Lucy’s “Perfect” Summer Read Free Page B

Spanish. Even if Lucy could have understood what she was saying, she couldn’t have heard it over Mora’s babbling.
    “We totally thought you drowned. We tried to call your dad, only the phone is out. I almost freaked, and Abuela was, like, ‘The Lord, he will take care of Senorita Lucy,’ and she’s all praying, and I’m thinking, ‘Well, if she drowns, at least she’s with J.J. — ”
    Lucy was glad to be sent off to the shower by Inez. Mora could talk longer than you could listen to her sometimes, and about the weirdest things.
    When Lucy came out in dry clothes, Inez had tortilla soup and hot tea ready. Lucy put Marmalade, their orange kitty, in her lap and drank her tea out of the butterfly mug that had been her mom’s. Mora sat across from her, cross-legged in the chair, and picked up where she’d left off.
    “Okay, so, like, how deep is it out there? Could you swim in it? I would have been so freaked out — ”
    Lucy clapped her hand over Mora’s still-moving mouth and leaned into the radio on the table. Dad’s voice crackled from it.
    “The National Weather Service is reporting — ” Big pause. “ — frontal winds of thirty miles per hour.” Another pause. “Make that fifty. Gusts up to fifty.”
    Lucy felt a frown form. Dad was usually so smooth on the radio. Listening to him was like hearing molasses pour, people said. Lucy had never actually heard molasses pour, but she knew what they meant. He never said “um” or “uh” or “like,” which Mora would have said every other word if she were a radio announcer. But today he sounded more like a car engine that couldn’t quite start.
    “Because of our sparse vegetation here in New Mexico,” Dad said, “the runoffs from this storm can cause flash flooding.”
    “Ya think?” Mora said to the radio. “No offense, Mr. Rooney, but that already happened.”
    Lucy was glad Dad couldn’t hear her. She glared at Mora and turned up the volume.
    “Today is a good day to stay home,” Dad was saying. “We’ll keep you updated, so just sit back with a cup of coffee and count on us. We’ll . . .”
    Another big pause. Lucy turned up the volume again, but there was only silence.
    “What happened to him?” she said.
    “ Senor Ted, he is fine,” Inez said. “The radio, it is not.” She nodded at the light over the table that flickered and blinked into darkness.
    “The power’s off?” Mora wailed. “I wanted to watch The View .”
    Lucy didn’t know what that was, and she didn’t care. She had a sudden icky-achy feeling in her stomach.
    “You think my dad’s okay, Inez?” she said.
    “Senor Ted, he can take care of Senor Ted.” Inez poured more tea into Lucy’s cup. “And I can take care of you.”
    But as Lucy watched the wind slam the rain against the window, she felt a scared kind of lonely. Dad always said that once you’ve lost somebody you loved, it was hard to trust that it wouldn’t happen again. That was why they had God.
    God and soccer. There were drills she could do in the house if she moved the furniture around some. She could at least toss the ball into the air and catch it with her foot. Lucy pushed the tea mug aside and went for the hook by the back door where she kept her ball in its net bag. She was halfway there when she realized she’d left it on the soccer field. Now she was ready to freak.
    “What’s wrong?” Mora said. “You look all weirded out.”
    “My soccer ball’s probably floated all the way to Alamogordo by now,” Lucy said. “Not to mention my bike.”
    She stuck her hands in her pockets, pulled them out, picked up Marmalade, put him down. Her skin itched on the inside. And then she realized something else.
    “Oh, my gosh!” she said. “Where’s Mudge? He’s out in this!”
    She tore for the door, but Inez got between her and it.
    “He’s in the house,” Mora said. “Abuela has the scratches to prove it.”
    “He is under Senor Ted’s bed. Come. Sit.” Inez pointed to the