Free The Luck of the Buttons by Anne Ylvisaker

T,” said Ned.
    “Olds,” said Tugs.
    “Whippet!” they said together. There wasn’t much traffic, but then there never was in Goodhue.
    “That was lucky, anyhow,” said Tugs.
    “What?” said Ned hopefully.
    “The case was still open.”
    “Oh,” said Ned, nodding as if he understood. “Yep, that was lucky.”
    “I guess I should get home,” Tugs said.
    “Me too,” said Ned.
    They were almost to the Perkinses’ house when they saw the three Marys roller-skating toward them. Mary Alice, Mary Helen, and Mary Louise were not only best friends; they were also beautiful, with straight hair, straight teeth, and small, plump limbs. Seeing them for the first time since Aggie’s party, sailing down the sidewalk, their matching skirts billowing, their laughing faces glowing, it was as if the pages she’d just read in the dictionary,
luck, fortune,
were skimming toward her. Tugs found herself wishing to be a Mary, too.
    Tugs waved.
    “Hiya, Mary Alice, Mary Helen, Mary Louise!” she hollered.
    “Well, if it isn’t Tugs Button and her little sidekick,” said Mary Alice as the three skated to a neat stop. “Where are you off to, nursery school?”
    “My house,” said Tugs. She smiled in what she hoped was a carefree summer-afternoon sort of way, then remembered her buckteeth and her cousin next to her. She pulled her top lip down and chewed on her lower lip. The Marys started to go around her.
    “Want to come with?” she said. “To my house?” She stepped in front of Ned. “He’s not coming.” She held up her camera. “I’ve got my Kodak. I won it at the Fourth of July. I didn’t see you there. Where were you? I could take your photograph.” Never mind that it couldn’t really take pictures.
    “We were over at the auto races in Cedar Rapids with our families,” said Mary Louise.
    “Eight thrilling events,” said Mary Alice. “Much more fun than that silly picnic.”
    “We’ve all got Kodaks,” said Mary Helen. “Boring.”
    “And,” added Mary Alice, “Mr. Moore says he’s going to put our photograph in the first edition of the
Goodhue Progress,
due to the generous contributions our fathers made.”
    “We can’t come anyhow,” said Mary Louise. “My mother is going to give us bobs.”
    “Oh!” said Tugs. “But your hair is so beautiful already.”
    The Marys giggled at that and tromped on the grass to get around Tugs and Ned. Then they glided away. Tugs looked after them, holding her camera in front of her.
    “Click,” she said.

Back at home, Tugs left Ned in the living room with Granny and her mother and went to her room with the excuse that she had to change clothes. How could she be like the Marys with Ned hovering around?
    She sat on her bed with her camera and scanned her room through the viewfinder, inspecting everything through the lens.
    Click:
a spider resting in her web in the sloped corner of the ceiling.
    Click:
tiny faded flowers on the curtain, rustling slightly in the barest midday breeze. The curtains were frayed at the bottom, and dirty.
    There were several yellowed newspaper pictures cut from the
Cedar Rapids Tribune
.
    She scanned the whole room but could not find one beautiful thing.
    Until the Fourth of July, Tugs hadn’t known she wanted a ribbon or a Kodak. She hadn’t thought about possibility. Tugs had never aspired. Burton’s accusation rang again in her head. Tugs
was
a Button, and all at once she understood what that meant. Who else but a Button would wear dirty ribbons pinned to their dirty overalls? Her face burned with belated embarrassment.
    “What on earth are you still doing in here?” said her mother, peering around the door. “Ned wants to entice Granny into a game of marbles, but she’s retreated out to the weed patch.”
    “Tell him I don’t have time for him,” said Tugs. “I’m busy.”
    Mother Button stepped all the way into Tugs’s room and shut the door behind her.
    “Busy is doing something useful. Now, your cousin is