Lucky Breaks (11 page)

Where, Lucky wondered, are the geologists when you need them? Where are the sedimentologists, the paleontologists, the seismologists, and the mineralogists? Why weren’t they out looking at rocks and discovering the mess Lucky was in? Where was Dot, the Captain, Short Sammy, and Mrs. Prender? Where, especially, was Brigitte? Why were they all too busy to notice that she was in trouble and needed them?

Where was Lincoln?????

The situation of being alone at the bottom of a well with no way to get herself out, and having no flashlight in the darkness, and nobody knowing where she was, and her best friend lost and wandering in the desert due to Lucky’s stupidly
ordering
her to, and her oldest friend, Lincoln, hating her—he had to hate her for what she did to his net—the situation was the worst she could ever, ever imagine. It made Lucky as sad as if the world had completely ended and she was the only person left. Tears poured out of her eyes. Everything would be a little
tiny bit better if only it were someone else’s fault, but all of it, every speck of awfulness, was Lucky’s exclusive fault, and she knew it.

Lucky cried miserably for a long while. She needed to blow her nose, and thinking of the toilet paper in the backpack reminded her of the Pixy Stix she’d brought in case of emergency. Pixy Stix comfort you when you are in a sad or desperate situation, and it is always good to have some on hand. They look like straws, but instead of being empty, the paper tubes are filled with very delicious grainy granules, like sugar but in different colors and flavors. You tear off either end of the straw and pour the grains onto your tongue. You can pour a lot to fill up your mouth, or a little, to make your Pixy Stix last a longer time.

But a strange thing had happened, because her backpack was wet clear through. Lucky felt around inside and found the reason. The cap of the plastic water bottle had been knocked loose—probably when she fell. So the toilet paper roll was wet and useless, and the Pixy Stix in their paper straws were rock solid and soaked. Lucky tried to slit the paper of the straw in order to salvage the candy, which could no longer be poured but perhaps could be scraped off with her teeth. But her arm muscles were still getting over the strain of climbing down, they were weak and noodle-y, and she dropped all five Pixy Stix on the ground. She would not pick them up—it was too yucky and too dark to see what muck from the ground was on them. Lucky put her head down on her knees and sobbed. No water, no toilet paper, and
even her Pixy Stix were ruined
!

After a time, Lucky discovered that being bored is actually almost worse than being sad. When you are sad, your heart pumps the tragedy all through your body and fills your mind with the story of your suffering, and you tell that story to yourself over and over. But when you are bored, your mind has no stories and is a gray lump, a lump with soggy crevices of longing for something to happen. Bored is bad; bored and all alone in the universe is dreadful; but bored and all alone in the universe and hungry and thirsty and sad in the dark is…Lucky searched for the right word.
It’s like death
, she thought.
Death would even be
better
than this.

If she were to die in the well, of starvation/sadness/boredom/thirst/loneliness, Lucky realized it might be so long before they finally found her that she would have become a mummy. This thought cheered her up quite a lot, because if she were a mummy she could be displayed in the Found
Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center and become a big attraction, since it’s not a common thing to see actual mummies. Even her father would come to see her mummified self—he would
have
to—and he would be proud and sorry. Proud of her magnificent courage; he would not realize how scared she’d been. And sorry because he had never known her before she died; it was too late now. And at last he would realize how wrong that had been.

Lucky knew that the very dry desert air was perfect for mummification, because she had once found a mouse mummy in an old abandoned shack. It was not all wrapped in cloth like ancient Egyptian mummies, which had become mummies because people had carefully removed their internal organs. Lucky had read, and she believed it to be true, that the ancient Egyptians removed the brain of the dead person by sticking little instruments, little teeny spoons with long handles, up inside the head through the nostrils and
scooping
the brain out! Bit by bit!

But if the mouse mummy was reliable proof, which Lucky thought it probably must be, then other animals around Hard Pan could be wonderfully preserved as natural mummies too, because all the fluids and internal organs would dry up. The air would suck out every speck of moisture so nothing was left to decay, just skin and bones and fur would be all that was left.

The mouse had been on its side at the time of death, and its mummy was flat as a pancake. Lucky thought that just before
she died she ought to remember to lie in a nice, attractive position. It was frustrating that the terrible well was too cramped for this. She would have preferred to be an elegant mummy, languid and serene.

Thinking of her position, and her mummification and display in the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center, Lucky wished she had some light and a pencil and paper in order to write a good description for the display case. Something like, “Genuine Mummy of Intrepid Young Explorer Who Died Heroically When Trapped in Lost Brooch Well.” Lucky considered. She hadn’t really done anything heroic yet. How frustrating! She wracked her brain for a heroic deed, even something from a long time ago, but couldn’t think of any.

Lucky was about to make
up
a heroic deed or two when she felt something brush her cheek. It felt sticky-cobwebby, and a new terrible thought of black widow spiders crept into her brain: Since they like living in caves, as Lucky knew from Miles’s grandmother, then they must
love
old abandoned wells. If there were black widows in the well and Lucky was bothering them in their work of catching things in their webs, and if they stung her because they thought she would take their bug-victims and eat them herself, then she was in truly big trouble.

Lucky was pretty sure that nothing hurt worse than a black widow spider bite. It makes your skin die. It sends poison through your body and causes horrible cramps and throwing up. If you’re at home you go right away to the hospital, but if
you’re in a well in the desert and can’t get out, you will probably die a wretched long lonely death, wrapped in pain.

Lucky stayed very still to show the spiders that she wasn’t there to steal their dinner or disturb their webs. She wanted them to know that she hadn’t meant to invade their home.
Please don’t bite me. I’m not good to eat,
she thought at them.
I’m too big
.
And I won’t hurt you, and I won’t steal your bugs, and I didn’t mean to disturb you
.
So please don’t bite me
,
please please please don’t bite me
. But she didn’t know if spiders could understand thought-waves, even urgent, desperate thought-waves, so she sat still and breathed and remembered.

Lucky remembered a time when she was seven years old.
Just breathe
, her first mother Lucille would whisper when they sat together on the big Thinking Chair. This was in the time before Lucille died. Lucille was a painter, and sometimes she would sit in her big chair, concentrating and staring at a blank page in her Arches pad of thick, thick watercolor paper. Lucky understood that when Lucille sat in her chair and stared at her paper it wasn’t a time for talking, so she perched on the wide green arm of the chair and rubbed her cheek against Lucille’s soft round shoulder, and breathed the Lucille-smells of paint and paint thinner. When her mother was almost ready to begin painting, she would hum or sing. “
Que sera, sera
, whatever will be, will be,” were the words Lucky remembered now, for it seemed to be a song about Lucky’s very situation, a song about the future, and how whatever happens, happens.

After her mother died, when Lucky was sad or missing Lucille, she would sit on the green arm of the chair in her mind, breathing with her mother. And now, in the well, Lucky calmed herself by thinking whatever will be, will be, for there was nothing she could do, not one thing, to save herself. After shouting and crying and raging and imagining herself a mummy and wishing she were heroic and thinking at spiders and missing her mom, Lucky was worn down. Finally, not caring any longer, she let her head fall upon her knees and gave up.

Then, although she was as alone as she’d ever been in her life, Lucky heard, inside her head, first the sharp click of Brigitte’s tongue, and then her deep voice.
“Ah, non, ma puce,”
said the voice inside Lucky’s brain. It was Brigitte’s bristling-mad voice. “The future does not happen just by chance.”

Lucky moaned, because she did not want to talk to Brigitte in her mind about the future.

“And now, you give up? I am disappointed, Lucky. Your first
maman
raised you to be brave, and always I see that you are a fighter.”

I’m not lucky
, Lucky thought miserably.
I ran out of luck. There’s nothing more I can do.

“You are eleven years old tomorrow! How can you dare to give up?”

And Lucky had an eleven-ish thought, a new thought that burned her with shame. If she died, right on the tip of ten, right on the brink of eleven, it would be her own fault. People would
talk about how they’d always thought she was a sensible person, but climbing down into an abandoned well? Going out in the desert without letting anyone know? Endangering her new friend? The idea of this was too dreadful and embarrassing to bear. She jumped up, backing away from where she thought the black widow web was. Cupping her hands around her mouth to make a megaphone, she shouted with all her might. “Hey! Down here! In the well! Help!”

And pausing to gulp air, Lucky heard a far-off voice, Lincoln’s voice, saying, “I hear her! Over there!”

“Lucky?” It was Paloma, her head tiny at the opening above.

“Paloma!” Lucky felt a huge surge of relief. Paloma hadn’t gotten lost, and she, Lucky, had been found.

“Lincoln,” Paloma said, “you were right! This is the well! I thought it was way over by that foothill!”

Then Lincoln laughed. Laughed!

Like this was a little picnic! Fine for them, with no splinters like hot needles in their hands, and with all the Pixy Stix they wanted, but what about her? They should have been
gravely
concerned about whether she was even, after all these hours and hours, still alive! Plus,
plus
the fact that Paloma evidently hadn’t followed her specific instructions to get Short Sammy.

Maybe it had slipped their minds that she was almost a complete
mummy
, in the bottom of some totally dark
well
, with a splinter that was probably an inch long, no food or drink for
hours
; yes, they must have just forgotten all about her, because
they were laughing
. Lucky heel-kicked the wooden wall of the well. Her throat and cheeks burned; the roots of her hair sizzled. The shocked and angry molecules coursing through her body almost gave her the power to spring high enough to reach the ladder, surge up it like Spiderman, and leap out and crack their two heads together with all her might.

“Hey!” she called. “This isn’t funny down here!”

“Hi, Lucky,” said Lincoln. “We were just laughing at Paloma’s sense of direction. Are you okay?” His head appeared at the rim of the well beside Paloma’s.

“Lincoln, would you please go get Short Sammy, which is what I
thought
Paloma was supposed to do, so I can get out of here?”

“Hey, Lucky!” Paloma called in a cheerful voice, ignoring Lucky’s sarcasm. “Guess what! I met Lincoln on his way here, so we made it back in only twenty minutes!”

Lucky knew positively that she’d been in the well for hours, but she held back this retort. She wasn’t in a position to start an argument.

“Oh,
fine
,” she called up. “That’s
great
. How do you think you’re going to get me out of here, Lincoln? You have no idea what it’s like from where I’m standing. Even if you climb down, you’d never be able to climb back up; it’s too hard. The ladder rungs are too far apart. It will have to be a strong grown-up who can piggyback me out. I really wish people would listen to
what I
originally
said and get Short Sammy or the Captain. And Lincoln—”

“Hang on, Lucky,” Lincoln called down in his calm, take-it-easy voice. “We’ll have you out of there in a few minutes. You sound okay, but do you need anything? Water?”

“Yeah, drop a bottle down that will give me a brain concussion when it lands on my head. Then, oh yeah, I know what: Send Miles down so he can do a little brain surgery on me.”

More laughter. Then Lincoln, saying, “I’d like to find out how deep the well is. Let me know when the bottle gets to the bottom.” And Lucky saw something swaying at the opening, slowly being lowered, bumping the sides of the well on its way down. A bottle of water on a rope.

The clear plastic glinted enough in the light from above for Lucky to see it as it reached her. Lincoln’s calmness and his lack of one speck of sympathy for her dreadful plight made Lucky reach out and jerk the bottle as hard as she could. The rope immediately fell on her in a heap, as Lincoln said, “Hey!”

“Wow,” Paloma said after a second. “She jerked it right out of your hands!”

Lucky felt tears begin to pour out of her eyes again. They were discussing her as if
she
were the problem, instead of them not getting Short Sammy or someone right
now
to rescue her. She pressed the heels of her hands hard against her eye sockets to make herself stop crying. “Lincoln!” she shouted. “Never
mind about me, but you might want to think about the fact that we’ll all be in big trouble if we don’t get back to Hard Pan pretty soon!”

Mumbled talk from above, then Lincoln’s voice. “Working on it, Lucky. Patience.”

Lucky couldn’t stand not knowing what was going on. “Hey, Paloma,” she yelled. “Why didn’t you bring Short Sammy like I told you?”

But it was Lincoln who answered. “He’s got something going on, pretty serious, but we’re not sure what it’s about.” Lincoln interrupted himself to say something to Paloma that Lucky couldn’t hear. Then he continued, “He came back from working on his adopted highway two hours ago and went straight into his house and closed the door. So I finished up decorating with Dot and thought I’d see what was happening out here—I figured you’d be here. Found Paloma heading toward Death Valley.”

Paloma had been way off course, Lucky realized. If Lincoln hadn’t come along, she’d be lost by now for sure. Lucky didn’t want to think about that.

“The thing with Short Sammy—what’s going on? Is it something to do with that box?”

But no one answered, and Lucky’s neck hurt from craning up at the opening way above. She hunkered down and took a swig from Lincoln’s bottle, thinking how sad and dangerous the world was when you least expected it, with people losing their
way and buying coffins and closing their door so you didn’t even know what was wrong.

If only she could trade this stinking black hole for the strong bright light on the surface, and trade the grip of the earth holding her below for Brigitte’s encircling arms. Lucky waited, and she despaired.