Listening for Lucca Read Free Page A

like their ancestral dinosaurs, we were given an hour of free time. I sat by myself under the enormous blue whale in the ocean room in the half darkness, listening to its sad calls playing over hidden speakers, my ears still ringing with the kids’ laughter.
    Kelsey found me and sat down next to me.
    “The guide was probably right, you know,” she said. “You saw an old photo once before and
imagined
you could still see the train tracks outside. It could have happened to anybody.”
    “You don’t understand,” I said. “I
saw
it. I saw a moving train! And I don’t know if it could happen to anybody, but it happened to me. You never get it!”
    Kelsey looked stung; she had only been trying to help, after all. She wandered off to stare at the fake elephant seals for an awfully long time. On the bus ride home, she didn’t sit with me. Nobody did.
    Things weren’t the same after that. Not with the other kids, or Kelsey, or even just with myself.
    Before then, I’d always had these vivid dreams. Morethan just about the house. About sinking ships. Plane crashes. Wars. Speeches. I used to wake up and talk about my dreams, thinking they were like everyone else’s, and then Mom and Dad would ask how I
knew
about such and such, it’d happened so long ago. I’d say I didn’t
know
about it, I’d just
dreamed
it. Sometimes they would catch each other’s eyes and then Dad would shrug and say, “Odder coincidences have happened.”
    But when it started happening during the daytime … well, it was just scary. It was scary to be awake and suddenly have the world
change
, to see things that weren’t there now. Had I fallen asleep? Or did I really have as little control over my thoughts during the day as when I was sleeping?

    For our first dinner in the new house, we had a picnic of sandwiches on the kitchen floor. I was sure Mom would never let us do that again. She’s very into cleanliness, routine, and order. It was well after dark, so it was very late for dinner in July.
    I opened my ham sandwich and inspected it. Just mustard, no mayo. Good, Dad had remembered. I put the bread back on and took a bite. It tasted dry and boring and stuck in my throat.
    Lucca had opened his, too, and was eating the ham out by itself. After the meat was gone, he started tearing his bread into little squares. Every once in a while he’d eat one.
    “How was the beach?” Mom asked.
    “Oh, good,” I said.
    “Yeah?” Dad asked. “Wish I’d gotten a chance to get out there. Maybe I will tomorrow, after I swing by the school and see how things look for camp.”
    Dad’s a science teacher and sports coach. This summer he was going to be running a soccer camp. He and Mom had this idea that I should be his assistant a couple of days a week. I’d reminded them that I don’t
like
soccer, but Dad said I’d be helping with attendance and equipment more than anything else.
    We were all quiet again for a few minutes.
    I looked around the kitchen. It wasn’t familiar to me from my dream, though most of the house
did
seem similar.
    I felt a chill pass through me again. These dreams were really starting to affect me during the day, when I was supposed to be awake and safe from them. I filtered back in my memory through the worst ones. Could any of them come true?
    “What if something bad happens to you on an airplane?” I asked.
    My parents didn’t answer right away.
    Then Dad, more used to kids asking questions because of his jobs, spoke first. “You mean like being in a plane crash? It would probably happen so fast that it would be over before you even knew about it. Before you could feel a thing.”
    Maybe he’s right and maybe he isn’t. It’s not like you can ask people who died in a plane crash if it was quick.What if the plane dropped suddenly and you got that sickening swoop in your stomach?
    Mom took her turn. “Are you worried about terrorists, honey? Statistics show that you’re more likely to win the lottery than to die