Listening for Lucca by Suzanne LaFleur Read Free Book Online Page A

conversation. Was I certain? If I had to ask the question, then I guess not.
    But that wasn’t really this girl’s business, either. Whether or not I lived up to the sound of my name.
    Sam had noticed us talking and came over.
    “Welcome to Nielly’s!” he declared in the exuberant voice of a TV announcer, spreading his arms wide. Then he dropped them to hold one out to me. “Sam Nielly, at your service.”
    Morgan smiled then, for the first time. For Sam, not for me. I looked at Sam as I shook his hand.
    “This is Siena,” Morgan told him. “She’s named to be certain and strong and brave.”
    “Oh,” Sam said. “I was just named third.”
    “Third?”
    “Yeah. I’m the third brother. Michael and Jack were already taken.”
    “She’s not a tourist,” Morgan continued. “She moved in.”
    “Where?” Sam perked up.
    “Ocean Drive.” I kept our house number to myself. Ifthese kids didn’t like me and found out where I lived, they could come and throw eggs at my house.
    “Wow, beachfront property!”
    “It’s a dump,” I said, even though I loved the place.
    “Well, in any case, you can’t live in this town and live too far from the water,” Sam said. “It’s just a short walk for me. Which house are you in?”
    Maybe people didn’t really go around throwing eggs at people’s houses, anyway—what did I know? Mom would say I shouldn’t be so afraid of people my own age.
    I took a deep breath.
    “Fourteen forty-five. Do you know it?”
    I was hoping they’d have some kind of story about my house, an explanation for the haunted feeling, in exchange for me giving up the number, but they both shook their heads.
    “This is your family’s shop?” I changed the subject.
    “Yep! Mom’s over there.” He pointed to a woman in a green store apron like Sam’s. “Dad grows the produce and Mom runs the shop. We’re all expected to help out. My brothers usually go with Dad and I help Mom.”
    I was listening to Sam, I was, but I couldn’t help that a glint of sparkles caught my eye. I looked sideways to see what was glimmering like that. On the ground, caught in the sunlight—just past Morgan’s foot—a sparkly butterfly-shaped hair clip. All alone. Abandoned.
    I stretched my foot out sideways, set my sneaker on top of the hair clip, and slid my foot back. I reached to pick up the clip.
    “What are you doing?” Morgan asked. It must have been odd to have me practically kick her.
    “Just picking this up.” I showed her the clip. “Is it yours?”
    Morgan shook her big tangle of rust-colored curls. The hair ties she used were so fat I should have been able to guess that the butterfly wouldn’t have fit into her hair at all.
    “Oh, that’s mine,” Sam said, running a hand through his shaggy bangs.
    “Shut up, Sam,” she said.
    “Are you going to keep it?” he asked me. “You don’t really strike me as the hair-butterfly type.”
    I was tempted, but someone would probably come back looking for such a nice clip.
    “No. Is there a lost and found?”
    “We keep a box under one of the registers. Mostly gloves left over from winter.”
    He led me over to the box. It
was
full of gloves and mittens, and also a small coin purse and a large gold earring and two paperback books. Ooh, a whole box of lost things.
    Sam, made curious by my long pause to look at the box, gave it a shake. That woke me up and I dropped in the butterfly. Morgan was looking back and forth between us. Sam put the box back under the counter.
    “It’s kind of special, right?” I asked. “So maybe only someone who asks for it and already knows what it looks like should get to see it. That way not just anyone could take it.”
    “Yeah, sure, that makes sense.”
    “If no one comes back for it, could I claim it?”
    “I thought you didn’t want it,” Sam said.
    “I don’t want to
wear
it,” I clarified.
    “You’re an odd duck,” he said.
    Uh-oh. Already labeled a weirdo and I’d known these kids for ten