Irrepressible Lucie Archer
Chapter 1
“Help! Help!
I’m being abducted!”
Our Ford, older than my eleven years,
sputters and fumes along the highway.
The car and its occupants ignore my outburst, so I continue. “It’s not fair!
“It wasn’t my fault that someone
stuck the drink table right under the best climbing tree.
“It wasn’t my fault that stupid,
perfect Emily in her stupid pink dress and her stupid white hat, and her stupid
white gloves was standing right next to the drink table.”
Stupid, perfect Emily looks up from
her book and sticks out her stupid pink tongue.
I ignore her.
“So what if I jumped down from the
tree and landed on the table and knocked the lemonade all over Emily. Honestly, her hat and gloves looked better
with pink lemonade dripping from them.”
Mom’s head swivels and she snaps,
“That’s enough, Lucie! Irresponsible,
irrepressible Lucie Archer! That
attitude is why you are going to your uncle’s house and not to England.”
Uncle, hah! Uncle Unknown of Nowheresville, USA. Stupid, perfect Emily gets to go to England
and I have to stay with somebody I’ve never met in some place I’ve never
been. It’s not just unfair – it’s a
nightmare!
Oliver, my cat, butts his head
against the metal bars of his pet carrier and meows.
“You feel sorry for me, don’t you,
Oliver?” I stroke his velvety head
through the bars. He half-closes his
Siamese blue eyes to make his “I-love-you” face. “You’re the only one in this whole stupid
family who cares about me.”
Emily rolls her eyes. Dad glances at me through the rear-view
mirror. Mom sighs.
Mom and Dad are professors at the
City University. Mom teaches art stuff –
Humanities, and Dad teaches British Literature, as in dead British
writers. Boring. They decided to write a course together for
the next semester, so they’re working on their lesson plan. They call it a curriculum. To write the curriculum, they wanted to
travel to England to look at art stuff and placed where dead British writers
have lived. Dullsville. Mom and Dad though it would be “educational”
for Emily and me. I don’t know about
“educational”, but anything is better than spending the whole stupid summer in
the stupid city where I live.
Then the stupid church picnic
happened – the stupid picnic that ruined my life happened. I can still picture Emily with rivers of pink
lemonade streaming from her hat and soaking her dress. That was so funny. But then I can still hear the words that
escaped from her sticky, pink face: “I
don’t know why Mom and Dad brought you home.”
That wasn’t funny. What was that
supposed to mean? Home from where? The hospital?
I don’t know why Mom and Dad brought me home, either. Mom and Dad don’t want a Lucie; they wanted
another Emily.
No comments:
Post a Comment