The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky Page 5

  “What’d your dad say?” I ask.

  “Shhhh,” Weird Harold scolds. “He hasn’t seen it yet. It’ll kill him. He cans and freezes all the stuff we grow in our gardens. It’s how we make it through the winter.”

  “I know. You guys give plenty of your vegetables to the rest of us, too. If you’d explain that—” I start, but the bush rustles again as Weird Harold tries to push another sheet of paper through the limbs.

  “I’m starting a petition,” he informs me. “Against the committee.”

  “I don’t need to be part of any petition,” I say. “Gus and I don’t have a garden. You’re the only one in the entire neighborhood who has a front-yard garden and rain barrels. Move the front-yard garden into the backyard, where you grow the rest of your vegetables. If you really tried, I’m sure you could make it all fit. Take one of the barrels down. That’s easy enough.”

  “It’s not just about the barrels, Auggie.”

  I shrug. I don’t see why he’s so mad.

  “Think about it,” he says. “What’s beautiful? What’s ugly? Their rules are as clear as chocolate syrup.”

  I fight the urge to make little circles in the air above my ear. If this isn’t cuckoo, I don’t know what is. Beauty isn’t exactly hard to figure out. It’s not a complicated math problem—it’s beauty. Irma Jean starts a new project with an old hand-me-down shirt filled with stains and holes, and after she’s done sewing on it, she’s got a pretty new skirt that doesn’t have a single frayed spot or discolored patch. Once, it was used up and ugly, and now it’s pretty—obviously.

  “Fine. Be that way,” Weird Harold snaps, angry about the frown that confusion has etched into my face. “But you’ll care when they come after you.”

  • • • 15 • • •

  When Gus pulls up, I tuck Weird Harold’s warning into the back of my mind and rush to meet Old Glory.

  “What do you want to do with all this glass, Auggie?” Gus asks when I drag him to my wagon, parked under the sweet gum tree out back.

  “Not any old glass, Gus,” I say. “Glass from Hopewell.”

  Gus leans down and takes a look. Gingerly, he slides a big piece of red out and holds it to the light. The edge looks so jagged and dangerous, it makes me nervous to see it between his fingers.

  “I don’t really like the idea of you picking up such sharp things when I’m not around,” he says.

  “I didn’t—Chuck did,” I say.

  “But broken glass?” Gus asks, his face wrinkling.

  “That came from the old stained-glass windows, Gus.”

  “Right,” Gus says, still not seeing what I’m hinting at.

  “I know that glass has already been used once,” I say. “But maybe we could use it, too. The same way Irma Jean sews new outfits out of fabric that’s already been worn by somebody else. Maybe that glass might like to find a new home in a new window—nothing as important as Hopewell’s. But a nice, cozy little window where it can get plenty of sun, just the same.”

  A slow smile spreads across Gus’s face. “Got it!” he shouts.

  Of the two windows that face the front porch, we start with the one that’s the easiest to get to—the one next to the door, with nothing in its way, not even the old swing. Gus takes off the screen, so he can get closer to the wooden slats that divide the window into eight equal sections. He cuts one of those eight clear panes out, leaving a hole that looks like a spot in a mouth where somebody’s wiggled a loose tooth free.

  “Sure am glad it’s decided to turn cold,” Gus says, pointing at the missing pane. “No problems with mosquitoes today.”

  Gus measures the hole and cuts a new pane out of a big chunk of scarlet glass. He winks at me when he gets it set in right. “Little Sister,” he says, “this is a fantastic idea. Quick—what color do you want the next pane to be?”

  Gus and I become a two-man team. Gus cuts new panes out of glass—panes tinted fuchsia and purple and green and blue. I come along behind him with some old glazing putty that Gus had in the garage, which is white sticky gunk that makes sure the glass stays in place tight and solid.

  “Really pack that stuff in good, Little Sister,” Gus says. “We don’t want a bunch of cold, drafty air leaking in on us this winter.”

  When we get the first window completely done, all eight panes, we rush out into the middle of the front yard to get a good look.

  “It’s like—it’s like—” I stutter, but I can’t find the right words.

  “Come here,” Gus says, tugging on my sleeve. When we race inside, Gus steps right in front of our new window. “Watch this,” he says.

  He holds both his arms out like a scarecrow. But it only takes a couple of seconds for me to stop thinking scarecrow. Instead, I start to think mistletoe and fat holiday stockings and candy canes.

  Because that’s exactly how Gus looks. With his arms held out, the colored light dances off the sleeves of his white shirt so that he looks like a lit-up Christmas tree.

  I clap. “This is amazing, Gus!”

  “Told you it was a good idea, Little Sister,” Gus says. “Come on now, let’s do the other window.”

  Together, we rush outside like it really is Christmas. Like carolers are on the lawn and Santa is on the roof, dancing between crisp, clean snowflakes.

  But even when we finish both windows, it’s not enough. I glance down into my wagon, at the tiny little shards on the bottom, and say, “Too bad we can’t scatter this on the ground—or down the front walk.”

  I’ve never seen Gus run to Old Glory so fast. I break into a pant to keep up with him and hop in. I’m so excited to find out where we’re going that I pet the dash right along with him. “Come on, Old Glory,” I chant. “You can do it. Come on.”

  Somehow, the whole town looks a little fresher as we drive.

  We wind up at the hardware store, where Gus buys an enormous bag of QUIKRETE concrete mixture—a whole eighty pounds—for a little over three dollars.

  “This we can fit in the budget,” he announces happily.

  Back home, Gus adds water to the dry mix, turning it into gray mud, and starts spreading it over our cracked front walk. I crouch down low, dragging my wagon behind me. I lay thumbnail-sized pieces of glass on the wet concrete, pushing them deep enough to cover all the sharp edges, but not so deep that the smooth tops won’t be able to sparkle in the sun. Once it’s dry, it’ll be safe to walk on.

  When we’re done, we race each other to the end of the front yard.

  “It’s like looking straight into a kaleidoscope,” I say. “The way all those brightly colored pieces shimmer in the sunlight.”

  Only, it’s not a kaleidoscope—it’s where we live.

  • • • 16 • • •

  On Monday, Ms. Byron tells us to crack open our math books. “Groups of three!” she shouts. “Hurry, hurry!” By now I’m not really all that upset about her nervousness. In fact, it doesn’t seem like a bad thing at all. All that energy reminds me of a curious kitten who’s always jumping and pawing at you, trying to get you to play.

  I immediately push my desk toward Victoria and Lexie, slamming into them so hard that all three of our desks rattle like cymbals. I think I see Victoria and Lexie exchange an eye roll, but I brush it away like lunch crumbs caught in a skirt.

  I pull out my ten-cent folder with loose-leaf paper inside and a plain old yellow number two. Victoria and Lexie pull out spiral notebooks plastered with glittery hearts and uncap matching pens with giant pink feathers poking out the back.

  Lexie’s bought the same school supplies as Victoria. I try to tell myself it doesn’t matter, even as my breaking heart insists that it does.

  “I hate fractions,” Victoria moans as she clicks her pen in a rhythm: click-click, click. Click-click, click. Like a woodpecker.

  Lexie’s eyes immediately shoot toward me. She knows I love them. But it suddenly seems silly to admit that math is my favorite subject.

  I already know the answers to the first f
our. I’m not exactly a whiz at math, but I’ve always been able to do fractions in my head. I imagine that I’m like Gus—I have a fiery welding torch in my hand, and I’m fusing the numbers together or cutting them apart.

  Victoria starts to doodle right in the margin of her textbook. “This is impossible,” she moans.

  Even though I’ve been trying to hold it in, my news is frothing and bubbling—like foam from a two liter of Coke that’s fallen from a grocery bag and bounced down the front steps. It’s spewing everywhere inside me, racing up my neck toward my mouth.

  “Westartedworkingonourhouse!” I blurt, so fast my words pile on top of each other.

  Victoria glances up at me like I’ve torn off all my clothes.

  “We—Gus and I—started working on our house,” I say, slower this time.

  Victoria frowns, letting her eyes trail across my plain green folder and my yellow number two, my discount-bin sweater, and my last year’s jeans. She stares an extra-long time at the jeans Gus bought summer before last, big enough that I could get two winters out of them. He hemmed them, like he always does—and now that I’ve grown tall enough for him to take them down again, I’ve got little white circles around both ankles.

  “How?” Victoria asks, still staring at those circles. It’s as though she’s asking those circles, not me. As though she’s saying there’s no way Gus and I could ever have the money to fix up our house.

  “We’ve been making it beautiful—just like the committee wants,” I say.

  “But—how?” Victoria asks again.

  “We’ve got stained-glass windows—and a stained-glass front walk.”

  “A stained-glass front walk?” Lexie repeats, rising up out of a slouch.

  “It’s the most amazing thing,” Irma Jean insists, swiveling in her chair to face our group. “I couldn’t believe it when I stepped outside this morning and saw it.”

  Victoria squints at Irma Jean. It’s only a squint, but right then, it seems like she’s saying Irma Jean is so far beneath her, she’s got to really strain her eyes to see Irma Jean clearly.

  That Victoria has some nerve! I think as I tighten my lips and curl myself over my loose-leaf paper. I hate the way she can’t seem to see any of the kids from Montgomery without seeing the bottom tip of her own nose, too.

  Quick as a cat can flick her whiskers, I answer every problem in our math assignment, rip my paper from my folder, and toss it on top of Victoria’s textbook.

  “You can’t do all those problems that fast,” she says.

  “Go ask Ms. Byron if they’re right,” I say. “After she tells you they are, I can explain them to you.”

  While Victoria stomps toward Ms. Byron’s desk with my paper in her hand, I’m left alone with Lexie. As the silence between us tightens, I have to remind myself that I can only miss three things about Montgomery. Just three.

  • • • 17 • • •

  At the end of the day, everybody rolls out of the Dickerson doors. I don’t think I can roll today—I stomp instead, each step rough and jerky.

  On the front walk, I watch Lexie get into the Coles’ car again. I want to tell Lexie that if she lived a few blocks south, in my neighborhood, Victoria would probably be looking down her nose at her, too. But Victoria’s got Lexie thinking she’s as perfect as a brand-new piece of jewelry behind glass. So Lexie wouldn’t believe me, anyway.

  When I glance up, I see Harold and Irma Jean exchanging a look. The kind of look that says they’ve been talking about me. “I know,” I tell them. “I shouldn’t have exploded at Victoria. But I couldn’t help it.”

  I glance down, cringing at the sight of our ankles. We all have the same mark of last year’s jeans. “I hate those white circles,” I grumble.

  Irma Jean flinches at my harsh tone. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s like we’re branded,” I say. “It’s like a mark that says the three of us are all from a poor neighborhood.”

  “I never really paid any attention to them before,” Irma Jean confesses, leaning forward to point her head down toward her feet.

  “Listen, Auggie,” Weird Harold starts, using that same, overly soft tone I’ve heard him use on his dad when he’s about to try to talk him into something. “You and I both want the same thing.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I say, bristling.

  “Sure we do,” Harold says, smiling at me from underneath a ball cap that says BIGFOOT LIVES.

  “We want the House Beautification Committee to see the beauty in our homes,” Harold insists.

  “I don’t care about the committee as much as you do,” I say, my eyes zeroed in on the black car that’s carrying Victoria and Lexie away.

  “But Victoria’s on the committee,” Harold reminds me.

  I glance over at him, feeling my eyes widen.

  “My dad’s always saying you catch more flies with honey,” he says.

  “Gus says that.”

  “So . . . maybe we shouldn’t fight with Victoria,” Harold suggests.

  “I watched her,” Irma Jean pipes up. “She got real stiff when you stood up to her. Her whole body. Like suddenly, she became a brick wall.”

  “I saw it, too,” Harold says. “So I was thinking—maybe Auggie shouldn’t try to pick a fight. Maybe I shouldn’t try to relay secret messages or start a petition. Maybe we need a better strategy. Maybe we need a little sugar.”

  “Like—maybe if I invite them over!” I shout. “I could ask Victoria and Lexie both to come—as long as Gus and I had enough time to really work on our house first. Then they could see all the great things we’ve done to the place.”

  He nods, smiling. “Now you’re talking.”

  “Like an open house!” I say. “You guys would be there, right? When Victoria sees our house, she’ll know—we’re not run-down people.” And Lexie will remember that, too, I tell myself.

  “I could make new curtains for my own front window,” Irma Jean offers.

  “Dad and I could clean up the front yard,” Harold chimes in.

  “You said it wasn’t about the rain barrels,” I remind him.

  “It’s not—but—” Weird Harold rubs his chin. “I think we have a better chance of impressing Victoria—and the House Beautification Committee—if we work together.”

  “Almost like an open neighborhood,” Irma Jean marvels.

  “What if they say no?” I wonder. “When I ask them to come over?”

  “Tomorrow, at recess, we’ll all ask them,” Harold says. “They won’t be able to refuse if we all insist they come. In the meantime, the three of us can start working. Okay?”

  Irma Jean nods and puts her hand out, palm down. Harold piles his hand on top of hers, and I put mine on top of Harold’s, just like a team would before a big game.

  • • • 18 • • •

  “You really coming to work with me today?” Gus asks that afternoon, after we drop Weird Harold and Irma Jean off at their houses.

  “Absolutely,” I say as we wave Irma Jean good-bye, and she scurries up her front steps. “Don’t want you taking something to McGunn’s that we could be using for our house.”

  It’s far warmer today than it really should be for September. But that’s Missouri for you. People around here are always saying, “If you don’t like the weather in Missouri, just wait five minutes and it’ll change.” Once, when I was still going to school at Montgomery, the morning bell rang at the start of a sunny, early spring day. Soon after, the skies clouded up, and it rained so much that we couldn’t go out for morning recess. By lunch, afternoon snowflakes were bouncing off our windows. We gobbled down our sandwiches and ran to the playground for a snowball fight. By the time we went home, the snow had melted, and the sun was back out.

  I swear it’s true. I’ve got yearbook pictures to prove it.

  Old Glory rumbles and jiggles toward Gus’s scheduled pickup.

  “Hey there, Gus,” a man calls out from his front yard. He’s wearing jeans and a white short-sleeved s
hirt that’s unbuttoned to show off his undershirt. Kind of old-fashioned for men to wear undershirts like that. The only other one I know who likes them is Gus.

  “Hey, Burton,” Gus says, waving as he steps from the truck.

  A big SOLD sign is stuck into the middle of his yard, next to a pot filled with flowers that have sharp petals, like daisies, but in the same colors as autumn leaves. Mums, I think they’re called.

  “Really thought I’d have more for you,” Burton apologizes. He shuffles his feet, tucks his chin down toward his chest, almost as though to hide his embarrassment as he points at the cardboard boxes piled at the curb. “Don’t know that you can get much of anything at McGunn’s for this.”

  I stand over Gus as he squats and riffles through the cardboard boxes. They’re full of toasters and lamp parts and hair curlers and coffeepots and irons.

  “Just a bunch of stuff I swore I’d fix someday,” Burton admits. “Stuff we plugged into the socket one morning, only to wind up getting showered with sparks and snaps.”

  Gus nods, understanding.

  “Got one more box in the house,” Burton says. “If you even want it.”

  “Sure, sure,” Gus says, because he’s a sweet guy. He’d never in a million years tell someone that their junk is too junky, even for a trash hauler.

  As Burton disappears back into his house, I smile at Gus. “Look,” I say, riffling through the box. “This toaster still gleams, even if it can’t toast a piece of bread anymore.”

  Gus whistles as he slides the toaster from the box and holds it to the sun. “Sure does, Little Sister,” he agrees. “Almost need a pair of sunglasses to look at it.”

  He frowns as he thinks. “There’s only so much you can do with an old thing like this,” he admits. “It’s not like we can cut it up like the stained glass—”

  Suddenly, Gus stops talking. He flashes a smile so wide and full, it swallows the rest of him right up. “Can’t cut it up,” Gus chuckles through that Cheshire cat grin, “unless you’ve got the tools to cut it with.”