The Thing About Luck

CHAPTER THREE

Nothing more happened as far as making friends for Jaz. But a few weeks later, as I walked into class on my last day before we left for harvest, for some reason, my eyes rested on Jenson. I remembered vowing to say hello to him, so I cheerfully called out, “Hi, Jenson.” Several people looked at me like, What are you doing saying hello to Jenson of all people? Jenson?

Jenson glared at me suspiciously, then said, “Shut up.”

Wow. I didn’t expect that. People were still looking at me, and I felt my face grow hot. I thought about what Jenson had just said. He must have been incredibly lonely to respond that way.

I heard one boy saying to another, “Hey, Summer likes Jenson.”

Even though I knew Jenson was lonely, now I was annoyed at him. “I was just trying to be friendly,” I called out.

“And I was just trying to say shut up,” Jenson shot back.

And now everybody was laughing at me. I knew nobody would remember any of this in September when I got back; still, when I took my seat, my face was burning.

I got called on four times that day. I had to solve an equation with two unknowns on the board, read a page out loud, explain what an element was, and define “ethical” versus “moral.” Boy, I was glad to be free when the bell rang.

After school I walked with some friends to where the school bus stopped. The ones who didn’t take the bus hugged me good-bye. When the bus came, I sat next to Melody as usual. Then I don’t know what possessed me, but I wanted to try to be nice to Jenson one more time. He was sitting alone, as if people were scared that if they sat next to him, some of his unpopularity might rub off on them, which it probably would. But I figured I had loyal friends, so I could afford to lose a couple of popularity points. I got up, walked straight back, and sat right there next to him. I felt his leg against mine, so I moved over a bit in the opposite direction.

“We’re going away for harvest tomorrow,” I said pleasantly.

He looked at me with annoyance and said, “You again?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to sit here and, like ... talk or something.” I saw several kids, including Jaz, watching me curiously. I couldn’t think of what to say next. I finally came up with, “I like your shirt,” which was a ridiculous thing to say because his shirt was heavy plaid flannel, even though it was warm out.

He thought a second. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve known you since first grade, and I don’t think you’ve ever spoken a word to me. So thanks for whatever you’re trying to do, but bug off.”

Well. That hadn’t turned out very agreeably.

Then we came to my stop, and my friends were hugging me and we were saying good-bye.

“See you!” I called out before I stepped off of the bus.

When I turned to head home, Thunder was sitting near the bush where he always waited for me. I walked with him a ways, then stopped in the middle of a bunch of weeds and sat down and rolled my head around to stretch my neck. I felt all tense. I didn’t know why.

“What are you doing?” Jaz said behind me. At least people didn’t mind sitting next to him. In that way, he was better off than Jenson.

“I’m de-stressing,” I said. De-stressing was what my dad did all the time. For instance, if you bothered him while he was watching sports on TV, he’d say, “Not now, honey, I’m de-stressing.”

Jaz shrugged and walked toward our house.

After de-stressing, I went inside. Jiichan had stretched a big map across the kitchen table to show us our route. This season we would be traveling from Texas to Oklahoma, back to Kansas, to Colorado, and to the Dakotas. If there was one thing I hated, it was road trips. It wasn’t that I found road trips boring. It was just that I would be trapped with my grandmother and Jaz for hours at a time. I mean, I loved them, but thinking of spending all that time with them made me crazy. My grandfather was different. I could ride with him all day, no problem.

For me, taking off time from school would be sort of wonderful and awful at the same time—wonderful because I hated schoolwork, and awful because my mother had told me that a lot would change for my entire class over the summer between sixth and seventh grades. And whatever these changes were, I wouldn’t be there for them. When we studied the civil rights movement that took place about a hundred thousand years earlier in the 1960s, we heard Sam Cooke singing “A Change Is Gonna Come,” which was my favorite song in the world, or at least my second favorite. I didn’t have a favorite, but I liked to reserve that space just in case a song came along that was the actual best song in the world. Anyhow, I wondered if I would ever understand these mysterious changes that were coming for my class or whether I would get left behind. I didn’t want to become a reject just because of a bunch of wheat.

And I already missed my parents. Obaachan was so much more strict than my mother or my father. She told us what to eat and drink and how to live. In Japan, her family had a plum tree in their backyard. She was convinced of the healing power of umeboshi, Japanese salty plums. They’re difficult to eat because they’re so sour and salty, but she ate them like candy, spitting the seeds expertly into a bowl. Spitting seeds like that would have gotten me quite a scolding, but as I said, she didn’t have to use her manners anymore because she was so old. I didn’t like umeboshi, so this was a mark against me Japaneseness-wise. Still, I was required to eat two pickled plums a day.

And I had to wear rubber gloves whenever I did the dishes. Even at Obaachan’s age, she had beautiful hands. She often held them in front of herself to admire them. The gloves made my hands sweaty, but if she caught me with no gloves on, she would say, “Even if I ugly fish for face, someone would marry me for my hands.”

“But you had an arranged marriage,” I once pointed out.

“No talk back or I ground you.”

I gathered the schoolwork my present and future teachers had given me into a binder. Binders are a great organizational tool. My finished mosquito drawings and the matching original photographs took up one binder. Then I had a binder for all my schoolwork, and another binder to hold new photographs of mosquitoes. Supposedly, I was going to have to spend three hours a day on my schoolwork. Ha-ha. I had already done some of it so that I would have free days. And teachers weren’t that strict about work they gave you when you went away on harvest. Once, I had returned from harvest and not done any of my homework, and the teachers barely blinked an eye.

One good thing about harvest is that there are always other kids around who belong to drivers, custom harvesters, or farmers. I had made friends that I’d stayed pen pals with, and even Jaz had made a friend one year, a boy as focused and intense as he was. I was surprised that there could be two such boys in the world. There were probably others as well. I wished they could all meet one another and form a club called the Intense Boys Association.

The night before we left, Jaz was really excited as we lay in bed—he had the bunk above mine. He was hoping he would make a friend during harvest.

“Wouldn’t it be great if I make two friends?” he said.

“That would be cool.”

“What if I make three? I’ve never had three friends at the same time before.”

Actually, he had never had two friends at the same time either.

He became quiet then, but I knew he wasn’t asleep. He was thinking about these three imaginary friends. I hoped he did make three, I really did, but thinking about it made me get a small pain in my stomach, because what was most likely to happen is that he would end up by himself a lot, talking to himself, playing with plastic soldiers, building with LEGOs, and watching movies. If you bothered him while he was playing with his soldiers, he might fly into a rage. You had to wait until he was taking a break.

The hall light went on, and Jiichan came into the bedroom. He pulled up the chair from my desk.

“Tonight I tell you the story of a weed,” he said. “One day when I boy, I pulling weeds in orange grove. Day hot, many weed, back hurt. Bad day. Weed came from all over the night before. Suddenly, more weed than I ever see. Weed my special enemy. I hate it more than anything. I have many nightmare about weed. But that day I find special weed I never see before. My mother scold me, but I take weed roots carefully out, and I leave field and put my special weed in jar of water. Then after work I plant it in wet soil. Every day I take care of that weed. It grow as tall as me, and that year we have best-tasting orange crop ever. We raise price because everyone want our oranges. So I want you to remember, always keep eye open for special weed. You both special weed. Oyasumi.”

“Oyasuminasai, Jiichan,” we said.