Lucy Read Online Free PDF Page B

bright prettiness with the ominous sounds of the place. She felt as if all the prettiness concealed some truer, deeper, and more menacing world that lay just beneath the surface.
    Jenny spooned Greek yogurt into bowls, and they sat together at the small table. Lucy regarded the fruit with curiosity. It seemed not quite real. She tasted a strawberry. It tasted only faintly like fruit. She missed the fruit of the forest, dark and sweet and musky. And she told herself, Stop your whining. You’re homesick. Snap out of it.
    To distract herself, she asked, “What will we do today?”
    Jenny bit her lip and thought for a moment, scooping berries into her bowl. “Well, what would you like to do? There are so many things to do in the city.”
    “May I please watch your television? I caught only glimpses of it at the airports. I’ve not really tried to watch.”
    Jenny shrugged. “Sure. Okay. But daytime television is pretty stupid. Come to think of it, nighttime television is, too.”
    “Yes, I know. Papa told me. But I’m curious to see what it is.” To Lucy the idea of television sounded very powerful. If she could learn television, then she might understand this culture better.
    After breakfast Jenny led Lucy to the den and showed her how the remote control worked. Lucy pushed the button to turn it on. But when the image came to life and the sound began to blare, she dropped the remote and put her hands over her ears, a look of pain creasing her face. Jenny couldn’t help but laugh. She picked up the remote and pressed the mute button.
    “Sorry. I don’t know why it’s turned up so loud. Oh, Nydia. The house sitter. She likes to watch.” She handed Lucy the remote. “Play with it. You’ll get the idea.” Then Jenny retired to her study to work. Lucy pushed a button. The screen showed an advertisement for something called Scalpicin. It showed a woman scratching her head with a worried expression on her face. A disembodied voice said, “The clear solution to a healthier scalp.” Lucy thought that odd. Scratching? She thought scratching was good.
    She pushed a button and some sort of drama began. People were arguing. Lucy recognized one of them as an old dominant female, but something had been done to her to make her face look younger. Lucy was puzzled that someone would wish to look younger and give up the status that age conferred. She found the story hard to follow. It seemed that a baby had been born and someone had stolen it and there was a murder plot like in a play by Shakespeare and someone’s wife was mating with someone else’s husband. Someone was in the hospital, though it wasn’t clear why. Everyone seemed mean and angry. It was very confusing. Then it switched to an urgent-sounding message about a new kind of sponge on a stick to mop the floor with, and then a doctor was telling Lucy that her joints hurt. A big boat appeared and someone who Lucy couldn’t see was shouting about it, telling her that the boat was going to take her to the Caribbean. But she didn’t want to go to the Caribbean. She wanted to be with Jenny. She worried that all of these invisible people might kidnap her and take her away. They all talked so loud and fast. Lucy had never met anyone who shouted in that rapid-fire way. She wondered, Who are these people? Where are these people? Do they really exist?
    Lucy began to feel dizzy and had to stop. She couldn’t keep up. She pressed a button and the screen went blank. As she put down the remote control and crossed the room to look at the books on a bookshelf, she felt somehow deficient for being unable to understand television. She ran her finger across the spines of the books and stopped at a familiar one: The Old Curiosity Shop . She read, “Night is generally my time for walking,” and felt her shoulders drop, her mind clear. Books are so much simpler than television, she thought. A book goes logically from one thing to the next.
    Lucy lay on the rug reading and feeling a