June 4th - "Lucy Van Pelt"

Sitting on the front steps of Regina’s home, Lucille eyed her phone with dismay. She should have timed her arrival better. Half an hour ago, Regina said she’d be ready to leave soon - she just needed a quick shower. When Lucille got to her house a half hour later, Regina said she’d be ready to leave soon - she just needed a quick shower. Twenty minutes later, Lucille got another text from Regina - she would be taking her “quick” shower now. But that was never the case with her.

Knowing she had at least another half hour to kill, Lucille tried to find ways to entertain herself. It was a hot afternoon on an early summer Saturday. Everything on this suburban street had a golden sort of tinge or quality to it. Patches of light danced along freshly-cut lawns; children rode bikes down the street; planes flew across the blue sky overhead, leaving white plumes behind them. The heat reached that perfect habitable zone of the upper seventies - the border of a pleasant summer’s day and man, it’s actually pretty hot out today. All that was missing was that shawa shawa sound of the cicadas present in any and all anime with an episode set during the summer.

Summertime anime. Lucille wanted to have her own beach episode, splash around in the water, point at the sea and go umi da! (or hey…if we kill all our enemies over there…). But going to the beach is something you need to decide the night before, since it was both a good hour’s drive away and parking was nonexistent after 10 AM. Instead, Lucille planned on spending her Saturday night in Regina’s room and finding ways to get rid of the perpetual boredom alongside her. They might drive around the pixelated streets of Los Santos for the thousandth time - at least they always found that amusing.

But that had to wait until Regina finished her shower. Sure, the door was unlocked, but on such a nice day, Lucille would rather spend that waiting period outside. In fact, on such a nice day, she would rather go for a walk, so she did. Regina’s street connected with a few other ones that formed a big loop. Lucille would be back in time, and if not, Regina could learn about how patience is a virtue.

Smoke appeared in front of Lucille’s face. She hadn’t even realized her vape was in her hand. Everything they said about nicotine was true, but at least her mouth tasted like strawberry now.

Brown hair bobbed along as Lucille sauntered down the suburban neighborhoods. Fortunately, New England neighborhoods aren’t like those big copy-pasted suburbs elsewhere in the country. That had a colonial quaintness to them, even if most were built in the 1900s. They had yards with real grass and the old, imperfect driveways and houses behind them spoke of history. Wabi-sabi, the Japanese call it - the sort of beauty that comes with the imperfections of age. Things like cracks in the low walls of lawns and walkways indicate a lived-in quality to these houses. People were there and made it their own.

Upon reaching a bend in the road, Lucille paused to look up at a big house painted a solid light-maroon color. If it wasn't smack dab in the middle of the ‘burbs, maybe she could've called it a cottage or an estate. It was set back on a slight hill carved into a rising set of terraces. Vibrant green moss climbed up the stone walls while gardens dotted the landscape. Tomatoes, zucchini, and…and…well, Lucille wasn’t a gardener. Her knowledge of anything rural came from a sort of unconscious osmosis delivered by movies and books. Her state was heavily urbanized, and while there were farms out west, she had never had any reason to visit them. There were farms up north, but she only went north for hiking. However, she did know that the key to any successful farm were the Three Sisters of corn, beans, and squash. How it worked - she couldn’t tell you beyond stick it in the ground and apply water. Perhaps that’s all she needed.

As her thoughts and legs drifted, a glint of light on the ground briefly caught her attention. A quarter laid on the sidewalk, utterly discarded, perhaps even dropped. Lucille only looked at it for a brief moment, too quick to tell if it was face-up or face-down. It was just a quarter, after all. A mere twenty-five cents couldn’t get you nothing nowadays, and besides - who had time for something like picking up quarters off the ground anymore? Something big like the terraced mansion was worth her attention. But a dingy thing of debased silver wasn’t even worth a second glance.

With dreams of glory and success in her head, Lucille continued along. After making it around three-fourths of the loop, with the sun still shining brightly and gently on East Eden, she came across perhaps the quaintest sight of them all - a picturesque lemonade stand. A little girl in a blue sundress sat behind the booth, a pitcher of fresh lemonade on the table. She waved at Lucille as she passed by; Lucillenee-chan (if only she could hear somebody unironically call her that just once!) couldn’t help but walk up to the booth.

“Lemonade!” the girl called out.

“Thanks!” Lucille exclaimed. There was a sign taped to the booth - twenty-five cents. Without any further ado, Lucille reached into her wallet. Her hand came out empty, or perhaps even covered in cobwebs. Sure, she had her licenses and cards in there, but no money. It was 2023 - this was the cashless society, after all. Who had a need for money or-

“Quarters,” Lucille mumbled. How ironic. 

She gave the kid a shrug. “Sorry, I don’t have anything on me.”

“Oh.”

The two remained in place for a moment. Silence filled the suburban street; the two stared at each other in the sunlight.

“Can I still have some?” Lucille asked.

“Um…it’s twenty-five cents.”

“Yeah, well…I don’t have twenty-five cents.”

More silence. More staring.

“Seriously?” Lucille asked. “You got the lemonade right there, I can’t have any?” She gestured at the sky. “It’s a hot summer’s day and it’s only twenty-five cents and you’re not gonna give me any?”

“...u-uh-”

“Oh,” Lucille realized. She gave the girl a sympathetic look. “You got caught up in the myth about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, haven’t you? Christ.” She ran a hair through her hair. The poor kids these days. Childhood should be the equivalent of playing in a giant field, perhaps even one filled with rye. Unfortunately, modernity ensured that the field of rye would be located on the cliffside. Every passing year, every new screen stuck in a kid’s face, every hour their brains got rotted by social media and the Internet, the kids would get closer and closer to falling off the edge. If only Lucille could just stand on the edge of that cliff and prevent them from plunging into the abyss. If only she could be some sort of catcher along the edge of that rye.

She took a seat on the sidewalk next to the table. Patches of sunlight fell on her as the canopy of trees in the girl’s backyard shifted in the summer breeze. “I used to be the same way, you know. I was always told to work hard, work hard. That’s all you have to do. Work hard and you’ll be a success. And I believed it. I want to be an author, you see. So I went to school for an English degree. Only my mother says she won’t help pay for something useless like that. So what do I say? I told her to pound sand. I’d do it all myself. You with me so far?”

“...u-uh-”

“The end of my senior year of high school and the summer before college, I spent every conceivable hour working. I had two jobs. Double shifts every day. My classmates were out living it up during their final summers at home. Me? I was waiting tables and standing behind cash registers. Because I had a dream. And all I had to do was work hard to achieve it.”

The vape crackled and smoke drifted out of Lucille’s mouth. She held it up to the booth. “You want any?”

“...u-uh-”

The girl seemed to answer negatively, so Lucille took a few more drags. “But that was only enough to get through one year. So I had to keep working during school. The kids in my class, they were all living on campus, going to parties, making memories. Me? I couldn’t afford living on campus. I commuted in and commuted out. I couldn’t hang out because I had work. It was tough, but it was all going to work out at the end, right?”

Lucille chuckled. “Perhaps that’s the problem. Thinking it’s all gonna work out. There’s no guarantee of that. ‘Cuz life’s not fair. Teachers didn’t like my writing all that much. When you’re that tired, the quality of your writing suffers. But my classmates, all their writing was good, you see, because they didn’t have worries. They say suffering creates art, but all suffering does is create more suffering. The way they dressed, the way they spoke, the way they carried themselves and interpreted life…”

She kicked a nearby rock. It clattered down the street. “Obviously, I’m blessed. I’m not homeless or a junkie. I’m not some poor African kid just barely hanging on by scavenging electronic waste dumped there by Western corporations, or a blindfolded woman executed in a dusty basement in Bucha. But that doesn’t mean I’m rich. That doesn’t mean life couldn’t be better. Whether it’s my life in general or even my writing, I’m no better than lower middle class. And that’s all I’ll ever be. I know I should be content with what I have, but all of us rats down here, we get this illusion…if we just work hard, pull ourselves up, we can make it to the top. All we have to do is keep going, keep reaching upwards, and try to grasp hold of that illusion. But it’s little more than a distant light, something intangible. It’s always so far away. Because it’s not there in the first place.”

“...u-uh-”

“What’s the point of working so hard? The money you make goes to someone else, and it’s not like you can improve your own position. If a rich kid can always write better than me, why bother? I stopped working so much. I stopped caring as much. And didn’t even matter in the end because I lost both my jobs in the pandemic anyways. But I had to get this degree. I had to prove my mother wrong. Don’t you see? I HAD to. That's where the loans came in. But now that it’s all over, I can’t understand why I thought that way in the first place.”

Lucille leaned back and gazed up at the sky. “But I guess it’s all my own fault. Nothing I can do except complain and keep living. It’s because I’m the type of person who focuses on big mansions always out of reach instead of measly quarters on the ground that I could easily scoop up. It’s always the big picture. Never the little things.”

Through a cloud of smoke, Lucille gazed up at her therapist. “What do you wanna be when you grow up?”

The little girl, finally faced with something she could understand, immediately brightened up. “A firetruck!”

“...a fire-fighter?”

“No, a firetruck!”

A few birds flew overhead. Lucille wiped her face and couldn’t stop the smile spreading across it. “That’s nice. I’ll be rooting for you. Can you do me a favor - can you root for me? Please?”

The girl raised an arm. “Yeah!”

Lucille rubbed her eyes. “Thanks…I really needed that today.” She stood up, feeling the breeze on her, feeling the sunlight on her. If she missed that quarter today, then she would just try to pick up the next one. And if she missed that one, then she would just have to try again.

Same with writing. Same with living. Because she had to chase something. Maybe it was all just an illusion. But some chases - those little ones - certainly aren’t. And maybe the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t real, either. Perhaps nobody’s tending to it. But maybe Lucille just needed to light it herself.

As she soaked in the summer day, she stretched her arms. “Gotta go. I bet my friend misses me.”

The girl cheered her on in farewell. Lucille walked down the sidewalk, then picked up her pace. The breeze felt good on her face, the swift movement felt good in her legs. She had somewhere she wanted to be and a new way of thinking she wanted to try. She would pick up those quarters - those little moments of happiness freely offered to her at no charge - along the way, instead of ignoring them in favor of getting jealous over the wealth of others. All she had to do was keep going and make it there-

Lucille tripped on a crack in the sidewalk. Her knee banged sharply against the cement; she let out a cry and held her wounded knee.

“Shh…aaah.”

She held her wounded knee.

“Shh…aaah.”

She held her wounded knee.

“Shh…aaah.”

She held her wounded knee.

“Shh…aaah.”

She held her wounded knee.

“Shh………………..aaah.”

Lucille would have to get a bandage from Regina. In the meantime, through the pain, she noticed a brief glint of light on the ground. Right next to where she fell, there was a penny on the sidewalk, just waiting for her.

She scratched her head. Lucille thought about picking it up, but then-

“...pffft. Who the hell would pick up a penny?”