Schools Out Read online

  Lucas’s father also scolded him about climbing up to the roof. “I expected more responsible behavior from you,” he said to Lucas. “Genevieve came primarily to help out with the twins. Now I see that she has to watch after you, as well.”

  “Aw, Dad. I don’t need a baby-sitter,” Lucas complained. “I promise I won’t get into any trouble.” Despite his promises, Lucas seemed to have lost his parents’ trust for the time being. They wouldn’t let him accept an invitation to go to the beach with Julio and his older brothers. They wouldn’t let him go to an amusement park with another of his friends from school. They wouldn’t even permit him to ride his bike off the block. If he had known that there would be such a fuss, Lucas would certainly have thought twice before he climbed that ladder up to the roof.

  For now, Mrs. Cott was keeping a cautious eye on Lucas. For the next few days, she insisted that he stay close to the house. Either she or Genevieve was watching him all the time. It also meant that Lucas had to go wherever they went.

  When the au pair girl had first arrived, Mrs. Cott had discovered that Genevieve was a very competent driver. So now Lucas found himself forced to accompany Genevieve when she went off on errands for his mother. He went with her to pick up dry cleaning or to buy something at the hardware store. The worst thing was having to accompany Genevieve with the long shopping list to the supermarket.

  There was nothing in the world more boring than going to the supermarket, Lucas decided. However, Genevieve beamed. “I love American markets,” she explained to Lucas. “There is so much to see. There are so many things to choose.

  I could walk around this supermarket all day long.”

  So Lucas stood by her side as Genevieve chose string beans from a huge bin. He watched in agony as Genevieve carefully selected first one bean and then another, instead of grabbing a fistful at a time. At this rate, it would take a week just to get a pound of beans.

  “What a terrible waste,” said Genevieve. She pointed to a man who was cutting the leaves off the tops of the celery. “You can use those to make soup,” she said. “In your country, there is too much waste,” she complained to Lucas.

  Next, Genevieve selected some fruit. As she was looking over the cherries, she picked them out of the bin, one at a time. If she was picking them off a tree, it wouldn’t have taken so long.

  Genevieve was horrified to see a store employee removing bruised peaches and throwing them into a rubbish can. “See,” she said. “That is more waste. Those peaches could be cooked into a wonderful compote.”

  Lucas didn’t know what a compote was, so he just shrugged his shoulders. Would they ever get through his mother’s shopping list at this rate?

  Lucas stood with his hands on the shopping cart, eager to move on. At least they didn’t have the twins with them. He watched as mothers moved past them with toddlers sitting in the carts. The little kids were giving orders. “Buy this. Buy that. ”

  He did know how those kids felt, however. Seeing all the shelves filled with food was making him hungry.

  “Let’s hurry up so we can go home for lunch,” said Lucas. “I could eat a horse.”

  Genevieve looked at Lucas with surprise. “I heard that you do not eat horsemeat here in America,” she said. “In France, we have special butcher shops that sell only horsemeat.”

  Lucas made a face. He guessed he wasn’t that hungry, after all. He explained to Genevieve that eating a horse was just an expression. As always, she took out her notebook to write it down.

  “You are a good teacher, Lucas,” she said.

  Finally, Genevieve was ready to move on. Lucas pushed the cart toward the aisle of cookies. “Graham crackers,” she read from the list that Lucas’s mother had given her. She studied all the other types of cookies displayed on the shelves.

  Graham crackers were the most boring cookies in the world, Lucas thought. He looked with Genevieve at the chocolate and cream-filled cookies. Lucas’s eyes landed on a package of chocolate-covered graham crackers.

  “Here,” he said. “These are the ones.”

  “Okay,” said Genevieve, dropping the package into the cart.

  As they moved on, Lucas felt he had had at least one victory. He knew his mother would never have purchased chocolate-covered graham crackers. Marcus and Marius would be covered in chocolate themselves before they finished chewing up their cookies.

  Genevieve picked out a package of chicken parts at the meat counter. At the fish department, she selected some fillets of fish to cook for supper. Lucas made another face. He knew fish was on his mother’s shopping list, but fish was one of his least favorite things to eat.

  Genevieve studied all twenty-seven types of mustard that were displayed near the meat counter. She even studied all the varieties of dog and cat food, despite the fact that the Cott family didn’t own either a dog or a cat.

  “These sound delicious,” she said, picking up a can of tuna, shrimp, and crab all mixed together for the gourmet cat.

  When they passed the ice-cream freezer, Lucas saw a notice that the store brand of ice cream was on special sale. A half-gallon of the store brand cost less than a pint of one of the other brands. Mrs. Cott’s list had said ice cream.

  “Hey, Jennie, buy this one,” said Lucas, picking a container that seemed most appealing to him. It was marshmallow fudge. So a half-­gallon of marshmallow fudge ripple went into the shopping cart. That was victory number two for Lucas.

  “Why did you call me Jennie?” the French girl asked Lucas.

  Lucas shrugged his shoulders. The name had just popped out of his mouth. “It’s a good nickname for you,” he said.

  “Nickname?” said Genevieve. It was a new word for her notebook.

  It took about forty minutes for them to wait on line. They had too many groceries to stand at the express checkout, which was for customers with ten items or less. The people ahead of them on line had carts piled high with hundreds of cans and boxes and packages. It looked like enough food to last a family for a whole year. Lucas was sure their turn would never come.

  Genevieve didn’t seem to mind waiting at all. She looked into the other shopping carts to see what these people bought. She started a discussion with the woman ahead of them about the difference in taste of fresh beans, frozen beans, and canned beans. Naturally, the woman noticed Genevieve’s accent, and before long they were having a conversation about traveling in France. The woman opened her pocketbook and showed Genevieve pictures of her children, who were away at summer camp. Lucas saw that Genevieve and the woman would know each other’s whole life story before it was time to pay for the groceries. This sure was a boring way to spend a morning. Lucas was so impatient that he felt as if he would explode.

  Finally, it was their turn. The groceries were put on the counter, and the cashier tallied the cost. Everything was put in heavy paper bags, and Lucas put the bags back into the cart so he could take them to the car.

  “At home, there are no paper bags, ” said Genevieve, fingering the sturdy brown paper bags.

  “How can you carry your groceries?” Lucas asked. He tried to imagine walking out of the supermarket with all their purchases spilling out of his arms.

  “Most people take baskets or string bags from home,” said Genevieve. “We do not waste so much paper.”

  Lucas shrugged. “We don’t have any baskets at my house,” he reminded the au pair girl.

  When all the bags were in the trunk of the car, they drove off home. Lucas was relieved that this chore was finished at last. When he got to the house, though, he had to help Genevieve take all the bags into the house. Then his mother made him help put the groceries away in the kitchen cupboards and in the refrigerator.

  “Oh dear!” Mrs. Cott sighed as she looked over their purchases. “I should have explained to Genevieve about getting plain graham crackers. ”

  Lucas pretended not to hear.

  Late that afternoon, Mrs. Cott took the car and drove into town to meet her husband when he finished
work. They were going out to dinner and to the theater. Having an au pair girl certainly was giving his parents the chance to have a lot of good times, Lucas thought glumly. Here he was stuck at home.

  “Be sure to shut all the windows if it rains,” Mrs. Cott had instructed Lucas and Genevieve before she left. “It looks like we are going to have a storm.”

  The sky had been getting darker during the past hour, and from the distance they could hear the faint sound of thunder.

  Genevieve was supervising Marcus and Marius on the swing set. The twins were no longer upset when their mother left them with their babysitter.

  “Bye-bye,” they called happily as they swung through the air.

  Within ten minutes, the storm had moved closer. There was a streak of lightning followed by a loud clap of thunder and big drops of rain.

  “Come. Inside the house,” shouted Genevieve to the twins. “No more swinging.”

  “Rain. Rain,” Marcus shouted. He jumped off his swing.

  Marius jumped off his swing, too. “I like rain,” he shouted as he tried to catch the drops of water in his hands.

  Genevieve took the twins into the house. She and Lucas ran about, quickly shutting windows to prevent water from coming inside. The sky had gotten really dark now, and the rain was coming down very hard.

  There was another streak of lightning, and it was immediately followed by a loud bang. “Did you hear that explosion?” shouted Lucas. “I bet it means trouble.” He reached for the light switch, and as he had expected, nothing happened.

  “Hey, Jennie. We’ve lost the electricity,” he informed her.

  “You mean there are no lights?” she asked him.

  “Right,” said Lucas, nodding. “No lights and no nothing.” As he said it, he had a great idea. “If the electricity isn’t working, the refrigerator won’t be working, either,” he informed Genevieve.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding her head. “It is the same at home.”

  “That means that the ice cream we bought this morning is going to melt inside the freezer.”

  Genevieve nodded her head. “It is too bad we bought such a large package,” she said. “It will be a big waste.”

  “The best thing to do is eat it before it turns into a mush,” said Lucas.

  “It is too close to suppertime to eat ice cream,” said Genevieve. Despite her foreign accent, she sounded just like his mother. It was the sort of thing a mother always said.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” said Lucas. “We can’t waste so much ice cream. My mother wouldn’t want it all to go to waste,” he said in his most convincing tone of voice.

  “Yes,” said Genevieve thoughtfully. “You are right. Waste is not a good thing at all.” She turned to the twins. “Come,” she said. “We are all going to have ice cream.”

  In the kitchen, they lit a pair of candles to help them see better. Genevieve opened the freezer and removed the half-gallon of marshmallow fudge ripple ice cream. “It’s still very cold,” she told Lucas.

  “It’s cold now,” Lucas replied. “But a power failure like this could last for hours. Maybe days. ” Once, when Lucas was about six years old, they had had a power failure that had lasted for almost twenty-four hours. However, he knew that most of the time when they lost electricity, it was restored within less than an hour. It was therefore very important that they hurry and begin eating the ice cream right now.

  Genevieve went to the cupboard and got dishes for all of them.

  “We had better eat as much as we can,” said Lucas.

  Marcus and Marius each ate a big helping of ice cream. Genevieve had two dishes. And the one and only Lucas Cott managed to consume no fewer than three full dishes of marshmallow fudge ripple ice cream. He was just scraping up the last of his third dish when the lights came back on.

  The kitchen clock said twenty minutes to five. However, Genevieve’s wristwatch, which worked with a battery and did not stop when the electric power stopped, showed that it was really ten minutes to six.

  “It is almost time for supper,” Genevieve observed.

  “I don’t want any supper tonight,” said Lucas. “This ice cream was my supper.”

  It was also, he thought, his third victory of the day.

  “Oh no,” said Genevieve. “You just had your dessert before your main course, that’s all. It would be a shame to waste the good fresh string beans and fresh fish that we bought today.”

  The au pair girl smiled at Lucas. “When Marcus and Marius took their nap today, I watched a film on television. I learned a new American expression that you did not teach me. ”

  “What is it?” asked Lucas.

  “I wasn’t born yesterday,” said Genevieve. She smiled triumphantly at Lucas.

  Lucas had not watched the movie with Genevieve. Still, he was pretty sure that he knew what the expression meant. It meant that he shouldn’t expect to have victories over Jennie. She had his number.

  7

  LUCAS LEARNS TO DANCE

  Although the summer was almost over and Genevieve spent most of every day with Marcus and Marius, she still could not tell the twins apart.

  Lucas thought this was very funny. Genevieve, however, solved the problem. She called both little boys moan Jerry. It sounded strange to Lucas. Neither boy was named Jerry. His mother explained that Genevieve really was saying mon cheri.

  “It means ‘my dear’ in French,” said Mrs. Cott.

  “They aren’t hers and they aren’t deers,” protested Lucas. “She doesn’t know which is which.”

  He was glad that he was smarter than Jennie about the twins. After all, they were his brothers and he’d been helping to take care of them long before she came on the scene. He was smarter than she was about other things, too. Genevieve still didn’t know how to work the VCR or the electric can opener.

  Nevertheless, although he had been prepared to dislike her, Lucas found himself enjoying Jennie more and more. At first, it was strange always to have a guest at every single meal. Still, with the passing weeks, she seemed more like a member of their family than a guest.

  Hanging around home so much during the summer, he had begun to see what a tough job his mother had. He understood now why she had needed someone, in addition to himself, to be around to help take care of the twins. It seemed as if a day rarely passed without one twin or the other attempting to get into serious mischief. Looking back, Lucas felt bad about the day he had climbed the ladder to the roof. His mother needed to count on him to help her, not give her something else to worry about. So Lucas worked hard to regain his parents’ trust.

  Sometimes, in the evening when the twins were in bed for the night, Genevieve played cards with him. He was surprised that she knew some of the same games that he did. In fact, if it weren’t for her funny pronunciation and her occasional errors when she spoke, you would think she was an American.

  Jennie loved American music. In the afternoons, when the twins were napping, she often sat in the living room and listened to the radio. She didn’t listen to the kind of slow, dreary music his parents did. She liked rock and roll. While she listened, she sang along with the singers. Even though the songs were in English, she knew all the words. Genevieve could sing and write letters home at the same time.

  When she finished writing, Genevieve would dance. Sometimes, Lucas watched her. Lucas always had thought that dancing was something you did with your feet. When Jennie danced, though, every part of her body seemed to move. She moved her head back and forth and, as her head moved, her long dark hair moved, too. Her hips swayed and her shoulders and arms also moved. Even her fingers moved in time to the music. Lucas watched with fascination.

  One afternoon, when Lucas was peeking in the living-room door to watch Genevieve dance, she reached out and grabbed him by the arm.

  “You dance, too,” she said as she pulled him toward her.

  “Naw,” said Lucas, pulling away. “I can’t dance.”

  “I will teach you,” said Genevieve. �
��At home, all the boys dance. You will never have a girlfriend if you can’t dance.”

  Lucas made a face. “I don’t want a girlfriend,” he said.

  Genevieve laughed. “Not today,” she said. “Not tomorrow. But someday you will. I know it for sure. You are a handsome boy. The girls will be crazy for you. But it will be much better if you can dance, too.”

  Lucas blushed and shook his head. “No way.” “Dancing is fun,” said Genevieve. She took Lucas’s hand. “Like this,” she said. “Just do what I do.”

  It was a little like playing Simon Says with his brothers, Lucas decided. The only difference was that Jennie didn’t speak. She stood opposite Lucas, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Then she raised an arm up into the air. “Lift your arm,” she instructed Lucas.

  He felt a little silly, but luckily no one was around to see him. Since he didn’t have anything else to do until Julio came over to play, he guessed he could do this for a little while. Cautiously, Lucas moved his arm just the way Genevieve did.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Do you feel the music?” She moved her other arm.

  Lucas moved his other arm, too. He did everything Genevieve did. It was as if he was looking in a mirror. When she moved her right hip, he moved his left hip. When Genevieve moved her left hip, he moved his right one.

  “Listen for the beat of the music,” Genevieve said. She waved her arms and moved her hips at the same time. Lucas tried to copy her.

  “You can do it,” she said encouragingly. “The girls will be mad for you.”

  Lucas felt his face getting hot. Even though he was embarrassed by Genevieve’s praise, he kept on dancing. It was sort of fun. It was almost like doing a kind of exercise. It was probably good for his muscles to dance like this, he told himself. He raised his arms over his head and stretched them in time to the music. Maybe his arms would grow faster if he did that. Then he would be better at shooting basketballs.