Just My Luck

by Jeff Anderson

  As we left the booth, Marquis showed me his prize—a tiny rubber duck reading a book. “I’m a lucky duck.”

  “Congratulations,” I said. “Cascarones, next?”

  “I don’t know.” Marquis crossed his arms. “That confetti and eggshell stuff gets stuck in my hair for weeks.”

  “Not everything is about your hair, Marquis.”

  “Well, almost everything is,” Marquis sighed. “But I guess we can go there next.”

  “All right!” I smiled.

  We searched for the cascarone booth,

  A bunch of kids were carrying around fruit cups—a plastic cup filled with cantaloupe, watermelon, mango, and jicama with a squeeze of lime and a heavy sprinkle of chilé powder.

  “We need to get one of those before we go too,” I said. I was getting snacky.

  “Do you want a fruit cup or a cascarone?”

  “Cascarone.”

  Since we didn’t find the cascarone booth right away, Marquis spotted Mr. Akins, wearing a black golf shirt the same as his. “I’ll be right back.”

  He walked right up to Mr. Akins and started talking, probably about how they were dressed as twins. Marquis was like that. He wasn’t afraid of anything—except cascarones in his hair and curses and coyote skins and brujas. I walked over and stood nearby so I could hear.

  “At the present time,” Mr. Akins was telling Marquis, “the cascarones booth is without a sponsor. It seems the sponsor had a cold-sore-related incident and is unable to distribute the cascarones. We are awaiting their imminent delivery.”

  “My friend here really wants to get some cascarones.” Marquis pointed at me, standing there, looking like a goofball. I waved, awkwardly. “When do you think they’ll be here?” Marquis asked.

  “We’re working on it at this very moment.” Mr. Akins pointed to an empty table—no sign, no people, and most importantly, no cascarones. “I can tell you the booth will be right over there.”

  Disappointed, we started roaming the rectangle of booths again.

  “Hey, if there are no cascarones like in Janie’s vision,” I wondered aloud, “will that mess up my chance to get to know Abhi?”

  “Relax. Mr. Akins says they’ll be imminently.” Marquis stopped and pulled a few tickets out of his pocket. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yep.” Which was always my answer to that question. Is there any other response? Seriously.

  “There’s the cotton candy booth over there on the other side that crowd.” Marquis waved the orange tickets. “My treat.”

  To get to the cotton candy booth, we passed through the huge mob of kids.

  “What’s going on here?” Marquis looked around as we snaked through half the population of Davy Crockett Middle School.

  “They’re filling up the dunking booth!” Chewy Johnson yelled over the rowdy crowd. “Mr. Stankowitz is up first—as soon as the tank is full.”

  Marquis and I stood on our toes to get a better view.

  Holding a black hose, Manny the custodian stood on a ladder, filling the tank.

  The booth was a dark-blue plastic container about the size of my grandpa’s shed. It had this clear plastic on the front so you could see through to the water in the tank. It was only half full.

  “It looks like a giant fish tank,” Marquis said.

  “They’re going to need a lot more water.” I nodded.

  “Man, I’ve got to find a bathroom,” Chewy said, turning to leave.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t watch the hose so close,” José said to Chewy as they passed each other.

  Where’d he come from?

  “That clear plastic thing on the front lets you see the teachers swimming in circles like goldfish in a bowl after we DUNK THEM!” El Pollo Loco cheered and danced around in a circle.

  Mr. Stankowitz inspected a little bench at the top. The sun glinted off his white arms as he stood perched high up on the dunking booth ladder.

  Blinded, we all looked away.

  “How’s it work?” Marquis asked.

  “See that stick coming out of the side of the dunking booth?” José pointed. “The target is on the end of it. If the ball hits it dead center on the red part—and hard enough—down goes Mr. Stankowitz.”

  “What will happen to those three strands of hair Mr. Stankowitz combs over the top of his head when he hits the water?” Marquis asked.

  “Wait here and find out,” El Pollo Loco said. “He’s going up as soon as the tank is filled. Coach Ostraticki is after that.”

  “You know what would make this even better?” Marquis turned to me.

  “Cotton candy?”

  “And a Coke.” Marquis said, “We’ll check back later.”

  It was a sugar 911. We hurried through the rest of the crowd to the cotton candy booth. As I followed close behind Marquis, I looked around for Janie’s fortune-telling booth. I was still curious about her vision.

  Marquis wove through the crowd, picking the path. I followed and kept looking around the festival. So I didn’t even see Marquis stop. I accidentally plowed into him, knocking him forward into a big guy, who lost his footing and dropped his fruit cup.

  “Somebody’s gonna pay for this!” The big guy turned around, furious.

  It was Dilum.

  CHAPTER 23

  FRUIT OF DILUM

  “You knocked my fruit cup on the ground, fool!” Dilum shouted at Marquis.

  Oh, no! Now my bad luck was affecting my best friend. Quickly, I ducked behind a girl who had loads of teased-out hair and watched. The crowd backed up, making room for Dilum to fight Marquis.

  “What’s your problem?” Dilum towered over Marquis, covering him in his shadow.

  “Nothing whatsoever. Dilum, right?” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Marquis. I know your sister Abhi.”

  Dilum slapped down Marquis’s hand. “I don’t care who you know or who you are. You don’t shove me and get away with it.”

  The crowd started chanting, “Fight. Fight! FIGHT!”

  Marquis gulped. “I can assure you I wasn’t trying to shove you. My friend and I are just trying to get to the cotton candy booth.” Marquis looked around for me. I stuck out my hand from behind the teased-hair mound and waved.

  “Well, isn’t that nice?” Dilum started in. “It’s going to be even harder to eat it with a sore jaw, you stupid klutz.”

  I’d never seen anybody so mad about a spilled fruit cup. And it was all my fault.

  I had to do something fast. I had to save Marquis.

  Marquis attempted to back away, but the crowd was too close for him to move. He was trapped. Dilum pulled back his hand.

  I did the only thing I could think of. From behind the hair, I bellowed: “Are those the cascarones over there?”

  The crowd stirred, pushing Dilum one way and Marquis another, turning back and forth, hunting for the cascarones that had finally arrived. Except they hadn’t arrived. So people kept looking—everywhere.

  Marquis and I fled to other side of the crowd—out of Dilum’s view.

  “You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowd, but you can yell ‘cascarone.’” I said. “There’s no law against that.”

  “Let’s just keep moving.”

  “Hey, look!” I said. “There’s the cotton candy booth and there’s no line.”

  Things were looking up. We escaped Dilum without a punch, a warm sugar smell filled the air, and there was no line at the cotton candy booth.

  Marquis stared forward. “That was close.”

  I guided him to the booth. “I thought you were buying me cotton candy.”

  “That’s all you want from me—my tickets.” Marquis handed over the tickets, cracking a smile.

  Mr. Gonzales, our math teacher, made Marquis’s cotton candy first. He twirled a pointy paper towel roll thing in a big metal bowl on top of a machine.

  My mouth watered. The pink glassy strings glistened in the sunlight as he handed Marquis the cotton candy.

  “I’ll make yours, Zack!” Soph
ia’s mom nudged Mr. Gonzales to the side with her hip. She rolled the cardboard cone around in the cotton candy machine. Mrs. Segura didn’t do it like Mr. Gonzales—at all.

  “I’m new at this, mijo!” She apologized over and over as the cloud got bigger and bigger and bigger. After a few minutes she handed me a cotton candy the size of a human head. “I hope you like it.”

  “I do.” I was in awe. “This is huge!”

  Marquis looked at his. “No fair. Yours is twice as big.”

  And it was. It was an enormous pink cloud. My luck was changing, I thought, as the cottony sweetness melted on my tongue.

  CHAPTER 24

  WHO’S DRIVING THE TRAIN?

  I had plenty of my fluffy cloud of cotton candy left, but my stomach hurt. Marquis’s was long gone. We strolled by the booths of hot dogs and sodas.

  “I can’t even think about food,” I said.

  The noon sun bore down, and little beads of sweat formed on my temples.

  “You want the rest of this?” I held out what was left of my pink cloud.

  As Marquis finished off the last bit, my eyes landed on a huge banner: DAVY CROCKETT TRAIN DEPOT. “Hey, look at that!” I elbowed Marquis.

  “All aboard!” Blythe’s dad wore blue-and-white pinstriped overalls and a train conductor hat. And Blythe was dressed as his twin. Except, of course, for the blue cardigan worn on top of her overalls.

  “Come ride the train my dad made!” Blythe yelled. “Only two tickets. All profits go to the student council!”

  “This could be a cool way to check out the whole festival,” Marquis said.

  “Fiesta-val,” Blythe sneered. “Tickets?”

  Marquis and I each handed Blythe two orange tickets.

  As Marquis and I walked around the train, admiring it, people began loading onto the train cars, which were made from four red oil drums turned on their side. A seat hole was cut out of the top of each empty oil drum. I kneeled down and examined the four wheels that were on a two-by-four axle.

  “Look at that engine,” Marquis called me to the front of the train. “Is it a riding lawn mower?”

  “Well, not anymore.” Mr. Balboa beamed. The mower was black with shiny chrome mufflers poking out of the sides of the enormous engine. The monster tires were larger than the ones on a riding mower.

  “This is awesome.” Marquis reached out his hand toward the engine.

  “Don’t touch that.” Mr. Balboa warned. “It’s very hot.”

  “Did you make this yourself?” Marquis asked.

  “I did.” Mr. Balboa stood tall. “I work at the motorcycle shop and I added some new pistons and mufflers.” He grabbed the bill of his conductor cap. “I calibrated the engine to go even faster than we’ll go today.”

  “How fast can it go?” Marquis was in full-on interview mode, like he was writing an article for the school website.

  “Faster than you’d think.” With a red rag like dad uses at Instant Lube, Mr. Balboa polished a spot on the engine. “On the weekends, I race riding lawn mowers.”

  “He almost won a couple of times.” Blythe bragged.

  “I will for sure with this one,” He patted the seat of his suped-up mower. “She’s got power! But talk is cheap.”

  We climbed in the last passenger car, right behind Blythe and straddle the beam, which ran down the middle of each oil drum. I sat in the front of the barrel and Marquis behind me.

  After Blythe’s dad climbed onto the engine and sat behind the wheel, I tapped Blythe’s shoulder. “Hey, I thought you were going to be the driver. How come you’re only taking tickets?”

  Blythe spun around. “Daddy says I have to watch him a few more times before I can take the wheel.”

  “Yeah, and he also said talk is cheap,” Marquis tapped the side of the barrel.

  Blythe sneered. “Mark my words, Mister. I will drive.” She spun around. “It’s time to leave, Daddy.” Blythe was a bossy assistant conductor too.

  The mower belched smoke as Mr. Balboa pulled the throttle on the side of the engine.

  One of the first things we passed was Janie’s fortune-telling booth. I figured Mr. Akins had approved her wild-cheetah-print scarf, because she was wearing it—on her head. The gold jacket she wore glowed in the sun. I squinted. It looked like it had flashing red lights attached to it. That couldn’t be. I needed a closer look.

  “Janie!” Marquis cupped his hand and yelled from the seat behind me.

  In the middle of her crystal ball reading, Janie threw her hands in the air, stood, and whirled around, her gold jacket twirled around too, almost floating like a queen’s robe. “It’s Madame Bustamante!” She bellowed. She bowed to nonexistent applause and sat back down.

  “Get that? Madame Bustamante, not Janie,” I turned to Marquis. “She told you!”

  “And that’s all she’s telling me today.”

  “You’re not going to her booth with me?” I whined.

  “No sir. I’ve had enough magic. Today, I am cotton candy full and magic free.” He burped to punctuate his sentence.

  The train drove around the outside of the whole festival in a big circle.

  We passed the silly-string station, the strength-o-meter, and the balloon darts.

  “I want to try my hand at the toss-a-rubber-chicken-in-a-bucket booth.” Marquis patted me on the shoulders from behind. “I am on a winning streak.”

  Just then, the oil-drum train passed the rubber-duck races, where my losing streak began today. “I think I need to cut my losses. No more games for me. It’s a waste of tickets.”

  “So you are going to see Ja—I mean Madame Bustamante—instead?”

  “Yes, I am. But let’s meet at the dunking booth when we’re done. I want to see if Coach Ostraticki is going for a swim in his track suit.”

  “Sure thing, Zack.”

  Just then, we rounded the corner by the dunk tank. Things had already started with Mr. Stankowitz. The train stopped to let a group of kids pass.

  We were just in time to see the ball hit the target with a BOOM!

  Splash!

  In went Mr. Stankowitz. He rolled around in the water like he was being attacked by a shark. José was twirling around laughing.

  After Mr. Stankowitz stopped flailing, one of the strands from the top of his head stuck right between his eyes like seaweed on a diver.

  “Well, now we know what happens to his comb-over when it gets wet.” Marquis nudged me.

  Raymond was the next person in line to dunk Mr. Stankowitz.

  Mr. Stankowitz locked the bench into place but had some trouble climbing back up on it. His Davy Crockett T-shirt stuck to him like tight bike shorts.

  “I’ll never be able to un-see that!” El Pollo Loco yelled, shaking his head, running away from the dunking booth fast.

  “Get him, Raymond!” Sophia yelled. “He gave me a bad progress report last week.”

  “Looks like she hired a hit man to dunk Mr. Stankowitz,” Marquis said. We turned in our train seat to look back.

  Everybody cheered Raymond on. He wound up his arm like he was pitching in the World Series.

  The crowd rumbled.

  Mr. Stankowitz shivered and seemed to hug himself, the strands of hair all sticking to his face. I felt sorry for him.

  “Get him again!” Sophia screamed.

  “Awww!” The passengers complained when the train started moving again at the best part.

  Raymond let the ball go and it catapulted to the target, hitting square in the center.

  BOOM!

  Splash!

  Down went Mr. Stankowitz again.

  “Have you had enough?” Sophia yelled, knocking on the clear plastic of the tank.

  As we got out of range of the dunking booth, I turned to Marquis. “Wow! Looks like the dunking booth’s going to be pretty exciting.”

  Mr. Balboa interrupted, blowing a foghorn as the train came back to the station. José had started following the train and was catching up as it slowed down to stop.
“Hey, kid, stop running with the train! We’re coming into the station.”

  El Pollo Loco ran along the side of the mower, trying to talk to Mr. Balboa. “Can you make it go any faster?”

  “Running next to the train is strictly prohibited!” Mr. Akins shouted into the crackling bullhorn.

  Mr. Balboa blew the foghorn so close to El Pollo Loco’s head that José finally stopped running and grabbed both his ears.

  “Ay!” El Pollo Loco shouted and rolled around on the grass. “That hurt, Mr. Blythe’s Dad!”

  As we climbed off of the train, I overheard Blythe begging, sweet as cotton candy. “Daddy, you said I could drive. Pretty please.” Her voice dropped lower as if she were going to feed him a poison apple. “Besides, I already told everybody.”

  Mr. Balboa nodded. Man, she was bossy: b-o-s-s-y.

  “I’m off to conquer rubber chickens.” Marquis headed off to the other end of the fiesta-val, waving.

  “I’m off to conquer … something,” I said. To tell you the truth, I didn’t really want to split up with Marquis, but if there was any chance at all that the crystal ball could help, I had to at least try.

  Out of nowhere José grabbed my arm—startling me. “How was the train ride, Zack?”

  “Bouncy.” I shrugged.

  “All right!” El Pollo Loco leapt up and down, clapping his hands. “Is it fast?’

  “It felt fast to me.”

  “Want to ride again?” He asked.

  “With you?” I was confused.

  “Yeah, come on.” José begged.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  My mouth opened, but nothing came out. Why was El Pollo Loco treating me like a friend all of a sudden?

  “I need somebody to ride with me.” He bounced like a pogo stick. “Come ooooooon!”

  “I’m on my way to get my fortune told.” I pointed toward Janie’s booth.

  “Oh, wow!” José spoke fast. “Janie’s fortune-telling booth—or I should say Madame Bustamante’s fortune-telling booth—is so awesome! I went before the dunking tank opened.”

  “Really?” I was surprised to hear El Pollo Loco say something nice about Janie.