Garden of Stones - By Sophie Littlefield Page 0,33
warmth creeping along her skin, evaporating her worries. “Come on. I’m starving.”
* * *
After lunch, a chaotic, noisy affair punctuated by the shrill shrieks of the little boys Lucy sometimes babysat, Jessie suggested walking over to the ball fields. “We can check out the competition.”
When they arrived at the stands, however, a little group had already taken the best seats: Irene Purcell, along with half a dozen other Caucasian teenage girls. Lucy recognized some of them from her delivery route, though she’d never exchanged more than a word or two with any of them. When they saw Jessie, a couple of them waved.
“Do you know them?” Lucy asked.
“A little.”
“Hey, Jessie,” a pudgy redhead called. “Want to sit with us?”
“Nah, it’s okay. We’re not staying. Got to be somewhere else.”
Lucy smiled to herself, her annoyance at the girl’s flirting overshadowed by the way Jessie had said we, the ease with which he included her in his fibbing.
“Oh, are you working?” another girl said. “I can’t believe you guys work for them anyway when they don’t pay you. It’s like you’re their slave.”
Lucy didn’t respond, even when she noticed Irene smirking at her. She wondered what the girls would say if they knew that her father had had his own factory, that once, on her birthday, he’d arranged for the toy department at Bullock’s to devote a clerk and the doll counter to her while she picked out a dozen outfits for her birthday doll and a wardrobe lined with genuine China silk to store them in. That her father had driven a gleaming Mercury, which, after his death, was stored in the garage and then sold for a fraction of its worth to the men who came to the neighborhood in the final desperate days before evacuation.
She wanted to let it go, wanted to believe she was unaffected by their casual cruelty. Tried to remember that she was the daughter of Miyako Takeda, famous in her neighborhood for her perfect complexion and tiny waist and mysterious smile. And that Jessie had chosen her, not any of them. But still, their condescension cut deep.
“You have a thing,” she said to the redhead, tapping the corner of her upper lip.
The girl blinked. “What?”
“A...smudge or something. What did you have for lunch? It looks like gravy.”
The girl blushed furiously and rubbed at her mouth. Lucy stared directly at Irene and smiled, deciding that even if she couldn’t always keep them from getting under her skin, she would never let it show.
* * *
On the other side of the ball field, there was an equipment shed built from wood salvaged from barracks construction, and behind it someone had built a pair of long benches with rough notched legs. Here Jessie and Lucy sat, out of sight of the players and the observers in the stands, and Lucy lit her first cigarette using the book of matches Jessie offered her.
Jessie watched her. “Have you smoked before?”
Lucy considered trying to pretend she had, but she knew there was more to smoking than met the eye. Instead she shrugged and puffed as she lit the cigarette, holding it between her index and middle fingers, as she’d seen the older girls do.
The smoke was intriguing and shocking at once. She felt it travel down her throat and willed herself not to react. She held Jessie’s gaze and closed her mouth on the smoke and tensed all her muscles, curling her toes and stiffening her shoulders against the cough. Her eyes watered and she held her breath and in a moment the urge passed.
Jessie smiled.
After a while, they ground the cigarette butts into the dirt. Lucy liked the way the toe of her shoe felt twisting into the fine soil, crushing the filter.
“Have you had a boyfriend before?” Jessie asked. “Back in Los Angeles?”
Lucy knew she was supposed to be coy, to play it cool. Who wants to know? she could imagine the high school girls saying, or What’s it to you?
But it wasn’t like that with Jessie. When he kissed her, it had felt...important.
“No,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “You’re my first.”
This time when they kissed, Lucy forgot about everything that was wrong. When Jessie’s arms were around her, he was all there was in the world.
* * *
Lucy stood on a chair to drape her blouse over the partition and air out the smoke. She meant to take down the blouse before her mother got home, but when Miyako returned a little after six