Chuck seems a little quiet tonight. But he brightens when he sees me and Gus. He shakes Gus’s hand, and they share a few happy words about the holidays. When Gus asks, “Will we be seeing some rebuilding in the new year?” Chuck’s face falls behind a shadow.
“I’ve tallied up the earnings from the rummage sale. But I’m still waiting to hear back from some businesses I’ve appealed to. Construction companies, that sort of thing,” Chuck admits.
Chuck’s tone gives me an awful off-kilter feeling. But before I can say anything to Gus about it, Chuck waves his arms, encouraging us all to come in close together, like a giant hug. Soon, we’re standing, and we’re all holding hands, and we’re singing “O Holy Night.” Everybody’s voices blend together like drops of water, until the carol forms a river. As we’re singing together, we float happily, straight toward Christmas day.
Gus and I unwrap our Christmas presents—new drawing paper and pencils for me, along with cologne that makes me feel grown-up and beautiful. And the new small toolbox I bought with my saved-up allowance for Gus—the one with the smooth wooden handle. And a picture I drew of the two of us, which looks a little like the pictures hanging in Ms. Dillbeck’s hallway. I’ve put the picture in an old frame I found in the Widow Hollis’s shed and painted up fresh, a different color on each side. Because everyone knows that pictures in frames are special.
Gus likes the picture the best and rushes to hang it in our living room, over the couch.
He keeps pausing to admire it the next few days, even as we’re back up to our eyebrows in making new figures. He cocks his head and stares at it in a way that always makes me pause, because I love to watch Gus’s face melt into pride and pure happiness.
As the year starts to behave like a windup toy grinding down to a halt, I hear a bicycle bell that makes me shove my face right in the window of our front room. Looking outside, I realize Lexie’s leaning against our fence out front, staring at the Widow Hollis’s old aluminum kitchen table, which is now the site of a birthday party—like the party I had back in the fourth grade. The entire table is surrounded by a group of friends, all of them with cone-shaped party hats on their heads. One boy at the table has a motor that raises his arm to his mouth as he eats a big triangle of pepperoni pizza. Another is blowing a noisemaker. Yet another is so into his birthday cake, he’s got bright blobs of icing smeared all over his cheeks.
I wonder, for a moment, if Lexie recognizes herself at the table—she’s the girl with the giant twists of wild, coiled rope for hair. I want to tell her, so I race out the front door.
She’s so into looking at our company that she doesn’t realize I’m standing on the porch.
I smile as her head moves from one area of the yard to the other, taking in the newest members of our company. She eyes a circle of kids sitting cross-legged, because they’re in the midst of a round of duck, duck, goose. She stares at the boy made of old copper pipes, whose motor raises his body to his feet as he starts to chase the girl running at full speed, her pigtails flying behind her, because she has named him the “goose.”
She stares, too, at the old corrugated tin we’ve used to create a group of girls holding hands as they jump around in a circle, because they’re playing ring-around-the-rosy. And at the old chain-link fence and a whole collection of rusted tools we’ve used to build two teams who are having a tug-of-war with a thick rope.
Lexie tilts her head, eyeing a man and a woman we’ve made out of twisted bed rails, who have their arms wrapped around each other because they’re dancing. And two coatracks that have become a couple holding hands, stacks of oil cans that are now the body of a boy who’s whispering sweet confessions into a girl’s ear—the girl who’s listening has wide eyes and her lips are in a big round O because she’s so surprised.
The way she eyes my work makes me feel even prettier, somehow, than my new dress from Mom did on Christmas Eve.
“Lexie!” I call as a flash causes both of us to jump. From the side of the yard, Victoria takes another picture, making her flash wash over our yard again.
“Hi, Auggie,” Victoria calls as she drops her camera into her backpack and starts to peddle away.
Before she steers her own bike away from the house, Lexie’s eyes go right back to the party at the table, and I swear, she zeroes in on the girl with the hair. I think she knows it’s her. And she gets this look on her face—the kind of look I haven’t seen since the two of us used to spend time at our wishing spot.
• • • 39 • • •
“It really looks like she’s painting,” Weird Harold tells me on the last day of winter break. He’s leaning against our front gate, staring at our yard. His breath explodes out into the air as he talks.
“Thanks,” I say, beaming like a thousand-watt lightbulb. Somehow, getting a compliment on my company is better than having a teacher tell me I’m clever, or overhearing a couple of girls in the bathroom saying that I really am kind of pretty, despite my crazy hair.
The last person we added, just yesterday afternoon (the same one that Weird Harold is staring at in admiration), is a girl who loves to paint the outdoors. She’s standing in front of an easel that holds a big tile with an outdoor design on it. Gus and I have put a piece of wood cut like an artist’s palette in one of her hands and a paintbrush in the other. I’ve even added an old beret to the top of her head.
“I love the way that none of the people in your yard look like they’ve ever wanted to be anywhere else,” Weird Harold says. It’s the prettiest thing he’s ever said to me. Right then, everything seems calm and perfect, for a little while.
But then, Harold nudges me. “You get your mail yet?”
The warm cocoa he’d put in my stomach turns into a popsicle. “Why?”
“It came. To my house,” Harold confesses.
“The reevaluation?” I screech.
He nods.
“It’s already come?” I remember the flash from Victoria’s camera, and get hot and cold all over. I hadn’t expected the reevaluation to be just another picture taken back to the committee. Somehow, I’d been expecting something loud and full of trumpets—like a parade.
He doesn’t even get his entire second nod in when I start to race across the street, to our mailbox, where I find our own notice from the House Beautification Committee. My throat feels clamped off as I tear open the envelope:
ATTENTION
AUGUST JONES
An Individual Residing at 779 Sunshine Street
Willow Grove, Missouri
Following our reassessment, we have deemed the property located at the above address to be in violation of the following city ordinances:
1. Inoperable Machinery on Premises
2. Improper Maintenance of Property
3. Abundance of Trash on Property
The previous twenty-dollar ($20) per-day fines have accumulated to nine hundred dollars ($900).
Due to additional violations and recent accumulation of trash, Mr. August Jones, property owner, will hereby be fined one hundred dollars ($100) each day the property remains in violation.
Payment can be made at City Hall.
Thank you,
The House Beautification Committee
(Making our city beautiful, one house at a time.)
I feel sick. Trash? They think we live around trash?
I glance back at my front yard, at the painting girl that Harold had just been admiring. How can this be?
“Trash?” I ask Harold, finally managing to say the word out loud. “Trash is stacked up, piled high—like at McGunn’s. How can figures like ours, that we’ve turned into something wonderful, be trash? And we don’t have inoperable machinery—look! Our motors move! According to this, they even fined us during all that time they were reevaluating. How can that be fair?”
Weird Harold takes a deep breath. “You’re finally starting to ask some of the right questions,” he tells me.
• • • 40 • • •
Our doorbe
ll starts ringing like crazy early the next morning—the first day I’m headed back to school. It feels like a finger jabbing into my stomach, waking me from a sleep so deep I have to stagger down the stairs.
When I get to the open door and lean groggily against Gus’s side, I find Mrs. Pike standing on our glittering walk in her chenille robe. “Have you seen this, Gus?” she asks, rattling her copy of the morning paper. On the front page of the Local section is a picture of our house. And the headline, “House Beautification Committee Targets Eyesores.”
My shock over the story is a ripple that starts at the top of my head and races straight down to my toes. My eyes widen and my heart revs; I’m completely awake now.
“I got another note yesterday—charging us fines, this time,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “I keep the toys in the garage. I painted the swing set. Irma Jean made new swing cushions and even some curtains for the little windows in our garage door. I don’t know what they want. It’s not like I can go buy brand-new everything.”
I slide the paper out of Gus’s hands. I groan, instantly too sick to my stomach to read so much as the first sentence. Because our house is pictured right there on the front page. And I wonder how Mom would ever want to come back to this, her childhood home being called an eyesore.
• • • 41 • • •
“I saw your house in the paper this morning,” Victoria Cole spits at the back of my head later on the very same day. “I guess you saw it, too.”
I try to pretend that I didn’t really hear her. When Ms. Byron starts our science lesson, I sit up straight and proud, chin jutted out.
“Can anyone tell me what happens to a plant when its light source is blocked—say, by a fence?” Ms. Byron asks.
I throw my hand right up in the air. “It’ll grow to the light,” I say, tossing a glare at Victoria. “You can’t cut a plant off from the light. It’ll always grow right toward it.”
Can’t cut Auggie Jones off from the light, either, I think.
“Sure, sure. Everything’s all fine and good until the neighbor chops the plant’s head off because it’s climbed the fence and is in his yard now,” Victoria growls.
Lexie tries to shoot a “Shhhh” at Victoria.
“Besides,” Victoria says, ignoring Lexie as she leans close to me, and whispers, too quietly for Ms. Byron to hear, “some flowers deserve to be leveled. Like, say, the flowers you’ve got on your roof. You go on, though, Auggie. You just keep on building up heaps of junk around your house. Like I said, it won’t do you any good. Before you know it, that whole street will belong to the city.”
“What are you talking about? You can’t do that,” I shout, too angry to care who hears. “You can’t take our house. It’s not something you could ever steal. It’s not—a bike or a coat. It’s a house.”
Victoria narrows her eyes at me, starts to open her mouth.
“Girls,” Ms. Byron snaps, popping a stomach pill into her mouth. “After school. My desk.”
• • • 42 • • •
When the final bell rings, the rest of the class races off. Lexie waits for Victoria in the hall.
“Do you want me to tell Gus you’ll be late?” Irma Jean asks when she pauses at my desk.
I cringe, shake my head. “I don’t want Gus to know I’m in trouble,” I say.
Irma Jean heads out to the hallway where she instantly starts pacing, shooting me worried looks every time she passes by the door.
While I drag myself up to Ms. Byron’s desk, I picture Old Glory rattling horribly beyond the school’s entrance. I picture Gus’s eyes darting this way and that, wondering where I am as pretty new SUVs honk and drivers yell at him for blocking the way.
“Girls, I’ve been watching this feud from a distance,” Ms. Byron scolds. “I’ve been trying to let the two of you handle it, but I’m telling you both now, this has to stop.”
“I would, Ms. Byron,” I insist, “but—”
Ms. Byron holds up her hand, shakes her head. “Auggie, that little argument this afternoon was uncalled for. It disrupted class. At the beginning of the year, I would have said it was unlike you to behave in such a way. But now, I have to say that your behavior is getting out of hand.”
“My behavior?” I ask. “But she—she—” I stutter, pointing at Victoria. How can I possibly be the only one in trouble?
“I’ve been following the news story regarding the House Beautification Committee,” Ms. Byron says. “I know Victoria is the junior member, and I know your neighborhood is having some troubles. Wasn’t your house pictured in the paper?”
“Yes, but—but—” I try. Every word crumbles against my tongue.
“I think maybe you’re taking your situation out on Victoria. It’s not her fault that your house is in violation, Auggie.”
“But, they—”
Ms. Byron eyes me in a way that makes me suck my words back into my mouth. I’ve never been this kind of girl before—not the kind who causes trouble. Not ever.
Just as my face heats up with shame, Ms. Byron adds, “Victoria, there’s no need to bring your position on the House Beautification Committee into this classroom. When you are in this room, you’re Auggie’s classmate. Understood?”
Ms. Byron lets up on the hard way she’s staring at us. She nods her head once to excuse me and Victoria, and we both stomp out into the hallway.
I’m furious—it doesn’t help that Ms. Byron got after Victoria, too. Because I feel like she actually agrees with Victoria. Everyone seems to agree with Victoria and the committee. I’m so mad that when I see Lexie I shout, “What’s with you? Huh? Why are you so into Victoria? Did you ever once think about the fact that she’s been going to school at Dickerson forever, but she doesn’t seem to have a single friend here other than you? Why are you suddenly letting her make your mind up about everything?”
“Leave her alone,” Victoria says, jumping in between me and Lexie. “You’re just jealous.”
“Jealous,” I repeat, while Irma Jean stares at us all wide-eyed. “What you and your dad and this committee are doing isn’t right,” I hiss at Victoria. “It isn’t right at all.”
“You try to do something about it, August Walter,” Victoria sneers. “You just try.”
“Watch me,” I spit back, determination burning as hot inside of me as the fiery spray from Gus’s welding torch. “I will.”
• • • 43 • • •
I’m not the only one whose anger is beginning to spread through her insides like poison ivy. The reevaluation and the story in the paper have both made the entire congregation of Hopewell so angry, they actually start shouting up at Chuck the minute he steps behind the pulpit on Sunday.
“We fixed it, Chuck!” Mr. Pike calls, from a seat in the back. “We picked up the toys in the yard. Irma Jean made new cushions for the swing set. But the committee still says the swing has been racking up fines now for more than two months. How can they do that?”
“Gus brought me all those shingles,” Mr. Bradshaw adds, from his spot next to the piano up front. “Brought some to the Widow Hollis, too. Now, we hear patches are in violation? I can’t afford the fines—so how am I supposed to afford a whole new roof?”
“It’s pay fines or eat at my house,” Mrs. Shoemacker agrees.
Chuck raises his hand to settle everyone down, and nods as he steps out from behind his pulpit.
“Why is my swing set in violation, when they’ve got old rusted pieces of the swing set from Montgomery cut up and glued together?” Mrs. Pike shouts, pointing at me and Gus.
“Now, don’t start in on our house, Mrs. Pike. We’re getting fined, too,” Gus insists.
“I thought when they reevaluated our homes, it would fix the situation. But it’s only made it worse,” Ms. Dillbeck says. “Most of us can’t exactly undo what we’ve already done. Once a porch is painted, you can’t really unpaint it.”
“You know Mr. Cole,” the Widow Hollis tells Chuck. “You see him all the time down
town as you try to raise the money to rebuild Hopewell, don’t you? Surely you can reason with him. You’ve got to tell him this isn’t right.”
Everybody starts shouting so loudly, Chuck has to stick his fingers in his mouth and whistle to get us all to quiet down.
“I’m every bit as concerned about this as you are,” Chuck says. He sighs, leaning against the pulpit. He’s looking as skinny as an old farm dog living on scraps.
“What are we going to do, Chuck?” Mrs. Pike demands. “We’ve got to think of something!”
Silence in the room swells.
“Chuck?” Mrs. Pike presses.
“Right now, I think your only concern should be for your homes,” Chuck says. “I’ll speak to Mr. Cole on your behalf. I’ll certainly take your concerns straight to him, try to reason with him. But the most important thing right now is for us to stick together and support each other.”
That doesn’t sound like much of a solution—it sounds more like Chuck’s trying to walk around the real answer. Everyone else must feel it, too, because we all just stare at him wide-eyed, waiting for more.
“I have to admit,” Chuck says quietly, “that I am also at the end of my ideas.” In our shock, Chuck goes on, “Our rummage sale didn’t bring the amount of money I was hoping for. I’ve appealed to every appropriate business in town. But I’ve come up short.”
The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky Page 11