It was all set that Lucy and Milo would accompany Papo Angelo to San Francisco the following week to check on the last known address for John Ruth. In the meantime, Lucy and Milo papered the libraries all across San Jose with Milo’s new drawings of the Dirty Thirty patch, the name they’d found and all the other information they had. They also stopped by Mac and Cheese’s to update them and to ask them to spread the word.
As the days went by, Lucy became more and more anxious. The draft lottery was coming up on August 5, where Josh would find out his fate. Would he go away to college in the fall to become a veterinarian? Or would he be drafted into the armed forces against his will? She thought every day about what he’d asked her to do for Gia.
Lucy wasn’t sure her heart could take it. She was already an overstuffed cannoli.
To make things even worse, Milo was only there for a couple more weeks, and Lucy found herself pretending he wasn’t going anywhere, that he would move in with Mrs. Bartolo and summer would last forever. Lucy would gladly have put up with all the worst heat waves of summer combined for the rest of her life if it meant Milo and Josh could stay.
Somewhere in all that, Lucy finally relented and started watching As the World Turns in Mrs. Bartolo’s cool house. After only a few days, she’d gotten sucked into the stories the way water gets sucked down a drain. Now she couldn’t imagine her afternoons without them.
“They’re all lawyers?” Lucy had said.
“Not all of them, just the Hugheses and the Lowells,” Mrs. Bartolo said.
Lucy had become obsessed with the melodramatic lives of the people who lived in Oakdale, Illinois. Would Dan turn to drinking after seeing Claire get struck by a car? Would Liz recover from her nervous breakdown and get out of the institution? Would Betsy ever find out who her real father was?
She looked forward to sitting between Milo and Mrs. Bartolo on the green damask sofa, a cold glass of iced tea on a coaster in front of her, Mrs. Bartolo knitting with her nervous fingers, exclaiming, “Oh, no!” and “He deserved that!” every few minutes alongside the dramatic organ musical accompaniment.
Lucy looked forward to it perhaps more than she should. Because all those stories took her out of her own, if only for thirty minutes each day.
On August 5, when the soap was over, Mrs. Bartolo sliced a bunch of hot dogs in half and fried them in a pan. Once they were good and browned, she slapped those hot dogs between two slices of toasted white bread and served them up with potato chips. Lucy didn’t expect much, but after one bite, she was sure this was the only proper way to eat hot dogs.
“Today’s the lottery,” Mrs. Bartolo said, digging into her own hot dog sandwich, which she’d covered in mustard. “Those poor boys.”
Lucy nodded. “Uncle G is barbecuing, and Gia’s boyfriend’s family is coming over to watch so they can all be together.”
“Sometimes it feels like life is just one big lottery drawing,” Mrs. Bartolo said.
She looked at Milo, who was crushing his potato chips into tiny bits with the palm of his hand. He was quiet. The draft lottery probably got Milo thinking about his dad. And Milo never said a word about his dad, not how many days were left until he got home or what they were going to do when that happened. He was like a plane in a holding pattern in the sky where you can’t land, but you can’t go anywhere else, either. Lucy knew people had their own ways of dealing with hard things—her Papo Angelo carried Nonnina around in an urn, for gosh sakes—so she understood Milo’s silence.
When Lucy finished her hot dog sandwich, she got up to look at one of Milo’s bird drawings that Mrs. Bartolo had taped to the sliding glass door. It was a hummingbird. On the other side of the glass was a hummingbird feeder, and Lucy wondered if Milo had drawn it right there, watching those birds as they flitted from one small feeding tube to the next.
“Did you know,” Mrs. Bartolo said, “that all bird species have a particular song?”
Lucy sat back down. “I didn’t know that.”
“A familiar melody that draws them a mate. So one bird sings, and another bird responds in recognition of their own kind.”
They all turned to watch the birds in the trees outside, could hear their songs through the glass.
“Sometimes a bird will learn the wrong song. A sparrow will pick up the call of a finch. They don’t know why. A fluke. Something wrong with their brains. But the bird will sing his heart out and never understand why the other birds don’t come. Isn’t that sad?”
Lucy looked at Milo. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing. That for all the ways they were different, Lucy and Milo learned the same song.
Later on, when Milo walked her home, they were quiet. Before she went up to her house, she stopped at the dragonfly garden, and she and Milo watched them zig and zag along the surface of the water in the early-evening sunshine dappling the creek. Blues and greens and yellows. Their iridescence reminding Lucy of Milo’s drawings.
“They eat hundreds of mosquitoes every day,” Milo said. “And since they only like healthy water, you can tell from where they live if the water is clean or not. Grams says all living things are interconnected that way. That we all have useful messages for each other if we just pay attention.”
Lucy thought about that. About what sorts of messages she might give and receive without even knowing it.
Josh Giovanioli was the oldest of three boys, and he and his whole family showed up at Uncle G’s, Josh holding a lemon cake. Lucy answered the door because the rest of her family was already outside on the patio trying to enjoy what was left of the day before everything went sliding off in a new direction, whatever the outcome. She’d been in the kitchen fetching a Tab for Gia, who was a gloomy lump in a folding chair sitting next to Papo Angelo outside.
Lucy had changed into her tie-dyed dress when she got home from Milo’s, and when she, Mom and Dad showed up on Uncle G’s patio, Gia burst into tears and hugged Lucy. Gia had burst into tears two more times since then, once when Josh called to tell her they were running late, and once when Papo Angelo pulled up his own folding chair and sat beside her, pulling her head onto his shoulder. For the first time that Lucy could remember, Nonnina’s urn wasn’t right beside him. It sat on an end table next to the sofa in the house.
“Gia will be glad to see you,” Lucy said.
Josh handed her the lemon cake. “I’ll be glad to see her, too. But mostly for when this is all over, one way or the other.”
Josh’s brothers were eleven and eight and just as gloomy-faced as his parents, who were both tall and had similar features, straight noses and wide-set eyes, which had showed up in each of their children. There was no mistaking they were related. So if Josh had to go away, there would be a reminder of him each time they looked in a mirror or at each other.
Dinner was tasteless, even though Uncle G cooked up seasoned rib eye steaks and Aunt Rosie made her famous macaroni salad. No one ate or talked much.
Lucy worried about Dad. He took Josh aside for a little while, talked to him quietly. She would have given anything to hear the words of comfort Dad was probably giving him. Or the facts, maybe. The cold, hard facts about what might be ahead. She watched them carefully, studied Dad’s every move. He didn’t look right to her. He was sad, just like the rest of them, and heavyhearted. But his coloring was off. Pale, even though he’d been spending time outside. And clammy, like he might be getting sick. Which sent a whole new batch of worries through Lucy’s already overloaded mind.
Soon enough, it was time to move inside and turn on the television.
Mom and Dad sat on the love seat while Lucy sat on the floor between their legs. The room was silent.
The television screen turned blue, and the words Special Report flashed.
“And now, the draft lottery!” said a cheery voice that was totally inappropriate for the occasion.
Lucy looked over at Gia, who sat tall with her chin raised, like she was ready to shout obscenities at the television announcer. She’d stopped crying and held Josh’s hand in both of her own. The man on screen looked like a kid, no older than Josh. His job was to pull the small, lightweight balls out of the clear Plexiglas container that looked like an oversized fishbowl.
Uncle G had explained the way the televised draft worked to Lucy before it started. There would be two large containers on screen with little balls inside, light like Ping-Pong balls. In one container, birth dates were written on brown balls, and in the other, numbers from 001 to 366 were written on yellow balls. As a birthday was drawn out, a corresponding number was given until each day of the year was assigned, 001 through 366 because it was leap year. Then, next year, when it was time to bring in more troops, they’d start with those birth dates that corresponded with 001 on up until they had enough men.
Sort of like bingo. The prize being a trip to Vietnam.
The best they could hope for was that Josh’s birthday wouldn’t get called for a long, long time. Lucy had both her fingers crossed, and her legs, hoping he’d get number 366. They were decreasing the number of troops and had only taken all those boys with birthdates from 001 up to 125 last year. So as long as Josh’s number was higher than that, he’d be safe.
Eventually, the boy on the television pulled Josh’s birthday out of the container. April 16.
Lucy wished as hard as she could wish that the next ball would have a number higher than 125 because all those boys would be safe.
Josh’s number was 023.
The room went still as Gia squeezed his hand.
He’d be going to Vietnam. Now it was just a matter of when.
Lucy watched as the Giovaniolis drove off in their wood-paneled station wagon to take Josh home, sad for all the unknown things to come. When would Josh’s letter of induction come? Sometimes they came right away, sometimes not for months. Would Josh volunteer instead? Some boys joined the National Guard or other forms of service that would save them from the front lines.
But Lucy didn’t think Josh would do that. He was like her father, thinking about the other boys he’d have to look in the eye or the ones who would have to go in his place. She used to think this was admirable, heroic even. But now she wasn’t sure.
Dad went home, tired, while Lucy and Mom helped Aunt Rosie with the dishes. When that was done, Lucy went to Gia’s room. The door was closed, and she could hear the soft melody of James Taylor. I’ve seen fire, and I’ve seen rain. . . .
Lucy knocked and let herself inside. Gia lay flat on her back on her orange shag rug right beside the record player. She was surrounded by stuffed animals. All Josh’s carnival winnings since they’d started dating when Gia was thirteen. Just a year older than Lucy.
“I can’t believe this is my life,” Gia said. The song ended, and she sat up, put the needle back to the beginning and “Fire and Rain” played again. She flopped back onto the rug and looked up at the popcorn ceiling, forlorn.
Lucy knew there wasn’t much she could do to help Gia. Gia would have her feelings—anger, grief, frustration—just like Lucy had. And she’d have to find her way through it, just like Lucy had. And no one, including Lucy, could look into her brain and give her what she needed. She’d have to ask.
The way Lucy could have asked. And didn’t.
Lucy had been mad at Gia for a long time and realized that, in part, it was because Gia hadn’t read her mind like a Fattucchiera and given her what she needed. Just like the Dandelion Girls at school.
How Gia chose to protest the war just didn’t matter anymore.
Lucy lay down beside her on the rug and used a giraffe as a pillow. She took Gia’s hand. She’d missed her cousin.
“I’m so sorry,” Lucy said. Both for what was to come and what had already passed.
Gia cried then. Cried and cried like it was the end of the world.
Which, Lucy supposed, for Gia, it was.