Susan Patron - The Higher Power of Lucky

Lucky tried to soothe herself out of the panicky feeling by remembering that the bug would drown sooner or later without danger of the mineral oil seeping into her brain. You have to be patient. The main thing is if the bug is injured instead of being killed, it will never come out and you will have to go to the hospital where the doctor will use a special, horrible tool to reach in—and Lucky did not want to think about that special tool and what it would feel like.

Miles made some machine-gun noises and limped off down the hill, kicking sand with his one shoe. Lucky did not move. It’s important to wait until the bug fully dies in the oil. She didn’t know if it was working, because the bug still fluttered and crashed around.

“I’m going back now, Lucky,” Miles called from the foot of the little hill. “I’ll bring help so you don’t die from the bug in your brain.”

Lucky fought to keep from crying. “Miles, no! I’m okay! I won’t die! Don’t you want to see the bug come out?”

“No!”

“Don’t you want a Fig Newton?”

A pause. Miles was probably thinking this over. “I better get help first,” he said.

“But I need you, Miles! I need you to help me!”

“Help you do what?”

There were many more seconds now between bug movements. “Help me wait. I can’t move, but I’m very bored. I brought a good book. Could you please read it to me?”

“I don’t know how to read enough words yet.”

“Miles, I know you can read this one. Come on, get it out of that plastic sack.”

Lucky knew Miles thought she was trying to trick him. Slowly he limped back up to the camp. She heard him rummaging in the sack. The bug moved, but only a little.

“‘A mother bird sat on her egg,’” Miles read, and sighed deeply, his voice full of wonder.

By the time Miles finished reading Are You My Mother? Lucky decided she could safely turn onto her other side and drain her ear.

“Will blood come out?” Miles asked.

“I doubt it,” said Lucky, but she wondered too.

The storm seemed to have blown itself out, and the sun was moving toward the rim of the far-off mountains. Lucky closed her eyes.

“Why is my mother in jail?” Miles asked suddenly.

“She made a mistake, Miles.”

“So she’s really not taking care of her friend in Florida?”

“No.” Lucky felt a whoosh as a glug of oil spilled out. She shook her head in case there was more.

“It’s better that she’s in jail,” said Miles, “because that means she’s not staying away from me on purpose .”

Lucky did not know what to say.

“She’ll come back when she’s finished being in jail,” Miles continued, “but if I tell her about running away, will she be mad?”

“I’ll tell her how brave you were about the cholla burr and how you read to me and everything,” said Lucky.

She lifted her head and examined the towel. A tiny white moth, smaller than a housefly, lay there. Lucky had expected a gigantic beetle. She smiled, the pain completely gone, and sat up. “She’ll be proud of you,” she said.

“Guess what, Lucky! Here comes Chesterfield!”

They both heard steps approaching in the calm silence. But it wasn’t a burro who came around the side of the hill. It was Lincoln.

21. Amazing Grace

The sky was smeared with red as the sun dipped down behind the Coso Mountains.

“Hey,” said Lincoln, “what’s up?”

“Nothing much,” said Lucky, arranging the skirt of Brigitte’s dress attractively, as if this were a usual, boring day. She felt her hair. It was full of sand, mineral oil, and twigs.

Lincoln got out a string and began tying it into a knot.

“We are living like the old miners! We ran away!” yelled Miles.

“I know,” said Lincoln. “So does everyone else. They searched everywhere in town and figured out you must be here. I’m sure they’ll be here sooner or later.”

“Are they very mad?”

“Pretty worried, I guess. Short Sammy kept telling Brigitte about all the times he ran away and how he turned out okay anyway. He was trying to calm her down, but I think he made it worse.”

Miles asked, “How do they know we’re out here?”

Lincoln shrugged. “Mrs. Prender said you were always talking about some burro named Chesterfield that lived in the dugouts,” he said.

Lucky sighed. “Want an egg?” she said.

“Only if it’s hard-boiled.”

Lucky thought how strange it was that some small things turned out just right, which was rare for big important things to do. As the sunset faded and faded and the sky darkened, she and Lincoln ate eggs, Miles got a Fig Newton, and HMS Beagle polished off a carrot. The feel of the air, soft and nearly still, was something you usually wouldn’t even notice. But now, after the dust storm, it felt like a kindness, a special thoughtful anonymous gift.

After a while, the full moon roared up into the sky behind their hill. Lucky thought that the people on Earth were very, very lucky to have their exact moon. They could have gotten a little puny moon like some of the other planets, and that would have totally messed up the oceans and the tides. Or their moon could have been too close or too far away. Or they could have had two moons or even more, and everything about their life would have been different. Lucky was sure, both as a scientist and as a girl-speck looking for her Higher Power, that it wouldn’t have been as good.

She was thinking how most people didn’t appreciate the moon enough at all, how they really didn’t give it much serious thought , when Lincoln said, “Well, here they come.”

There were many vehicles bumping along the dirt road: Short Sammy’s old Cadillac and Brigitte’s Jeep and Dot’s pickup and Mrs. Prender’s VW and the Captain’s van, and more following in their dust. They drove slowly, shouting “Lucky! Miles! Lucky! Miles!” out of the windows.

“We could hide,” said Lincoln.

But Lucky didn’t want to hide, and anyway Miles was already lurching down to the road, as excited as if they had won a game of hide-and-seek. She sat on a rock and gazed out at the desert. Maybe they would think she’d kidnapped Miles, and send her to a special school in L.A. for bad kids, and if they did she would become a bad kid. She saw herself in a room full of beds like in a jail, each bed with a bad kid in it. They would take away her specimen boxes and her survival kit. Instead of being a ward with her own private personal Guardian, she would become a Ward of the State. And you can’t sit on the State’s lap and the State doesn’t hug you before bed. Probably she would die of sadness, Lucky thought, seeing herself under a gray sheet, her face turned to the wall.

Car doors were slamming and dozens of people were getting out and shouting and laboring up to their camp. The air was so warm and the moon was so bright it was almost like daylight, except more mysterious. Lucky got something out of her plastic bag and ducked into the shadows of the dugout where she could watch.

She had something important to do before she surrendered.