Lucky Little Things

by Janice Erlbaum

  u don’t know when ur not wanted

  go away

  I could not cry in the library. I would not cry in the library. I was not crying in the library. It was very dusty in there. Did I mention my allergies?

  After lunch I was waiting for science lab to start when there was an announcement over the loudspeaker, saying that the auditions for the play were rescheduled for that afternoon instead of Friday.

  Great. So now I would get to show off my puffy red eyes to the whole world.

  * * *

  When I got to the auditorium after last period, I looked better than I had in the morning, but I still appeared highly allergic to life.

  I waited for my turn in the back row, looking over the scene Ms. Engel gave us to read. It was a scene where a daughter was arguing with her father. I ran through the lines a few times out loud so I wouldn’t stumble on any words. This girl Brooke, the only person in our class who could read aloud from Romeo and Juliet and make it sound halfway understandable, was urgently whispering the lines to herself with her eyes closed. She was pretty much guaranteed to get the lead role.

  When it was my turn to take the stage, right before I opened my mouth, somebody made the sad-trombone sound that means “loser.” Then there was a bunch of giggling. If Ms. Engel heard it, she didn’t say anything.

  I felt hot and sweaty, like I’d just run a race, and my heart was pounding. When I started reading the lines from the script, they came out louder than I meant them to.

  “‘You don’t understand,’” I began. “‘You tell me I’m your whole life. You tell me every morning and every night, “Nadine, you’re my whole life.” But you’re not my whole life. I want to have a life of my own!’”

  I realized I was shouting, and the script didn’t say anything about shouting. But Ms. Engel looked pleased, and it sounded kind of cool, echoing in the auditorium, so I went with it.

  “‘You have to let me breathe! Ever since Mom died, you’ve been…’”

  Gulp. The words stuck in my throat. What was happening? I heard Mom’s words from that morning: Ever since Aunt Jenny died …

  I started the line over. “‘Ever since Mom died…’”

  I said a quick prayer. Please don’t make me break down in the middle of my audition and start bawling like a baby. But the tears started to come.

  I swallowed hard and kept going. “‘… you’ve been so angry at me. You act like I’m a bad daughter, but I’m not.’”

  Ms. Engel read the father’s line: “‘I never said that, Nadine. You’re my—’”

  “‘WHOLE LIFE,’” I read, cutting her off. “‘I know! And my whole life is about to begin. You have to let me start it.’”

  “‘I can’t let you get hurt. I can’t lose you.’” Ms. Engel finished the father’s line and just looked at me.

  From the back of the auditorium I heard someone clapping very slowly. It sounded sarcastic. I wanted to throw up. I knew I deserved to be mocked for my disastrous yelling, crying audition, but I wasn’t sure how much more mocking I could take.

  Then the clap began moving toward the stage, into the lights, and after I wiped my tears I could see the person behind it. It was none other than Melanie Lambright, the junior who had written Umbilical.

  Melanie was big and tall and dressed dramatically in all black, with pink streaks in her hair. I didn’t know her—eighth graders and eleventh graders don’t mix—but everybody knew who she was from last year’s school talent show, when she performed a monologue she wrote about a crazy rich woman on the subway. It was weird and funny and contained a few choice bits of adult language, which made her a hero in our eyes.

  As Melanie walked down the aisle, still slowly clapping, she kept her eyes fixed on me. Finally, she stopped in front of the stage and frowned.

  “Who are you,” she demanded. It was a statement, not a question.

  “I’m … Emma,” I said nervously. “Macintyre.”

  I wanted to get off the stage, out of the lights. Other people were waiting for their turn. I knew the mocking noises would start up again any second. Melanie just stared at me. I wasn’t sure if it was a good stare or a bad stare.

  “That was incredible,” she said.

  Ms. Engel nodded in agreement. “Remarkable. Great job.”

  I thought I might collapse with relief. “Th-thank you,” I stuttered.

  Melanie and Ms. Engel whispered to each other for a second. Ms. Engel smiled, and suddenly all the whispering about me that had happened earlier that day didn’t matter. I was “incredible,” “remarkable,” and “great.” I walked off the stage with my head high.

  Brooke grabbed my arm as I passed her seat. “Emma,” she said sternly, “you were so good. I hate you and everything about you.”

  From Brooke, this was a compliment.

  “Thanks,” I said, grinning, as I left the auditorium. “I hope you break your leg.”

  * * *

  I walked home from school slowly. As I got closer to our building, the great feeling from the audition began to wear off. I definitely wasn’t eager to see Mom after that morning’s argument. I hoped she’d be at a meeting, but there she was, sitting in front of her laptop in the kitchen.

  “Bloop.” Her voice sounded mellow, which meant she’d probably just gotten home from AA. “How was your day?”

  “Sucked,” I said. Then I reconsidered. “Except auditions.”

  “Yeah?” She closed the laptop and smiled. “You did well?”

  “I think so. I don’t know. Ms. Engel said I was great.”

  “Bloop! I’m so glad to hear it.”

  I loved it when Mom and I make up from a fight without talking about it. Then we can just act like it didn’t happen and move on. Now, this was the kind of luck I liked. The day had started out rocky, then got rockier, but then it started to smooth out. Maybe it could be salvaged after all.

  I looked around for the container of rice with my phone in it. “Where’s my phone?” I asked.

  “It’s right here,” Mom said, and reached into the cupboard. She handed me a smooth white box, still in the cellophane.

  A brand-new phone.

  My jaw hit the floor so hard I nearly broke my own foot. “Are you kidding me?”

  I was astonished. The last thing I expected after the fight that morning was to come home and find a new phone. Was Mom trying to make a point? Was she about to take it back and tell me I was too immature for it, and say I had to wait until August to get a new phone, like she’d been saying?

  I gaped at her.

  She smiled. “It’s yours. Open it.”

  I started unwrapping it, unfurling its charger, feeling its weight in my hand. I wished I could get video of myself unboxing it. It was SO much nicer than my old phone. I couldn’t wait to get it set up and start playing with it.

  But first I gave Mom a hug. “Mom! You are blowing minds here! You are the most legit mom ever!”

  “You’re welcome, and I know.”

  I let go of her and went back to caressing my lovely new phone. My old case wouldn’t fit, but I’d get a new one—a few new ones, to switch up according to my mood.

  Mom said, “I’ll help you write a thank-you note to Herbie. He gave it to me.”

  Herbie was one of her clients. Mom met him when she was volunteering at the library with a group that does tech support for elderly people, teaching them how to use email and helping them with the gadgets their well-meaning grandkids forced on them. Then Herbie became a paying client, hiring Mom to come to his apartment once every other week, for “maintenance,” which mostly meant listening to him complain about technology and talk about the good old days.

  I met Herbie once when Mom took me to the volunteer group’s annual party. He and I sat at a table together while everyone else was dancing and mingling, and he told me some jokes I didn’t fully understand but knew I probably shouldn’t be hearing. Then he gave me ten bucks and told me to go buy myself a nice cigar. Herbie was super old, like al
most ninety, but he was awesome. Mom said he always tried to overpay her and act like it was a mistake.

  Mom continued. “He says his grandnephew gave it to him.” She switched into an imitation of Herbie’s voice. “What the hell do I need this for? He wants me to start online dating?”

  I clutched the phone to my chest. “He’s not going to want it back, is he?”

  She laughed and shook her head no. “Herbie practically threw it at me when I saw him today. ‘Get it away from me! You know what these things do? They suck your soul out through your eyeballs.’ His grandnephew wanted him to have it so they could FaceTime. Herbie says, ‘I already learned the Skype. I’m not learning anything else that’s new.’”

  “You swear this is mine?” I asked. “I won’t have to give it back?” I didn’t mention that I couldn’t possibly give it back because it had already fused to my hand. The phone and I had become one. “What’s the catch?”

  “No catch. Except if you lose it, you don’t get a nice new one to replace it. You can go back to your old phone.”

  She handed me the container of rice with my old phone in it. My old phone—it had seen me through so much. I felt a little guilty, knowing that I was about to cast it aside.

  Oh well!

  I played with the new phone all night, downloading apps and testing them out. I was so engrossed, I didn’t realize until I was drifting off to sleep:

  I’d just gotten item number 1 on my luck list.

  Five

  My good-luck streak continued the next morning. I’d been dreading the sight of Savvy and Tyler on the sidewalk outside school, but there was no sign of Savvy, at least not from a distance. As soon as I got close, Brooke the Drama Star and her friend Harrison pulled me over to stand with them.

  “You have to help us,” said Brooke. “Mr. Auchen’s mole needs a name.”

  “Um, why?” I asked. Like there would be a logical reason to name a mole.

  “Because it’s practically an independent being,” explained Harrison. “Therefore, it deserves a name.”

  Harrison had been Brooke’s best friend since fifth grade. They were by far the smartest kids in our class, and they were always together—before school, at lunch, during any free period. He was the only person allowed to call Brooke by her given name, Brooklyn, and he was weirdly possessive of that privilege. I couldn’t tell if he was gay, in love with her, or both.

  “How about Dobby the Face Mole?” suggested Brooke.

  Harrison put his hand on his chin in an exaggerated I’m-thinking pose. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m leaning toward Bernice.”

  “Call it Guaca,” I said. “Then its full name will be Guaca Mole.”

  Brooke opened her eyes wide. “Emma Macintyre! You are today’s winner of Name That Mole!”

  * * *

  Not only was Savvy missing from the sidewalk that morning, but she wasn’t in homeroom and didn’t appear in class. Tyler Hoff didn’t seem to care. I saw him before social studies, massaging the shoulders of notorious airhead Venice Biandi, who Lewis had once described as “a walking blond joke.” I had a brief flash of hope that maybe the thing Tyler had with Savvy wasn’t a thing after all.

  Right before lunch, the cast list for the play was posted outside Ms. Engel’s classroom. Everybody was crowded around it, so I couldn’t see anything. I heard Brooke say “Yes!” so I figured she got either the lead or the part of the dead mom, which was almost as good. She ran off with Harrison to celebrate. Then this girl Azalia turned and gave me a death glare as she walked away. “Good luck, Emma.”

  I shimmied into the open spot, scanned the list, and gasped. So that’s why Azalia tried to jinx me.

  I got the lead. Me. The lead part. I got it.

  Brooke was playing the mom.

  Like with my new phone, I didn’t want to believe it was real without proof. People around me were saying congratulations, some of them sarcastic, some of them sincere. I heard someone repeat the news to the people behind them: “Emma’s the girl, Carter’s the dad, and Brooke’s the dead mom.” But I still couldn’t believe I’d actually gotten the lead part. I thought for sure I’d wind up playing one of the neighbors or, like, Townsperson #2, which is the role I usually get.

  I checked the list again, drawing a line with my finger from NADINE to EMMA MACINTYRE, making sure I’d read it correctly and I hadn’t been cast to play the father.

  “Okay, good for you, let someone else see now.” Lewis the Troll pushed past me to look for his name. “Yes!”

  He had been cast to play Julian. I didn’t know what that meant, but his name was not far below mine and Carter’s, so I guessed it was a decent-sized part.

  Venice Biandi, the ditz with the massage-able shoulders, came up to me and started gushing. “I knew you were going to get it,” she said, launching into her usual mile-a-minute monologue. “You were amazing at the audition. You should see if they recorded it.” She stuck to me, continuing to jabber as the crowd moved toward the lunch room. “If you put it on YouTube, you never know who could see it. My sister’s friend got to be in a commercial because of her YouTube. Now she’s gonna maybe move to L.A., and we’re gonna visit to, like, scope it out…”

  Venice sat down at the far end of the Dakota table, where she’d started eating lunch lately, hoping to make her way toward a top seat. Since she and I were talking with each other, I sat down next to her. I felt weird about sitting at their table, since they had made it so clear that I was unwanted, but they just ignored the fact that I was there. I kept waiting for Savvy to show up, but she must have been absent again.

  Down at the other end of the table, Lewis was crowing about his success.

  “I’m gonna kill this part. Watch. I’m gonna murder it. I’m going to exterminate it.”

  Dakota, Naturi, and Sierra were humoring him, but they seemed to be distracted by something on their phones. A few bits of conversation drifted my way.

  “She didn’t.”

  “She did.”

  “Stop.”

  “I can’t imagine it.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  For once, it didn’t seem like they were talking about me. By some good fortune, there was another girl they’d decided to torture that day. Whoever it was, I didn’t envy her.

  * * *

  That afternoon in English, while Madelyn Michaud was giving an endless, grinding presentation on the epic greatness of her personal heroes, the 2016 U.S. Olympic women’s gymnastics team, I started thinking about my luck list. I was only a few days into my lucky month, but I already knew I needed to make a few changes.

  For starts, I had to cross out number 3:

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

  I no longer wanted Dakota to like me, which was handy, because that was never going to happen. She acted as if she didn’t even like her own friends most of the time—they were always being “such dumpster fires” or “total garbage people.” I still envied Dakota, the way most of the girls in our class did, for her thick hair and her unholy self-confidence and her absentee parents, but I no longer wanted to hang out at her house. My new number 3 was literally the opposite of that:

  3.  Dakota leaves me alone.

  While I was thinking about my list, I decided to cross out number 4, too:

  4.  Make out with Tyler Hoff.

  And change it to:

  4.  Make out with a guy I like.

  Rest in peace, my crush on Tyler Hoff, for you are dead to me now.

  It was a solemn and historic moment, me giving up this two-year romantic fantasy—truly, this was the end of an era. If this had happened two months ago, I could be commemorating it with Savvy and a ceremonial tub of ice cream.

  Speaking of Savvy, there was number 9 on my list:

  9.  Savvy stops being weird to me.

  I wasn’t ready to cross this one out.

  I mean, obviously, she didn’t want to be best friends anymore
. Obviously, she had a whole new set of friends, including the guy I used to be in love with, the one she “hooked up” with, whatever that meant. But just hours before that happened, Savvy and I ate lunch together like always. What was I supposed to think? She wasn’t acting like herself lately, but she was still Savvy—the same Savvy who I’d been having sleepovers with since we were eight years old. Savvy, whose bedroom in our thirty-room mansion had a secret passageway behind the fireplace that connected to the fireplace in mine. Savvy, who had been there squeezing my hand at Aunt Jenny’s funeral. She and her moms were part of my family.

  I’d given up hope of joining Savvy in the Dakota group. But I didn’t want to give up on our friendship. Mom and Aunt Jenny used to tell the story about the time when they were in their twenties and had a fight over a guy, and they didn’t talk to each other for three years. Then Aunt Jenny’s dad died, and she called Mom, and they made up right away and became best friends again. They always laughed when they told the story of the fight, because that’s how silly they were to let a guy come between them.

  Things could still work out with Savvy. Maybe our friendship wouldn’t go back to being the way it was before, but I had faith in the lucky letter. In less than one week, I’d gotten a new phone and the lead in the play, and those were two major things I wanted to happen. And I’d been even luckier than I’d hoped. I’d only asked for a speaking part in the play, and I’d gotten the biggest speaking part in the whole show.

  I thought back to the day of the audition, and how unlucky I’d felt going into it. I’d thought it was the worst possible luck that the auditions had been moved to the exact day when I was a total mess. I didn’t feel lucky when I almost embarrassed myself in front of everybody by bawling onstage. But what if I’d been in a better mood that day? Would I still have gotten the part if I hadn’t been so upset?

  The letter said that some things would be obvious right away, while other things would take time to reveal themselves.

  Like getting the lead in the show.

  Funny, I thought, how unlucky events can lead to lucky ones.