Cynthia Kadohata - The Thing About Luck

I called out, “Jaz?” He didn’t answer, so I called louder, “Jaz?”

Obaachan shouted back, “You bother everybody with your noise! You walk loud like rhinoceros in jungle!”

I seriously doubted that she had ever heard a rhinoceros walk in the jungle, but I was glad to hear her voice. I walked toward it. In a few minutes Obaachan said, “Over here.”

I held out my hands and moved them back and forth until I felt the pickup. I stepped on Obaachan’s hand by accident and she cried out, “My hand! You ruin my perfect hand!”

“I’m sorry! Where’s Jaz?”

“He sleep in truck. You go too.”

I climbed into the pickup with Thunder and lay down on the backseat. Thunder tried crawling on top of me. I couldn’t push him off, though, because he was too strong and stubborn. So I lay there with ninety-five pounds of Doberman on top of me. Seriously, Dobermans have elbows like rocks. I concentrated all my energy, the way I did when I was holding Jaz, and with a grunt, I pushed off Thunder. He curled up on the floor and went to sleep.

I woke up to a commotion. A big rig had arrived with the employee camper. Jaz was sitting up, stretching on the front seat. The back doors of the pickup couldn’t open unless a front door was open, so I climbed over the front seat and got out with Thunder and Jaz. Mr. Laskey had apparently woken up with the noise as well and was standing nearby in a robe. The other combines were in from the field. I squinted at the headlights of the big rigs, then checked my watch: 2:47 a.m.

Mr. Parker was already attaching the employee camper to the water and electricity hookups. Yay—a real bed! I staggered into the camper and felt for the light along the wall. I turned it on and found myself standing in the kitchen. To the right of that was a couch and TV. Then I checked out both ends of the camper, which turned out to be identical. Each had six beds—two three-level bunks. I knew my grandparents would want the bottom bunks. I took a middle bunk so that Thunder would be able to get up into it. I told him “Hup!” and he struggled onto the narrow bed.

Even though the bed was hard, it felt really comfortable compared to the backseat of the pickup. I usually liked to take a shower before bed, but I was so tired, I thought I’d be able to fall asleep without being clean. The rest of my family trudged in together. Jiichan looked exhausted; the lines on his face seemed deeper than usual, as if he were a lifetime smoker. “You want air conditioner, Toshi?” Obaachan asked.

“Hai,” he said, lying down with a grunt.

“I’ll get it,” Jaz said. He turned it on and climbed to the top of the other bunk. I could tell how tired he was by how he kind of slapped his hands onto the rungs instead of grabbing them firmly.

Obaachan eyed her bed critically, then pushed at it a couple of times with her hand. “Summer, pull mattress off for me. I sleep with it on floor.”

I climbed down obediently, pulled off the mattress, and climbed back up.

“I change my mind,” she said. “I think I sleep with mattress on bed. Summer.”

I had a feeling she was doing this on purpose, but what could I do? I climbed down and put the mattress back on the bed. This time I waited. “Well?” I asked.

“Floor is better.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“You smart-mouth me?”

“No, it’s just what I figured, that’s all.” She looked at me suspiciously, but I just pulled the mattress to the floor without another word. Then I turned out the light and got in bed.

“Ah, kita makura !” Obaachan said. She groaned and I heard rummaging before she groaned again.

Kita makura was the Japanese superstition that sleeping with your head to the north was bad luck. The beds had already been made, with the pillows on the north. I supposed Obaachan had just moved around so that her head was now facing south. But then she said, “Summer.”

“Yes?”

“I want to sleep east. Change my mattress. It too heavy for me.”

In fact, it wasn’t heavy at all, but I climbed down carefully and felt my way to the light switch. I didn’t know how I was going to survive the whole summer without killing somebody.

“Never mind,” she said. “I like south after all.”

“You’re doing this on purpose!” I cried out.

“What you mean?” She gave me her best innocent look. That made me even more suspicious.

“You’re making me climb up and down just because you think it’s funny!”

“What funny about that?”

“Well, do you want anything else before I get back in bed?” I asked, exasperated.

“What would I want? It middle of night.”

Obaachan lay down and closed her eyes. By the time I got back in bed, I was wide awake. I stared into the blackness and thought about practice-kissing my hand and pretending it was Robbie. But somehow Obaachan would probably know, and I didn’t want to be humiliated. I turned on my side, my back to the rest of the room, and gave my hand a little peck. I wasn’t sure how stiff to keep my lips. I wasn’t sure how much to move my lips. None of my friends had ever kissed a boy, but another girl in class had kissed a boy at a party, and after she did it, the boy passed her a note in class calling her the Rock of Gibraltar because he said her lips were so hard. She had cried in class, right in the middle of math. Something like that could pretty much ruin your whole life.

When I opened my eyes the next morning, Obaachan wasn’t on her mattress. Jaz and Jiichan were still sleeping. I climbed down—Thunder jumped—and padded toward the kitchen area. I stopped when I saw that the Irish guys, Mr. McCoy, and the Parkers were already eating cereal, all squeezed together on the built-in benches. Mr. Dark was probably on the road from Kansas, hauling the fourth combine. Then Obaachan spotted me and said, “Summer, you eat cereal. Hurry, before it all gone.” I walked into the room feeling thoroughly embarrassed to be seen by Robbie in one of the stupid T-shirts I always slept in. Across the front it said I LOVE HOUSEWORK—NOT.

“I love housework—not,” Robbie read in a monotone.

“Ah, ya’ll make someone a fine wife one day,” Mick said, and everybody laughed.

I was trapped. I snatched up a box of Cap’n Crunch and poured it into a bowl, adding just a little milk, since there wasn’t much left. Obaachan shook her head at me for some reason. I held the bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other.

“Oh, sit down, dear,” said Mrs. Parker. “There, squeeze in next to Robbie.”

Everybody squished together even more, and I sat next to Robbie, our shoulders pressing against each other. Even though my T-shirt already reached almost to my knees, I stretched it down as much as I could.

“It’s the strangest thing—your face is flaming red,” Mrs. Parker said. “Do you have a fever?”

Everybody looked at me. “I’m fine,” I said. I faked a smile and spooned cereal into my mouth.

Mrs. Parker laughed. “I think you have the messiest hair I’ve ever seen.”

“Yes, ma’am, it gets very tangled at night,” I said. “I thrash.” Could this possibly get any more embarrassing?

“Goodness, maybe you should cut it.”

“Yes, maybe.”

And yes, it could get more embarrassing. Because then Robbie said, “You smell funny. Like ... insecticide?”

“Robbie has a very good nose,” Mrs. Parker said.

Great. “Last year I actually almost died from malaria that I caught in Florida, so I use DEET. It gets on my clothes.”

He looked at me thoughtfully, as if I had just said something profound. One of his green eyes held a tiny spot of hazel. He was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Then suddenly he looked mischievous. “You heard of washing machines?” he asked, almost tauntingly.