The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky

  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

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  Copyright © 2014 by Holly Schindler

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Schindler, Holly, date.

  The junction of Sunshine and Lucky . .y Holly Schindler.

  pages cm

  Summary: Auggie and her grandfather use found objects to transform the

  appearance of their home and, in the process, change . .hole town’s perceptions

  of beauty and art.

  ISBN 978-1-101-59233-5

  [1. Folk art—Fiction. 2. Dwellings—Fiction.

  3. Neighborhood—Fiction. 4. Grandfathers—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S34634Ju 2014 [Fic]—dc23 2013009134

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume

  any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Version_1

  For all the artists who have ever been told their work wasn’t “good.”

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  • • • 1 • • •

  Old Glory shimmies like she’s dancing the jitterbug. That’s what Grampa Gus calls his pickup truck, anyway, the one he’s always driven, with GUS’S SALVAGE painted right across the doors. She (that’s the other thing we’ve always called the truck, she, because Old Glory’s a regular part of the family) jiggles so much, she tickles my stomach.

  The cab’s completely packed—my best friend Lexie’s here with me, along with my neighbor Irma Jean. We’re in a giant tangle on the passengers’ side of the bench seat, our arms and legs weaving in and out of each other as we try to leave Gus enough space to drive.

  Our voices sound like a whole playground as we squeal and squirm. Excitement leaks out that way—in shrieks, like air slipping out of a balloon—the day before you get sent to a brand-new school.

  “You all are making more racket than a bunch of skeletons break dancing on a tin roof,” Gus teases. But the low tones of his laughter tell me that he doesn’t mind at all. I love Gus’s belly laugh—it’s so hearty, if it were a meal, it’d be chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy, and pumpkin pie for dessert. So I let a few funny-sounding squeals out on purpose, because I want another serving.

  Old Glory inches toward the gates of McGunn’s Iron and Metal, a junkyard that Gus knows so well, he could walk through it blindfolded and never once bump his shin on anything. The junkyard stretches on for about fifteen miles. McGunn’s takes everything: wrecked cars and old appliances and air conditioners and water heaters. An old plane even calls McGunn’s home now, and the wings stand like a giant sloping island in the distance.

  A junkyard might sound like an ugly old trash heap, but I’ve always loved the way the rust at McGunn’s makes a pretty orange stripe against the blue sky, right where the earth and the heavens stand back-to-back, making the horizon line.

  Gus waves at Mick McGunn, the owner, who has crazy black hair growing all over his arms and out his ears and across his face. It sticks out from under his red ball cap. It pours out from the top of his T-shirt. I wonder, like I do every single time I see him, if it gets tangled in the buttons on his shirts, caught around his watch.

  “Got yourselves a real beauty queen there,” Mick says as he points to the El Camino attached to the winch on the back of Old Glory.

  Mick’s right about the El Camino. It’s a shell of what it used to be, missing its hood, and its engine, and all its doors. Even its seats and steering wheel are gone now.

  But that makes it the perfect car for Gus, who’s a trash hauler. Not a garbage collector, like the men who drive giant trash trucks through neighborhoods and pick up weekly bags of sour kitchen leftovers and old waded-up homework assignments. Gus is the guy to call for big jobs. The guy who picks up your broken-down freezers or your junked cars. He’ll take your old grills or your rusted patio furniture or even clean out the contents of your grandparents’ shed, when they decide they’re packing up their house and moving in with you and your parents. He does all of that for a fee, and then brings it to McGunn’s, where he trades his hauls for even more scrap money.

  It’s amazing, I think, his ability to take something broken and worthless and turn it into a fold of green bills in his pocket. Everywhere Gus goes in our town of Willow Grove, people are slapping him on the shoulders, smiling, and thanking him for coming out and hauling off their eyesore of a lawn mower, or asking him to come by again and pick up the swing set their kids have outgrown.

  There’s something beautiful that happens to people when they get the burden of useless stuff lifted off of them. Their shoulders straighten, and they take fuller breaths, and they smile like they’re marathon runners who have gotten their second wind. And that, in my mind, is another special power that belongs to Gus.

  We all tumble out of the cab, and Gus steers Old Glory toward a yellow piece of machinery—it almost looks like a bread box built for a giant.

  “Here you go,” Mick tells us, patting the top of a freezer. “Front-row seats.”

  Irma Jean is the first to launch herself onto the freezer, flashing a smile as big as her nose—and Irma Jean’s nose is enormous.

  She’s wearing her favorite summer dress, the one with the giant orange flowers and the stretchy top with tiny straps t
hat tie into bows on top of her shoulders. One of Irma Jean’s best.

  “You’re not going to believe what I made for tomorrow,” she tells me again, smoothing her sundress down the backs of her legs. “I haven’t shown anybody yet. Not even Mom.”

  “Must be nice to be trusted with the sewing machine,” I say as Lexie climbs up on top of the freezer beside us. Irma Jean makes her own clothes out of the hand-me-downs she inherits from her older brothers and sisters. She’s so good at it that her mother splurges every now and then on new material—mostly when Walmart has a clearance, less than a buck a yard.

  “Your dress will have a hard time looking as good as my new hairdo,” Lexie jokes. She can come up with more fancy hairstyles for her long red hair than anyone I’ve ever seen. Today, a French braid trails straight and thick and strong down the back of her head—like the spine of a book—then spills into a curly ponytail. I wish I could do something fancy with my hair. All Gus and I can ever think to do with the wiry, kinky mess is to tie it into a hundred tiny braids.

  As Lexie pats her hair, we giggle. The notes of our giggles are like the notes of a piano chord that have to be played all at once to sound right.

  “You all looking forward to the first day of fifth grade?” Mick asks the three of us.

  “More than ever,” I admit. The idea of it being so close makes my stomach do a little somersault.

  “No first-day jitters, Auggie?” Mick presses.

  “I’ve got first-day jitters, all right,” I tell him. “But not from nerves. From excitement.”

  All summer, everyone’s been saying “Dickerson,” the name of my new school, the same way that they say, “Ooooh. Double chocolate truffle cake.” Like it’s something they all wish they could sink their teeth into. And a special school is the perfect place for a girl like me to finally find her special-something. Thinking about it makes a smile break out inside me.

  The way I figure it, there are two kinds of people in this world—people who shine like the chrome on Old Glory, and people who are more like the rusted metal in McGunn’s. My entire life, I’ve been surrounded by people who shine, who have a special-something. And starting tomorrow, I’m going to find mine.

  Gus buys us all sodas from Mick’s vending machine, like people buy popcorn at the movies, to have something to snack on while the entertainment unfolds. Irma Jean and Lexie both start guzzling their sodas and swinging their legs from the freezer’s edge.

  I’m still standing, quietly sipping my soda, as Mick uses a bulldozer with a claw to grab the El Camino through the windows, feed it into the enormous yellow car crusher.

  The masher lowers, squeezing the car. At first, the car looks like it’s trying to fight back. But it’s no match for Mick’s crushing machine. The windshield pops, making tiny glass pieces fly like drops of water from a stomped-in puddle.

  Lexie and Irma Jean cheer as if they’ve just watched a movie villain get his comeuppance. The old El Camino keeps shrinking as the roof is pushed down to the floorboards. Irma Jean and Lexie hoot, clapping. They love these shows.

  I have to admit, it really is pretty amazing, watching something as big as a car get turned into a patch of metal that stands about as tall as a concrete block. But today, I can hardly even concentrate on the show. I’m too busy imagining what it will be like to start a new school and discover my shine.

  • • • 2 • • •

  That very night, a monster roars, pressing his bright yellow eye against my bedroom window. He roars again, louder this time, as fiery slime drips from his jaws. He grips my house with his big meaty hands and shakes it, then kicks the boards right above the foundation.

  It’s late at night—so late, it almost doesn’t seem possible for the clocks in the house to be awake enough to keep track of the time.

  I sit up in bed and grab my quilt with my sweaty hands. I scream, my voice every bit as forceful as a punch. I scream again, like maybe it’s possible for my scream to beat the monster back.

  But the monster isn’t afraid of me; he roars even louder, blowing his foul breath into my room and making my first-day-of-school dress, hanging on the closet door, sway back and forth.

  I don’t know what wakes Grampa Gus, my scream or the monster’s growl. But he comes racing into my room, his face ashy and gray with terror. He grabs my wrist and leads me down the stairs. We’ve got to get someplace safe—we need a tight little hiding spot.

  I try to head for the hall closet Gus always keeps locked. But as soon as I put my hand on the doorknob, Gus stops me. “Not there,” he says. He wraps his arms around me and steers me toward the hearthstone of the fireplace—the exact center of the whole house. I know Gus feels safer here, but I’d much rather have a nice thick door between me and that awful monster.

  “It’s all right, Little Sister,” Gus whispers into my ear. It’s a goofy nickname, since I’m nobody’s sister at all. But coming from Gus, the name always feels like a kiss on the forehead.

  “It’s just a storm,” he murmurs.

  Just a storm? Does he really expect me to believe that? It’s a monster, and he’s kicking and smacking and yanking on our house.

  “You know what a storm is, right?” Gus asks, like I’m some little kid. “Just hot and cold clashing. Cold wanting to move in, and warm wanting to hang on for life. See, nothing in this world likes the idea of coming to its end. Not a flower, not a man, and not a season. That’s all this is. Summer not wanting to die. And fall trying to push summer on out.”

  I tremble, because I swear, our house is perfect. And it’s taken my whole life to get it that way. We’ve got a flat, smooth, perfectly round circle in the middle of the living room throw rug that Gus and I have worn thin by dancing. And the glossiest newel post in the entire neighborhood, because we both grab hold of it as we start to climb the stairs. And a hundred other one-of-a-kind markings that I always notice every time I come home.

  “You and I,” Gus says, “we can ride out any storm.”

  But I don’t want to wait for it to pass.

  The monster rattles our screens, taunting us with his strength as Gus stares through the window at the small metal outbuilding in the backyard where he keeps all his old welding equipment. Even though I know it wouldn’t work, I keep imagining how great it would be if Gus would turn on that torch, let its fiery breath rush out, and scare the monster so bad, he’d go running away like a scolded dog.

  I press my face deep into Gus’s chest and tremble against the winds that feel strong enough to turn the entire world upside down.

  • • • 3 • • •

  Once I hear the storm monster begin to stomp away, I relax in Gus’s arms. I fall asleep to the sound of his heartbeat, and wake up in my room to the sounds of chirping birds. Hard to believe, as I crack my eyes, that my house looks so much like it did yesterday—not flipped upside down by the storm after all.

  I put on the dress I’ve saved for the first day, a sundress with a giant ruffle around the neck instead of a collar. The material—a pinkish-purple that’s the same color as my can’t-wait feeling—rustles about my knees as I clomp down the stairs, straight for Gus’s first-day-of-school buttermilk pancakes.

  I wolf down the last maple syrup–drenched bite and grab my new backpack, which feels lighter than a backpack ever should, since it only has my lunch inside it. No math or spelling books yet.

  “Come on, Gus! Let’s go, let’s go!” I shout, racing down our front walk. I’m putting my backpack into the cab of Old Glory when Irma Jean comes running from the house next door. She’s only one of a whole crowd, since she’s the fifth of eight kids named alphabetically: Anna Beth, Cody Daniel, the twins Ernest Francis and Gertrude Hannah, Irma Jean, Kelly Lilith, Michael Nicholas, and Opal Patricia.

  “Well,” Gus sighs, like he always does anytime he sees all the Pike kids together, “I guess when Mr. and Mrs. Pike get to the end of the alphabet, we’ll know for sure that their family won’t get any bigger.”

  Since Opal Patri
cia’s a baby—all soft coos in a blanket—and Michael Nicholas is barely walking, since Kelly Lilith goes to preschool, Anna Beth and Cody Daniel go to high school, and the twins go to middle school, Irma Jean is the only one of all the Pikes who will get sent to Dickerson with me.

  Mr. Pike gives Irma Jean a good-luck hug. It’s a little hard for Irma Jean to wrap her arms all the way around her dad, since he has a stomach as round as a large pizza. But her mom is the opposite—so tall and stretched-out, she always reminds me of a giraffe reaching for the tastiest leaf at the top of a tree.

  Irma Jean races to our gravel driveway, turning circles to show off her own first-day dress—it’s green plaid, with a brown corduroy vest. I can tell she’s made the vest from her brother’s old coat—but only because I know she had to fight with Cody Daniel to give up his too-small but still-favorite jacket. She looks really studious, like a girl who should be on a poster for the library.

  “Loveyourdress,” I say. I know my mouth has brakes somewhere, but I can’t find them. So my words keep racing forward. “Comeonlet’sgo. WegottapickupHarold.”

  Gus revs the engine, chanting, “Come on, now, Old Glory,” while the truck sputters and threatens to die. “Come on, sweet girl,” he pleads, while he strokes the dash like she’s really a cat. “Come on, you can do it.”

  After a few extra sputters and lunges, Old Glory kicks into gear and lurches down the street. With the exception of some tree limbs lying in the middle of a few front yards and leaves scattered across the curbs and streets like confetti after a parade, the neighborhood hasn’t suffered much damage at all. In fact, the raindrops that haven’t dried up yet make the neighborhood glitter in the sun.

  We amble through the streets of Serendipity Place, passing by the Widow Hollis’s house. Just like it happens every time I get close to her home, my mind fills with the image of the beautiful irises that bloom in her yard every spring. I’m convinced the only place you’d ever see a blue as deep as her flowers is the bottom of the ocean.

  And when Old Glory slows a bit up by Mrs. Shoemacker’s place, I swear, yet again, that there can’t be grass that thick and beautiful anywhere else—it’s as soft and plush as carpet in a movie star’s house.