realized she’d rather have Paloma than Lincoln as her best friend, it hadn’t occurred to her that he would ever feel differently about her . All their lives Lucky had known that a part of Lincoln loved her; he couldn’t help it. He would always love her,no matter what; she took that for granted. But at that moment he was looking at Brigitte.
“A digital picture to send by e-mail,” Brigitte said. She pronounced “digital” in her French way, “dee-gee-tal,” each syllable crisp, like a freshly ironed shirt. Freshly ironed clothes were a rarity in Hard Pan; they caught your eye. Brigitte’s accent was like that: out of place, and yet pleasing; it caught your ear. “Lincoln, look at your net!” Brigitte said suddenly. “It is becoming so big and quite beautiful. What, I wonder, will you catch in it?”
Lucky shifted into a regular seated position by putting her beautiful, ignored feet under the table. No one had noticed her perfectly aligned toes or her unusual ability to spread them out as if they were fingers. Her excellent sheet cake idea had been tossed out the window. She might as well not even be sitting there, even though it was all about her birthday. Worse, Lincoln seemed preoccupied with useless things that had nothing to do with her. His knot tying wasn’t just a peculiar hobby any longer—he’d become so good that he had made friends with the most famous knot-man in England, and he was showered with praise by Brigitte, and probably he would win that contest. Then he would leave Hard Pan, which had suddenly become puny and unimportant to him, Lucky realized, a stupid little place that didn’t even show up on most maps.
So when Lincoln packed up his net, folding it into the plastic bag on the floor, and went outside with Brigitte to pinch off some herbs to take to his mom, Lucky stood and gazed for amoment at the everything drawer; then she yanked it open. It contained abandoned stuff that might still be useful: bottle stoppers and spools of twine and corks and rubber bands. It also held a pair of sharp, long-bladed scissors; Lucky snatched them. Squatting down by the plastic bag, she pulled it open and plunged her scissor-hand inside. Then she made three quick cuts in different random places on the net.
Lucky slammed the scissors back in the drawer and stood in the doorway, taking deep breaths. She smelled dill and cilantro and thyme, fresh and clean, strong in the air. She tried to explain to herself why she had secretly cut Lincoln’s net. She tried to make a good reason in her mind. It was like a sudden illness, as if her meanness gland had swelled up and pumped nasty corpuscles throughout her bloodstream.
The meanness in her bloodstream made her skin feel sticky and her scalp grubby. Lucky imagined peeling off her grimy skin and throwing it into the washing machine.
There were red marks on her thumb and forefinger, where she’d gripped the scissors. She hid the marks with her other hand, and she hid her meanness deep in the laundry hamper of her heart.
13. a decision to trust
As she lay on her bed copying a map of the solar system for science homework on Tuesday evening, Lucky listened to Brigitte’s end of a phone conversation with Paloma’s mom, whose name turned out to be Carmen. It was their second long talk.
Brigitte had filled Lucky in about Mrs. Wellborne’s worries from their first phone call. She worried about bugs and infections and bacteria and dust and wild animals and rabid dogs and kids who might be bad influences and Paloma’s homework and, especially, she worried about people she called Old Desert Rat Characters. Carmen wondered why the Old Desert Rat Characters would live in such a remote place for years and years; why they didn’t want to be closer to civilization, and what they did with their time, way out there in the desert. Lucky wasn’t sure, but she thought probably Short Sammy and the Captain and Dot and Mrs. Prender were all Old Desert Rat Characters.
“A digital picture to send by e-mail,” Brigitte said. She pronounced “digital” in her French way, “dee-gee-tal,” each syllable crisp, like a freshly ironed shirt. Freshly ironed clothes were a rarity in Hard Pan; they caught your eye. Brigitte’s accent was like that: out of place, and yet pleasing; it caught your ear. “Lincoln, look at your net!” Brigitte said suddenly. “It is becoming so big and quite beautiful. What, I wonder, will you catch in it?”
Lucky shifted into a regular seated position by putting her beautiful, ignored feet under the table. No one had noticed her perfectly aligned toes or her unusual ability to spread them out as if they were fingers. Her excellent sheet cake idea had been tossed out the window. She might as well not even be sitting there, even though it was all about her birthday. Worse, Lincoln seemed preoccupied with useless things that had nothing to do with her. His knot tying wasn’t just a peculiar hobby any longer—he’d become so good that he had made friends with the most famous knot-man in England, and he was showered with praise by Brigitte, and probably he would win that contest. Then he would leave Hard Pan, which had suddenly become puny and unimportant to him, Lucky realized, a stupid little place that didn’t even show up on most maps.
So when Lincoln packed up his net, folding it into the plastic bag on the floor, and went outside with Brigitte to pinch off some herbs to take to his mom, Lucky stood and gazed for amoment at the everything drawer; then she yanked it open. It contained abandoned stuff that might still be useful: bottle stoppers and spools of twine and corks and rubber bands. It also held a pair of sharp, long-bladed scissors; Lucky snatched them. Squatting down by the plastic bag, she pulled it open and plunged her scissor-hand inside. Then she made three quick cuts in different random places on the net.
Lucky slammed the scissors back in the drawer and stood in the doorway, taking deep breaths. She smelled dill and cilantro and thyme, fresh and clean, strong in the air. She tried to explain to herself why she had secretly cut Lincoln’s net. She tried to make a good reason in her mind. It was like a sudden illness, as if her meanness gland had swelled up and pumped nasty corpuscles throughout her bloodstream.
The meanness in her bloodstream made her skin feel sticky and her scalp grubby. Lucky imagined peeling off her grimy skin and throwing it into the washing machine.
There were red marks on her thumb and forefinger, where she’d gripped the scissors. She hid the marks with her other hand, and she hid her meanness deep in the laundry hamper of her heart.
13. a decision to trust
As she lay on her bed copying a map of the solar system for science homework on Tuesday evening, Lucky listened to Brigitte’s end of a phone conversation with Paloma’s mom, whose name turned out to be Carmen. It was their second long talk.
Brigitte had filled Lucky in about Mrs. Wellborne’s worries from their first phone call. She worried about bugs and infections and bacteria and dust and wild animals and rabid dogs and kids who might be bad influences and Paloma’s homework and, especially, she worried about people she called Old Desert Rat Characters. Carmen wondered why the Old Desert Rat Characters would live in such a remote place for years and years; why they didn’t want to be closer to civilization, and what they did with their time, way out there in the desert. Lucky wasn’t sure, but she thought probably Short Sammy and the Captain and Dot and Mrs. Prender were all Old Desert Rat Characters.
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