The NaLu Chronicles

Honeymop

(This chapter is dedicated to my best friend NancyFFranco   I call her Honeymop out of love.)
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He meets her when he's nine.

He's at the Magnolia Public Library, rifling through the shelves for a book that will help him with his school project because his loaded father won't shell out money for something that 'won't be used more than a few times,' when he accidentally kicks a worn pink sneaker.

"Watch it!" its owner snaps, smacking him in the leg. He stares down at the mop of yellow hair.

"You watch it! Why are you sitting in the aisle, anyway?"

"I'm reading," the girl—Honeymop, he decides he'll call her—answers in a tone which sounds like she thinks he's stupid for asking.

Well—well, he's not the one sitting in the way of people passing through.

"Do you even know how to read?" he asks.

Honeymop's chest puffs up. "I do too! Better than my class. That's why Ms. Mavis told my mom she's not allowed to teach me anymore."

"Ms. Mavis isn't allowed to teach you anymore?"

"No, my mom isn't!" Honeymop drops the book she's holding and sighs. "Ms. Mavis says if I get too avance—"

"Advanced," he cuts in with superiority.

"That," she dismisses, "then I'll be bored in class, and she doesn't want me to go up two grades until the end of the year. She wants me to have something to do in class."

"Oh." He frowns. He has no idea what that means.

"Mom doesn't know I'm here," Honeymop adds.

"Won't you get in trouble?"

Honeymop wriggles her shoulders. "Mom and Dad both work. Mrs. Aquarius says I can come if we both keep it a secret. She's sitting over there—" the girl gestures at the reading area, "—keeping the time."

"Keeping what time?"

"The time we have before Mom and Dad get home, duh."

And to think the sneakiest thing he's ever done is steal two lollipops while his nanny wasn't looking.

(He thinks she probably knows, because she gives him the stink-eye now when he goes near the glass jar of candy—and it was just two lollipops!)

"What do you know about fishes?" he asks. "I'm doing a school project."

Honeymop's eyes light up. "I know just the book."

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Honeymop's real name, he learns, is Lucy.

He makes up his mind to call her Honeymop, anyway, and only Honeymop ever. It's his special name for her. She had glared at him for a full five minutes when he told her and had declared that she would call him 'Dweeb' from then onwards. It was a lot less creative and a lot less nice than 'Honeymop,' but he had let her, because she was just a baby and 'Dweeb' actually didn't sound all that mean when it fell from her lips.

Honeymop is way, way smart, and she does end up skipping a grade at the end of the school year. They have met up in the library more times than he can count by then. His dad is happy about the sudden interest he's taken in learning, but really, he's just there so Honeymop can read to him.

Honeymop has the sweetest voice.

She also reads him a different book every week, so he does end up learning after all and it's way more fun than when he's alone and struggling to get through ten pages without falling asleep. The only time they go without her reading is a few weeks before her ninth birthday, when she shows up looking sad and tells him that 'Mommy died and daddy left.'