The Thing About Luck

  “Yes?”

  “I want to sleep east. Change my mattress. It too heavy for me.”

  In fact, it wasn’t heavy at all, but I climbed down carefully and felt my way to the light switch. I didn’t know how I was going to survive the whole summer without killing somebody.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I like south after all.”

  “You’re doing this on purpose!” I cried out.

  “What you mean?” She gave me her best innocent look. That made me even more suspicious.

  “You’re making me climb up and down just because you think it’s funny!”

  “What funny about that?”

  “Well, do you want anything else before I get back in bed?” I asked, exasperated.

  “What would I want? It middle of night.”

  Obaachan lay down and closed her eyes. By the time I got back in bed, I was wide awake. I stared into the blackness and thought about practice-kissing my hand and pretending it was Robbie. But somehow Obaachan would probably know, and I didn’t want to be humiliated. I turned on my side, my back to the rest of the room, and gave my hand a little peck. I wasn’t sure how stiff to keep my lips. I wasn’t sure how much to move my lips. None of my friends had ever kissed a boy, but another girl in class had kissed a boy at a party, and after she did it, the boy passed her a note in class calling her the Rock of Gibraltar because he said her lips were so hard. She had cried in class, right in the middle of math. Something like that could pretty much ruin your whole life.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When I opened my eyes the next morning, Obaachan wasn’t on her mattress. Jaz and Jiichan were still sleeping. I climbed down—Thunder jumped—and padded toward the kitchen area. I stopped when I saw that the Irish guys, Mr. McCoy, and the Parkers were already eating cereal, all squeezed together on the built-in benches. Mr. Dark was probably on the road from Kansas, hauling the fourth combine. Then Obaachan spotted me and said, “Summer, you eat cereal. Hurry, before it all gone.” I walked into the room feeling thoroughly embarrassed to be seen by Robbie in one of the stupid T-shirts I always slept in. Across the front it said I LOVE HOUSEWORK—NOT.

  “I love housework—not,” Robbie read in a monotone.

  “Ah, ya’ll make someone a fine wife one day,” Mick said, and everybody laughed.

  I was trapped. I snatched up a box of Cap’n Crunch and poured it into a bowl, adding just a little milk, since there wasn’t much left. Obaachan shook her head at me for some reason. I held the bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other.

  “Oh, sit down, dear,” said Mrs. Parker. “There, squeeze in next to Robbie.”

  Everybody squished together even more, and I sat next to Robbie, our shoulders pressing against each other. Even though my T-shirt already reached almost to my knees, I stretched it down as much as I could.

  “It’s the strangest thing—your face is flaming red,” Mrs. Parker said. “Do you have a fever?”

  Everybody looked at me. “I’m fine,” I said. I faked a smile and spooned cereal into my mouth.

  Mrs. Parker laughed. “I think you have the messiest hair I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yes, ma’am, it gets very tangled at night,” I said. “I thrash.” Could this possibly get any more embarrassing?

  “Goodness, maybe you should cut it.”

  “Yes, maybe.”

  And yes, it could get more embarrassing. Because then Robbie said, “You smell funny. Like . . . insecticide?”

  “Robbie has a very good nose,” Mrs. Parker said.

  Great. “Last year I actually almost died from malaria that I caught in Florida, so I use DEET. It gets on my clothes.”

  He looked at me thoughtfully, as if I had just said something profound. One of his green eyes held a tiny spot of hazel. He was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Then suddenly he looked mischievous. “You heard of washing machines?” he asked, almost tauntingly.

  I paused. I thought about something smart to say, something that would un-embarrass myself. Then I said, “We don’t have a washing machine at home. We put soap and water in the bathtub, and I stomp on our laundry.”

  Robbie paused. Then, since I was only kidding, I smiled slyly, and he smiled back.

  “You’re kidding. You’re okay,” he said, then poured some more cereal.

  Yeah! No matter what else happened, the entire day was now a success because I was okay!

  I finished my Cap’n Crunch while everybody talked about harvest. If everything went well, we would be heading for Oklahoma in about a week. Rain was coming, but during growing season, Texas had been in a drought, so there wasn’t much business here. Some harvesters weren’t even bothering to come down to Texas. According to Mr. Parker, to get to Oklahoma in time meant sixteen-hour days every day. Farmers—and custom harvesters—weren’t happy until every single grain was in the elevator. Only then could anyone relax.

  Robbie checked his watch, as if he had an appointment, and turned to me. “Did you bring a lot of schoolwork?”

  “Yeah, but I probably won’t do all of it. The teachers really don’t expect harvesting kids to do all their homework.”

  “I know, but I gotta do all mine, anyway. My dad’s a tyrant. Are you gonna help your grandmother cook?”

  “Uh-huh. That’s my biggest chore. I have to help with every single meal. Washing the dishes, boiling turkey, whatever. Do you have chores?”

  “Like I said, my dad’s a tyrant. So almost every time we change farms, I have to clean and check the combines. I check all the fluid levels—the engine oil, the water, the hydraulic oil. I check the tires. Then I look over the sickle sections and guards. Then I grease all the ten-hour zerks. There are also twenty-five-, fifty-, and hundred-hour zerks, but they need to be greased only after the machine runs that many hours. I blow out the filters. And I have to wash the windows and clean the inside of the cabs.”

  “That sounds like a lot of stuff,” I said. I knew only a bit about cleaning combines, because once when I couldn’t sleep on harvest, I went outside and found my dad cleaning his combine. Many custom harvesters made each employee clean his or her own combine. We were lucky to have an extra person—namely, Robbie—to help us.

  “It takes about an hour per combine.” He shrugged. “I like it. I’d better like it, because I’m going to be doing it until I go to college.”

  “Wow,” I said. He had three little freckles right above his lips.

  “Wow what?”

  “Wow, I never even think about college.”

  “How old are you again?” he asked.

  “I’m twelve, but I’m really thirteen because that’ll be my next age.” That made no sense, but Robbie didn’t say anything.

  There was a knock on the door, and then it opened before anyone had a chance to say “come in.” It was Mr. Laskey. “Has anybody checked the moisture level yet? We had a pretty dry night. Might be time to cut already,” he said.

  “I checked thirty minutes ago and it was fourteen-point-five,” Mr. Parker told him.

  “Then it might be ready now.”

  Though he wasn’t finished eating, Mr. Parker got right up and went outside with Mr. Laskey.

  Everybody followed except for Obaachan and me. It didn’t change my life if the wheat was ready to cut or not. I started clearing off the table.

  It was pretty easy because, like I said, in the menu books, Sundays were the only days when we made a full breakfast, with scrambled eggs and sausage and toast and stuff. I loved iri tamago—eggs scrambled with sugar and shoyu and rice wine. It sounded so weird when people called shoyu “soy sauce.” It made it sound like Tabasco or something instead of the clean and perfect thing that it was. Anyway, I made a mental note to ask Mrs. Parker if we could make that for everybody one Sunday.

  Obaachan picked up a bowl I’d put in the rack. “What this?” she asked, pointing at it.

  I had to admit there was a little piece of gunk stuck to the outside of the bowl. I took the bowl back and rewashed it whi
le Obaachan checked and then dried every dish in the rack.

  “I clean counters, you walk Thunder, then do homework.”

  I got a tennis ball and walked out with Thunder into the bright sunshine. I threw the ball for him for about fifteen minutes, until his tongue was hanging long out of his mouth. I got him some water, hoping he’d perk up and play longer, so I wouldn’t have to do homework yet, but he just lapped up the whole bowl and went to the camper door and looked at me. Okay, then. Homework time for me.

  Inside, Jaz was at the kitchen table doing his so-called homework. He was supposed to be making a detailed family tree, but I knew he was making up some of it. Our family consisted of farmers and fishermen as far back as anyone knew, but when I’d sneaked a peek at his paper earlier, he’d claimed we had several samurai in our background.

  I took down A Separate Peace and finished reading the middle part. So I’d read the first part first, the last part second, and the middle part third. I didn’t know how I would write my book report, because I just plain didn’t understand the book. Next I read the parts I hadn’t read. The book was supposed to be for high schoolers, but a sister of one of my friends was in high school, and she thought it was the worst book she ever read. And even though I kind of agreed with her, I also kind of disagreed with her. Maybe I should just write the truth and say that it was the worst book I ever read, but that it made me wonder things about myself. It made me think that each person had all sorts of things going on inside of them, but most of these things would never surface unless circumstances were exactly right. So basically, inside of me was a big wilderness, and then around the wilderness was a nice, mowed lawn. After I thought that, I admit I figured I was kind of a genius. The only problem was that I had taken an IQ test once, so I knew I wasn’t a genius.

  Jiichan had wanted Jaz and me to take the test so he could understand us better. Jaz scored “very superior,” but when it came to real life, he basically flunked. I ended up with an overall score called “high average.” But what I didn’t understand was, did that mean I always operated on “high average,” or did that mean sometimes I operated on “very superior” and other times on “low average”? On the other hand, whatever.

  I hugged Thunder to me. Once, Jaz told a boy in my class that I still slept with a stuffed penguin, and so I told Jaz that I loved Thunder ten times more than I loved him. I got grounded for a week by my mother. Her big concern was that my love for Thunder might stunt my “socialization,” as she called it. How could I be unsocialized when I had so many friends? If I put together all the times I had ever been grounded, I wondered how much time that would be. Three months? Five? Eight?

  After Obaachan had cleaned the table and counters, she lay on her back in the kitchen area. After a while she pushed herself up with a grunt and said, “We go to supermarket now. Mrs. Parker like fresh meat, not frozen. And we need fruit and vegetable.”

  Jaz and I stood up. “Can I read what you wrote?” I asked him.

  “No, it’s none of your business.”

  “But your family tree should be exactly the same as my family tree.”

  “Then what do you need to read it for?” he asked.

  We all got into the pickup—Thunder too—and headed for town.

  We drove down the dirt road to the highway. “I wonder which way supermarket,” Obaachan said. “Summer, you pick, and if you wrong, you make lunch by yourself all week.”

  “Why didn’t you ask someone?” I asked.

  “Because nobody’s as smart as you,” Jaz said.

  “I’m not going to pick,” I protested.

  Obaachan nodded her head a few times and turned left. We drove down the highway, surrounded by wheat fields. You just couldn’t get away from them.

  Out of the blue Obaachan said, “Fifteen times four.”

  She liked to test my math because I wasn’t very good at it. Of course, we were way past multiplication tables in school. “Sixty,” I said.

  “No!”

  “Obaachan, it is.”

  She pulled the truck over and took out a pen and paper from her handbag. “Let’s see . . . carry two . . . Okay, you right. See? You say I never admit when I wrong. Take that back.”

  “But this is the first time.”

  “Take back and say you make mistake.”

  “I take it back and I made a mistake,” I said. I didn’t see how she could turn her being wrong into me saying I made a mistake. So I added, “But you made a mistake too!”

  “That subject finished,” she replied.

  Jaz hit his head softly on the dashboard. With each thunk, he’d say one word. “I. Didn’t. Make. A. Mistake.”

  Basically, Thunder was the only normal person in the truck, and he wasn’t even a person.

  Jaz suddenly sat very straight and still, and then his shoulders relaxed again. Then he started talking.

  “So last night I woke up and my action figures were alive. They were talking about a raging battle. The sergeant asked me if I wanted to go fight, but I didn’t want to because I was too sleepy.”

  I looked out the window as Jaz’s voice continued. “The sergeant told me to take a cold shower to wake myself up. So I did that, but then I thought I still didn’t want to go to battle because I’m just a kid. Battles are for grown-ups.”

  I leaned back as he went on, talking about what each action figure was wearing, what their dog tag numbers were, what their hair looked like, if they had skinny or fat fingers, and a million other details. My parents had taken him to three different child psychologists in Wichita. One psychologist said he had ADHD, one said he had PDD-NOS, and one said he was OCD. I wasn’t sure what the initials stood for except for OCD, which meant “obsessive-compulsive disorder.” That was why he would use only his three special cups. All three doctors wanted him on medication for his head-banging, but my parents refused. So did my grandparents. We had all learned to live with him, so what was the problem? It was just a part of life.

  Though nothing was in front of us, Obaachan suddenly slowed down, and we all jerked forward with the momentum. My grandmother’s braking strategy was always a mystery to me. I was about to ask her why she’d braked but then thought better of it, because she would only say something that would somehow make it all my fault. I might not have been a genius in general, but when it came to Obaachan, I did have a smart thought now and then.

  I leaned over Thunder and made little noises like most people would for a baby. Obaachan kept up her strange braking strategy. Finally, I couldn’t stop myself. “Obaachan, why do you keep braking?” I asked.

  “Every time you make noise to Thunder, I think I about to hit something. It your fault. If you no like, call taxi.”

  I ignored that.

  There was no wind, and the wheat was still. I wondered what the fortune-teller would say about that. The sky filled suddenly with clouds, but they disappeared so quickly that you would have had a hard time convincing someone it had just been cloudy.

  I peered through the back windshield at the highway curving through the wheat. Highway. Wheat. Sky. So simple. Compared to a city like Wichita, it all looked like a doorway to another world—our world. I always had this weird feeling as I stared out at the wheat, like the dust of my personality was settling a bit, like instead of me ever being confused or with my thoughts all over the place, I was just me, without any questions about anything or any worries or even any sadness. But that was impossible, because I didn’t even like wheat. Did I?

  A mosquito zzz-ed in the air in front of me, and I smashed it by clapping my hands together. I looked at it. It was a male; it had the feathery proboscis.

  In that old movie The Fly, Jeff Goldblum was half fly, half man. When I was so sick, that’s kind of what I felt like. I felt like I was turning into something that wasn’t me. Some scientists wanted to eradicate all the mosquitoes in the world, because they thought only good could come of that and it would prevent diseases like dengue, West Nile virus, and malaria. I wondered if th
at was true or whether every living thing had a purpose.

  “What are you doing in here?” I asked the smashed mosquito.

  “Obaachan, Summer is talking to dead mosquitoes again,” Jaz said, causing Obaachan to laugh.

  Then Obaachan stopped laughing and said, “Summer and Jaz always make me forget pain.”

  The supermarket was air-conditioned. Basically, it was paradise. Except for two cashiers at the front, it was totally empty as far as I could see. I didn’t get to go to a supermarket very often. At home we just went to the local grocer’s in town. There had been a big sign outside saying GRAND OPENING. Below that it said IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME.

  I was kind of surprised by just how big this store was, and how empty. Obaachan handed me some recipes for the rest of the week. I had to get all the ingredients that weren’t crossed out.

  Mrs. Parker had miscalculated how much cereal everybody would eat. I put five boxes of Cheerios into my cart. Original Cheerios was the bestselling cereal in the country. It had been invented in 1941 and was called Cheerioats until 1945. I knew this because we once had to do a paper on one of the top ten crops raised in Kansas. Oats were much less important to the economy of Kansas than wheat, but I chose to write about oats because I figured I already knew a lot about wheat, and I just felt like learning something new. There were something like twelve different types of Cheerios the last time I counted.

  In the dairy section I found buttermilk, fat-free milk, flavored milk, lactose-free milk, low-fat milk, reduced-fat milk, whole milk, almond milk, coconut milk, rice milk, and soy milk. Mrs. Parker wanted 2 percent milk. This really annoyed Obaachan because she was a firm believer in whole milk, especially for growing kids. So I bought an extra carton of regular milk for Jaz and me, even though it wasn’t on the list and even though Mrs. Parker had told Obaachan to get exactly what was on the list. I guess we were already going rogue.

  Then we bought all the other stuff and checked out while the cashier smiled almost the whole time, even when nobody was talking. Then she smiled harder and said, “Thank you. We hope to see you again!”