Fortune Falls

by Jenny Goebel

  “I’ll be all right. Just give me minute.” After a short pause, when the earth had finally stopped roiling beneath me, I added, “On the count of three?”

  Petey nodded. We counted together, then sucked in as much air as either of us could hold. As we raced past the old iron gate, I glanced down at my little brother with his cheeks all puffed out with air.

  Maybe failing the Luck Test wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. Maybe it would even be for the better if I was sent off to Bane’s—for Petey’s sake, at least. Nothing terrified me more than the thought that my bad luck might cause him to meet the same fate as our father.

  Arriving home with nothing more than a bump on the back of my head was a huge relief. Arriving home to find Cooper on my front lawn was as good as stumbling upon a four-leaf clover. Just one look at his face—his rich brown skin and long dark eyelashes—made me feel happier inside. And, as any hapless person knows, happy is a close brethren to lucky.

  Cooper had let Wink out of the backyard, and she was rolling around on the grass—her back right paw punching the air, rapid-fire, as he scratched behind her ear.

  Wink makes most people uncomfortable. She makes them especially uncomfortable when her missing eye takes them by surprise. I’ll be taking Wink for a walk and someone will come up to her at just the right angle (the angle from which she looks perfectly normal), but when she turns to greet the person—her tail wagging so hard it shakes her entire backside—giving whoever it is a full view of her one-eyed, pirate-y face, the stranger usually flips.

  Some people try to hide their shock. And you’d think that expressions frozen in place would be better than sneers of revulsion, but they’re not. The people who turn to ice are usually the same people who milliseconds before had been reaching out to pet Wink. When they freeze, their hands naturally fall back to their sides. In my opinion, those reactions are the worst, because they came so close. If the people had only stretched their hands a little farther, run their fingers through her short, soft fur, then they’d have realized that she’s no monster. She’s just like every other dog. Minus an eye.

  Cooper has always seemed to get that. He’s never pulled his hand back. Never has looked repulsed, either. The first time he met Wink, he reached right past her bum eye and found the sweet spot behind her ear. The spot that sent her leg thrumming in doggish glee to a beat the rest of us couldn’t hear.

  As Petey and I approached the lawn, Wink turned her head to face us, and her tongue lolled from the left side of her mouth. With her one good eye, she gave me a look that said, “I love this guy. You know I love this guy. Why have you been keeping him from me?” Like I was the one who’d told Cooper he couldn’t visit.

  “Cooper!” Petey cried, breaking free from my grasp. He bowled over Wink and tackled my best friend with a bear hug, just like he’d done countless times before. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to pretend that things were like they’d always been. That I could invite Cooper to stay for a while, maybe even go inside and work on homework together like we used to.

  As Cooper and Petey wrestled around on the grass, with Wink doing her best to join in on the fun, I felt my spirits lifting. That was the thing about Cooper. Even when Wink pinned his bright orange shirt with her paw while Petey dragged him in the opposite direction, ripping a hole along the bottom seam, Cooper beamed like he was having the grandest time of his life.

  For a second, I was tempted to join in. I could tousle Petey’s curls right along with Cooper as we all dodged a lashing from Wink’s wagging tail. Then I remembered the last time my friend stuck around for an afternoon. He wound up needing eleven stiches.

  Of course it was my fault. It was always my fault.

  A few months back, I’d tried to take a seat next to him at our kitchen table—something a Lucky could do a million times and never have a problem. But when I sat down, one of the wooden chair legs splintered in half. I tumbled backward, slamming hard into the wall. The force of the impact left an ugly purple bruise on my left shoulder, but, worse, it knocked a picture frame off a nail. A sharp pointy corner of the frame came down right on top of Cooper’s head and, well, you know the rest.

  No. His parents were right. It was too dangerous for us to be friends.

  I cleared my throat loudly, and the commotion on the front lawn came to a dwindling halt. “Petey and I need to go inside now,” I said stiffly. But when I saw how Cooper’s dark brown eyes sunk inward with disappointment, I added, “I’m glad you came … Wink’s really happy to see you.” On cue, my dog slathered saliva across Cooper’s face with her tongue.

  He gently nudged her away as he wiped his face with a now-holey T-shirt, and then pulled himself to his feet.

  Before I could stop myself, the words “I’m happy to see you, too” slipped out of my mouth, and blood rushed to my cheeks.

  He took a step toward me as Petey and Wink went back to tumbling around on the front lawn. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Oh?” I said, and bit my lip. As much as I wanted him to stay, I knew it was better not to encourage him. Petey was stuck with me, but that didn’t mean Cooper should have to put up with any more of my calamity-causing ways.

  “I looked for you at lunch, but—”

  “I have a lot of homework,” I blurted out. “I really should get started.”

  A flicker of doubt seemed to tug at the corners of his mouth. Perhaps he was wondering why I was trying to brush him off or maybe he was remembering a warning his parents had given him. Whatever it was, it didn’t last long. His lips stretched into a grin as he said, “Okay, sure … I’ll get going, but only if you promise to meet me at the tree house tonight. Eight o’clock sharp.”

  I sucked in air. So much air that I didn’t have enough room in my lungs when I said, “But your parents—”

  “Are going out to dinner,” he said, still grinning.

  “But aren’t you worried—”

  “That we’ll have entirely too much fun? It is a valid concern.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t.”

  “You can and you must.” I caught a twinkle in his eyes. “That is, if you want a real shot at ending this nasty bad-luck streak you’re having.” Cooper always referred to my doomed situation as “a streak,” like it was something that could be broken, and not a lifelong condition.

  I might’ve felt more inclined to believe him if he wasn’t constantly plotting ways to improve my fortune, always to no avail. We’d spent an entire afternoon once, walking until we both had blisters, with him no more than two feet in front of me, dropping pennies the entire time. Tails. Time after time, every last darn penny fell on unlucky tails.

  There was no end to it, no escaping my terrible fate. But just as I was about to tell him as much, a flash of lightning followed by a deep rumbling clap of thunder electrified the air. The hairs on my arms stood on end—the strike was that close. My hands jerked up, as if I could brace myself for the troubling change in weather. Petey darted back to my side, and Wink cowered low to the ground, whimpering. She looked apologetic now, like she’d somehow angered the sky and this was her punishment.

  Wink. I could see in her eye that she was getting ready to bolt. And racing after her in a lighting storm wasn’t something that would go well for either of us. I lunged for her, but she tore away from my grasp. Poor girl was so spooked, she didn’t know I was only trying to help. Cooper made a dive for her after I missed. Hooking his fingers through her collar, he caught Wink midstride and pulled her back beside us.

  “Thanks,” I said as he transferred his hold on Wink to me. “About tonight …” I began, but then the rain started. Droplets the size of pennies fell from the sky, pelting our skin, hair, and clothing, and leaving wet matted streaks down Wink’s back. Her whimpers grew louder.

  “Sadie?” Petey’s voice quavered as he screeched out my name. He liked being wet about as much as Wink liked lightning.

  “The tree house. Tonight, Sadie, be there,” Cooper said. “Plea
se.” Then, with one last reassuring scratch behind Wink’s ear, and an actual wink directed at Petey who stood half hidden behind my back, Cooper took off. The pace with which he ran through the rain stole my breath away. Yet every one of his strides fell perfectly between the cracks in the sidewalk. I know because I watched until he turned the corner and was gone from sight.

  “Sadie,” Petey said again, his voice no more stable than before. I nodded, and then we all darted across the wet grass and right through the front door.

  Wink wasted no time shaking the water from her fur. The spray might’ve been annoying if Petey and I weren’t both already sopping wet. Then she made a beeline down the hall and headed straight for the bathroom. I could hear her claws clicking on the porcelain, like silverware clinking together, as she settled into her usual hiding place. The bathtub was her sanctuary. It’s where she’d wait out the storm.

  I glanced down at Petey. The rain had rinsed the purple paint from his curls and plastered them flat against his head. I touched my fingers to my own hair. The moisture had puffed my curls out like Frankenstein’s bride. I sighed. “Let’s go get a snack.”

  “Dry off first?” Petey begged.

  “In the kitchen.”

  My little brother scuttled behind me as we both left drip marks on the creaky, old floorboards leading down the hall. Just inside the cramped kitchen, I snagged a towel from a hook by the sink. The dish towel was white with a giant four-leaf clover that had been stitched on with green thread. Unfortunately, only the real thing counted.

  I patted Petey dry first and hadn’t even started drying myself when he began whining for cheesy puffs.

  “Uh-uh, you know the routine. An apple a day …”

  “Keeps the doctor away,” he deadpanned.

  “Eat your apple first. Then cheesy puffs.” Returning the towel to its hook, I plucked a Red Delicious from the fruit basket on the counter and tossed it to him before grabbing one for myself. As we listened to the patter of the raindrops and watched the flashes of lightning illuminate the world beyond the windowpanes, we polished off our apples in silence.

  Every once in a while a boom would rattle the windows, and a soft whine would echo in the bathtub. The whimpering noises bothered us more.

  When there was nothing but cores left, Petey dug into the bag of cheesy puffs, and I dug into my homework. Nothing like writing a social studies essay to distract me from my problems, I thought. I should’ve known better. My report was on the thirteen original colonies, and my pen spurted blue ink everywhere just as I was writing the number thirteen for the thirteenth time.

  That’s how you know your luck is truly corroded, and it’s not just that you’re clumsy. Everybody makes mistakes. Everyone has accidents. And sometimes terrible things happen that are beyond anyone’s control. But bad luck is different. Bad luck feels like Fate keeping tabs on you, playing cruel jokes and pulling strings, laughing at your expense while it does everything within its far-reaching power to make your life miserable.

  I jumped up from the kitchen table and grabbed a paper towel to blot the blue puddle off my paper as quickly as possible. It was no use. The paper was ruined.

  After I cleaned up the mess, I grabbed a fresh sheet of lined paper and a new ballpoint pen and started completely over. This time, I revised the report so that it only contained twelve mentions of the unlucky number. As I neatly rewrote the paper, the storm outside ended just as quickly as it had started.

  The rain quit pouring, the sky stopped flashing, and Wink wandered out of the bathroom. Happy as a Lucky, she licked cheesy powder off Petey’s fingers until I told him to go wash his hands. As soon as my little brother got up to go to the sink, Wink came over and rested her head on my thigh. She stayed that way until I finished my homework—long after Petey had finished his snack and had headed to his room to play.

  When she wasn’t hiding in the bathtub, this was something Wink did—lay her head on my leg. Most of the time, I think I took her being there for granted. Today, it caused a lump to form in my throat. The test was coming so soon. Just one week away. And I knew how lost I’d feel without her if I was sent to live at Bane’s. I thought she might feel a little lost without me, too.

  After carefully tucking my homework inside my folder, I turned my full attention to Wink. Any scorn for the lapse in Cooper’s visits had vanished from her eye. I petted her head and down the back of her neck. She shivered with pleasure.

  Honestly, the worst kind of reaction a person can have to her disability isn’t dropping a hand away, not petting her. The worst reaction a person can have is disappointment. And that was exactly what I’d felt when Dad brought her home almost five years ago today.

  I still felt guilty for it.

  Wink was supposed to be a surprise, but I knew something was up when a lady from the shelter called. I didn’t answer the phone when it rang, but she left a voice mail reminding Dad to give “his new puppy her medicine.”

  A puppy! My heart had trilled with excitement. My birthday was only a few days away. I’d always wanted a puppy, and my new baby brother just wasn’t cutting it. I bounced on my toes waiting by the door, trying to picture the puppy before she arrived. Would she have light-colored hair, frothy and curly like mine, or sleek brown fur? Would she be small or large? Have a long nose or a short, stubby muzzle? I decided it didn’t matter what the puppy looked like; I loved her already.

  At least I thought I did. When Dad walked through the door, I took one look at the puppy in his arms, at the caved-in side of her head where her other eye should’ve been, and at the puffy pink scar where her skin had been stitched back together and where fur would never grow, and I burst into tears.

  I already had plenty of one-eyed dolls and Barbies with missing limbs. I didn’t need anything else in my life that was flawed.

  “Take her back!” I cried.

  “Sadie girl!” Dad said admonishingly.

  I scowled and ran from the room.

  It took days of Wink wagging a hopeful tail as she nudged me with her nose for me to decide she wasn’t actually defective. Her nose, by the way, is decidedly medium in size, as is she. And her fur isn’t white or curly or brown—it’s the color of fading sunlight and as soft as dandelion parachutes. She’s perfect. When I finally did cave, I fell for her hard.

  Dad told me later that no one else had wanted Wink and that he couldn’t bear to leave her behind at the shelter. And with the surgery to remove her infected eye, and the medication we gave her afterward, she was fine.

  “You’re more than fine, aren’t you, girl?” I said and cupped her face in my hand. “You’re just like Dad said, you’re a wonder.”

  Wink panted in agreement and I folded my body over hers, resting my cheek on top of her head. I couldn’t imagine my life without her, or how much I’d miss her if I was forced to live at Bane’s.

  My thoughts drifted to what else I’d be forced to give up if I failed the test on Monday. My home. My family. My best friend. I also thought about what Cooper had said earlier. Was it possible that he could have found the right charm to rid me of my bad luck?

  Something stirred in my chest as though a tiny puff of air had blown through that punctured balloon. I nestled even closer to my dog and whispered, “Please, oh please, let it be true.”

  Wink scampered behind me as I left the kitchen to check on Petey. I found my brother sprawled across his bedroom floor, surrounded by a fortress of blocks. He didn’t even look up as I poked my head in the door, while Wink ran over and curled up protectively beside him. Satisfied, I retreated to the basement.

  Petey’s room used to be my room, too. It had been my parents’ idea for me to move out. When I turned ten, they said I was too old to share a bedroom with my little brother. I’m sure what they really meant was I was too unlucky. Either way, I wasn’t happy about it. At first.

  Because my new room is below ground level, the only window peers out at a not-so-lovely view of corrugated aluminum. And just outside the room,
it’s all rafters full of cobwebs and hard concrete floors. In a way, I felt like I was being banished.

  It didn’t take long, though, for me to settle in and to realize that I was really, truly happier in the basement.

  When I was younger, I could never seem to remember to get out of bed on the same side I’d gotten in. (Yet another important rule for anyone Fate has lined up in its crosshairs.) So after a few twisted ankles and even a broken collarbone, I started sleeping on the floor.

  When I moved to the basement, there was enough room to push a bed snug against the wall. That way there was really just one option for hopping out. I’d never had a dresser before, either. Again, because of space, but also because they were easy to pull over and had really sharp edges.

  Dad said I couldn’t live my life avoiding every risk—we just had to make a few adjustments. So we draped a padded quilt over the corners of my new armoire and filled the rest of the room with soft blue blankets and pillows the color of amethyst. We also painted the walls a pale purple, my favorite color, and dotted them with yellow bursts to look like stars. Now I didn’t think about me being separated anymore or about everything being cushioned because I was unlucky. I just felt safe. Wink had her bathtub; I had my bedroom.

  From what I’d heard about Bane’s, they’d taken the opposite approach. The rooms there were anything but cozy. Students were only allowed to bring a few preapproved personal items, and the boarding rooms were almost entirely barren—every last potential hazard removed. It probably felt safe, too, but I couldn’t imagine a place like that ever feeling like home.

  My clothes were still spotted with mud from the puddle, so I changed and decided to start a load of laundry. I stepped out of my room, over a joint in the concrete floor, and up to our washer and dryer. As I dumped a bushel full into the washer, a sock slipped down through the opening between the two appliances. It was a tight fit, but I was able to wriggle my hand inside the gap. When I grabbed the sock, I caught a glimpse of another behind it. It was a bit of a stretch, but at last, I snatched the second sock with my fingertips and fished it out as well.