Free The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky by Holly Schindler Page B

came out of a kindergarten art class.
    Ms. Dillbeck laughs softly. “He sent them. He didn’t draw them.”
    Now I’m really confused. I want to ask why her nephew would have taken all that time to send her those pictures he didn’t even draw—and why she would frame them. Frames, I figure, are for really special things.
    But before I can say anything, she leads me into her old sunroom. The autumn sun streams into the room in beams that crisscross through the screen. Sort of looks like the sunlight’s been cross-stitched here.
    The insides of an old cardboard box rattle and clink as Ms. Dillbeck slides it out from under a table. When it gets close enough for me to look inside, I see a bunch of old broken pottery—cups and vases, their smooth glazes sparkling in the cross-stitched sunlight.
    â€œThis your nephew’s, too?” I ask.
    She nods. “He tried his hand at pottery for a while, but it turned out that he was better at buying art than making it.”
    She lifts a strange mug that’s caved in on one side. She turns it over in her hand, eyeing the clumps of hardened clay that rise and fall around the lip like the mountains in the relief maps at school.
    â€œLook at this silly old cup,” she tells me. “I always loved it because my nephew made it. But it’s not like I can drink out of it.”
    â€œYou’re giving me that for my house?” I ask, feeling bubbles of excitement rise inside me.
    â€œI know you can figure out how to make this talk for you,” she says with a wink, just before she puts the mug back and helps me hoist the box of pottery into my wagon.

• • • 23 • • •
    â€œThe posts, Gus,” I say, pointing at the simple, square poles that stretch from the floor of our porch to hold up our roof. “We could use Ms. Dillbeck’s pottery to fix up the old posts, like we used the glass on the front walk.”
    Gus takes Ms. Dillbeck’s pieces into the back shed, where he puts them into an old pillowcase and smacks them with a hammer—not hard enough to turn them into dust. Just enough to break the old cups and half-finished vases into chunks the size of a quarter. He mixes up some QUIKRETE—thicker than before—and I come along with the pieces of pottery, squishing them into the gloppy mixture as far up as I can reach. I haul a small step stool out of the garage and use it to reach the middle sections of the porch posts. For the highest sections, Gus plants his ladder and I pass him bits of pottery, telling him exactly where I want each piece to go.
    Gus and I are in the middle of the front yard examining our work when I hear footsteps. I look up as Weird Harold joins us, wearing a cap that reads WHAT NOW?
    â€œWhat do you think?” I ask, pointing. The concrete and pottery give the posts a thick, rough, almost dangerous feel—like the skin on the back of an iguana.
    â€œMs. Dillbeck’s pottery, right?” he says, his crooked teeth flashing through his grin.
    Part of me wonders how he knows about Ms. Dillbeck’s pottery, while the other part is used to Weird Harold being able to see and know everything, like the cameras inside the door at Walmart.
    So I nod, feeling pride start to leak out of my pores. “Think Victoria will like it?”
    Instead of answering, Harold says, “I have something I want to show you.”
    He hurries across the yard, disappearing around the corner of my house.
    The Bradshaw backyard almost looks like a farm, with all the rows of vegetables and the tiny signs marking what’s growing where: turnips and pumpkins and beets and eggplant. The picnic tables have a few already picked zucchini spread out on them. I love the look all the rows of green shoots give the backyard—and the earthy smell of so many plants.
    Harold points to his dad, who’s tugging at a tarp that’s draped over some large mound