Lila Blue Read Free

I had a pocket edition nearly as thick as it was wide. I'd put clear
tape all over the cover to reinforce it, but the poor thing was frazzled from
constant use.
    Ever since Grandma Betty gave me a
picture dictionary when I was four, I've loved words. I never worry about being
bored if I have a dictionary. I guess I'm addicted to it the way some people
are to crossword puzzles or to those tiny breath mints. I open it anywhere and
study the first word my eyes land on. I flit around from page to page tasting
words, the way bees visit blossoms on apple trees. Some words are sweet, like memorabilia and willowware , and I say them over and over in my head or out loud if
I'm alone. Others are bitter or salty. Or sour, like propitiate. Or
sharp, like cataract . I feast on words. That's what Shelly meant by delicious
words of the summer.
    The dictionary is guaranteed to
calm me down and help me get through hard times, and there had been more hard
times than ever lately.
    Janice wasn't doing so well. She
hadn't smiled in weeks. She'd stopped going out with her girlfriends, and her
last boyfriend had gotten mean to her and too interested in me. Three
babysitters in a row quit because my mother came home so late, and she'd run
out of ideas for where to get new sitters. I told her I was old enough to look
out for myself, but she felt too guilty to leave me alone.
    The last two sitters had been
useless. They should have paid me for doing their homework. How do some
girls get to be seventeen without developing brains?
    I was worried about my mother, and
I was worried about me. She was all I had, and she was in trouble.
    Grandma Betty couldn't help us that
much, because she had two other daughters with all their kids who used her
house for a motel. Her fourth husband, Hugh, was tolerant, but he limited
houseguests to one batch at a time, and Janice's sisters always seemed needier
than we did.
    So I guess I should have seen this
coming, but you don't know how bad something is when you are smack in the
middle of it. Like a bad smell that you've been breathing in day and night. You
don't know how horrid it is until you've been in fresh air long enough to
regain your senses. Then you walk back in and, whoa, this place really stinks.
    Somewhere around the Oregon border,
after all that scenery and all those passengers embarking and debarking, I
thought, "Whoa, my life really stinks."
    I spent a few miles wallowing in
that realization, and then I became curious about what was coming up next.
    I studied the white business card
that was the ticket to my future. On it was a tiny picture of my newly
discovered grandmother. Lila looked old. Her white hair was braided on her head
like a crown and it had red flowers stuck in it. My grandma Betty dyed her hair
black, the way my mother did, so I was not used to white-haired relatives. I
wondered how many other ways Lila would surprise me.
    Her card had raised blue lettering
that said, Carefree styles for the whole family at Lila Blue's Family
Barbershop, Highway 101, Rainbow Village, Oregon.
    "She will pick you up"
were my mother's parting words. I sure hoped Janice had remembered to tell Lila
I was coming.
    The rain started at the Oregon
border and didn't show any signs of letting up. The whole world turned gray and
black. In some places the rain was so heavy the bus's giant windshield wipers
could not keep up with it. I strained to help the driver see until I gave
myself a headache and had to close my eyes and try to rest. I snuggled in the
hooded sweatshirt from my backpack, leaned against the cold bus window, and listened
to the tires splash rooster tails of water over everything in our path.
    Jane and I had to change buses in
Corvallis to get to the coast highway. She was still in horrid condition when I
woke her up and gathered her belongings for the transfer. If my mother
considered Jane a reliable person, she was delusional.
    After I'd ridden a full twelve
hours, I finally limped off the bus at the