Free Listening for Lucca by Suzanne LaFleur Page B

into town.
    “Hey!” Sam said when I entered Nielly’s. “Siena?” heasked, as if checking. I nodded. “Come to do your shopping? Want some strawberries?”
    I looked over toward the produce, where a hundred small green cardboard bins held a multitude of bright red berries. A shiver ran down my spine. “No, thank you.”
    We stood there awkwardly.
    “So … how can I help you, then?” Sam asked.
    “The clip we put in the lost and found … is it still here?”
    “Oh, that. Let’s see.” We headed to the box. Sam took it out and shifted the contents around. “Still here.”
    I looked into his face, which I realized was kind of cute. He had a stretch of summer freckles across his nose and blond sun-streaks in his hair. So he couldn’t be spending all his time cooped up in this shop.
    “Well, do you want it or not?” Sam asked in response to my staring at him as if I had totally forgotten the reason I’d come to the store. My cheeks flushed pink.
    “Uh, yeah, thanks.” I held out my hand and he dropped the clip into it. Then he shook his head, puzzled.
    Whatever. What did it really matter what Sam thought? I’d known all along I was going to be lousy at this new-friend thing.
    “Well, bye,” I said, suddenly in a hurry to leave.
    “You’re kind of mysterious, you know.” I turned back. “You show up here out of the blue, no one knows where you came from or why you bothered to come to this summerland to stay …”
    Oh, that was all. Phew.
    “They don’t know because they didn’t ask,” I pointed out.
    “Okay, fair enough. So where are you from and what are you doing here?”
    “Brooklyn. And looking for a more relaxed life.”
    “Well, here we are very relaxed.” To show how much, he leaned against the register with his elbow, but it slipped. He caught himself. “See?”
    I laughed. I didn’t want to get too comfortable, though: things were going well, but I might muck them up. “Bye, Sam.”
    As I went down the front steps, Morgan was coming up.
    “Hi. What’s up?” she asked.
    “Just heading home.”
    She held up a DVD box and shook it.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “Some sci-fi movie Sam left at my house last night. He loves this stuff. He tried to get me to watch it, but I fell asleep.”
    Did they watch movies by themselves or with other friends? Were they boyfriend and girlfriend? I didn’t know her well enough to ask.
    Morgan and I stood there for a minute, and then she said, “Well, see ya.”
    “Yeah, see ya.”
    When I got to my room, I set the butterfly clip on the shelf with my collection. It was a pretty addition. A verypersonal item for someone to have lost. Good thing I’d found it.
    I lay down on my bed, threw my shoes on the floor, and put my feet up on the wall, feeling sorry for myself.
    Either one of them could have invited me to hang out with them today. But why should I have expected that?
    I pushed the idea of being friends with Sam or Morgan away and drifted into thoughts of Sarah. When I was in Sarah’s mind, I could forget myself completely. I could be inside someone who seemed so normal, someone who had a normal brother and a normal relationship with him. And the story felt like it was going somewhere. I hadn’t figured out what had happened here yet, but I still bet that I could, if I kept trying.
    I rolled over onto my stomach and got the notebook and pen ready.
    I lay outside, in the yard, on my stomach in the grass, reading one of Joshua’s comic books that he’d lent me
.
    Mama hates for me to do that, lie in the grass. It gets stains on my clothes that Vicky has to scrub and scrub to get out. If they come out. The worst is when I get grass stains on my white stockings, but, luckily, in the summer heat I hadn’t been told to wear any. I would have to scrub my bare knees in the tub myself
.
    Jezzie showed up with the newspaper and a scowl on her face
.
    “What?” I sat up
.
    She held up the front page and read the headline, “ ‘Town