Lucy Doesn't Wear Pink (2 page)

Lucy flipped hers so it play-slapped at the sides of her face. She could see its blondeness out of the corners of her eyes. Yellow and thick and straight like her mom’s had been. Not all weird and chopped-off and sticking out the way Aunt Karen’s did. That was supposed to be a “style.”

Lollipop’s legs startled straight, and her claws sunk into Lucy’s faded blue-and-yellow plaid pillowcase. She sprang to the windowsill — in the slow-motion way her chunky body insisted on — and pressed whisker-close to the glass. Lucy crawled to the headboard and leaned on it to peer out.

Granada Street was Saturday-afternoon-in-January quiet. Even J.J.’s house across the road looked as if it were trying to nap behind the stacks of firewood and tangle of rusted lawn mowers and pieces of cars piled around it. Dad asked Lucy just the other day if the Clucks still had everything but the kitchen sink in their yard. She reported that now there actually
was
a kitchen sink out there.

But there were no doors banging or Cluck family members yelling, which was what usually made Lollipop switch her tail like she was doing now. Unless the kitty saw something in the spider shadows of the cottonwood trees on the road, there was nothing going on out there.

At least it wasn’t Aunt Karen already.

Lucy sank back onto the bed on her stomach, legs in a thoughtful kick. She pulled the top of her sweatshirt over her nose and mouth and wrote,

Aunt Karen said on the phone she was bringing Christmas presents.

“It won’t be soccer cleats or a new seat for my dirt bike, I can guarantee you that,” Lucy said to Lollipop. “You wait — it’ll be some f lowered dress.” Whatever it was, it would make her feel like she was wearing sandpaper.

Lollipop rolled off the sill and burrowed herself between Lucy’s pillows. Lucy didn’t blame her. Aunt Karen hadn’t even arrived yet and she was ready to hide under the pillows too. She set the book carefully on the bedspread and grabbed her soccer ball — the real one — between her feet and stretched her denim-clad legs in the air.

What was wrong with jeans and sweatshirts and tennis shoes in winter, and shorts and T-shirts and bare feet in summer? Nobody but Aunt Karen seemed to care what Lucy wore, but she couldn’t come from El Paso without bringing skirts and bracelets and hair bows.

Lucy lowered the ball to the pillow beside Lollipop, sat straight up, and wrote one more thing —

She let the book sigh shut and smoothed her hands over its cover. Pale green with gold leaves she could feel under her fingertips. And gold letters too, which said, A WOMAN’S BOOK OF LISTS — not curly and girly, but clear and strong.

Lucy pulled the book to her nose and breathed in. In spite of how long it must have been in the box in the storage shed, it still smelled like Kit Kat bars and lavender soap, and it made Lucy sure her mom could be right outside her door, wanting to know if Lucy was finished with the book for now because she wanted to write in it too.

Lollipop’s head came up again. She tumbled from the bed to the floor and skidded on the buttercream ceramic tiles as she scrambled for the chest. The wooden spoon went out as Lollipop went in, and the lid came down with a resounding slam.

That could mean only one of two things. Either Aunt Karen was pulling into the driveway — which couldn’t be because she was never, ever early — or . . .

Lucy crawled to the window again and slid it open this time, letting in a blast of cold air that dried out her nostrils in one sniff. With it came what anyone else would have thought was the beyond-annoying sound of a Chihuahua begging for food.

“Pizza delivery,” the voice said.

Lucy settled her elbows on the windowsill. “What kind of toppings?”

“Um . . . applesauce?”

“What?
” Lucy said.

A dark ponytail surfaced to the window like a periscope on a submarine.

“Whatever,” the Chihuahua voice yelped. “I’ve been out here for ten hours.”

“No, you haven’t, Januarie.” Lucy watched as a round face came into view, chapped-red and puffing air. “Probably more like ten seconds.”

Januarie stood up to her full short-for-an-eight-year-old height and clamped her hands, plump as muffins, on the outside stucco sill. “I have to come in,” she said. “I have a you-know-what pizza.”

“A message from J.J.?” Lucy said.

“Shhh!” Januarie sprayed the sill, her hands, and the front of Lucy’s sweatshirt. “We’re supposed to talk in code!”

“ ‘You-know-what’ is not ‘code,’ ” Lucy said.

“I forgot what it’s supposed to be. Artichoke?”

“You might as well just say it.”

“I
will
if you let me in.”

Januarie inched her knee up the cream-colored adobe wall, but Lucy shook her head. “Not that way — use the back door.”

The moon face plumped into a pout. “I feel more like a spy when I climb in the window.”

Lucy didn’t have the heart to tell her it had been several pounds since Januarie had been able to squeeze through there. J.J. and Januarie’s mom had made a lot of her funnel cakes for Christmas, and Lucy suspected Januarie had scarfed down more than her share.

“Back door,” Lucy said as she slid the window toward Januarie’s turning-blue fingers. “My dad will want to say hi.”

And she hoped he’d take his time with it. As soon as Januarie disappeared, whining, from the glass, Lucy scanned her room for a place to hide the Book of Lists. Since she’d discovered it yesterday in the storage shed, there hadn’t been any need to conceal it, but Januarie had what J.J. called “a serious nose problem,” especially when it came to anything that belonged to Lucy.

Lucy dove for the toy chest, but the tiny, pitiful mews coming from that direction changed her mind. Januarie always squeezed Lollipop like she was trying to get toothpaste from a tube. As soon as she heard the kitty, Januarie would go right for her.

“Hey, Januarie-February-June-or-July,” she heard her dad say from the kitchen.

“How do you always know it’s me?” Januarie said — so loud she might as well have been right outside Lucy’s door. Lucy hated it when people did that with her father.

“Nobody walks like you do,” Dad said.

“Really?” Januarie said.

Good. They were going to have a conversation. Lucy could always count on Januarie for that. She stuck the book under her sweatshirt and looked around again. She could put it in the corner behind the oversize rocking horse, but every time Aunt Karen came, she talked about how it was time to get rid of the “baby toys.” The fact that Lucy’s own mom had painted him didn’t seem to make any difference to her.

She could put it in the fireplace, since Dad wouldn’t let her have a fire in there anyway — but that was where she’d just stashed her stuffed animals when she was doing her Aunt Karen tidying. Their bear heads and bunny tails and lamb noses poked indignantly in all directions. If she put one more thing in there, they might stage a mutiny. Maybe she’d just conceal it on the bookshelf with the books she never read — No, too obvious.

“I gotta go talk to Lucy,” Januarie half-shouted.

“I’m sure she knows you’re here,” Dad half-shouted back. Lucy heard him chuckle, and she heard Januarie’s baby-elephant footfalls coming down the wide hallway. No wonder Dad knew her walk.

As the clumping neared her door, Lucy yanked open the underwear drawer in her dresser and thrust the book inside. It wasn’t the place of honor she wanted, but it would have to do for now. She was just slamming it shut when the door was f lung open and Januarie barged right on in, black eyes already gleaming toward the chest of drawers.

“Januarie,” Lucy said, leaning against it, “when are you going to get it that my dad is blind, not deaf?”

“Huh?” Januarie said.

Lucy moved toward the rocking chair — as far away from the underwear drawer as she could get — and scooped up the school binder she hadn’t touched since she’d f lung it there on December 15th. “You don’t have to yell when you talk to him. He can hear just fine.” She chucked the binder under the bed.

Januarie blinked.

“Never mind.” Lucy held out her hand. “Give it.”

“What?”

“The message from J.J.”

“Shhhhh!” Januarie shoved the door closed and leaned on it as if she and Lucy were about to be attacked by a pack of coyotes. “I remembered the code.”

Lucy forced herself not to roll her eyes. It had to be hard to be eight, wanting to be like the eleven-year-olds. Besides, Januarie had been annoying at least since she was three, when Lucy first met her. J.J. said she was born that way.

“Okay,” Lucy said. “What is it?”

“The pizza has anchovies.”

That meant Januarie brought a message from J.J. Du-uh! Lucy sighed and held out her hand. Januarie dug into the pockets of her denim overalls, no easy feat since they fit her like another skin, and pulled out a rolled-up piece of a take-out pizza menu.

“He taped it closed,” she said, a sure indication that she had been thwarted in her attempt to read it before she gave it to Lucy. She held it as if she were considering adding something more to the ritual of handing it over. Lucy took the opportunity to snatch it from her and shove it into the front pocket of her sweatshirt.

“Aren’t you going to read it?” Januarie’s voice curled into a puppy-whine.

“Later,” Lucy said.

“J.J. said it’s urgent!”

“You want a candy cane?”

Januarie looked torn. Lucy thought she shouldn’t consider being a spy when she grew up. She could always be persuaded with food.

“Hey, Luce?” Dad called. “We need to go over a few things before Aunt Karen gets here.”

Januarie’s face lit up like a luminary. “Your Aunt Karen’s coming?”

“Yeah,” Lucy said, and for the moment, she was thankful. “You might want to go home and put on a hair bow or something.”

“I want to show her my new coat! Did you know I got a new coat for Christmas?”

“I’ve seen it twelve times,” Lucy said. “You’ve worn it every day since.”

Januarie lowered her voice, spy-like. “I couldn’t wear it today. It’s too obvious.”

“Yeah, it’s hard to be inconspicuous in that color green,” Lucy said as she ushered Januarie by the elbow to the door.

“Incon . . . what?”

“Grab a candy cane on your way out. They’re in the — ”

“ — basket by the front door. I know.”

Of course she did.

When Januarie was gone, Lucy used her pen to slit the tape and unrolled the paper. Several letters and words were highlighted with a yellow marker, which at the moment annoyed Lucy almost as much as Januarie herself. She didn’t have that much time.

“You coming, Luce?” Dad called.

“Be right there, Dad.”

Lucy took the paper with her as she left her room and padded down the bright Navajo rug that led to the kitchen like the Yellow Brick Road.
Pepperoni and Sausage
— that meant “Meet me” — she got that much.
Extra Cheese
— “bikes” — she put that together.

She looked for the key word — and there it was.
Jalapeno
. That stood for “escape.” J.J. and his codes.

Lucy stuffed the paper back into her pocket and bounced between the always-wide-open wood doors to the kitchen in a whole new mood. Dad sat at the tile-topped table by the window, holding the mug with the howling coyote on it. There was just enough sun to make a silhouette of his sharp triangle nose and his squared-off chin. He tilted his salt-and-pepper-crew-cut head in her direction and smiled — like nobody else in the world did. Lucy wondered sometimes if God smiled that way, because it made a room seem filled with sunlight. It happened a lot, like maybe Dad was trying to brighten the dark space where he always had to be.