Listening for Lucca Read Free Page B

in a terrorist attack.”
    I almost bought that as comfort. Winning the lottery is rare, so that seemed like good odds. But … “I’m not even old enough to
buy
a lottery ticket, so there’s
no
chance of me winning the lottery. But if I ride trains and buses and fly in planes and go to public places, then there is
some
chance of being in a terrorist attack.”
    Lucca didn’t say anything. As usual.
    My parents didn’t really understand what I was asking. I wasn’t just talking about what if something went wrong with the jet engines or if your plane was hijacked.
    I’m not really afraid of flying. Flying is kind of fun. You get to drink soda and look at the clouds from the top side and, most importantly, that’s how we get to Florida to visit Grandma since she moved there. I even flew to visit her without my parents, proudly in charge of Lucca, when Mom and Dad went to go house- and job-hunting in the spring.
    And flying is how I’ll get to all those faraway places I want to see one day.
    What I meant was more about how you go out in the world and continue being you when something terrifying and unexpected could happen.
    I decided to try a different route. “Let’s say you’re in Europein the nineteen thirties or forties and the Nazis might invade your country any day now.… How do you calmly sit on the toilet to go to the bathroom?”
    Dad actually put down his sandwich.
    “Siena, this is the oddest dinner conversation we have ever had,” Mom said, her sandwich hovering an inch from her mouth. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore.”
    I sighed.
    “Oddest or most odd?” Dad muttered to himself.
    “Nobody cares about that right now,” Mom snapped at him. “Our thirteen-year-old seems to be having some kind of mental breakdown.”
    “I am not,” I insisted. “I just want to know something.”
    “I think,” Dad said, “that her breakdown is philosophical, not mental.”
    “Meaning?” Mom asked.
    “I think she’s trying to … pry apart the essence of being in our world.”
    “It seems to me more like she has some kind of anxiety.”
    Oh, my favorite. Now they were talking about me as if I weren’t there.
    “Children might just be more anxious these days than ever before,” Dad said.
    Mom, Dad, and I all looked at Lucca.
    He didn’t look anxious. He was carefully stacking those little squares of bread into a tower on his paper plate.
    Lucca is three years old, almost four now. There’snothing wrong with his ears or his mouth or his throat that any doctor can find. He did really well on the intelligence tests they could give him, the ones where he pointed to pictures and played with blocks, so he understood what people said. He just wouldn’t talk. The doctor said that sometimes anxiety might make a kid not talk. We don’t really know what Lucca has to be anxious about, but that was one reason we moved—Mom and Dad thought maybe he’d be less anxious someplace less hectic and busy.
    The other reason was me. The weird dreams, the lack of friends. I’d refused to see a therapist, which Mom suggested over and over. That would only
confirm
that I was crazy: no thanks. I didn’t tell them about the daytime visions. I couldn’t add that to Mom’s worries.
    So Dad looked for new jobs someplace quiet.
    “Listen.” Both of my parents resumed eating but kept their eyes on me. “All I’m trying to say is, this world is crazy.”
    “You’re being too dramatic,” Mom said.
    “No,” Dad countered. “I think she’s got it.”

4
    Mom came by at bedtime.
    “You have everything you need?” she asked. “You have sheets, a toothbrush?”
    “Yeah, Mom, I’m fine.”
    She sat down on my bed with me and looked around my room, which was not quite my room yet. “This will be nice for you when it’s all set up.” She smoothed her hand over my ponytail, and then she pulled out my hair tie and ran her fingers through my loose hair. She had tucked me in this way every