Lucky Little Things

by Janice Erlbaum

  Darren was getting angry, too. “I told you, I’ll be back on Monday afternoon.”

  The chipmunk got louder.

  “I’m not having this argument with you again. I am here to deal with Uncle Herb’s estate. I am meeting with real estate agents all weekend, and I will be back on Monday afternoon. Okay? I’m turning off my phone now. Good night.”

  He ended the call and groaned quietly to himself. I slithered into another room off the hall just in time for him to turn around. He ran his fingers through his hair, then headed back to where Mom sat innocently, waiting to have her heart stepped on.

  I waited another full minute before reentering the living room. When I did, I had a pained look on my face. “Um, Mom?” I mumbled softly, one hand on my lower stomach. “I’m feeling, um, not exactly good.”

  “Not exactly good” is our code for anything embarrassing, like diarrhea or my period.

  Mom nodded at me and rose from her beanbag. “I’m so sorry,” she said to Darren. “Unfortunately, we need to go. But I’m loving this footage. Can you put it online somewhere so we can watch the rest of it later?”

  “Sure,” said Darren. He was trying to cover his disappointment, as was Mom. I could see they didn’t want to leave each other. “Or you could come back another time! I’ll be back in town soon. Maybe there’s a time that’s convenient…”

  I tugged on Mom’s shirt a little. Me and my imaginary diarrhea-period needed to get moving before she and Darren could make another date.

  “We’ll FaceTime this week and set something up,” she said as Darren walked us to the door. She gave him a quick acquaintance kiss.

  I waved. “Bye, thanks.”

  Darren closed the door behind us. Mom stopped on the sidewalk and looked at me with concern. “Sorry you’re feeling bad, Bloopy. You okay to take the train? Or do we need a taxi?”

  I felt guilty about lying to Mom and making her worry when there was nothing really wrong with me. I felt so bad, my stomach actually did start to hurt. I knew a taxi would be expensive, but I couldn’t resist.

  “Taxi, please,” I requested.

  Even though her precious, only daughter was unwell, Mom was in a great mood, humming to herself in the cab the whole way downtown. I hadn’t seen Mom that happy in months. I wanted to tell her about the phone call I’d overheard, but I didn’t want to bring her down. Besides, Mom already knew about Pauline. Mom knew that Darren had a girlfriend, and that didn’t stop her from liking him.

  If that didn’t do it, I didn’t know what could.

  Eleven

  I was one day away from the end of my lucky month, less than two weeks away from the play, and two minutes away from losing my mind.

  I’d given up trying to understand how luck worked. It was like electricity, or the Internet—it didn’t matter how it worked, as long as it worked. And it was working. It was working so well, it was spooky.

  1.  Holly offered me an internship for part of the summer. “With the expansion coming up, we need all the help we can get,” she explained. The position involved filing and data entry, and Knights Seminary would give me extra credit for it. I couldn’t believe I was going to get more extra credit for hanging out with dogs. It does not get much luckier than that.

  2.  The dentist canceled my appointment. Has that ever happened in the history of dentistry? Dr. Bander’s office was flooded by a neighbor’s burst pipe, and she wouldn’t be able to see patients for the next two or three months while she had it repaired. Tell me that’s just a fluke.

  3.  Mom made a coffee date with Conrad. And while Mom kept saying that coffee dates are “not romantic, just friendly,” I think we both hoped she could be more than friendly with Conrad. Not only would Conrad distract her from Darren, Conrad was handsome and heroic, and if he weren’t twenty years older than me, I’d be in love with him, too. Not that Mom was in love with him—yet—but I did catch her stalking him online.

  “I’m just looking at his LinkedIn to see if we have any clients in common,” she protested.

  Oh, Mom, I thought, rolling my eyes. Please go to Lying School and sign up for the remedial class.

  “He doesn’t have Facebook,” I informed her. “I already looked.”

  4.  Lewis dropped out of the play.

  Ms. Engel broke the news at rehearsal. She’d just spoken to Lewis’s dad, who said he was sorry, but urgent family business meant they all had to go to the Philippines the week of the show. Which was crazy suspicious, since Lewis Goldstein was not even the slightest bit Filipino.

  Ms. Engel was fully furious. She couldn’t help yelling at us, even though she knew it wasn’t our fault. “How are we supposed to replace our lead actor two weeks before the show? How is someone else going to learn the lines and the blocking in time? We don’t even have an understudy!”

  “I can do it.” Jason, one of the upper school crew members, came forward from backstage. “I’ve heard it a million times.”

  Okay, now. This was way beyond ordinary luck. This was luck times a million. This was nearing-infinity luck. Jason was a ninth grader, and he was so fully, effortlessly, indescribably hot, it boggled the mind. Looking at him was blinding. Even teachers fell under the spell of his gorgeousness.

  “You can’t mean it,” said Ms. Engel. “You really mean it? Please don’t joke around with me right now—I can’t take it.”

  “I’m serious.” Jason reached out to shake my hand. “Hey, Emma. I’m Jason.”

  Hey, Jason, I’m DYING. “Hey,” I said.

  “If you have an extra copy of the script, I’ll use it for today. Then I’m pretty sure I can get the lines down.”

  Melanie and Ms. Engel looked at each other, openmouthed. “This is incredible,” said Ms. Engel. She handed Jason a copy of the script. “This is literally incredible.”

  Her mind was so blown, she used the word “literally,” which she hated. We were all banned from using that word in her classroom.

  What kind of practical joke was the universe playing on me this time? Suddenly I’d been rescued from the arms of my enemy and placed into the arms of a fourteen-year-old Greek god. Jason stepped into the role of Julian like he’d been there since the beginning. I was the one having trouble with the lines at rehearsal that day—looking at Jason made it hard to speak.

  Afterward, I went to the girls’ room with Brooke and Geneva so we could scream at each other: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

  Jason replaced Lewis just in time, too. Even after Lewis had helped spread Savvy’s picture, I’d been trying to convince myself that maybe he wasn’t the most loathsome human being in history. Worse, I kind of didn’t mind rehearsing our scenes. Now the thought made me gag. He was a user, a liar, and friends with everyone I hated. He probably wanted to make me think he liked me and then reject me in public, or something awful like that.

  But then I’d noticed that he’d done a total turnaround and, tbh, I had no clue why. He no longer looked at me in the hall, in class, outside, or anywhere else. He acted like I didn’t exist, and I acted like I didn’t care, because I didn’t. I did not care at all.

  I watched him at lunch that day, sitting at the table of evil. He was tipped back in his chair, laughing at someone else’s expense. Dakota cackled loudly. Tyler high-fived him. Venice sat next to Tyler and looked adoring.

  “I’m so happy Lewis got out of that stupid play before he turned into a dramatic actor,” Dakota said loudly to Sierra.

  “They’re all such losers,” Sierra agreed. “And dirty, scummy rats.”

  I thought about the “loser” they got to step in for Lewis. If Jason was a loser, I never wanted to win again. According to Melanie’s story about karma, I would probably be married to Jason in three years, and Dakota would be in jail for being her heinous self.

  I couldn’t wait to see how things would work out.

  * * *

  Mom was in the kitchen when I got home, typing like a maniac and cursing ducks. I wanted to ask how her coffee date with
Conrad went, but I knew it wasn’t the right time.

  “Bloop,” she said, eyes on her laptop. “You got a letter.”

  I had several heart attacks in a row. Mom wasn’t supposed to know about the letters. How did she know I’d gotten one? Did she read it? If so, would she make me explain the whole thing? And how was I supposed to explain it when I didn’t understand it myself? I tried to say something and nearly choked on my own tongue.

  Mom was deep into her work, so she was oblivious to my distress. “It’s over there on the counter,” she said.

  Phew. It wasn’t a mystery envelope that had been slid under the door. It was just a regular letter, with a stamp and an address and a postmark, delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. I almost forgot those existed. Who even writes letters anymore? I ripped it open to find out.

  It was from Savvy.

  Dear Emma,

  Hey. How are you? I’m not great, but I’m getting better. Every day I wake up and for a second I think it’s a normal day, and then I remember what happened, and it makes me want to crawl under my bed and stay there.

  Anyway, Moms won’t let me have a phone or email or anything, so I’m writing you this letter. Kind of going cray over here with no phone, but it’s also good that I don’t have contact with anybody from school. I never want to see any of them again.

  Moms sent me to a shrink. She’s cool, I guess. She doesn’t make me talk about stuff if I don’t want to. I don’t get the point of it, but I will take any excuse to get out and see people who aren’t Moms. I feel so trapped in this house. They got me a home tutor for the rest of the school year, and then they’ll decide where I go to high school. I just want to go somewhere where nobody knows me.

  How are you? I’m so happy for you that you got the lead in the play. You deserve it. You’ll be great! I’m sorry I didn’t say congratulations when you got the part, but I didn’t know how when we were barely speaking.

  I know it’s my fault that we weren’t speaking, and I’m sorry. I never should have been friends with Dakota and those guys. I miss you a lot. If you want to visit again sometime, that would be great. You’re like the only person Moms would let me see. But I know you’re busy with the play and everything else. I wish I could see it.

  The note you gave me when you came the other day made me cry so hard. I messed up a lot of things, including our friendship. Being best friends with you is the only thing I miss about my old life.

  PLEASE write back even if it’s to say you hate me.

  Love,

  Vannah

  PS: I changed my name. I’m not called Savvy anymore. Now I’m Vannah. And I’m dropping A-Mom’s last name, so I’ll just be Vannah Stone. Remember when we used to play “secret identity”? Now I have one, LOL.

  I instinctively reached for my phone to text her before realizing, Yeah, that’s not going to work. I just wanted to send her some hearts. I didn’t have any words yet—I couldn’t choose between, Yeah, you were pretty awful and It’s okay, I forgive you since both were true. A heart would have said it all.

  Mom finished typing and slammed the laptop lid. “Argh! Duck-knocking hockey puck! Hockey hockey hockey puck puck puck! I told her eight hundred times to back up her data, and now she lost everything and she’s blaming me.”

  Mom’s face was bright pink, and she looked to be on the verge of tears. Sometimes she got angry at clients, but this was extreme. I decided to walk Penguin and give her some room to cool down.

  Fifteen minutes later, when Penguin and I came back, Mom had returned to speaking English and was typing at only 80 words per minute, instead of 180 per second. “Sorry I was crabby, Bloop. Thanks for walking the dog.”

  “Sure,” I said. Then I ventured, “So how was the coffee date?”

  She stopped typing, closed the lid of her laptop, and rolled her eyes. “Oh, it was great!” she said in her most sarcastic voice. “We went to this cute place on University, and we got a nice pot of coffee, and then thirty-seven different women stopped by our table to say hi to Conrad and ask why he hadn’t called them.”

  “What?”

  “Yep! He’s a total player. One of those guys who needs to have women falling all over him. And he wasn’t even embarrassed about it. You remember that first day at Herbie’s, when Darren was embarrassed about Pauline calling, and he said it was ‘work’? This guy didn’t even bother to pretend these women were clients. Ugh!”

  Yeah, that’s a major ugh. I felt bad for Mom. She was wearing the new shirt she’d bought online and paid express shipping for so she’d have it in time to wear today.

  “At least he saved Penguin,” I said.

  “And that’s the only reason I didn’t flip the table and walk out.” Mom sighed. “I should have known Conrad was too good to be true. Oh well. Better luck next time, right?”

  Speaking of luck, I still needed to track down Fran and grill her about the letters. “Have you seen Fran?”

  “Yeah, she was downstairs when I came in from my amazing dream date. She was about to do the recycling, so she might still be in the basement.”

  “Oh, great. I need to … uh…” What did I need to do that involved going to the basement? Aha! “I need to see if there are any empty shoe boxes down there. I think I’m going to do a diorama for my, uh, history project.”

  “What project?” Mom asked, but I was already out the door and down the stairs to the basement.

  I heard Fran humming and talking to herself as she mopped the laundry room. I crept toward her, trying to think of what I could say to open the conversation. Hey, Fran, I got your letter. Or, Hey, Fran, thanks for the letter. Or, Hey, Fran, WTH is up with the freaky, possibly magical letters you’ve been sliding under my door?

  I got the first part out: “Hey, Fran.”

  She jumped about six feet in the air and dropped the mop handle. “Jesus … Christ!” she yelled, with a truly impressive assortment of profanities between the “Jesus” and the “Christ.” She put one hand over her heart and wheezed. “Tryin’ to kill me.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

  She looked at me suspiciously as she picked up her mop. “Well, you accidentally did a real good job of it there.”

  “Sorry. I just had a question—”

  “I don’t have time for questions right now. And don’t step on the clean floor! Just go back up those stairs and let my floor dry before you mess it all up again.” Fran turned her back to me and resumed mopping.

  “Okay,” I said. “But I got this letter—”

  “Good for you!” she cried nervously. “Now take your dirty shoeprints upstairs. I don’t know anything about your letters.”

  Fran was definitely hiding something. She kept mopping the same part of the floor so she wouldn’t have to turn around and face me. And she said she didn’t know about my letters. Plural. But I’d only mentioned one letter.

  “How did you know there was more than one?”

  She threw down the mop in frustration. “I meant all your letters! None of your letters! I don’t concern myself with anybody’s mail!”

  Now, this was just untrue. Fran was a snoop, a gossip, and a meddler, and everyone in the building knew it. Last fall, when Emily Chang got a fat letter from Yale University, the whole building knew she’d been accepted before she even got home from her cello lesson.

  Of course Fran had something to do with the letters. Nothing happened in our building without Fran’s permission. Last time we talked, she threw me off the trail by playing dumb, but I was onto her now. “Please, Fran, the month’s almost over, and I’m dying to know—”

  “Bloop?” I heard Mom call from the top of the basement stairs. “I found a shoe box!”

  Fran was instantly relieved. “Hey, Kate!” she called. “Tell yer daughter to get her mangy feet off my clean floor!”

  Mom’s laugh echoed in the stairwell. “Come on up, Bloop! I got what you were looking for.”

  I looked pleadingly at Fran. She
had turned her back to me again. “Fine,” I said, then stomped back up the stairs. I’d find another opportunity to confront her. We lived in the same building, so she couldn’t avoid me forever. And I was going to get to the bottom of the mystery, one way or another.

  One more day.

  * * *

  I sat on my bed that night, thinking about my luck. So much had happened in the last four weeks, I felt like I had aged a year. I barely remembered what my life was like before I got the first letter. It was less complicated back then, for sure. But definitely less interesting than it was now.

  I pulled out the first letter and reread it. I had to admit, it didn’t sound at all like Fran. I looked over the instructions again.

  This is not a hoax. This is real, and here’s how you can prove it:

  Write a list of ten lucky little things you want to happen. At the end of the thirty days, look at the list and see what your good luck has brought you.

  It wasn’t quite the end of the thirty days, but it was close enough. Time to look at the list again, and see what my good luck had brought me.

  1.  Mom gets me a new phone.

  Check. And she gave it to me when I least expected it. And not only was it a new phone, it was a new new phone—not one of Mom’s old ones, but a nice fresh one straight out of the box. I suddenly realized that Mom could have kept the new phone for herself and given me the phone she was using. I would have been one thousand percent psyched and happy about it. Instead, she gave me the brand-new one and kept using her old phone. That was extremely cool of her, and I hadn’t even noticed.

  My new phone looked even luckier to me now.

  2.  Get a speaking part in the spring play.

  Check plus. A bad day led to a good audition, which led to me getting the lead. Which led me to star in a love scene with the hands-down-handsomest guy at school. Which was a scene I was going to perform in front of everybody in the auditorium, twice. I was going to get to kiss Jason onstage, right in front of Dakota and her girls, all because they made me cry on audition day. Sweet, sweet karma.

  3.  Dakota likes me and invites me to hang out at her house with everyone.