The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky Read Online Free PDF Page A

door, shaking his head and rubbing his chin like he knows he needs to go in, if only he could get up enough courage to do it.
    I know exactly how he feels as I sit in worn-down Old Glory, with an awful wrecked car attached to her, on our way to a junkyard filled with trash, and with a whole year at Dickerson stretched out before me.
    Courage, I think as I stare at Chuck, can sometimes be like when you’re dying for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but there’s only a skiff of peanut butter left on the side of the jar, and no matter how much you scrape, you begin to wonder if you’ll ever get enough on your knife to cover an entire slice of bread.

• • • 7 • • •
    The first Saturday after school starts, Lexie and I circle our bicycles in and out of each other on the sidewalk below the old billboard that can be seen high against the sky almost anywhere you plant your feet in Willow Grove. Our wishing spot, that’s what we’ve always called it.
    The old ad for the dress shop is faded now, ripped in places. A giant black sticker with AVAILABLE and a phone number covers a big section in the middle. But I can still see the face of the woman on the billboard, still see that she has her head thrown back, her mouth open like she’s in the middle of laughing. Like whoever took that picture caught her in some joyous moment. And I can still see that she’s beautiful.
    I know that the woman on the billboard is my mother. Gus has told me so, a hundred different times. Gus, and everybody else in Willow Grove. It was my mom’s special-something: she was beautiful.
    Shining brighter than any star
. That’s what everyone always says about my mom, that she’s off somewhere incredible, like California, shining brighter than any stars out there—the ones twinkling in the sky or on the silver screen.
    Which is why her picture has always felt like the most natural place for me and Lexie to put our wishes.
    â€œWhat’re you going to wish?” I ask Lexie. “I’m going to wish that we could all go back to Montgomery.”
    â€œWhat for?” she asks, her nose crinkled.
    â€œDon’t you miss it?” I ask. “I wish I could open my eyes and find out that a desk with my name across the front of it has been waiting for me there, all this time.”
    Lexie shrugs, rustling the waves of her hair that she’s letting spill across her shoulders today. “I don’t miss it so much. If we hadn’t gone to Dickerson, we never would have met Victoria.”
    I nod, pretend that I’ve been glad to share Lexie, but I have to admit, the past week has felt a little crowded because of Victoria. She’s always around—at lunch, during recess. And even though I try to find things about her to like, there’s something about her—I can’t quite put my finger on it yet—but for some reason, she reminds me more of a parent than a kid. Maybe it’s the way her shirts are always ironed and color-coordinated with her socks, or the way she never has any Band-Aids on her knees. Or maybe it’s the way she’s always sitting in class with her feet crossed and her chin in one hand, all prim and proper.
    â€œI have to go,” Lexie says.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œI have this thing I’m doing with Victoria,” she says.
    When my face falls, she explains, “I’d invite you, but it’s kind of a two-person thing.”
    â€œOh,” is all I can manage.
    And like that, she lifts her backside from the seat, standing up to get more leverage. She peddles extra-quick, down the street, out of sight.
    I grab a notebook from the metal basket on the back of my bike. “Dear Mom,” I scribble, because I sometimes write letters to her—even in my head when I have something to say and no paper around.
    Today, I feel ready to ask her to come back. Because she’s glamorous, that’s