by Nancy Rue
Lucy pressed her lips together. All the names she’d dreamed up for soccer teams, like Galaxy and Fire and Power, ran and hid in her mind. They were too special to waste on this — this — posse of —
“Posse. Yeah.”
Lucy clapped her hand across her mouth. Had she done it again?
Gabe knocked the ball out of her other hand and dribbled it away. Veronica went after him, squealing, silky hair f lying out behind her.
“Tell them our name,” Mr. Auggy said.
“Los Amigos!” Januarie cried. “What’s you guys’s?”
“The Posse.” Gabe dribbled the ball into the clump of kids, faking from one side to the other so the still-giggling Veronica couldn’t get it. “We’re the Posse.”
“Excellent.” Mr. Auggy clapped him on the shoulder. “Now we’re starting to think like teams.”
Who, Lucy wondered, was he calling “we”?
“Los Amigos?” J.J. said on the way home that afternoon. He jerked the front wheel of his bike back and forth like he wished it was some amigo’s head. “They aren’t my friends. ’Cept Emanuel, kinda.”
“Lucy’s my friend,” Januarie said. “Only — could you slow down?” Her moon face was the color of a setting sun as she skipped beside Lucy’s bike.
J.J. stopped at the edge of Second Street, and Lucy pulled up next to him.
“Januarie, go home,” he said.
“Why?” She slipped a meaty hand over Lucy’s on the handlebar.
“Because if you don’t, I’ll — ”
“Because I need you to be a lookout,” Lucy said. “Go see if there’s a red truck parked in front of my house.”
“Who is it?”
“Just see if it’s there, and if it is, watch it until I come.” Lucy lowered her voice and tried to look serious. “It’s really important.”
Januarie nodded solemnly and chugged across the street. Lucy turned back to J.J., brushing off her hands.
“You owe me,” she said.
“She’s a pain,” J.J. said.
“So, what did you want to say that she can’t hear?”
J.J. tossed his hair away from his face, but the wind slapped it back again. “I got an idea.”
“Ye-ah,” Lucy said slowly. “Last time you had an idea, I about got run over by an ATV.”
“That’s what I’m saying. There’s another place we can play soccer — without Gabe or those two girls.”
“At school? They’ll just find us, and Mr. Auggy will make us play — ”
“This is a place we can go after school and on weekends and stuff.
Just you and me and Emanuel and Oscar. Maybe Carla Rosa.” J.J. rolled his bike a few rotations. “We don’t even gotta tell Januarie. Come on — I’ll show you.”
“Aren’t you still grounded?”
J.J. waved that off.
“It’s not out by Little Sierra Blanca, is it?” Lucy said.
“No — this is — just come.”
Lucy cocked a foot onto a pedal and hopped up on the seat again. She could already feel a hopeful smile taking shape on her face.
“Lucy!” It was a Chihuahua whine. Januarie charged toward them, not even looking as she bustled her round self across the street. “That red truck’s there,” she said.
“Just go back and keep an eye on it,” Lucy said.
“No — there’s a lady at your house, and she said to tell you to come in.”
“She’s not the boss of Lucy,” J.J. said.
Januarie planted her hands on her hips and looked like somebody’s fed-up mother. “Her dad is. And that lady said Lucy’s dad said to come in before she went anywhere.” She gave a period-at-the-end-of-a-sentence nod.
“You’re lying,” J.J. said.
“No, she’s not.” Lucy turned her wheel toward the house. “It’s this nanny my dad hired.”
“A babysitter?”
“Don’t worry. She’ll be gone in two months.”
“Two whole months?” J.J. said.
Lucy took off slowly. “Maybe sooner,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll catch up in a couple minutes.”
“Aw, man.” Lucy heard him wheel off away from Granada Street.
“He’s gonna get in trouble again,” Januarie huffed out as she tried to keep up with Lucy. “He’s still on groundation.”
Lucy chewed at the inside of her mouth. Okay, so she’d check in with Inez and then go look for J.J. and bring him back. Januarie must not have gotten Mr. Cluck in a good mood again like she said she could.
She leaned her bike against the fence on the outside, so she’d be ready for a quick takeoff, and picked up Mudge, who was in his usual spot behind the century plant.
“Are you gonna let him bite that other girl?” Januarie said.
Lucy backed into the gate, Mudge filling her arms, and pushed it open. “What other girl?”
“The girl that’s with that lady that’s in your house.”
Lucy stopped. “There’s a girl in my house?”
Januarie nodded importantly. “She’s, like, ten, or maybe eleven — okay, more like twelve. And she’s Mexican or something — Dusty Mexican, not Veronica Mexican — and she wears magazine clothes.”
“Magazine clothes?”
“Like — ”
“Never mind.” Lucy pushed the gate to close it. Januarie squeezed her face near the crack.
“Did I do good?” she said. “Spying for you — did I do good?”
“You did awesome. I’ll let you do it every single day.”
The last thing Lucy saw as she shut the gate was Januarie’s very-significant-person smile.
The first thing she saw when she opened the back door was a girl in silky blue pants and a white jacket with a stand-up color that announced MORA on the back of it in shiny embroidery. She held a cell phone in one hand while a long finger on the other pointed its white-tipped nail at Inez.
“I am SO not coming here if I can’t get reception,” she said.
Inez picked the cell phone from the girl’s hand like it was a peach on a tree, and dropped it into the pocket of her own red sweater.
“You do not need the reception. Everybody you need to talk to is here.” She nodded at Lucy.
The girl twirled around as if she were about to launch into a dance, led by her thick fudge-colored swirl of hair. She faced Lucy with brown eyes so big they barely seemed to fit on her face. She didn’t smile. Januarie was right about one thing. Her skin was the shade of coffee-with-cream like Dusty’s, not cola-colored like Veronica’s.
But she was definitely Hispanic, just like everybody else who looked at Lucy the way this girl was looking at her.
“This is Lucy,” Inez said in her f lat voice.
“How do you talk to your friends if you don’t get reception?” the girl said.
Lucy blinked. “I don’t have a cell phone.”
“That is just wrong.”
“What do you mean it’s wrong?” Lucy was glad she was still holding Mudge, because she suddenly wasn’t sure what to do with her arms. “What do I need a cell phone for? I see my friends at school.”
“How do you even talk to them in school if you can’t text message them?”
“Mora.” Inez looked at Lucy with her lips pressed together, so that two dimples appeared that Lucy hadn’t seen before. The girl had them too. “This is my granddaughter, Mora. She will come with me every day.”
“Until my mom comes back from California, which better be soon.” Mora picked up a green-and-white polka-dotted purse with orange leather trim from the counter and pawed through it, fingers f lying. Lucy had never seen such long fingers, or such perfect fingernails, at least not since the last time Aunt Karen was there.
Mora pulled out an iPod. “It is so boring here.”
“Not for long.” Inez had the iPod out of Mora’s hand and into her other pocket before Lucy even saw her do it.
“I need music!” Mora said.
“You need the manners. Both yo
u sit at the table. I have the snack ready.”
Mudge popped his head up and licked his kitty-lips.
“No snack for you,” Lucy said to him. She opened the back door to let him go and used it as an excuse to stand on tiptoe and look over the fence. There was no sign of J.J. He could be halfway to Alamogordo by now.
She poked her head inside. “Thanks, but I can’t stay. I’m not that hungry anyway.”
“Sit,” Inez said. “Eat. Your father give the orders.”
This woman was such a liar. Dad never gave “orders.”
At least he didn’t used to.
“Take the jacket off. You are staying.”
Lucy closed the door with her foot and felt the kitchen grow strangely small. She let her backpack slide to the floor and took off her coat and trudged to the table, all the while watching Inez glide from the stove to the cupboard to the refrigerator, as if she knew where everything was and had, in fact, put it there herself. As Lucy sank into a chair, she checked to make sure this was the same table where she and Dad had breakfast that morning.
Mora leaned against the counter and stuck one leg up on the other thigh like a flamingo.
“Sit,” Inez said.
“I want to eat mine in front of the TV,” Mora said. “Oprah’s on.” She pointed one of her endless fingers at Lucy. “You do have a TV, don’t you?”
“Sit,” Inez said again.
Mora flounced over to the table and plopped herself next to Lucy. A yowl rose from the chair that sent her f lying almost into Lucy’s lap.
“You sat on Marmalade!” Lucy dove past Mora and swept a bundle of orange and white stripes into her arms. Marmalade poked his head into Lucy’s armpit. Mora thrust a hand against her chest.
“Oh — my — gosh,” she said. “Does it bite?”
Lucy couldn’t quite get her head to shake. Dad had said she couldn’t turn the cats loose on Inez. He didn’t say anything about letting granddaughters think —
“He’s never actually attacked anybody,” Lucy said. “But we keep a very close eye on him — just in case.”
Mora yanked back the hand she was stretching toward Marmalade’s fur. “In case what?”
“Let’s just say he had a very traumatic kittenhood before we got him. If he feels threatened — ” Lucy lowered her voice “ — well, just watch your fingers.”
“Why?”
“And your toes.”
“Your father says you like the grilled cheese,” Inez said, and set a plate with two golden quesadillas snuggled next to scoops of guacamole on the table. “I told you sit, Mora.” She gave her a push into the chair.
“That cat — ”
“He’ll be fine if you let him sit on your lap,” Lucy said.
“But you said — ”
“It’s either that, or he’ll be watching your toes the entire time.”
Mora’s already-huge eyes got bigger. “Okay,” she said.
Lucy placed Marmalade onto Mora’s thighs and stroked his back cautiously until he, of course, curled into a contented ball and went back to his purring-wheezing-snoring. Mora pulled her arms above the table and looped her feet back over the rung of the chair.
“Is this okay?” she said.
“That should do it,” Lucy said.
She reached for a quesadilla and watched Mora out of the corner of her eye. The girl kept glancing into her lap and curling her fingers into her palms.
“Mom takes me to Starbucks in Alamogordo after school,” she said to Inez. “They have free wireless.”
“I know,” Inez said in a voice like a dial tone.
“Wireless what?” Lucy said.
For a second, Mora seemed to forget about the Terminator Kitty. “Tell me you don’t have a computer either.”
“I don’t have a computer.”
Mora flattened her palm against her forehead. “I can’t even deal with this another minute.”
And definitely not for two months, if Lucy had anything to do with it. She tried to put some hope in that as she sank her teeth into a quesadilla.
9
Inez cooked dinner before she left — pork asada, she called it, and salad and black beans that Lucy refused to admit were the yummiest things she’d ever put in her mouth. She’d seen how many chiles Inez had put in the salsa, though, and she gave that a wide margin at the dinner table. She had to get Dad a glass of water after he slurped some up on a homemade tortilla.
“That’s hotter than the surface of the sun,” he said when he could speak. “What color is it?”
“Green.”
“Ah.” He took another gulp out of his glass. “We could use that to clean the drains too.”
“She doesn’t have to fix dinner.”
“She’s a good cook.”
“We’re good cooks,” Lucy said.
“This is kind of nice though, isn’t it? Just sitting down and relaxing over a meal?”
He looked so much like he wanted the answer to be yes that Lucy said, “Sure.”
Dad dabbed at his eyes with a napkin. “I hear you actually got your homework done.”
“Dad, she practically chained me to the table. Me and her granddaughter.”
Dad chuckled. “You weren’t so crazy about Mona?”
“Mora. She thinks we’re boring because we don’t have a computer and satellite.”
“You don’t have to be best friends with her.”
“That’s good because it isn’t gonna happen.” Lucy suddenly felt squirmy. “Can I be excused?”
“You’re done already? I haven’t even started. Keep me company.” Dad put his hand right on the plate of sopapillas that were oozing butter and sugar, as if he saw them with his nose. “Have some of these — it smells like she stole them from heaven.”
“I don’t want dessert.”
Dad’s eyebrows lifted. “Okay, who are you, and what have you done with my daughter?”
“Da-ad.”
“Lu-uce.”
Lucy picked up her plate. “I’m gonna clean up.”
He laughed out loud. “Now I know you’re avoiding me. Sit down. Have a — what are they — sopapillas?”
Lucy plunked back into the chair, but she forced herself not to reach for one of the white puffs she’d watched Inez create at the same time she was drilling Mora on her vocabulary words and checking Lucy’s fractions.
“Talk to me,” Dad said. “Did you like Inez?”
Lucy saw her chance and formed her words carefully. “She told a lie.”
Dad’s eyebrows went up even farther. “And that was?”
“Are you ready for this?” Lucy got up on one knee. “She said that you said that I had to sit down and have a snack before I did anything else. No, she said you ‘ordered’ it.”
She sank onto her foot and waited for him to call for Inez to be fired immediately. He tapped his plate with his fork.
“I need coordinates,” he said.
Lucy leaned across the table. “Meat at twelve o’clock. Beans at three. That evil salsa at six o’clock. Salad at nine. Don’t you even care that she lied to me?”
Dad tasted the pork before he answered. “That was the truth. I wanted you to have something more nutritious than Pasco’s.”
“We don’t care about nutritious!”
“We do now.”
Lucy poked her finger into a sopapilla.
“I take it you didn’t sick Mudge on her.”
Marmalade chose that moment to hop onto Dad’s lap and twitch his whiskers at his plate. Lucy felt a small twinge of guilt. But only a small one.
“Keep your paws off, pal,” Dad said.
Lucy pulled her hand out of the dessert. “I was good. But, Dad, I’m almost always good. Which is why I don’t need a nanny. Pasco watches out for me — and Mr. Benitez isn’t going to let me get away with anything, and — ”
“We’ve already been there.” Dad closed his eyes and eased a forkful of beans into his mouth. “That’s heaven too.”
&
nbsp; “Whatever.”
His face grew still, and all trace of angels faded from it. “You promised to give this a fair try for two months.”
“One month and twenty-nine days,” Lucy said.
The only way she was going to get through it, she told Lollipop later as they snuggled with the big stuffed soccer ball on her bed, was if J.J. really did have a place for them to play without Gabe and the Gigglers. And that bossy Mr. Auggy.
“Okay,” she said to the purring face that was nose-to-nose with hers. “So he said I rocked. But he makes us play with people who don’t even care about soccer.”
She relocated Lolli into the pillows and knelt to look out the window. The lights in J.J.’s house tried to shine through the bedsheets Mrs. Cluck draped across the windows for curtains. J.J.’s, on the second floor, was dingy white, perfect for hand signals if he pointed his flashlight at it.
She watched, chin resting on the tile windowsill, but no message appeared from J.J.’s fingers. And Januarie didn’t show up with a pizza delivery. Lucy felt very much all by herself. Dad could probably use some company listening to NPR —
But Lucy pulled the Book of Lists from her underwear drawer and hugged it to her until the next list idea came to her.
Number Six made it easier to go to sleep.
J.J. just grunted the next morning when Lucy met him and Januarie outside the gate. He wasn’t on his bike, so Lucy walked hers. Januarie chattered away, but Lucy studied the side of J.J.’s face. It was stiff as the frost inside Dad and Lucy’s freezer — the one Aunt Karen always said they needed to replace with the kind that defrosted itself.
Finally, when Januarie ran off to join the third-graders, Lucy said to J.J., “Well?”
“What?”
“New place to play today?”
“No. Saturday.”
“Why?”
“Januarie and her big mouth.”
“Grounded?”
Grunt.
The warning bell rang, and Lucy hurried into the sixth-grade wing to put her soccer ball into her cubby. Late as it was, the hallway was empty, except for one person. Lucy groaned inside when Dusty turned from her perfect lineup of color-coded notebooks.
“Hi,” she said.
Lucy shoved a nest of papers into the back of her cubby and pushed her soccer ball carefully in front of it. What was Dusty up to now?
