I walked out of my classroom, wondering if anything would ever be the same again. I thought about my so-called friends and how little they really knew me. They would probably be mad I hadn’t told them. And then what? Would everyone want me to use my luck for them? Would I ever be anything but the girl who had luck in the small town where everyone else had none?
The principal looked sweaty and uncomfortable. He kept touching the neck of his shirt and loosening his tie, until it had practically come free from the knot. His hair was messy and he kept repeating things.
Finally, he showed me the test scores and I saw that I was nationally ranked and what my ranking was.
I hadn’t realized I had that much luck. It made me feel equal portions pleased and sick inside. With that much luck, things would change. There had to be no question of that.
“Congratulations. This is something we should all be proud of,” said the principal.
“What does it mean?” I asked him. “What happens now?”
“Well, you can certainly stay here for as long as you wish. We’ll be happy to have you, but I suspect that you will have other options. With a score like that, private luck schools will want to interview you and offer you scholarships. Of course, they will have opportunities for you that we can’t compete with. And ways to train your luck and make sure that your education isn’t short-changed by lucky guesses.”
He didn’t want me at the school, I thought. It would be too hard for them to make sure I learned anything. And with the truth out, he couldn’t control the school situation the way he wanted to.
I figured out what that meant pretty soon. I didn’t tell anyone, but by the end of the school day, everyone knew. Some of my friends whispered that I thought I was better than they were now and they turned away from me when I tried to talk to them. Other people, friends and acquaintances, swarmed around me so that I could barely take a step alone. This came with offers to carry my books, my backpack, to drive me to and from school so I didn’t have to take the bus, and offers for dates.
This was exactly why I had kept my luck hidden for all these years. They were all acting crazy. I thought about the story of the ugly duckling who suddenly realized he was a swan. People pretend that story has a happy ending, but for the ugly duckling, he was used to being a duckling, being with other ducklings. Suddenly having to be a swan, something he knew nothing about, wasn’t such a great thing. The ducklings treated him differently now, and he couldn’t do anything the way that he was used to.
Finally I got home and cried. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, I thought. If I was lucky, wasn’t that supposed to mean that the things I wanted to have happen, happened? I didn’t want this.
Mom tried to get me to talk to her, but I wouldn’t. Then Dad came home and I came out and explained it all to them. I showed them the test results the principal had given me, complete with the ranking and the brochures he’d offered me from private luck high schools that had already come in the mail to the school.
“This is wonderful,” said Mom. But her cheeks were bright red, as if I’d slapped her and she looked suddenly older.
“Our little girl,” said Dad. “I’m so happy.” But his back hunched over more than ever as he glanced through the photos from St. James.
“You’ll have so many schools to choose from,” said Mom.
“I know,” I said.
“I don’t want you to think about us. Don’t pick a school based on how close it is to home. You want to think about yourself now,” said Mom.
“We’ll come up and visit you whenever we can,” said Dad. “Though we’ll have to do some saving.”
“I don’t know if I want to go,” I said. My little girl fear of being adopted and sent back to my birth family hadn’t come true, but this didn’t seem much different, after all. I was still going to be sent away and Mom and Dad were going to feel like I wasn’t theirs anymore.
“Of course you want to go,” said Mom. “You want to be with people like you, with luck.”
People like me. With luck. Was that what I wanted? I wasn’t so sure. It would mean so much change, and I didn’t know if I was ready.
There was a long pause. “This is wonderful, Trudy,” said Dad. “We’re so happy for you.” He put his arms around me and hugged me, but for the first time in my life, I felt like Dad was holding back, not quite putting all of himself into it.
“It’s not just for me,” I said. “I can help both of you, too.” Now that I was honest about being lucky, I thought maybe my parents would accept some of the perks. I should have known better. They might had been unlucky, but they still had their pride. And their stubbornness.
“Don’t think about us, Trudy,” said Mom. “This is your chance to make your life better. Don’t look back at us. We’ll get along fine. We always have.”
Dad moved to Mom and wiped at the tears on her face. “Tears of joy,” she said, but I didn’t believe her.
Of course, meeting Rob on my first day at St. James made a lot of things better. He really was like me, and so was everyone else at St. James. Surrounded by other people who had luck, it made my luck seem less noticeable. I sometimes wished that I had more friends besides just Mabel and Arless. Not that there is anything wrong with them. I love them and am so glad I have real friends. But there were a lot of people who didn’t like me at all. Laura Chevely had done her best to spread nasty rumors about me, and even if I had more luck than she did, I couldn’t escape all the consequences of that.
The fact that I rarely saw Mom and Dad these days, and that I didn’t know what I was going to do when Rob graduated and I still had two years left at St. James alone wasn’t something I thought a lot about. I had to believe things would work out. I was lucky, after all. And I was finally where I belonged, with other lucky people like me.
Chapter 2: Rob
It’s not easy being the only son of the only son of the oldest luck family in America. I know, whine-whine-whine. But I never get credit for anything. Even things I do that have nothing to do with luck, no one notices. And most people just see a faded image of my dad when they look at me. I’m the Student Body President like him, but I didn’t get elected with as big a margin. My grades aren’t as good as his. And I don’t know what I want to do with my life, though he started his first successful company in high school, a company that sold tips from lucky investors to those who weren’t so lucky. It wasn’t illegal at the time, and my dad has kept up with all the laws to make sure that he is just on this side. Money matters a lot to him. That, and luck.
My mom’s parents had a lot of money and she met him at some mega-rich ball when she was, like, seventeen. He waited for her to turn nineteen, and then they got married. I think she still spends most of her time figuring out how to spend Dad’s money, while he spends all his time figuring out how to make more of it. So it’s a happy marriage that way. The only unhappy part is me. Whenever I am with my parents, I feel like I am disappointing them just by breathing. I don’t dress well enough for my mother. I don’t care about money enough for my father. The one thing they think I have going for me is the family luck.
I get that my dad worked hard for everything he has. I get that he had to find a whole new life for himself after my grandfather was caught in a big scandal that cost him his political ambitions. He went into show business after that, and you can still see some of his films. He was actually a decent actor, though he probably got better roles than he should have, considering his ability alone. Look up Nicholas Chiltern on Wikipedia, and you’ll see what he’s like. Of course, I can’t do that at home. Dad checks all my web browsing and he has certain links to my grandfather’s films and his scandal tagged so I can’t see them. He’s embarrassed and he has never told me a single good think about the man. He died when I was three or four years old, but to my knowledge, we never met. Dad didn’t speak to his father from right after high school until the very end.
Dad’s mom divorced Grandpa when he went into acting. We
ll, that and the scandal he was involved. She lived with my parents for a while, until she got too old and now she lives upstate in a really nice home with acres and acres of land. I sometimes wish I could go see her more often. It’s like Dad has become embarrassed about her, too, though, and we don’t go as much as we used to. Her mind is going, but she’s so lucky that I think it’s adorable. She sometimes forgets who we all are, but she makes up names for us and tells us the parts we’re supposed to play in the scene in her head. She never curses or shouts like other people who get dementia. She smiles or giggles and ruffles my hair. She tells me I’m handsome, too. She asks me when I’m going to take her out of the place and marry her. She makes me feel like I really matter, which is why I like her. But also possibly why Dad talks about her not being his real mother anymore. I guess his real mother wasn’t nearly so nice.
I should feel sorry for Dad, I guess. His childhood was miserable, by all accounts. Not that his dad expected too much of him, but he expected nothing. And grandma was always unhappy back then, because she suspected stuff or because she knew it. I get it. Money is security to him. It’s his way of proving that he’s not his father, that he made good in the world. I just wish that he didn’t think that I have to follow the same path as him. And I wish sometimes that I could trust him enough to hint at even a little of my problems. Some people say the truth will make you free, but I don’t think any of them ever met my dad.
And then there’s Trudy. I heard about Trudy a week or so before she transferred into St. James. There was a big buzz about her test score. The highest that had been measured that year, and in Tennessee in some town no one had ever heard of where no one had ever had a luck score above average since the test was invented. Some people whispered that she was ugly, that it was only fair that someone who was so lucky be hideous to look at. You might think that people who are lucky would naturally be beautiful, but it’s not always true. Then there were other rumors, that she was stuck up, that she had refused to speak to her unlucky parents ever again, that she had never had any friends in her life because she thought she was above them all.
“She is probably an idiot, bumbling around in that country town. I bet she comes here and gets the worst grades you’ve ever seen, ends up marrying some politician and having a whole slew of babies she hopes will end up just as lucky as she is,” said Laura at lunch one day.
“You hope so because you don’t want her to end up taking challenging you for supremacy here,” said Art.
“Don’t be ridiculous. No one could challenge me for supremacy here,” said Laura, flipping her hair.
I had known for a long time that things weren’t right between me and Laura. It was hard to put my finger on the problem exactly. She was beautiful, smart, and she knew what she wanted in life: me. She didn’t expect much other than me doing what she told me to do, which wasn’t too onerous. I kissed her when she expected it. I asked her to dances when she hinted that she wanted me to. I bought her the birthday gifts that she pointed out to me in the mall the week before the official date. But there was something missing between us. I knew I could never tell her the truth, and that was part of it. But more than that, I had the sense that Laura wanted the same thing from me that my parents did. She wanted me to make money, she didn’t care how as long as it was a lot, and she wanted me to keep up the good family name.
It was when Laura was talking about Trudy before any of us had ever met her that I realized I had to break up with her. I had been going along because it was the easiest thing to do, not to face down Laura. I told myself that it was just high school, that it didn’t matter, that when we went on to college, I could figure out if I wanted her in my life or not. But the nastiness in her voice when she talked about Trudy made me see clearly that she was mean and small. More than that, her meanness had been making my life more difficult. She would echo the things my father would say even when he wasn’t around, about what classes I was taking or what grades I was getting. Nothing I did was good enough for her, either. You can say you think that would just push me on to new heights, but it didn’t. It made me feel more crappy about myself and like there was a shell that I lived inside that I could never get out of.
I still didn’t break up with her, though. Let’s face it, there is a part of me that is a chicken where Laura is concerned.
But when I met Trudy, I didn’t care about how hard it would be with Laura. Because once I broke it off with her, I’d have Trudy to look forward to and anything was worth that.
I won’t say it was love at first sight exactly, but maybe second sight. At first sight, I saw Trudy sitting in the chairs outside the principal’s office. She wasn’t gorgeous, but she was cute. A cute nose, freckles, and hair that had a tendency to do whatever it wanted, even when she tried to pull it back in a tight ponytail. She sat with her legs crossed as if she was wearing a skirt even though she was wearing khakis.
“Who is that?” I mouthed at one of the secretaries.
They told me it was the girl who had gotten the super high luck score from Tennessee.
“Why is she waiting there?”
‘The principal said he wanted to talk to her.”
“How long has she been waiting?” I asked. It was about two hours into school by then.
“Since an hour before the bell rang,” said the secretary.
“Does the principal know?”
The secretary shrugged. “It’s on his calendar. He’s a busy man and besides, she’s fine. She hasn’t complained.”
They were staring at her in that way that women sometimes stare at each other, like a cheetah staring at a group of gazelles to see which one is the weakest and he can bring it down the fastest.
I was supposed to go back to class, but I couldn’t help myself. I kept watching her. Two people went into the principal’s office in the next twenty minutes ahead of her and she didn’t say a word. Laura would have had a tizzy fit. Of course, Laura would never have let this happen to her in the first place. She’d have pushed her way in.
Then one of the janitors came by. He was going to ask her to move so he could vacuum the couch underneath her.
She jumped right up. “Are you Principal Hannig?” she asked.
Where she came from, did principals vacuum their own office areas?
“No, I’m not. I’m John,” said the janitor.
“Oh, John, nice to meet you. I’m Trudy,” she said. “Can I get you something? You look tired. Why don’t you sit down?” she asked.
“I’ve got work to do,” said John.
After three years of being at St. James, I had probably seen John any number of times but had never actually talked to him or thought enough about him to ask what his name was. There were probably twenty people who worked inside or outside the school who were almost invisible to me, people who were hired not because they were lucky but because they weren’t, and having them there made the rest of us feel better because we knew the difference.
Trudy didn’t know the difference. “Here, give me that vacuum. I’m not doing anything useful right now. I’ll help you with the vacuuming and then when I’m done, you’ll be rested and ready to keep going.”
“I don’t know,” said John, looking toward the principal’s office and then to the secretaries. But none of them were paying any attention to him. He caught a glimpse of me, but I tucked myself back against the wall so Trudy wouldn’t see me. I didn’t want her to think of me as a stalker type, but I was intrigued by what she was doing.
“With my luck, I bet I’ll have this couch cleaned in ten seconds flat,” said Trudy cheerfully. And indeed, the couch was cleaned very quickly. “What else should I do?” she asked. “The floor?”
“You don’t need—” said John.
“But I want to. I like to be of use.”
“But you have luck,” said John. “You don’t need to do work when you have luck.”
“Who says that?” said Trudy. “If you don’t do any work, then what’s the point of living
? Lucky people have a responsibility to do more work with all that luck, but we all have a responsibility to do what’s right and what is in front of us to do. Don’t we?”
John shrugged.
Right then, the principal came out and ushered Trudy into his office. He looked like he wasn’t happy about John having talked to her. But Trudy mentioned how welcoming he had been, and how happy she was to see how everyone was treated so well at St. James, that it wasn’t nearly as stuck up as she had been afraid it would be.
“After all, I’ve lived my whole life with people who haven’t had any luck. It’s what I’m used to.”
I didn’t hear any more than that, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Between class the next hour I made my way back down to the office and found her right outside it, looking at a piece of paper with her locker number on it. I talked to her, flirting a little. I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t want to scare her away, but I think I could have kissed her for the first time right there. She made me see how much I’d been missing with Laura, how trapped I’d been. She opened the door to my cage and coaxed me out.
She didn’t even know who I was then, not the Rob Chiltern of the Chiltern family part of the Student Body President part or the rich part. She laughed and giggled at me like she didn’t care. Like maybe she could see the real me, and that the rest wouldn’t matter.
I’m not saying I spilled the truth to her that first meeting. I’m still human, and I was still afraid of what the consequences would be, especially if my dad found out. Which he would have. I found out pretty quickly that one thing Trudy is not good at is lying. If she thinks something, you can see it right on her face. That’s another big difference between her and Laura, and another reason that when I started falling, I just kept going, faster and faster, the hole of love getting deeper and deeper around me. I didn’t have to guess what Trudy was thinking or tease it out of her like she was a Shakespearean sonnet written in another version of English. She was just who she was, and she could—almost—make me feel comfortable enough to be just who I was, too.
An Ideal Boyfriend Page 2