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

minutes. All I had to do was take too much interest in a stupid butterfly hair clip. Why hadn’t I been more careful? Things had been going so well, too; maybe I’d have passed for completely normal.
    Then Sam said, “I get a break in half an hour. Have lunch with us?”

    I went outside the store and sat on the wide porch steps.
    Had that really been an invitation to lunch?
    I opened my book and pretended to read, but I kept glancing up to watch the people walking by. Tourists walked slow and looked around a lot from under their sunglasses. They wore bright, clean summer clothes with the names of Maine towns printed on them. The people who lived here, at least as best I could spot them, walked more quickly and confidently and were more likely to be in cutoff jean shorts and worn-looking tank tops.
    Being new, I wasn’t really a townie
or
a tourist.
    Some other kids my age walked by. They looked at me but didn’t stop to say hi. I was relieved. I could only takemeeting so many new people in a day. I was already nervous enough about lunch.
    The half hour slipped by. Should I go back inside? Would they laugh at me if they hadn’t really meant to invite me? Was it worth risking?
    But I was still sitting there on the porch, so if they saw me they’d think I had at least
hoped
for a real invitation. Maybe sitting there, waiting, hoping, made me look like a loser. Maybe I should just go. Maybe Sam and Morgan were inside, eating already, laughing at me through the windows.
    I turned to check. Someone came through the door, but it was only Sam’s mom, who started straightening the flowers, peering into the buckets to see whether they had enough water.
    A minute later Sam came out, looking around. I snapped my head forward as if I’d been looking down the street and not into the store for him.
    “Oh, there you are. I thought maybe you’d left.”
    “Still here.”
    “Oh, good. Mom, I’m on my lunch break!” Sam yelled.
    “I’m right here!” she yelled back. “You don’t need to yell!”
    “Sorry!” Sam yelled. He stretched out his hand to me and helped me up. I followed him back inside. Morgan abandoned her magazine and came to join us, looking unsurprised that I was still here.
    “How much is lunch?” I asked Sam.
    “Nothing. Not for my friends, anyway.”
    I felt my face flush. Was he really calling me his friend already?
    “I should probably pay. Why should your mom have to give us three free lunches?”
    “It’s fine,” Morgan said. “She says she’d rather have us here eating than out making trouble where she can’t keep an eye on us.”
    “Plus, she’d have to feed us all anyway if we ate at my house, so it’s no big deal,” Sam said. “Her only rule is we can’t eat all day. I have to take a designated lunch break.”
    Sam handed me a green lunch tray while Morgan got her own. “You can take anything from the prepared foods, the fresh fruit, or snack stuff like chips. And you can go behind the deli counter to make a sandwich, but you have to put on gloves. We make the sandwiches for regular customers, but if you’re with me, you’re staff.”
    “Okay.” It sounded fun to make my own sandwich. I put on gloves and made a fresh turkey on wheat, then grabbed a bag of chips. I filled up a plastic cup with water and joined Sam and Morgan at a table.
    “Thanks,” I said to Sam, setting down my tray and sitting next to Morgan.
    Sam examined my sandwich. “Looks good. Maybe I should hire you to make mine from now on.” Sam had peanut butter with grape jelly oozing out around the edges. Very sloppy. Where’d he get peanut butter and jelly? Morgan had a salad and had also found somewhere to get aheaping bowl of pudding. Obviously there was a lot of exploring to do here.
    “The lettuce on your sandwich—that’s from Dad’s garden.”
    “Neat.” I chewed carefully. My stomach felt funny about the prospect of digesting something Sam’s family had grown. Ew, how personal.
    “Did you get