The Thing About Luck

CHAPTER TWO

Three boys from Jaz’s class had said they could come to the party. Nobody else had RSVP’d. But it didn’t matter. Three boys! We were so, so excited. At eleven on Saturday morning my friend Melody came over in case we needed help.

“What should I do?” Mel asked Obaachan.

“Vacuum living room.”

“Obaachan,” I said, “she’s a guest.”

“She here to work.”

I shook my head at Mel to let her know she didn’t have to vacuum. But we couldn’t have a for-real conversation with Obaachan and Jiichan listening. So we just talked about the coming harvest.

Let me finally explain about custom harvesters. Many wheat farmers don’t cut their own wheat. They bring in custom harvesters like the Parkers, who hire independent contractors like my family to drive the giant combines that cut the wheat. They also hire drivers of big rigs to haul the wheat to grain elevators. Grain elevators are usually tall reinforced-concrete buildings that you may have seen but never really thought about. The elevators are where the grain is stored.

The custom harvesters are the ones who own or lease the really, really expensive equipment. They’re usually family-owned companies. A new combine can cost $350,000, so you need to have really good credit to get a loan from the bank to buy or lease your equipment. Shoot, our house cost a quarter of that. During the harvest season these companies travel from farm to farm, from Texas to Montana or North Dakota, and even up to Canada for some harvesters.

Anyway, enough about custom harvesters (for now). I made two chicken-breast sandwiches, and Mel made two. Every so often, I slipped Thunder a piece of chicken, so he sat his best sit as I cut the sandwiches in half and inserted toothpicks topped with colored cellophane into each half. Then I put a sprig of parsley on each plate, which is kind of fancy, but I wanted to make a good impression.

Melody, Obaachan, Jiichan, and I sat at the kitchen table waiting while Jaz sat in the living room. “Summer, get your hair under control,” Obaachan said. “You look like Yoko Ono, 1969.” I had the bad luck of being in that small minority of Asian people with frizzy hair. Usually I wore it in braids, but I hadn’t done that today.

I braided my hair in the bathroom. Melody came with me. “I have a bad feeling about this whole party thing,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Mel asked.

“I don’t know. At least we’re going on harvest pretty soon. Kids are less snotty on harvest. They’re desperate for someone to play with. Me, I’m mostly worried that everyone at school will forget me.”

“I won’t forget you if you promise you won’t forget me,” Mel said.

“Deal,” I said.

“Deal,” she responded.

So at least I would have one friend to come back to. We hadn’t gone on harvest the previous year because my parents had found local work, so this would be my first harvest since I got sick. Lately, I’d been lying in bed at night, thinking on the one hand, about all the mosquitoes I would see on harvest, and on the other hand, what it would do to my health to be smearing on the insecticide DEET every night for several months. Supposedly, DEET was known for not being bad for humans, but whenever I first put it on, Thunder didn’t like to be near me.

With my hair braided, Mel and I checked on Jaz in the living room. He was sitting on the couch wearing his favorite T-shirt, which was neon green. When noon came and went, I put the plates into the refrigerator. I went to check on Jaz again. His hands were folded in his lap, and he was staring straight ahead. There was no clock in the living room, so he may not have known that it was ten after twelve.

Back at the kitchen table, we waited some more. At twenty past noon Obaachan said, “Why say come when no come? Why say yes when mean no?”

I looked down at the flecks of silver in the kitchen table. Jaz had once counted every fleck on the table; there were 3,412. That was just the kind of boy he was, and that was why he had no friends.

I went to peek at my brother again. His hands were still folded in his lap, but now his jaw was hanging open. My brother was small and stocky, like a four-foot tall weight lifter. He was built exactly like my grandfather, a rectangle with a head on top. It was disconcerting to talk to Jaz because his eyes had a strange, unwavering quality. He was a very serious kiddo, but I had seen him smile. I had heard him laugh. So I knew he could be happy sometimes.

I started to feel furious at the boys in Jaz’s class. Were they completely heartless? Finally, at 12:45, my grandmother’s back slumped with defeat. I had never seen her like this before. Jiichan flossed his teeth, as if nothing special were going on.

“What Jaz doing?” Obaachan asked.

“Just sitting in the living room with his mouth hanging open,” I answered. “He’s hardly moved.”

At one o’clock, my grandfather laid down his floss and declared, “Nobody coming. Let’s eat sandwich. Let’s celebrate, ah, we can celebrate, ah ... ”

Nobody could think of anything to celebrate, so Jiichan just got to his feet and took the sandwiches out of the fridge. “Go get your brother.”

I walked reluctantly into the living room, where Jaz sat stoically. “Jiichan says we should eat.” Then I said it again.

He looked at his feet. “Why doesn’t anybody like me?” he asked.

I thought of saying, You have a bad temper, and you’re weird. He had such a bad temper that when he was angry, he sometimes banged his head on a wall or on whatever was handy. And he was weird because he would do strange things. Like, one time when he started singing a song in the middle of a test. My mother loved to tell that story because she thought it was cute, but I doubted the kids in his class thought it was cute. But I knew now wasn’t the time for honesty. “You had a friend, but he moved away. That wasn’t your fault. You’ll make another one.”

“Connor Foster smells, and he even brags that he takes only one bath a week, and even he has a couple of friends,” Jaz went on, now looking at me directly.

I hated all the boys in Jaz’s class. In my class the boys were nicer. They did not shun anyone. But then I remembered Jenson, who didn’t have a single friend that I knew of. I had rarely given him a thought, but now my heart went out to him. He was long and lanky, and he always held his chin slightly up, so you could see in his nostrils. And, it was hard to explain, but there was something about him that kind of repelled everyone. It was something about the way he moved, not in smooth, normal strokes like most people, but rather kind of jerky, as if he were part robot. Right then and there, I vowed to say something to him one day. Even if it was only “hello,” it would acknowledge that he was there.

Jaz stood up. “Okay, let’s eat.”

Everybody took half a sandwich, along with some potato chips. We ate silently. Jaz was a focused eater, just as he was focused with about everything he did. He stared down his food as if eating were a fight to the finish, and he chewed so vigorously that my parents worried he might crack his teeth.

“Boys need red meat to grow, not chicken,” Obaachan finally said, not sharply, but weakly, as if she had been defeated today. I think she loved Jaz more than she loved me, but at that moment I didn’t mind. Jaz needed all the love he could get.