Lucy Read online

  “Guess? Why do I have to guess?”

  “It’s just a manner of speaking, Luce. It’s the way we talk.”

  “Okay. So what’s, um … Your Tube?” Lucy knew that she still had it wrong.

  “Come on. I’ll show you.” Amanda pulled another chair up to the computer. She typed and clicked the mouse and soon they were watching what looked like a small television set in the middle of the screen. It showed a pretty girl with curly blond hair.

  “Here. This girl’s named Nathalie. She lives in a small farming community in Illinois. Watch.”

  The video started with the girl smiling brightly, waving and saying, “Hello, YouTube. I’m making another video. Super! I didn’t know what to talk about, but … I thought I’d give you guys a bunch of random facts about me.” She paused to eat cereal out of the box, muttering to herself and chewing into the camera. “Random fact number one. I like to snowboard.”

  “What’s does snowboard mean?”

  Amanda stopped the video. “Have you ever seen snow?”

  Lucy shook her head sadly. She felt as if there was an entire world out there that she knew nothing about. She’d been studying all her life—math, languages, music, history, science—and yet she knew nothing.

  “Here, lemme show you.” She clicked a few times and another video appeared, showing tiny figures zigzagging down a big white mountain. Loud music played as some of the figures leapt and spun around in the air.

  “Those are people?”

  “Yeah, and they’ve got their feet strapped to a board, that’s why they call it snowboarding. Snow. Board. Snowboarding.”

  “Wow. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah, I can teach you, if you want. When winter comes.”

  “I would be ever so grateful.”

  No! Just say, ‘Sweet.’”

  “Sweet?”

  “Trust me: Sweet.” Amanda held up her hand. “Slap my hand.” Lucy slapped it. “Ouch. Not so hard.”

  “Sorry.”

  Amanda switched back to the video of Nathalie, who held up two fingers and said, “Random fact number two: I’m addicted to ChapStick.”

  “Do you know what ChapStick is, Lucy?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Your problem, Luce, is that you have a severe product deficit in your otherwise vast store of knowledge. You need a basic American primer. America is all about products. Buy, buy, buy, eat, eat, eat, consume, consume, consume.” She took a breath. “Goods, matter, material, possessions—stuff.”

  “What for? That’s what I don’t understand. What’s all the stuff for? We throw most of it away. So why get it to begin with?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just junk. And here’s the thing: There’s always new stuff. Old stuff is no good. New stuff is always better.”

  “I always thought that old things were better than new things.”

  “Well, some old things are good, like if it’s your grandmother’s wedding ring or old music like Tom Petty and the Beatles. But when it comes to everyday stuff, they’re always telling us that what we’ve got sucks. We need something new.”

  “Got to have it?”

  “Yeah, gotta get it. Like your breakfast cereal. You know what breakfast cereal is, right?”

  “Yeah, Fruity Cheerios.”

  “Okay, exactly my point. Once upon a time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, there were, like, only classic Cheerios. Well, after a while someone came up with the idea of Fruity Cheerios and voilà! Something new was born.”

  “So what’s ChapStick?”

  “It’s something that you put on your lips when they get all dry and cracked.”

  “Ohhh. Sure, we used the juice from an aloe plant for that.”

  “There you go: Aloe. Once upon a time there was just plain grease. Then someone put aloe in it. Bingo: Something new. So you like Fruity Cheerios? Well, get this: One day you’ll go to the store and they won’t be there anymore. Instead you’ll find some kind of new and improved Cheerio, like hey, we’ve gotten rid of that nasty sweet fruity taste and you can now eat one hundred percent pure organic toasty Cheerios or whatever. And they’ll probably be made out of ground-up clarinet reeds.”

  “They went back to plain old Cheerios, then.”

  “Right! And the assumption is that we’re too stupid to notice. Which we are.”

  “I still don’t understand. What’s the point?”

  Amanda leaned in close to Lucy’s ear and whispered, “I think it’s a conspiracy to make somebody rich.”

  Lucy found it all completely baffling. Why would someone want to be rich? But she thought that she already sounded stupid enough without asking. “Let’s see some more people.”

  “On YouTube? Sure.” Amanda played through a number of videos of teenagers talking about themselves and doing strange things. In one of them a girl held up a piece of notebook paper with the word “myself” scrawled on it in red marker. Then she made a face and picked up a pair of scissors. She held up the paper and cut it in half in front of the camera.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. I think maybe she cuts herself. There’s a whole subculture on YouTube of girls who cut themselves.”

  “They cut themselves?”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s weird. I had a friend who was into it in eighth grade. She said it was like getting high. You know, like some kind of chemical is released when you’re injured.”

  They shrugged and exchanged a look. Lucy felt comfortable with Amanda. They were communicating in The Stream.

  Amanda typed on the keyboard again. One after another, the videos played, and teenagers said, I found out I was pregnant. I decided to commit suicide. I learned I was anorexic. I realized that my parents were proud of me. I questioned my religion. I got suspended for drinking. I got a reputation as a slut. Amanda explained that a large number of the people on YouTube were playing a game called tag. “If you get tagged, then you have to make a video telling five things about yourself and send it to five other people. Then they’re tagged and they have to send it to five other people and so on.”

  “That means that if they do that only ten times they’ll be reaching almost ten million people.”

  “Is that right? I mean, ten million? Or did you just pick that number at random?”

  “No, it’s five to the tenth power. Well, 9,765,625 to be exact. But if you do it just one more time, you’ll be reaching almost fifty million people.”

  “How’d you do that math so fast?”

  “It’s just, you know … exponents.”

  “No, I don’t know. Are you some kind of genius or something?”

  Lucy laughed. “No, I just like math.”

  “Well, whatever. You’re right. It’s a lot of people. If you put something on YouTube that catches on, it happens really fast. Like you can be talking to millions of people in a few days. Here, let me show you something else.” Amanda found another video. Lucy saw a girl writhing on the floor. She kept saying, “I don’t drink,” and laughing uncontrollably. She tried to stand but fell back to the floor. Then she began screaming and screeching unintelligibly, pouring out her sadness.

  “Oh, poor thing,” Lucy whispered. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s just drunk. Behind all the fun and games, there’s a lot of messed-up teenagers out there.”

  Another video came on, showing three girls in a pool of bubbling, steaming water. Two of them began kissing, and it dawned on Lucy: They were turning into bonobos. That’s what girl bonobos do, they kiss and fondle each other and laugh and act silly. That’s what alcohol does, she saw. It pushes people back in evolutionary time. Those girls think they’re back in the forest.

  Another video showed a number of girls in a big bathroom like the one at school with all the metal stalls, the too-bright lights. Everyone was talking at once, but the video focused on a girl who was stumbling around and slurring her words. She was laughing so hard, yet she was also screaming about how sad she was.
It almost hurt Lucy to watch her and to hear her cries.

  Without warning, the girl bolted toward one of the stalls, but she ran right into the edge of the open door and knocked herself out. As she lay on the floor, unconscious, several girls stood over her laughing. Lucy felt so bad for her. She saw that those people weren’t merely going back in evolutionary time. They were falling down. Once you’ve spent ten million years learning to walk on two feet, then falling down can be so sad. Lucy covered her face and felt tears welling up in her eyes.

  “Oh, my God, Lucy. What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

  “I just feel so bad for those people. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s only a video,” Amanda said. She put her arm around Lucy. “Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “No, no, it’s just …” Lucy didn’t know what she was feeling. She was overwhelmed with sadness for those people. It wasn’t only the drunk girls. She could see that everyone else was holding back from expressing anything deeply. Like the people on the bus who couldn’t talk. But because these girls were drunk, they’d lost that inhibition and were sending the true message of … of … of this whole place. And Lucy wondered, What have I gotten myself into? Can I survive this place?

  Lucy looked up and saw on the screen that the video of the drunk girl running into the bathroom stall door had been watched by almost a million people. “Why do they want to see other people so miserable?”

  “I don’t know,” Amanda said. “You know. Then you don’t feel so alone, I guess. It’s messed up, I know.” They sat in silence for a time. Then Amanda said, “My mom’s a drunk.”

  Lucy didn’t know what to say. She had seen people drunk only a few times, when Denis and his clan had had celebrations. “I’m sorry.”

  “She’s okay. I mean, she has a job and all. But my dad left on account of her drinking. My dad’s some kind of investment guy in New York City. He gives me money. But I pretty much fend for myself around here.”

  “You seem to be doing okay. You’re in The Stream.”

  “The Stream? What’s that?”

  Lucy thought for a moment. “Well. It’s kind of like YouTube, I suppose.”

  “I guess.”

  “Sorry. It’s kind of like YouTube, I guess. Anyway, in the forest you have to fend for yourself. You have family, people who care about you. But it’s so dangerous, you’re really on your own. You have to be aware. So everyone communicates the way animals communicate. It’s like a special channel called The Stream.”

  “The Stream,” Amanda said. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “You know how sometimes you’ll meet someone and immediately like her? Or you meet someone who instantly makes you uncomfortable?”

  “Sure, like you’ve either got chemistry or you don’t.”

  “Yes. Or you hear about how animals might run away before an earthquake?”

  “Sure, I’ve heard about that.” Amanda thought it over, then she smiled and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right. And speaking of The Stream, I’ve really gotta pee!”

  They both started giggling, and then they couldn’t stop. Rolling on the bed, Amanda said, “Stop! Oh, my God, stop! I’m gonna pee in my pants!” She leapt up and ran to the bathroom.

  15

  LUCY AND HER FATHER did not celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas. She had read about Christmas in Dickens. When she asked her father about it, he said that it was a religious holiday and that religion was part of the problem and launched into a lengthy discourse about intolerance. But Lucy was just a child. She didn’t care about all that. She wanted presents.

  “We celebrate birthdays,” her father said. “We give presents then.” But Lucy knew how to manipulate him, and her father had a soft spot in his heart. So as a compromise they began celebrating the winter and summer solstices, exchanging small presents that they fashioned themselves. Not everyone seemed able to join in. But some of the family members would come with a twisted bit of grass, a bunch of flowers, an offering of fruit.

  Seeing the holiday season in America for the first time was both thrilling and shocking to Lucy. It began with a crescendo of gluttony in the fall. Lucy and Amanda dressed up for Halloween and ran up and down the streets with the smaller children, gathering sweets in bags. At Amanda’s suggestion, Lucy dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. (“Because,” she said, “you’re not in Kansas anymore.”) Amanda dressed as the Good Witch Glinda. Months later they would still have bags of candy.

  Then Thanksgiving came. The Christmas decorations were already in the stores. It was a system that seemed to be tripping over itself in its fervor. Lucy and Amanda helped to cook the meal, but the process seemed all out of proportion. Jenny’s mother came. Lucy regarded the small busy woman with the nervous cough and asked if she should call her Grandma, since she called Jenny Mom.

  “Don’t you dare call me Grandma, young lady.”

  Lucy and Amanda were preparing sweet potatoes. Harry was slicing carrots. “Carrots!” he said in a theatrical voice. “Let’s have a carrot joke.” Then he intoned, “A zucchini and a carrot were walking down the highway when a truck sped past and hit the carrot. The carrot was rushed to the hospital. The zucchini paced nervously in the waiting room for hours. Then at last the doctor appeared. He said, ‘Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is: Your friend is going to survive. The bad news is that he’ll be a vegetable for the rest of his life.’”

  Jenny said, “You tell that joke every time.”

  “Yeah, I crack myself up.”

  Lucy watched as his flashing hazel eyes met Jenny’s and wondered if they’d ever mated. Most of the time they just seemed like old friends. But their feelings for each other were clear to Lucy in those fleeting glances.

  Once everyone was seated before plates heaped high with food, Lucy asked, “Can we really eat this much?”

  Mrs. Lowe said, “Eat up or you won’t get big and strong. You’re such a tiny thing.”

  “Oh. I don’t think I’m going to grow much taller. And I’m already pretty strong.”

  “Smart mouth,” Mrs. Lowe said, digging into her mashed potatoes.

  “I only meant—”

  “It’s okay,” Jenny said. “You’re right. It is extravagant. Eat what you like, honey.”

  Harry looked up and said, “This is too delicious. I want no interruptions. Everyone, please switch your phones to ‘stun.’ That way we won’t hear a thing when your phone rings. We’ll just see you go rigid and slump to the floor.” Mrs. Lowe giggled.

  Amanda laughed and winked at Lucy, and then she knew that everything was all right. Because of her mother, Amanda had learned to be wary and to use all the communication channels that were available to her. When Lucy had invited her to come for dinner, she had added, “That is, if you don’t have to be with your mother for Thanksgiving.”

  Amanda had laughed and said, “Oh, you don’t want to be around my mom on holidays.”

  During dinner both Harry and Mrs. Lowe were stealing glances at Lucy as if searching for clues to something just out of reach. When everyone was cleaning up the dishes, Harry said to Jenny, “Her ears are set too high.”

  “You can have them surgically clipped,” Mrs. Lowe said. “Aunt Josie did that for Becky when she had her nose job.”

  The following Saturday night Amanda took Lucy Christmas shopping in the Loop and Lucy saw snow for the first time.

  Lucy felt the rush of adrenaline as the train dove from the elevated tracks into the dark tunnel, and the yellow firefly lights went swarming past. Amanda didn’t seem to notice as she sat listening to music through her headphones.

  When they emerged onto State Street, Lucy saw millions of glittering white lights all up and down the boulevard, caught up in the trees as if mysterious albino spiders had woven their secret webs in the night. The fat snowflakes glowed as they swirled around the high streetlamps, and she had the impression that she was floating in a fantasy world of those white spiders, all moving a
nd pulsing around her, weaving her into a cocoon of fleece.

  “Taste it, taste it,” Amanda said. “It’s good luck.” And she tilted her head back and opened her mouth. As Lucy watched the white spiders fall into Amanda’s mouth, she tilted her head back and let them fall onto her own tongue.

  “It’s snow.”

  “Duh, yeah, it’s snow. Probably filled with yummy lead and mercury after falling through the air of Chicago.”

  “Sweet,” Lucy said.

  Amanda linked arms with Lucy and pulled her along, saying, “Come on, silly goose. Hey! Luce the Goose. That’s what I’m going to call you.”

  They went along State Street, peering into the display windows at scenes from A Christmas Carol laid out in antique dioramas, with Scrooge and Tiny Tim and Marley’s Ghost. Lucy ran up and down excitedly examining each display and reading the didactics aloud.

  Inside the department store, Lucy felt as if they’d been shipwrecked on a stormy sea and were floating amid the scattered cargo of a vast and fallen empire.

  “No way,” Lucy said. “There’s just no way that I can possibly choose from all this stuff.” They came to a glass case full of beautiful sparkling stones, and Lucy said, “Ooh, how about one of these?”

  “Nope. Inappropriate to buy your mother a wedding ring. And too expensive anyway.”

  “I have my allowance.”

  “Nope, nope, nope.” Amanda took Lucy’s arm and dragged her through the store. But Lucy had to stop and examine each dazzling new display that they encountered.

  “Timepieces are good.”

  “Nope.” Amanda dragged her along. “No watches.”

  “A carpet? They’re pretty.”

  “Sorry, too big. Too expensive. Come on. I know just the thing. We’re the shopping marines. We get in, complete our mission, and get out.”

  Amanda assured her that a sweater was the perfect gift for a daughter to give her mother. When they emerged from the store, the snow had grown much heavier and the wind was whistling in the wires. They ran for the train station, sliding on the sidewalk, and hurried down the stairs. On the ride home Lucy felt exhausted from all the excitement. The train climbed the grade from the tunnel and out onto the elevated tracks.