewing.

  She took it and made some adjustments. “Looks like a good start.”

  “What did you bring?” I asked.

  She had a little basket, too. “Socks and stockings. I thought I’d do some mending. Make these things last longer.”

  She laid the items out in front of her in four piles—mine, hers, Daddy’s, and Joshua’s. She held a sock of Joshua’s for a moment, then put it in the pile with the others that belonged to him.

  “I think this one’s yours, Jezzie,” she said, holding up another sock.

  Jezzie took it. “I can make a sock puppet out of it. Or a stuffed animal.”

  “If you want,” Mama said. “Though I could teach you to mend it. It’s a useful thing to learn.”

  “Nah, not right now,” Jezzie said.

  “You aren’t so grown up, are you, Jezzie?” Mama smiled.

  But Jezzie was grown up. Especially now that she was kissing boys. I opened my mouth to defend her. But Jezzie interrupted me, asking if Mama had buttons she could sew on the purse and use for eyes on her sock animal. Then she gave me a funny look, as if she’d guessed what I was going to say.

  Mama told Jezzie to get the little button box. We sat and worked in silence. Eventually, Mama went to help Vicky with dinner.

  “Hmm.” Jezzie eyed Mama’s purse on the table. She went over to look at it.

  “What are you doing?” I asked as she pawed through Mama’s things.

  “Just looking at how the purse is made.”

  But she opened Mama’s wallet and took out a ten-dollar bill. She didn’t put it back in.

  “Are you taking Mama’s money?” That was an awful lot of money. Not like taking a dime to get candy.

  “I have to have money in my purse, don’t I? That’s what a purse is for. She’ll understand.”

  Something about it felt funny, but Jezzie made some sense. Mama had been helping her make her purse, and she would probably be willing to give Jezzie something to put in it. But a whole ten-dollar bill?

  We continued our projects until we were called to dinner.

  At dinner, everyone was quiet until Dad asked what we had been up to today.

  Mama said, “The girls spent this afternoon sewing, working on projects they made up themselves.”

  “That sounds very nice,” Dad said. “Maybe after dinner you can show me your projects.”

  “I was working on a dress for my doll. I’m going to make a heart to sew on right in the middle. And Jezzie was making a purse. At first she had nothing to put in it, but—”

  Jezzie gave me a sharp kick under the table.

  “Ouch!” I said. “What?”

  This was the second time Jezzie had stopped me from talking. It was getting annoying.

  “What’s the matter, girls?”

  “Nothing,” Jezzie said. “She’s just talking too much. I like things more quiet.”

  No one talked for the rest of the dinner. My parents are very cautious about Jezzie’s ears. They don’t want her to be in pain. They probably thought this was all about her ears.

  But Jezzie’s eyes were angry.

  When I came back to myself, the whole house was dark and quiet. Everyone must have gone to bed.

  I brushed my teeth, turned off my light, and lay down on my side.

  Was I that different from Jezzie, taking things that didn’t belong to me? I always told myself that they were left behind, unwanted. But some of those things someone might come back for. And Mrs. Lang hadn’t actually told me that I could have that cup.

  It took me a very long time to fall asleep.

  16

  In the morning, the cup was still there on the shelf.

  I tried to ignore it and the guilt as I got dressed. Then I made my bed, something I never do, and sat down on it, facing the shelf.

  Yes, it was still there.

  “But doesn’t it belong here?” I asked out loud. “It’s not stealing if it belongs here.”

  Great. Now I was talking to myself.

  This house was a loony bin.

  And I still had so much more to learn. How was all this connected? What did it all mean?

  It was the pen, and not the cup, that I picked up from the shelf.

  “Come on.”

  Jezzie walked me through our yard and the next one and then out toward the water—not in the direction you would go to swim at the beach. We stayed on the grass where the hill sloped out to dunes leading to the water without ever becoming a sandy beach. We ended up at the stone steps that went right down into the water. You could get in and out of boats there or just sit, resting your feet in the waves that made gentle lapping sounds against the stones. I didn’t come here much, it being out of sight of the house. Jezzie probably had, and for that reason.

  “Do you want Joshua to come back?” Jezzie asked.

  I nodded. As she said his name a lump came into my throat. Things at home were awful without him.

  “Well, you know, loose lips might sink ships. There are signs saying that all over town.”

  I nodded. I’d seen one of them outside the grocery.

  “So that means,” Jezzie continued, “if you want to make sure Joshua comes back, you need to stop talking. Haven’t you noticed how quiet everyone has been since he left? A lot of soldiers don’t come back. You don’t want to take any chances that his ship will sink, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s really hard not to talk—especially for little children like you—and we don’t want you to forget. We need to lock your lips.”

  “Are you going to do it, too?”

  “Of course not. He’s your brother, not mine. It’s you being quiet that matters.”

  “How do you lock your lips?”

  “I have a key.” Jezzie held up two fingers a couple of inches apart. “A special one.”

  “I can’t see it.”

  “That’s because it’s invisible.”

  “How do you know it’s the right invisible key?” I pictured her fishing it out of a whole box of invisible keys.

  “Trust me. I know.” Jezzie continued to hold the key in her fingers. “Just one turn on your lips and they’ll be locked. And Joshua will come home. Ready?”

  I didn’t really want to give up talking. But if it meant that Joshua would come home, I’d do it. He’d asked me to keep a secret for him. He wanted me to keep quiet, too. I nodded.

  Jezzie leaned toward me with the invisible key.

  “Wait!” I shrieked.

  “Are you ready or not? Don’t you want to save Joshua?”

  I nodded again and stood still.

  She pressed the invisible key to my lips and turned it.

  Then Jezzie opened her hand as if she were tossing a pebble down the steps. Was it my imagination that heard something clatter on each stone step and drop into the water with a plop? That the water spread out in circular ripples?

  Why had an invisible key done that? I opened my mouth to ask, but the words got stuck in my throat. I wasn’t sure if Jezzie had noticed the strange thing that had happened.

  Jezzie gave me a sweet smile. “There now, that’s all done with. Let’s go have lunch. Do you hope there’s jam or pudding today?”

  But I couldn’t answer her as we walked back up the dunes.

  I came back to myself breathing hard. Whoa! What had Jezzie done? Could you, just like that, just like magic, take someone’s voice away? That couldn’t have really happened, could it?

  I guess I had finally found out why Sarah didn’t talk, but it hardly made any sense.

  Well, what did make sense? How was it that I could even see this stuff? How did I know I wasn’t making it up? Had I only made up this last sc
ene because I was waiting for her to lose her voice? Had it really only come from my own imagination?

  And what was with the invisible key? Why had it been invisible but audible, and how had it fallen into the water like that?

  Arrgh! I had never had such confusing thoughts tumbling around in my head.

  I stayed in the window seat, staring out at the water. Things looked almost exactly the same out there as they had in Sarah’s time.

  There was a knock on my door and it opened. Sam.

  “Your mom says to come down for dinner.”

  “Already?”

  “Yeah. You all right?”

  “Yeah.” I rubbed my eyes, which were tired and watery.

  Sam lifted my notebook from the window seat and started flipping through the pages. “Can I read it?”

  I took the notebook back and closed it. “None of it makes any sense, anyway.”

  We went downstairs and sat at the table. Four places set.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked.

  “One of the kids had to go to the ER.”

  “Oh no, really?”

  “Yeah. They aren’t sure yet if it’s a break or a sprain. They’re taking X-rays. The parents met them there, but Dad feels like he should stay for a while.”

  We sat down to eat. Mom and Sam made polite conversation. I was as quiet as Lucca. I watched him scoop up noodles without a care in the world.

  Maybe it really was my fault Lucca didn’t like to talk. I was like Jezzie, taking things that weren’t mine. Being mean to younger kids like I was to Lucca sometimes.

  “Siena?” Mom asked. “Do you feel all right?”

  I nodded, but she reached her hand over and felt my forehead. “You may be a little warm. Why don’t you head right to bed after dinner?”

  Sam caught my eye. I looked away, but I felt too bad to be embarrassed about my mommy checking me for fever and sending me to bed in front of him.

  It was still light out, but I went upstairs, and without changing my clothes or brushing my teeth, I fell into bed.

  17

  The makeshift hospital with a couple dozen cots is full of people without names or faces. Where faces would be, their skin is smooth and blank. Their skulls and arms and legs are bandaged (or missing). No one is anyone. And because I am here, I, too, am no one. I, too, have no name, no face.