June Sparrow and the Million-Dollar Penny Read online

  “Odd thing, that Penny Book,” he said at last.

  “Have you ever heard of one before?” June asked. Maybe it was a midwestern thing, like Postum.

  “I used to collect coins myself. Probably still have that jar somewhere. But what your mom did, writing about the day she found it and then something from the date of the penny—now, that’s creative.”

  “Bob sure knew about it,” June said darkly. “And Aunt Bridget wanted to get rid of it.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, though,” Moses said, reaching across to ruffle Indigo’s ears. The pig had fallen asleep, sprawled out in the warm armchair. “Why wouldn’t she want you to have it? And why would she tell you she’d tossed it in the drop box when she hadn’t?”

  “’Cause she hates me?” June offered. She was trying to make a joke, but Moses looked at her seriously.

  “As far as I know, hate can’t really breathe without its opposite,” he said gently. “Some people do hate, it’s true; I’ve seen it. But most of us just do the wrong thing sometimes. Misguided. Don’t know why.”

  June didn’t want to be rude to Moses, so she stared hard into her empty mug. “Some of those pennies are worth a lot of money,” she said slowly. “My mom wrote in her penny book about finding the Big One. Maybe Aunt Bridget stole it from her and doesn’t want me to find out.”

  “But wasn’t your mother the rich one, and your aunt the poor one?” Moses asked.

  June put her head back and closed her eyes, suddenly exhausted. Nothing made any sense, starting with this conversation with a strange old man in the back of a second-hand clothing shop in Red Bank, South Dakota.

  The bell at the front of the store rang, and June popped forward in her recliner, shocked by the intrusion. Moses laughed and swung forward more slowly.

  “First customer of the day,” he said cheerfully.

  A voice called out, “Moses? You here?”

  “We’re in the back!” Moses winked at June. “No customers yet.”

  June pulled Indigo onto her lap as she heard someone walk their way. For a split second she wondered if it was Aunt Bridget come looking for her, but then there he was again: Joe, the Tunafish Boy with those big blue eyes and a cowlick that stuck straight up like Indigo’s tail when he was surprised. Joe looked as shocked to see June as she was to see him.

  Moses waved at him. “Morning, Joe. Want a cup of Postum? This is June. She’s new in town.”

  Joe nodded without saying anything.

  “We’ve met,” June said. “We’re in the same class.” Then, after a beat, “In the same detention, if you want to know the truth.”

  “Huh,” said Moses. “Didn’t know I was running a home for juvenile delinquents.”

  Joe smiled and June felt a little relieved. At least the boy had a sense of humor, plus he didn’t smell like tuna fish today.

  “Is that yours?” Joe asked, pointing at Indigo.

  “Yes,” June said. “Say hello, Indigo.” Indigo held out a trotter, and June could tell he missed wearing his top hat out here in the country. Joe looked surprised but shook Indigo’s trotter politely. “Pleased to meet you.” He turned back to June. “Indigo?”

  “Indigo Bunting,” she said primly, tucking the pig under her arm. “And before you ask, he’s a miniature pig with the name of a bird, and yes, he’s housebroken.”

  Joe’s eyes widened and June added impatiently, “We’re from New York.”

  “Joe works here Saturdays,” Moses said briskly. “Sorting and labeling, sometimes working the cash register when I’m busy. Don’t see any reason why you can’t work here as well.”

  “Me?” June was stunned. Work? June had never given a thought to working except for some vague idea that someday a fabulous job would come her way that allowed her to save the world while looking exactly like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  “Your aunt giving you an allowance?” Moses asked.

  “No,” June said slowly. She felt Joe looking at her and started to blush. She didn’t want him to know that she came from a rich family—he’d think she was spoiled. There was an awkward pause. Maybe she was spoiled, June thought with horror. She had never thought of herself as spoiled, just rich. But maybe that was the same thing in South Dakota. Maybe that was the same thing everywhere!

  “I pay three dollars an hour,” said Moses. “Not the state minimum, but not bad for Red Bank.”

  “Can’t do better except for lifeguarding at the pool,” said Joe. “And you have to be sixteen for that, plus it’s only in summer.”

  “I’m not much of a swimmer,” said June, feeling herself blush even harder. A spoiled rich kid. Is that what she was?

  “It’s settled, then,” said Moses. “Joe can show you the ropes out back. I’m going to man the register.”

  Moses hitched himself back into the wheelchair: he locked the wheels, picked up one leg, then the other, and lifted himself into the seat using just his arms. June was impressed with how easy he made it look. She had a hard time pulling herself out of the pool just with her arms! But Moses was very strong for an old man, and once he was back in the chair, he headed into the shop and settled behind the cash register up front, turning on a large transistor radio that was tuned to a country-music station. Joe shrugged at June and led the way to the piles of black garbage bags stuffed with clothes, and cardboard boxes with kitchen discards poking out the top. Indigo closed his eyes and stretched out a little more comfortably. June glared at him and thought she might just have heard a snore, or was that a chuckle? Only Indigo could do both at the same time.

  It was the slowest hour of June’s life. She couldn’t believe that she had only earned $3.00 by the time it was over. Actually it was $2.50 once she subtracted the cost of the Dalmatian sweater. All she really wanted to do was sit down with Indigo and try to puzzle out her mother’s list, but first she and Joe had to empty out the garbage bags. They threw roughly half of what was donated into a bin headed for the landfill. Who would donate dirty socks? Not to mention the unmentionables. Before they began to sort, Joe made them both put on rubberized dishwashing gloves, and she thought he was being a little ridiculous until she saw some of the things that came out of those bags.

  You could tell right away if they were acceptable donations by whether or not the clothes were folded. Even though most of the donations arrived in garbage bags, some people folded neatly, and there was no question that those clothes had been washed. Other bags were crammed to bursting, and if it had been up to June, she would have thrown them directly into the landfill.

  “Do we really have to look through this one?” she asked Joe after pulling out three balled-up pairs of tights.

  Joe shrugged. “Once I found a brand-new leather jacket at the bottom of a bag filled with sauce packets from a Chinese restaurant.”

  “You’re kidding!” June stopped sorting. “Where is it?”

  “Hanging in my closet,” Joe said with a grin. “Moses lets you buy things half price if you find something good. Sometimes he even lets you have it for free.”

  “No, I mean the Chinese restaurant,” said June. “I didn’t see one in town. I love Chinese food, and I especially love getting it to go.”

  Joe looked surprised. “I don’t know. I guess there must be one in Sioux Falls. Never been.”

  “You’ve never had Chinese food?”

  “Nope. But I’ve got a great leather jacket.”

  Joe tied up a bag of discards and tossed it behind his back into the garbage bin. He made the shot from about ten feet away. He grinned and said in a fake sportscaster’s voice: “He shoots! He scores!” June pretended not to notice.

  “How come you moved here?” Joe asked after a little while.

  “I didn’t,” June said abruptly. “I was forced to come live with my aunt because of money.”

  Joe nodded. “My mom almost had to give me up after my dad died, because of money. Lots of people told her to put me into foster care, but she said no way. She’s ge
tting unemployment since she got laid off, so that’s good.”

  June wondered what “getting unemployment” meant but thought she’d sound stupid if she asked, so she just nodded.

  June felt something hard in the bag and pulled out a big plastic fish that was mounted on a piece of wood. She stared at it.

  Joe clapped his hands and the fish started singing, its rubber lips moving and its tail wiggling. “Don’t worry, be happy. Don’t worry . . . be happy.”

  June shrieked and dropped it onto the table, where it kept right on singing. Joe laughed out loud, and Indigo Bunting ran over to see what all the fuss was about.

  “What the— What is that thing?” June asked as the fish ended its song with a final wiggle of its rubber lips.

  Joe could barely breathe, he was laughing so hard. “You’ve never seen one before?” He clapped his hands again just as Indigo was reaching in for a sniff, and the pig jumped back as the fish started up again: “Don’t worry, be happy.”

  “Leaping Liberace,” said June, getting closer now. “It’s like—a joke thing?”

  This made Joe laugh even harder. “Yeah,” he said between breaths. “They used to be all over the place. Restaurants, gas stations, everybody had ’em.”

  The song stopped and Joe clapped again, and this time Indigo knew what to expect. He got up on his hind legs and began to do his own choreography, forearms in the air and hips swaying.

  June started laughing at Joe’s shocked expression. “We used to watch a lot of American Idol,” she said apologetically. “He’ll dance to anything as long as there’s a bass line.” There certainly was a bass line, and Indigo was clearly enjoying showing off his moves. She picked him up and put him onto the long table—he began to moonwalk.

  “Your pig—moonwalks?” Joe was awestruck.

  “He’s just a big show-off.” Indigo slid toward them on his knees for a big finish. “You should see him when he dances to Michael Jackson. He’s out of control.”

  Joe clapped to start the song up again, and this time they both cracked up as Indigo began his routine with an ambitious pirouette and landed on his hindquarters with a thump.

  “Working hard? Or hardly working?” asked a voice sarcastically, and there was Aunt Bridget. She stood in the doorway, and Moses was right behind her with an apologetic expression.

  “Aunt Bridget!” June grabbed Indigo in the middle of his bow and took a few steps back, putting as much space as possible between them. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, after you walked out on me”—Aunt Bridget’s eyes bored into her—“I figured I’d give you a little time to tire yourself out before I came to pick you up on the road—”

  “I didn’t want to get picked up!”

  Aunt Bridget ignored her. “I drove back and forth a few times, but no sign of you or the critter.” She nodded at Indigo. “Eventually, I figured I’d come into town myself to look for you. Agata, down at the hardware store, told me she’d seen a strange girl riding by in the passenger seat of Moses’s truck.” She turned to glare at Moses then back at June. “I figured out who that might be from the description: ‘strange.’”

  Moses started to say something but Aunt Bridget barreled on.

  “And don’t you ever get in a car with a stranger again! You were lucky this time but that is dangerous behavior, and you follow my rules when you are living with me! You are in a lot of trouble, Missy.”

  “I never wanted to live with you and my name is not Missy!” June shouted. Aunt Bridget looked like she was about to blow, and Moses held up his hands to stop them.

  “It’s my fault, Bridget. I should have called you when we got here,” he began. “I wasn’t sure where she came from at first, or that you didn’t know—”

  “I didn’t know where this girl had gone, and apparently she didn’t see fit to tell me!” Bridget interrupted, giving them both a hard look.

  June took a deep breath. “I came down here to get my mother’s Penny Book. What I think is strange is that it wasn’t in the drop box like you said it was.”

  Aunt Bridget looked flustered for half a second, then recovered. “I gave it to Bob to bring down here. Same difference. Guess he hasn’t gotten to it yet.”

  “Guess not,” said June. The silence lengthened between them.

  Moses looked from one to the other. “I tell you what,” he said to Aunt Bridget. “I can use another hand down here with the donations, and me or Joe can drive her home when her shift’s over. That way, when Bob comes down with the book, June can just—”

  “No,” said Aunt Bridget in a tone of voice that made even Moses look taken aback. “That book is gone. She’s coming home right now.”

  “No, I’m not!” June said, her voice rising. “I am not coming home until—”

  “Until we finish our English project,” Joe interrupted. June and Aunt Bridget both stared at him. “We have a big presentation on Monday, and June and I are supposed to do research at the library this afternoon.”

  Aunt Bridget opened her mouth and closed it again, just like the rubber fish. “Since when do you have a homework project that requires the library?” she asked June.

  “Since you made me go to school,” June shot back. “I was fine with homeschooling! Did you know that colleges accept more homeschooled kids than ever before because we work at our own pace, which means—”

  “Enough!” Aunt Bridget interrupted. “That is quite enough out of you!” She looked hard at Joe. “You’re Joe Pye, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Live with your mother out past Freeman Road?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You and June in the same class, then?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Mr. Fitzroy’s English.”

  “Hmmph! That know-nothing.” June thought it best to keep her eyes trained directly between Indigo’s ears. “Very well,” Aunt Bridget said. “You may go to the library for this ‘project’—a royal waste of time, if I know Henry Fitzroy—but school is school. How will you get home?”

  “I’ll drive her,” Joe said. Aunt Bridget raised her eyebrows and he continued, “I can give her a ride on the tractor. That’s how I get to work and back, and it’s legal on the roads. Tractor won’t go more than fifteen miles an hour.”

  “I know how fast a tractor can drive,” Aunt Bridget snapped. She sighed and looked at Moses, who gave her a small nod. “We’ll talk about the job later,” she said to June. “For now, you go to the library with Joe and then straight home.”

  June nodded without smiling, though she knew that Joe and Moses both expected her to thank her aunt. There was nothing to thank her for as far as June was concerned. Nobody had ever been in charge of June Sparrow; she was in charge of herself.

  Aunt Bridget stood there expectantly until Moses finally broke in. “You go ahead and get your homework done, Joe. You can make up the hours next weekend.”

  “Thanks, Moses.” Joe grabbed his jacket.

  “I’ll see you back home before supper,” Aunt Bridget said to June. “No funny business or I’ll know about it right quick, make no mistake about that.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” June said, in such a perfect imitation of Joe’s polite tone of voice that Aunt Bridget did a double take. She looked as if she couldn’t decide if June was being rude or not.

  “The tractor’s out back,” Joe said. June looked at Moses, who winked and nodded. This was all a game, June realized. Joe might have thought up the library idea, but all they really had to do was drive around the block, and Aunt Bridget would be gone by then. She certainly wasn’t going to leave before Bob got there with the Penny Book. She grabbed Indigo Bunting and followed Joe, with Aunt Bridget watching her every move.

  There really was a big green tractor with huge muddy wheels in the parking lot, though June seemed the only one surprised by it. Joe climbed up on the metal seat and held out a hand for her to grab as she clambered up to sit next to him. The seat was plenty wide, but all of a sudden it seeme
d to be perched very high above the ground. Indigo Bunting looked at her doubtfully.

  “Are you sure this is safe?” she asked Joe. He turned the key in the ignition with one hand and held the enormous steering wheel with the other. The motor started right up and everything began to shake. June felt her teeth and her toes rattling, and Indigo pressed himself even closer to her.

  “You okay?” asked Joe loudly over the engine.

  Aunt Bridget was standing off to the side, looking like she was ready to trail them to the library, but her aunt appeared much less frightening from the high seat of the tractor. June felt a small rush of triumph.

  “Yes!” she yelled back to Joe.

  “What?” He looked over to make sure she was okay.

  “Nothing!” June yelled, and despite Aunt Bridget she found herself smiling. Joe grinned back and she punched his shoulder. “Get going!” she yelled. “We’ve got to get to work on this project, right?”

  “What?”

  “Drive!”

  The tractor started off with such a strong lurch, June almost fell off the back. She put one hand on the seat and the other hand on Indigo. As they pulled out of the parking lot, Aunt Bridget was still watching, and Moses was at the door of the shop, waving to her. June waved and was surprised when Aunt Bridget waved back along with Moses. Good-bye and good riddance, thought June as they pulled onto Main Street. They might not have been exactly leaving Aunt Bridget in the dust, but it was as close as she could get for now.

  When they got to the corner, June tapped Joe on the shoulder. “Turn around!” she yelled in his ear. “We have to go back!”

  “How come?” he yelled.

  “Penny Book! Bob could come down any minute!”