Listening for Lucca (21 page)

As I walked back I couldn’t get what Mom had said out of my head, about something at the beach helping Lucca. Why?

It must have been connected to last night.…

Joshua had said maybe I could help Lucca by doing the opposite of what Jezzie had done to Sarah. But how would you do the reverse? What had happened hardly made any sense.

I stopped walking, closed my eyes, and pictured that moment in Sarah’s life, Jezzie turning the invisible key and tossing it down the stone steps. I remembered the taps the metal made on the stone, heard the splash it made when it hit the water, saw the rings ripple out from the spot where it fell.

I started to have an idea, a crazy, impossible idea.

It was worth a try, anyway. Wasn’t everything already crazy?

When I got back to our house, I headed out down the path I had never been down before, not in this time, anyway. I tried to follow the way Jezzie had led Sarah, across the grass and over the dunes. The ocean grew closer.
There! There were the steps leading into the water. They were real. Just like everything else had turned out to be.

I took off my shoes and sat on the lowest dry step with my feet in the water. So cold!

What would I find? What I was looking for was invisible.

I scanned the water with my eyes, not wanting to stir up any of the sand and make it cloudy. I studied the sand and the long reeds of dune grass. They were very hard to see through.

The grass scratched my toes as I started to walk through the shallow water, carefully lowering my feet to each step. Each was more slippery than the one before it. When my feet hit the sandy bottom just off the last step, I was standing about thigh-deep in the water.

I couldn’t see anything. But, again, I was looking for something invisible … I closed my eyes. I
listened
.

To the sound of water lapping against the stone.

To the wind rippling so very quietly through the grass along the dunes.

To the air itself.

I listened for things that no one would expect to hear.
I
could hear them.

Things I could feel, but not yet see …

I trailed my icy toes through the sand, searching, searching. After a few minutes, I felt something. Not rock or plant. It was metal. Small. I held my breath. Keeping my eyes closed, I reached down and felt through the sand
until my fingers found it, too. I gathered up the object and brought it to the surface.

Only then did I open my eyes. Through Sarah’s eyes, I hadn’t been able to see it. With my own, I could.

In my hand was a little key. Bronze-colored with black patches, a Celtic-knot handle, and two skeleton teeth at the tip. Shorter than my pinky.

Maybe this was it.

Maybe this key would help my brother.

That night, I waited until I was sure Mom and Dad were asleep, and then I slipped into Lucca’s room and quietly closed the door behind me.

Lucca’s a deep sleeper; he used to fall asleep in his stroller on the street in New York, ignoring sirens and car horns, subway trains and street music. When I sat down next to him on the bed, he slept on.

He had that sticky look of little kids who sweat in their sleep. His Batman pajamas clung damply to his skin and his bangs were moist; his mouth hung open, his chest gently rose and fell. I smoothed his wet hair away from his face.

“Hey there, dreamer,” I whispered, “with all your thoughts so secret.”

I turned the key over in my hand. The bronze gleamed in the moonlight. The key was so solid, so real to me. Jezzie
had made Sarah
believe
she could take her voice away, and that had been the important thing. If Jezzie had been able to use the key to convince Sarah it was wrong to talk, maybe I could use it to let Lucca know I wanted him to. And maybe soon, he’d want to.

“Hey, little brother,” I whispered.

I shook his shoulder gently, and he opened his eyes. As he woke he examined my face in the dark.

“I just wanted to tell you … I’m sorry … about how I made you feel … about talking, I mean. If that’s not why you haven’t been talking to us, I don’t want to change you, not if you don’t want to. But I would love for you to talk to me, and Mom and Dad; to go to school and play with the other kids. Maybe that doesn’t seem like so much fun to you, but it can be. So anyway, think about it.”

I rolled the key in my fingers. Lucca sat up.

“Just if you want to,” I promised. “I brought something to help … a magic key.”

I held my hand out to show him. His night-light gave enough light to see it, but he held his own hands up, empty, and shook his head.

He couldn’t see the key. It seemed only I could. I’d dreamed it, believed it hard enough that it had become real just for me.

“That’s right,” I said. “It’s magic. It’s invisible.”

Lucca stared at me.

“Okay?” I asked.

He nodded.

I pressed the key to his lips and gave it just a hint of a turn.

I sat looking at him for a little bit longer. Maybe this would change everything. But it would only matter if it was what Lucca really wanted.

He cuddled back down onto his pillow. I stayed until he was asleep again. Then I went back to my own room and set the key on my shelf with the other abandoned things. That was the end of what I could do—it would be up to Lucca now, to choose his own way.

I finished getting dressed in the morning and headed down to the kitchen, where Mom had put out a box of fruit-rings cereal. I poured myself a bowl.

Lucca came downstairs. He still had that sticky, sleepy look.

“Hey, buddy. How are you?”

He climbed up into the chair next to me. I crunched my cereal for a minute and then realized he’d probably want some.

I dumped a dry handful out on the table. “Wanna play colors? Can you eat a pink one?”

Lucca reached for a pink one and crunched it. He smiled. Probably the cereal tasted good.

“Where’s an orange one? Can you find an orange one?”

He pointed to one, scooped it up, and put it in his mouth.

“You ate it!” I acted surprised. “I wanted to eat it. Can you get
me
an orange one?”

He picked up another orange one and fed it to me.

“Yummy! Now, what color is this?” I picked up a purple one.

He wasn’t tricked. He said nothing. Nothing, nothing. But he looked like he was giving the matter some thought. I finished my last spoonful and went to get a plastic bowl for Lucca. I filled it with cereal, poured in a little milk, and gave him a toddler spoon.

“Do you like the cereal?” Lucca’s swinging feet told me he did.

He finished but stayed put, looking at me. I poured him another bowl.

Wait
, I reminded myself.
Wait
. It was up to him.

Sam called that morning.

“Want to go to the amusement park? We’re supposed to have bad weather, so maybe the lines will be short. We can wait out the storms at the carousel if they happen.”

“Sure.”

“Morgan’s coming, too.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll come get you in half an hour.”

I dressed, got some money from Dad, and waited by the front porch.

Sam’s dad drove us there and said he would come back for us at six p.m. That gave us loads of time—probably
enough to go on every ride, because it wasn’t the biggest amusement park. But it had a couple of roller coasters and it looked pretty fun.

Morgan and Sam both seemed to like roller coasters the way I do. You always have to sit in pairs, so I was worried about who should sit with who, but Sam was a born diplomat. He alternated sitting with each of us and then saying he wanted the seat to himself, making us sit together. Morgan seemed fine with the whole thing.

One ride was nauseating to watch. The riders stood up and held on to some vertical handles, and then the ride flipped them upside down and twisted them around in every direction at random.

“Cool!” Sam yelled.

Morgan and I looked at each other as Sam ran to get in line. “We’re getting ice cream!” Morgan called after him. “Come on,” she said to me. She got strawberry and I got coffee.

“It feels cooler now that I’m eating ice cream,” I said.

“No way. It’s blazing hot.”

The thunderstorms hadn’t come through yet. We headed back over to the crazy ride. Sam was still in line. We waved to him and then found a bench across the sidewalk so we could watch.

“I’m probably going to be sick just watching that thing,” I said, slowing down my ice cream eating.

“Sam can be crazy,” Morgan said. “But he says you’re a crazy one, too.”

My cheeks burned pink. “He said that? What did he say?”

“He said you talk to ghosts or something. Do you? You talk to ghosts?”

I shook my head. “Not really.” There. Choose the vaguest words possible. Don’t give a solid answer to anything. That’s safest.

“Sam has the nuttiest ideas sometimes. That’s too bad, though. I would have wanted to see that.”

If she thought Sam’s ideas were nutty, she wasn’t likely to take any of the things he’d told her too seriously. Not that it didn’t sting to know he’d been blabbing about something so private. I kept my cool, which wasn’t too hard with the ice cream. “What, like have a séance?”

Morgan shrugged. “I don’t know. It would be fun, like for Halloween. We could still do it. Get a lot of kids going.”

“Does Sam really think I’m crazy?”

Morgan got a sly look. “Maybe. But I also know he thinks you’re awesome. He doesn’t shut up about you.”

“Is that … okay with you?”

“Yeah, whatever!” She smiled.

“You mean you’re not boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“No!” Morgan started laughing. “Sam’s like my brother. We’ve been playing in the mud at the beach together since before we could walk.”

“But even if he’s just your friend … you don’t mind … if he … or if I …?”

Morgan shook her head. She gave her cone a good
chomp. When she was done chewing, she said, “I have a boyfriend, anyway. I haven’t told Sam.”

“Really? Why not?”

“Just easier. And he’s been spending a lot of time with you, so he hasn’t noticed I’ve been around less. For now, it’s perfect until I want to tell him.”

“Someone from school?”

“High school. He’s a sophomore.”

“Morgan!”

She grinned as she finished her ice cream cone.

Sam was leaving the ride. I hadn’t even noticed that he’d had his turn. Just as I realized ice cream was running down my wrist like I was four years old, I noticed that Sam looked rather green. He stopped and bent over. Uh-oh.

“I got this.” Morgan hopped up, ran over to him, and got him to sit down with his head between his knees. Soon Sam was looking a little better.

I realized that Morgan had just given me a secret to hold. Sarah’s words drifted into my brain:
Ooh, a secret. Those special words that give you a tiny piece of someone else to carry around, to prove you know something important about them
.

I knew then that Sam wasn’t my only friend up here. Even if I could talk to ghosts. Or whatever.

On Saturday, Mom and Dad thought the air was a good temperature for painting, so they were on ladders working on the outside of the house. I didn’t like them up on ladders; I kept picturing them toppling and ending up paralyzed.

No sense staying home all day feeling nervous.

I found Lucca parked in his red and yellow Little Tikes car.

“Come on, kid, let’s go to the park.”

It was a bit of a walk, but Lucca only had to do some of it, because I gave him piggybacks off and on.

Nobody was at the playground. That was nice. I sat on a bench and Lucca ran around and climbed on things. Then he went over to the swings and needed help hopping onto a seat. I gave him a boost and started pushing him.

My mind kept wandering out toward the ocean. You could see it from here, too. From everywhere, it felt like.

The ocean. Now, that was something that kept going no matter how hard life got. And if I thought about it from standing right here, there seemed to be no end to it. On and on and on, no matter what happened.

“Higher!”

“Sorry,” I said, remembering to give him a gentle shove.

“Higher!” He added, “Please.”

Then I realized.

I ran around to the front of the swing and caught him. I hugged him and hugged him and hugged him.

“What?” Lucca didn’t like this interruption. Who cared? I gave him a big kiss on the cheek. Then I calmed down. Didn’t want to scare him. Didn’t want to make too big a deal out of it and have him change his mind.

I went back to pushing him on the swing. I pushed him high, as he had asked, my arms never getting tired.

He was quiet.

But that was okay. It was something. It was a start.