Pinchbeck

pinchbeck \PINCH-bek\, adjective:
not genuine; fake

Looking at her face, I could tell right away that she thought I was serious. The funny thing was that I had been joking. Well, excuse me, let me make a correction. It was funny to me, not to her. Honestly, nothing much is ever very funny to her. Maybe that's why she lets me hang around: for the occasional sound of laughter. Even if it is at her expense. She doesn't mind. I swear that girl's head is always looking at the back of itself. Some people call it "daydreaming," but I disagree. If that's all someone does, wouldn't it just be their walking-talking life? No, Lucy isn't dreaming. She's thinking. And hard.

"Come on, now, Lucy. I was only kidding," I say.

But she doesn't answer. She just keeps walking and swinging a short stick that she picked up along the way, swinging it through the grass that reaches up to our knees, slowly back and forth in front of her as if she were chopping her way through a jungle. And so I follow on behind, keeping to her path, being careful not to step on the back of her heels with my long strides. I don't even try to hide my smile or my low chuckle, not when the sky's so shiny and the field's so green and her brown hair's swinging to and fro in her ponytail, smiling right back at me.