Lucy Doesn't Wear Pink (23 page)

He turned to Dad again, but Lucy didn’t hear what he said. There was too much going on in her own head. Could this actually be happening? Could her dream be coming true? Her mom’s dream?

“What are the chances of the city putting up some money for cleats and shin guards?” Mr. Auggy was asking.

“Slim to none,” Dad said, “but it’s worth a try. The next council meeting’s Tuesday the eighteenth.”

“Are you on it?”

Dad made a hard sound. “No — I’ve volunteered, but so far the mayor hasn’t taken me up on it.”

“He doesn’t even know anything,” Lucy said.

Dad put up his hand. “But I’ll go to the meeting with you, Sam, and we’ll see what we can stir up.”

“I’ve got your back, Ted,” Mr. Auggy said. He grinned at Lucy. “Your dad rocks, Miss Lucy.”

But Lucy didn’t answer. They were calling each other Sam and Ted now? She didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. She didn’t have much time to think about it, because the next strange thing happened.

“Luce,” Dad said, “a big envelope came yesterday, and it smells like Aunt Karen. See what it is, would you?”

He pawed in the basket beside the couch and handed her a fat brown envelope. Not only did it reek of Aunt Karen’s perfume, but it had Lucy’s full name on it — Lucy Elizabeth Rooney. Lucy’s head hurt again. Only Dad got to call her that, but there was Aunt Karen, as usual, poking herself into a place she didn’t belong.

“So?” Dad said.

“It’s from her — for me.”

She started to stick it under the couch cushion, but Dad said, “It’s probably that soccer program information. Mr. Auggy might like to see that.”

He could have it. Lucy kept herself from throwing it toward him.

While Mr. Auggy looked over a three-inch stack of brochures and papers, Lucy closed her eyes. When she opened them, the room was shadowy and Mr. Auggy was gone and only Dad sat on the couch with her, as if he hadn’t moved all day.

“Was I asleep that whole time?” Lucy said.

“You needed it,” Dad said. His voice sounded thick. That knot thing again. “You didn’t take care of what I love, champ.”

Lucy felt her own knot forming. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t ever do that again.”

“I won’t.”

“I have to ask you — what did you trip over?”

“I think it was a rock,” Lucy said.

“I thought you and J.J. cleaned up the field.”

“We did.” Lucy rubbed her eyes and sat up. “And I know that rock wasn’t there when we started playing yesterday.”

“What are you thinking?”

The first thing she thought was that Mr. Auggy wouldn’t want her making accusations without proof. The other thing she was thinking she didn’t say out loud.

“I want you to play soccer, Lucy,” Dad said. “I want you to have everything you deserve. I want you to have a great childhood. But please, please be careful.”

Lucy whispered, “Okay.”

Then Mudge yowled from the kitchen door for his dinner and Artemis Hamm crouched down to stalk him from behind the Napping Couch and Lollipop made a beeline for Lucy’s bedroom. From somewhere, Marmalade meowed sleepily, and Dad got up to feed them all and make macaroni and cheese like they always had on Sunday nights.

But something had changed. Something silent that Lucy didn’t understand — except to know it was something she couldn’t make the same again.

15

Dad wasn’t kidding when he said Inez was coming early. She had a breakfast concoction on a tray in front of Lucy before she could even get off the couch to go to the bathroom.

“Eat this now,” she said. “I will make the caldo de res for lunch.”

“What’s that?” Lucy said.

“Stew. Very healing.”

“What’s this?” She drew in a breath of steam from the plate in her lap. It smelled amazing. Dad would say Inez had stolen it from heaven.

“Machaca,” Inez said.

Lucy stared into the bowl whose contents shone with grease. “Do I want to know what’s in it?”

“Brisket, scrambled eggs, beans, hash browns.”

“Does Mora like it?”

Inez straightened up from peering under the couch at Artemis Hamm. Lucy thought she saw a smile somewhere on her face. “No,” she said. “She says she will die if she eats it.”

“Then I’ll probably like it,” Lucy said. And she did.

When she was finished, she wriggled back into the pillows and said, “I guess I get to watch TV all day, huh?”

“Huh,” Inez said as she produced a bright red notebook that said LUCY ROONEY, SOCCER CAPTAIN on the front of it. “Work from Senor Coach. Get busy.”

“I have a concussion!”

“You will live.”

And then Inez got busy, sweeping and polishing and scrubbing things Lucy never would have thought of. She herself had no choice but to do the twenty math problems Mr. Auggy had assigned, all of them with jokes attached to them, and copy over the paragraph she had managed to string together from her collage. By the time she was finished, Inez had the caldo de res ready, and although it looked like it had the hoof of some animal swimming in it, Lucy ate it and scraped the bowl with her finger.

Inez made her take a shower and climb into her bed for the nap she swore she didn’t need. She turned on the radio so she could hear Dad’s voice while she lay there.

When she woke up, Mora was sitting in her rocking chair, staring at her.

“What was it like?” she said.

“What was what like?” Lucy sat up and felt somehow naked with Mora in her room.

“Going unconscious — was it weird?”

“No — well, yeah. It was like being asleep, only not.”

Mora arched an eyebrow. “Now, that clears it up. At least we don’t have to do Bible study today because you’re sick. I bet we could talk Abuela into letting us watch Oprah.”

Lucy was about to ask her what the big deal was about Oprah when she heard a high-pitched whine outside the window.

Mora bolted to her feet. “Is that that cat?”

“Could be,” Lucy said, though she knew it wasn’t.

“I’m out of here,” Mora said, and she was.

Lucy waited until she heard the TV go on before she got to her knees and looked out the window. Januarie was crouched below, face full of news.

“Dusty and that other girl are coming to your back door!” she spewed out.

“No they are not,” Lucy said.

“Yuh-huh.”

Sure enough, Lucy heard voices from the kitchen that didn’t belong there.

“Okay, thanks,” she whispered to Januarie. “I’ll make it up to you.”

She shut the window, ready to burrow under the covers, but Mora f lung open the door and said, “You have company. Huh. You really do have friends.”

Lucy didn’t inform her that Dusty and Veronica did not qualify as friends. And what was with everybody invading her bedroom? She felt a sudden need to brush her hair. She tightened her ponytail and straightened her big Dad T-shirt and pulled it over her knees as she hugged them against her.

“Hi,” Dusty said from the doorway.

“Hi,” Veronica said from over her shoulder.

Dusty gazed around the room as if she were entering a foreign land. “Can we come in?”

“Sure,” Mora said. She shut the lid on the toy chest and patted it. “You can sit here.”

Their voices — as they chattered about Lucy’s stuffed animals in the fireplace and the giant soccer ball on the bed and the totally cool rocking horse in the corner — covered the mournful mewing of Lollipop in the chest.

“Cool room,” Dusty said as she sat on the end of Lucy’s bed and leaned on the soccer ball.

Mora settled herself into the rocking chair and dug into her pocket. Inez must not have frisked her for techno today. Lucy herself focused nervously on Veronica, who looked like she was about to open Lucy’s drawers.

“Are you better?” Dusty said.

“Uh-huh,” Lucy said. She wasn’t quite sure what to say to a roomful of girly girls — her room full. It didn’t help that Januarie appeared in the doorway, scowling, chubby arms folded across her chest as if to say, “You let them in? How could you?”

“I was so scared when Mr. Auggy said you had a concussion,” Dusty said.

“You could die from that,” Veronica said.

Januarie hiked herself up beside Lucy. “Could you?”

“I didn’t,” Lucy said.

“Which is good, because we are going to have a for-real soccer team.” Dusty smiled, lighting up her heart-face. “And you’re the captain.”

Lucy looked at each of them, but they were both smiling, Veronica with her lip hanging down.

“Is Gabe mad about that?” Lucy said.

Dusty shrugged. “He’ll get over it.”

“I comforted him,” Veronica said with a giggle.

Ickety-ick.

“Is Gabe your boyfriend?” Mora said.

“I wish,” Veronica said.

“I have a boyfriend.” Mora stared into the thing she was holding, which didn’t appear to be either her cell phone or her iPod.

Veronica wandered over to her, but Dusty parked her chin on the soccer ball and said to Lucy, “We are going to have such a good team. I wish we could have uniforms.”

“Me too,” Lucy said slowly. “I was thinking of red and blue — I don’t know — ”

“That’s totally what I was thinking! We have to come up with a name for the whole team, though. You’re good at soccer names.”

“That is the coolest thing ever!”

They both looked at Veronica, who held Mora’s small contraption in her hands as if it were a diamond ring.

“What is it?” Dusty said. She got up to join them. Even Januarie craned her head.

“It’s an electronic diary.” Mora took it carefully back from Veronica. “I keep all my secrets in it.”

“About your boyfriend,” Veronica said, voice velvet with envy.

“Oh, yeah, and other stuff. Very secret stuff.”

Lucy could actually understand that. She’d been pretty nervous when Veronica was poking around near the underwear drawer. She had to find a safer place for the Book of Lists.

“That’s why I use an electronic diary instead of a regular one,” Mora was explaining. “You have to have a password to get into it.”

“What is it?” Veronica said.

Dusty tucked her chin under. “Like she’s so going to tell you.”

“Oh, it’s okay.” Mora’s eyes were big and shiny. Lucy figured she loved an audience. “It only opens if I say it exactly the way I recorded it. And it’ll tell me if I’ve had intruders.”

“Cool.” Veronica seemed barely able to keep herself from dissolving into a coveting pool.

“See, you have to do it just like this.” Mora put the device up to her lips and said, in a voice that sounded like somebody on TV, “Consuela.”

“Who’s Consuela?” Dusty said.

“It’s the name I wish I had instead of Mora. See — ” She f lashed the diary toward Veronica. “I’m in.”

It was obviously too cool for words this time, because Veronica just shook her head. Even Dusty looked impressed, and Januarie — Januarie was hanging over the edge of the bed, fascinated in spite of herself. The two seconds of being able to talk to another girl slithered out of Lucy like a snake that might never have been there in the first place.

“A gathering of mini-women!” someone said from the doorway.

Dad was there, face sunlight-smiling, eyes traveling toward the sounds.

“Hi, Dad.”

Lucy started to scramble out of bed, but Dad said, “Stay where you are. You’re still a patient.”

“How did he know you were getting up?” Veronica whispered loudly.

“Because he isn’t deaf,” Lucy whispered back.

Dad chuckled. “A lot of people make that mistake. And you are?”

“Me?” Veronica said.

“This is Veronica,” Lucy said.

“Ah — from church.” Dad’s eyes traveled some more. “Dusty, you here too?”

“Wow — yeah.” Dusty looked impressed, more than she was over the electronic diary.

“Where’s Januarie-February-June-or-July?”

“Here,” said the Chihuahua voice. By some miracle, she hadn’t said a word through the whole thing. Dad must have smelled her.

“What’s up, little one?” he said.

“Nothin’.”

“Inez made cookies.”

Januarie was off the bed and in the kitchen almost before Dad could get out of the doorway.

“We shouldn’t do that, Dad,” Lucy said. “She has to lose weight if she’s going to play soccer.” She sneaked a glance at Veronica, who didn’t even blink.

“She’s not that chubby,” Dusty said. “I was like that when I was her age.”

“Not me,” Mora said. “I’ve always been thin — that’s why I’m such a good dancer.”

“Do you take actual dance classes?” Veronica said, using her envy voice again.

While Mora went into a long explanation of how many classes she took every week and how many competitions her team in Ala-mogordo had won, Dad eased his way over to the bed and felt Lucy’s forehead.