Nancy Rue - Lucys Perfect Summer

Other books in the growing Faithgirlz! Library

The Faithgirlz! Bible

Nonfiction

Dear Nancy, Beauty Lab, Body Talk, Girl Politics, and
Everybody Tells Me to Be Myself but I Dont Know Who I Am

The Sophie Series

Sophies World (Book One)

Sophies Secret (Book Two)

Sophie Under Pressure (Book Three)

Sophie Steps Up (Book Four)

Sophies First Dance (Book Five)

Sophies Stormy Summer (Book Six)

Sophies Friendship Fiasco (Book Seven)

Sophie and the New Girl (Book Eight)

Sophie Flakes Out (Book Nine)

Sophie Loves Jimmy (Book Ten)

Sophies Drama ( Book Eleven )

Sophie Gets Real (Book Twelve)

The Lily Series

Heres Lily! (Book One)

Lily Robbins, M.D. (Book Two)

Lily and the Creep (Book Three)

Lilys Ultimate Party (Book Four)

Ask Lily (Book Five)

Lily the Rebel (Book Six)

Lights, Action, Lily! (Book Seven)

Lily Rules! (Book Eight)

Rough & Rugged Lily (Book Nine)

Lily Speaks! (Book Ten)

Horse Crazy Lily (Book Eleven)

Lilys Church Camp Adventure (Book Twelve)

Lilys in London?! (Book Thirteen)

Lilys Passport to Paris (Book Fourteen)

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ZONDERKIDZ

Lucys Perfect Summer
Copyright 2009 by Nancy Rue

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

ePub Edition June 2009 ISBN: 0-310-86292-2

Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rue, Nancy
Lucys perfect summer / by Nancy Rue.
p. cm. (What about Lucy? ; bk.3_)
Faithgirlz!
Summary: Facing up to a cheater at an elite soccer day camp and some
difficult events at home helps eleven-year-old Lucy do some growing up
during a summer which, while very different from the one she imagined, turns
out to be just right.
ISBN 978-0-310-71452-1
1. Soccer Fiction 2. Sportsmanship Fiction. 3. Christian life Fiction. 4. Single-parent families Fiction. 5. Blind Fiction. 6. People with disabilities Fiction. 7. New Mexico Fiction. I. Title.
PZ7.R88515Lun 2009
[Fic]--dc22

2008045729

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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cover design: Sarah Molegraaf

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Content

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:18

Dear God: Why My Life Is Just about Perfect

1. School is out for the summer!!!!!!!!!!

Lucy would have made more exclamation points, but Lollipop, her pot-bellied kitty, was watching from the windowsill above the bed, her black head bobbing with each stroke and dot. Shed be pouncing in a second.

Lucy protected the Book of Lists with her other arm and wrote...

2. Aunt Karen is taking her vacation to some island, so she wont be coming HERE for a while. YES!!

3. I can practice soccer every minute that I want to which I HAVE to do if Im going to be accepted to even try out for the Olympic Development Program. Hello biggest dream on the planet!

4. We have a soccer game on our field in two weeks, thanks to Coach Auggy. A for-REAL game, with a whole other team, not just our team split up, which is always lame since we only have eight players to begin with. I cannot WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lollipop twitched an ear at the pen.

Forget about it, Lucy said to her. Shed only just learned the joy of making exclamation points from Veronica, who was a girly-girl, but who did have her good points. Lucy snickered. Good points, Lolli. Get it?

Lollipop apparently did not. She tucked her paws under her on the tile sill and blinked her eyes into a nap. Lucy slipped a few more exclh2ltion marks in before she continued.

5. I get to hang out with J.J. and Dusty and Veronica and Carla Rosa and Mora any time I want, not just at lunch or soccer practice or church. Okay, so I already got to hang out with them a lot before summer, but now its like ANY time, and thats perfect. Except were still stuck with Januarie. If she werent J.J.s little sister, we could just ditch her, but she needs a good influence. Were a good influence.

Lucy glanced at her bedroom door to make sure it was all the way shut. The Book of Lists was her private way of talking to God, and everybody else in the house Dad and Inez, the housekeeper-nanny, and her granddaughter Mora knew to leave it alone. Still, she always had to figure out whether it was worth risking discovery to write down what she really, really thought. She decided it was and added.

Well, maybe Moras not that good of an influence.

Besides, God already knew she was thinking it. Shed discovered that if He wanted her to think anything different, He would definitely let her know. She wrote some more:

6. We can go buy little chocolate soccer balls at Claudias shop in the middle of the day, or have breakfast at Pascos caf or take picnics to OUR soccer field, because guess what? Its SUMMER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Something black whipped across the page and Lucys pen flew into space, landing with a smack against the blue-and-yellow toy chest and knocking down the ruler Lucy always kept there to hold it open in case Lollipop needed to jump in and hide. The lid slapped shut, and Lolli sprang into an upside down U before she leaped and skidded across the top with her claws bared. She glared indignantly at Lucy.

You did it, Simplehead, Lucy said. Just a minute. Ill open it for you. But before she could even scramble off the bed, Lolli dove under it. A squalling fight ensued with Artemis Hamm, their hunter kitty, who had obviously been sleeping beneath the mattress.

Break it up, you two! Lucy said. But she didnt dare stick her hand under the bed. One of them would eventually come out with a mouth full of the other ones fur, and it would be over.