Melanie was either reading my texts or reading my mind. “That’s like, almost exactly what they said to me.”
“Yeah, well. That was three years ago. And I just found out last week that one of my old ‘best friends’ is in the hospital with anorexia. And what’s strange is, I wished for so many bad things to happen to her, but when I heard that something bad did happen, I felt really sad for her, and I wished it hadn’t happened.”
“Why were you sad for her?” I could picture Dakota starving herself to death and me being totally cheerful about it.
“Because her karma sucks.”
Karma? I remembered Aunt Jenny using that word a few times. The way she’d explained it to me was, “It means everything that comes around, goes around.” But I wasn’t fully clear on it, so I just nodded.
Melanie took a sip of her latte and continued. “I mean, look what happens. People are mean to me, so I stay home and write. They’re all hanging out, posting pictures, and I’m miserable and alone. I write all the time, and my writing gets better. Then I win an award for writing. Then the school decides to produce my play. And next year, I’m going to have a good shot at a full college scholarship, all because of a play I would never have written if those girls hadn’t been such bitches.”
This was exactly what I was starting to notice: how everything was related, how the bad things that happened sometimes led to good things later. Melanie’s story of triumph almost gave me a ray of hope, until I remembered how messed up everything was.
“So I’m grateful to those girls,” Melanie continued. “And now they have to watch me succeed, which is the worst thing I could possibly do to them.”
“Like the motto,” I said. “Living well is the best revenge.”
“Exactly! I felt jealous of those girls, and now they feel jealous of me. So we’re even! But one of them is suffering from anorexia, and that’s horrible.”
I understood. No matter how upset I was at Savvy, I never wanted her to be used and humiliated that way.
I thanked Melanie for the talk, and for saving me from those girls on the sidewalk. Then I walked slowly the rest of the way home. I wasn’t going to tell Mom what happened with Savvy’s picture—I knew she’d give me a huge lecture about safety and privacy, call Savvy’s moms, and make everything worse. Fortunately, Mom was on the phone when I got home.
I closed my door, sat on my bed, and pulled out my luck list, which I’d hidden under a bunch of papers for school. The list was covered in changes and checkmarks and things I’d crossed off.
What if I tried to use my luck to help Savvy somehow? She was already being punished for fooling around with Tyler. And now she didn’t have a single friend on her side. I knew what that felt like. Later, after she was out of this mess, she could tell me she was sorry for getting caught up in the social game—and I’d tell her how much she hurt me, but I’d forgive her. And then, decades into the future, we could tell our daughters the story of how we almost fought over a guy.
There was no way for me to help her without some superhuman luck. Even with superhuman luck it was a long shot. But it wouldn’t hurt to try.
I scratched out item number 8:
8.Mom forgets my upcoming dentist appointment.
Then I wrote:
8. Help Savvy.
I had just put the list back in its hiding place when Mom ended her call and poked her head into my room.
“Bloop.”
“Bloop.”
“How was your day?” she asked.
“Okay. Rehearsal was frustrating. Carter still doesn’t know his lines.”
“Good thing I know all of them,” Mom said. It was true—in the process of helping me learn my lines, she had memorized the father’s part. “If they need an understudy, tell them I’d be happy to step in.”
I smiled, but I wasn’t doing a great job of acting like nothing was wrong. I still needed to get out of her face for a few minutes and get myself straight. “I better walk Penguin,” I said, sliding off my bed.
“Thanks, Bloop.”
I put on his leash and grabbed my coat. I was halfway out the door when Mom stopped me.
“Oh, hey, I forgot. You have an appointment with the dentist next Thursday, so you might have to leave rehearsal early.”
Damn, I thought as the door swung closed behind me. That was fast.
* * *
The week wore on, and Savvy did not come back to school. She didn’t answer texts, she didn’t answer emails, her Instagram and Snapchat were gone. She must have been super-mega-extra-fully-forever grounded. Tyler had been suspended from school for the week, which was good, because I never wanted to see his face again.
Since I couldn’t reach Savvy any other way, I decided to go by her apartment and slide a note under her door, just a few lines to let her know that I was still on her side. A letter slid under my door had brought good things—maybe my note would do the same for her.
I went by her building after rehearsal on Friday. Someone came out of the building and held the door for me to enter.
I climbed the stairs with their familiar musty smell. Savvy and I used to run up and down those stairs together all the time, but it had been months since I’d been there. It made me feel nostalgic for our old friendship. So I decided that, rather than slip the note under the door, I’d knock and see if she was home.
Savvy’s mom Charise answered my knock. She was surprised to see me.
“Hey, Emma.” Charise did not invite me inside, but I could smell something delicious coming from the kitchen, as usual—she was a private chef and was probably making a dessert for one of her clients. She stood in the doorway and folded her arms over her apron. “Savvy is not allowed to see her friends right now.”
“Sorry for stopping by,” I said. I handed her the note. “Can you please give this to her? I just wanted to tell her I hope she’s okay.”
Charise looked me dead in the eye as she unfolded my note. Then she read it aloud:
Dear Savvy,
I’m so so so so sorry that Tyler turned out to be such a terrible person. You didn’t deserve what he did to you. Even though we haven’t been close these past few weeks, I still think of you as my best friend.
Love, Emma
Charise considered the note, considered me, and made a decision. “Come in,” she said. “You get two minutes.”
Savvy was on the couch, reading a book. When she saw me, she ducked her head and started to cry. I ran over to give her a hug, then sat down beside her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Emma, I’m so sorry I was mean to you. I never should have been friends with those guys—”
“It’s okay,” I told her. Now I was crying, too. “All I care about is how you are.”
She sniffled and wiped her nose with her sleeve. “I can’t believe Tyler did this to me.”
I could. That’s the thing about super-good-looking guys—they can do whatever they want, and nobody says no to them. Not even adults.
“He’s the worst person in the world,” I said. “He should die a slow and painful death.”
Savvy nodded ruefully. “He kept begging me to send him a pic. I said no, but he said the others wouldn’t want me around if I was going to be a little baby. Dakota and Sierra told me everybody does it—they said they send pics to guys all the time. So I sent him a Snap. And then he sent the screenshot to all his friends.” She started ugly-crying again.
I felt so helpless. I would have done anything to make things better for Savvy, but there was nothing I could do. My friend was suffering, and I couldn’t do anything to help her. This must have been how Mom felt when Aunt Jenny got sick.
Charise watched us with folded arms. “All right,” she said. “Time’s up.”
I gave Savvy another hug. “I’ll come see you again soon,” I whispered.
She squeezed me, so I knew she heard.
I let Charise escort me back to the apartment door. “Thank you for letting me come in,” I said.
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She nodded. “Next time, I won’t. I know you weren’t a part of this. But she’s punished for the rest of the school year, and that means no visitors.”
“When does she get to come back to school?” I asked.
Charise raised her voice so it could be heard in the living room. “Savannah doesn’t get to go back to school.”
I didn’t understand. Of course she’d go back to school. Everybody had to go to school. It was the law. Her moms couldn’t punish her by keeping her home forever, could they?
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean,” said Charise, “that Savannah’s not going back to Knights, or going to any other school. She’s being homeschooled from now on.”
Then she closed the door in my face.
Eight
That weekend, the third in my lucky month, we went to Grandma’s beach house on Fire Island. It was a three-hour trip that involved a subway, two trains, a van, and a ferry. Last time we made the trek, Aunt Jenny was with us, so it didn’t feel like three hours. Time flew by when she was around.
I closed my eyes as the ferry carried us to the island. I could hear last year’s conversation so clearly. Aunt Jenny and Mom were talking about how hard it was to find a boyfriend at their age.
“The good ones are already married,” Mom said.
Aunt Jenny nodded. “Even the bad ones are married.”
They laughed. I knew she was talking about their friend Casey and her horrible husband, Ken, so I laughed, too.
“I still have hope, though,” Aunt Jenny continued. “My horoscope this week was ‘Tell the universe what you want, and it will echo it back to you.’ Isn’t that cool?”
I shrugged. Sounded like mumbo jumbo to me. But if it worked for Aunt Jenny, it was cool.
She continued. “So yesterday I sat down and made a list of things I wanted in a boyfriend. Like, he has to have a job. He doesn’t have to love the job. But he can’t hate the job. I don’t want to be with someone who’s miserable every day.”
“You’re asking a lot,” Mom said, laughing. “I think I’d be happy with just the job part.”
“Well, you have to be very specific with the universe,” Aunt Jenny said. “You have to let it know exactly what you’re looking for. And part of that is sitting down and deciding, ‘These are the things I want.’ You have to pick a destination; otherwise you’ll spend all your time going in circles.”
I snapped back to the present. Aunt Jenny was gone. She would never reach her destination or find that perfect boyfriend who fit everything on her list. The universe was a jerk.
When we stepped off the boat, Grandma was waving at us from the dock. She greeted us with lipstick-y kisses that smelled like gin. I saw Mom stiffen a little bit, but she smiled and told Grandma how happy we were to see her.
“Wait until you see the house. The whole front of the deck needs to be powerwashed. You know, I got the Luss boy—what’s his name, Carl? I got him to do it for me last year for fifteen dollars, but this year he wants double. Can you imagine? I said, ‘You need double what you got last year? Did they raise the price of water?’ And he says to me…”
Grandma’s complaints lasted the whole ten-minute walk to her house, and they didn’t stop there.
“I told him at the market, ‘I’m not buying your rotten lettuce anymore.’ Last three times I bought lettuce, it was slimy on the bottom, but they put a piece of paper towel in there so you can’t see.”
In a way, it was good that Grandma talked about nothing all the time. It was like having a TV on in the background. We didn’t have to have any difficult conversations or talk about painful memories. Mom leafed through magazines and stared at the ocean and said “Uh-huh” every so often. I made popcorn on the stove the old-fashioned way and said “Uh-huh” whenever Mom did.
Everything in the city—school, the show, Savvy, and Dakota and her crew—seemed very far away. And since Grandma never asks anybody else how they’re doing, I didn’t have to talk about any of it.
“I’m gonna go see who’s around,” I said.
“Okay,” said Mom. “Have fun.”
“Don’t go too far,” said Grandma. “And if you stop by the market while you’re out, see if they have any decent produce or if it’s all garbage. It’s outrageous, what they try to get away with, with the prices they charge…”
I let the door swing closed after me and walked around town aimlessly. It wouldn’t be beach weather for a few months—it was May, but it was chilly and windy out, and there weren’t many people around. I put the hood of my sweatshirt up and headed for the water.
The wind on the beach was fierce. Walking into it was a struggle. The waves were gray and foamy, and they sprayed mist along the shore. I was cold and wet, and the wind blew at me hard, but I kept going.
I am an Antarctic explorer, I told myself. I must reach the base camp before the sun goes down or I’ll die.
There was somebody farther down the beach looking for shells. This person is my only hope, I thought. I must catch up to this person or I’ll die.
I wasn’t actually going to fling myself at whoever it was and beg them to save me from the crippling cold. It was just a game to play with myself, to keep my legs moving and my brain occupied. I got closer and closer to my mystery savior, and realized it was Bobby Dudderman, who I’d known since we were both six years old. Us kids all called him Bobby the Dud.
Bobby was looking intently at the rocks and shells on the ground. He had been collecting stuff from the beach forever. His pockets were always ripped from carrying things around. He showed no interest in playing games, or socializing in general. If his parents hadn’t forced him to go to other kids’ parties, we probably wouldn’t even have known his name.
He looked up as I approached. He had grown two inches and gotten a super-short haircut since I last saw him. It was weird how different it made him look.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” he said, and went back to looking at the sand.
I passed him and kept walking for a while, then sat down on a washed-up log. Bobby moved slowly and deliberately down the beach. I envied him. He didn’t need other people. He was perfectly happy being himself, by himself. He would never know the pain of losing a friend, the way Mom and I did.
I stared at the ocean. I was thinking about my luck. There were ten days left in my lucky month, and then … And then what? Would I go back to being unlucky? Would every good thing that had happened be undone? Would I lose my phone and screw up the play and make more people hate me? How was this supposed to work?
I didn’t even know if I’d get an explanation for the letter and who sent it, or if I’d just have to go on wondering forever. It was so frustrating.
I wrapped my arms around my knees and squeezed my eyes shut tight. When I looked up, Bobby was walking toward me with his hand outstretched.
“Here.”
He gave me something small, smooth, and blue. It was warm from his hand, and it curved to fit perfectly into my palm. “Cool.”
“Beach glass is hard to find now. It used to be ubiquitous, but the advent of plastic bottles caused a paucity.”
And he was off, talking about something science-y. It didn’t matter to him whether I understood or not. He just enjoyed discussing the things he loved. Sometimes he could sound like a computer, but as he told me about the “ramifications of the plasticization of the oceans,” he seemed excited and alive.
I suddenly realized that Bobby was the perfect person to talk to about the letter. He knew about a lot of hard-to-explain things—maybe he could help explain this to me. I knew he wouldn’t look at me like I was nuts if I told him something crazy, and he certainly wouldn’t tell anybody else. The letter said I should tell “no human person,” but Bobby was the most robotic person I knew. And the month was more than half over anyway.
I decided to risk it.
“What do you know about luck?” I asked.
The fact that I totally swit
ched the subject with no warning did not bother Bobby. He was squatting on the sand, emptying his pockets and surveying his finds. “You mean mathematical probability? I have a superficial understanding of the mechanics. Why?”
“I don’t know. Weird things have been happening, and I don’t know what’s going on.”
Bobby started to sort his treasures on the sand: scallop shells over here, smooth ones over there; round pebbles over here, chunky rocks over there. Every so often he picked up an item and chucked it over his shoulder. “That’s the definition of life,” he said without looking up.
“Okay, right. But about three weeks ago, I got this letter…”
I told him the whole story: the letter, the list, the way some of the things on the list had come true and some had gone bad. I was aware of how kooky it sounded, but it was such a relief to talk about it, finally, to say the words out loud. If that meant my luck would end, I’d have to live with that, because I couldn’t live with a secret this big for much longer.
When I finished my story, Bobby nodded. He thought for a minute, then nodded again.
“The letter was written by human hand,” he said.
“Well, typed by a human on a computer. There was no handwriting, so I couldn’t tell if it was someone I knew.”
“But the letter was composed and delivered by a human. The words were not put on paper by a deity or a magical being.”
“Well, I mean, obviously…”
I said “obviously,” but this had not been a hundred percent obvious to me until Bobby said it. I mean, science doesn’t explain everything about the way the world works. Maybe there was some kindly wizard or good fairy or magic angel looking out for me. But, of course, Bobby was right. It was just a plain old person.
Bobby continued. “Humans don’t have the power to see or influence the future. Studies of psychic ability have not found a reliable correlation between predictions and outcomes.”
The look on my face must have said Huh? because Bobby rephrased his sentence.
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