Free Lucy Doesn't Wear Pink by Nancy Rue Page A

didn’t go over the budget. She didn’t have to add things up in her head anymore. She just knew that if she had to buy tortillas that week, she couldn’t get Nesquik too.
    She was deciding between creamy and crunchy peanut butter, always a tough decision, when she heard Mr. Benitez clear his throat. He did that so much, Lucy sometimes wondered if he had hair balls like her cats.
    “Your father called,” he said. It sure sounded like he had a hair ball in there.
    Lucy selected the crunchy p.b. and put it in the basket.
    “He said to tell you to get tea bags.”
    “Tea bags?” Lucy scrunched up her nose. “We don’t drink tea.”
    “I don’t care whether you do or not. He said to get tea bags.”
    Mr. Benitez pulled a box from the shelf above Lucy’s head and dropped it on top of her peanut butter. Then he peered in until Lucy felt like he was peeping into her brain.
    “You don’t have enough money on your account for all of that,” he said. “Put something back.”
    “I know how much money I have,” Lucy said, and then added, “Thank you, Mr. Benitez.”
    Dad said she had to be polite to him no matter what because he let them have an account and nobody else in town got one.
    Still, she gave his thick face an I-told-you-so smile when she didn’t go over the limit on her items, including the mysterious tea bags. She wondered about those until she got closer to the house with her two full-to-overflowing bags and saw a faded red pickup truck parked in front.
    She slowed her steps. A repairman? No, nothing was broken this week. Somebody returning one of the kitties who’d wandered off ? None of their cats ever actually left town, and who in Los Suenos had a truck like that?
    Lucy was no closer to figuring it out when she peeked through the window in the back door while she balanced both bags on one hip to turn the knob. The person sitting across from Dad at the table was a total stranger.
    Only, even from where she stood, Lucy could see that she didn’t act like one.
    The woman sat in the chair like a perfect L, making her short self look tall and important. In spite of the fact that she wore her black-pinstriped-with-gray hair in a straight-at-the-chin cut like a child in an old picture book, she wasn’t little-girlish at all, not with a face as square as a box and a mouth that pulled inward like she was sucking herself in. Anybody that serious couldn’t be there for a good time.
    “Come in, Luce,” Dad called.
    Lucy pushed open the door and deposited the bags on the counter and peeled off her backpack and extracted her arms from the sleeves of her jacket — until Dad finally said, “Enough with the stalling. Come say hello to Senora Herrera.”
    “Inez,” the woman said.
    Her voice was as dead-sober as her face, which was why Lucy was surprised as she crossed to the table to see that the woman wore a bright-white blouse with life-size red hibiscus f lowers embroidered on it, and a yellow skirt that matched the f lowers’ centers. Two strands of pearls followed the ring of wrinkles around her neck.
    “This is Lucy,” Dad said, sounding as if Lucy had already been a main topic of conversation before she came in.
    “Hi,” Lucy said, and stuck out her hand to the lady, because Dad would tell her to anyway if she didn’t.
    The hand she put into Lucy’s had calluses that scraped like toothbrushes on her palm. She looked at Lucy with small, black, smart-looking eyes, like she knew things she wasn’t about to tell.
    “I’ll put the groceries away,” Lucy said.
    “They’ll keep,” Dad said. “Did you get the tea bags?”
    “Uh-huh. What did we need them for?”
    The lady — did she say her name was Inez ? — stood up. She was only as tall as Lucy, but Lucy felt as if she were shrinking in front of her.
    “Do you have the tea kettle?” she said. She spoke like English wasn’t the first language she learned.
    “I don’t know,” Lucy said.
    “In the pantry, top shelf, all the way to the