Three Times Lucky Read Online Free PDF Page A

said, standing and emptying the mud out of his pockets.
    “We know she lives by the water,” I prompted.
    He sat back down, the mud rising in the water like smoke. “So?”
    “So, if water took me away from her, water can bring us back together,” I said, watching the leaf swirl away. “I’ll send her a message by water, so she can find me. This is brilliant. Let’s go tell Miss Lana.”
    Moments later, I stood in the café, creek water puddling around my feet as I explained my plan: I’d put messages in bottles and release them far upstream, letting them float down to my true mother.
    Miss Lana studied me like I was a star chart and she had crashed on Mars. “I don’t know, sugar,” she finally said. She rang up Tinks Williams’s bill and handed him his change. “It seems like a long shot to me. A very long shot.”
    “But Miss Lana,” I said, “we have to. The water’s all I got.”
    “I’m going to Goldsboro for a tractor part,” Tinks said. “I’ll sling a message off the bridge for you, if you want me to.”
    Grandmother Miss Lacy Thornton dabbed her lips with her napkin. “I think it’s a fine idea,” she said. “I’m going to Raleigh tomorrow. I’d be glad to release one if you’d like, Lana.” She smiled. “You have to admit, some things
do
look better sailing away,” she’d said, and Miss Lana had nodded.
    So far my bottles have failed. Every once in a blue moon someone finds one and calls, but most just disappear. Like Miss Lana, I now recognize them as long shots. Still, I keep them ready for folks heading west, with my standard note inside:
Dear Upstream Mother. You lost me during a hurricane 11 years ago. I’m ok. Write back or call. 252-555-4663. Mo.
    Sometimes I still dream she floats an answer back to me. But I always wake up before I can make out the words.
    The Colonel
rat-a-tat-tatted
against the door. “I’ve located Lana’s cooking oil and a popcorn pan,” he reported, looking frazzled. “Popcorn front and center in five.”
    “Message received, sir,” I said.
    The Colonel’s a wizard in the café kitchen, where he organizes things in neat lines and stacks. Miss Lana organizes our personal kitchen by “intuitive whim”—circus-worthy towers of plates and bowls, canned goods stacked by color, a refrigerator of health foods possiblygone toxic. The Colonel says he can’t find a dad-blamed thing in there. He would say more, but Miss Lana doesn’t allow cursing.
    The phone rang again. “I got it,” I shouted, scooping it off the hook. “Hello? Miss Lana? … Oh, hey Grandmother Miss Lacy Thornton. How are you?” I asked, trying not to sound disappointed. “Fine. … No ma’am, not yet, but she’ll call. …”
    Miss Lana says the good thing about living in a small town is everybody knows your business, and they pitch in. The Colonel says the
bad
thing about living in a small town is everybody knows your business, and they pitch in. It cuts both ways.
    “Yes ma’am,” I said, “Anna Celeste’s party
is
Saturday, but I don’t need a ride. … No ma’am. It’s because Anna Celeste is my Sworn Enemy for Life and I’d rather go face-down in a plate of raw chicken entrails than go to her party. Plus I’m not invited. … Yes ma’am, I’ll tell the Colonel you called. Good-bye.”
    Anna Celeste Simpson—blond hair, brown eyes, perfect smile—became my Sworn Enemy for Life our first day of kindergarten.
    Miss Lana had walked me to school and fled, crying. As I waited for the bell that would spell my doom, I spied a princess-like girl across the muddy playground. A new friend! I started toward her. Her pinch-faced mothergrabbed her arm. “No, honey,” she said in a pretend whisper. “It’s that
girl
from the café. She’s not one of us.”
    Not one of us?
    Until that instant, everybody in my world had been “one of us.” Still, I might have regained my Legendary Poise if little Anna Celeste hadn’t squinted at me and shown a faint, pink