Lucky Me

by Cindy Callaghan

  “Egg salad?”

  “Um . . . How do you say? . . . Formidable?”

  “Excellent?”

  “Oui. Excellent! We say ‘excellent’ too.” He pointed to his name tag. “My name is Henri.”

  “You work here?”

  “Un peu . . . er . . . a little, when I am not in school.”

  He turned me in the direction of a podium, where a woman stood. “Listen carefully. She does not like it when people do not listen,” he said. “I see you plus tard . . . er . . . later?”

  “Yes,” I said. I knew a little more than basic French because I’d studied it in school and listened to some CDs, but mostly I’d learned it from Brigitte and her parents when they were in the US. By just hanging out with them, I’d picked up a lot of phrases.

  Brigitte was exactly like I remembered, even though I hadn’t seen her in a while—and she was older than me. Here’s the deal: Brigitte was very nice, but she was a little unusual.

  Her brown hair was longer now, past her shoulders, but still very thin and mousy brown. She was tall—very tall, in fact. It seemed like her legs were longer than the rest of her body. Her glasses were square and thick. Her pants were pulled up too high, and she’d buttoned her shirt all the way up to her neck. Her unusual style actually made me smile, because the thing is, it suited her. She was kind of a quirky girl. I hoped my outfit described me in a way that said, “Bonjour, Paris! Gwen Russell is in the house!” With three brothers, I was no expert in fashion, but I’d gotten sandals, hair clips, and lip gloss for this trip. Those were big advancements to my wardrobe.

  Before I could talk to Brigitte, a small woman wearing a crisply starched uniform and a name tag identifying her as Madame La Beouf stood behind the tour guide podium. She glanced at the clipboard in her hand.

  “Welcome to the Hôtel de Paris,” she said with no French accent at all. If anything, from her drawl, I’d guess she was from Alabama or Louisiana. “Tonight we will travel by bus to la Côte d’Albâtre Étretat, where they launch the lanterns.” She clapped twice to get the attention of a couple who were talking. She pointed to her ears and mouthed, “Listen.” Henri wasn’t kidding. She was serious about paying attention. “I will be joined tonight by my assistant.” She waved to Henri, who lifted a tapestry suitcase onto a cart.

  Henri waved back, but his mouth gaped open for a second like this was a surprise to him. He forced a smile.

  I was psyched to hear this because I wanted to talk more to Henri. He was cute, was French, and seemed my age. Plus, if he was as sportif as he looked, we had something in common.

  I was good at most sports. Kind of by accident, really. You see, I’d been recruited for every backyard game my brothers played. Whoever was “stuck” with me on their team pressured me to be tougher, faster, and stronger. This meant that I made every team I tried out for. Now I was a three-sport girl: soccer, basketball, and lacrosse. It also meant that I often had black eyes, fat lips, and bruised legs. I’d had more broken fingers than anyone—boy or girl—in my school. I had a few girlfriends, but mostly I hung out with the boys.

  But recently, I had been trying to be more girly. My hair finally reached my shoulders, and my mom had bought me some trendy new clothes, which I had brought with me.

  Madame LeBoeuf continued. “You must stay with the group at all times. Raise your hands to ask questions. Speak slowly and clearly so that everyone can hear. Comprende?” she snapped. Then she said, “If you require the facilities, now would be the time. We’re leaving in five. That’s minutes, people!” Her yelling definitely had a southern twang, proving there was nothing French at all about Madame LeBoeuf except her name. I used the translation app on my phone. LeBoeuf was “Beef.” Kind of a perfect description of her too.

  Everyone in Group C scampered to the bathroom. But not me. This woman wouldn’t scare me into going when I didn’t have to. Instead I went to see Brigitte.

  She instantly hugged me, transferring hair or fur or something strange and fuzzy from her shirt onto my new V-neck tee that I’d tucked into capris.

  “Gwen! The little sister I never had.” I figured Brigitte was probably twenty-two years old now. “I am so glad you are both here,” she said to Mom and me. “You are going to have a wonderful week!”

  “Are you coming on the night tour?” Mom asked her.

  “Yes! I wouldn’t miss it. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never been to la Côte d’Albâtre Étretat,” she said. “Besides, I want to hear all about every little thing going on in Pennsylvania.”

  Brigitte led us outside to the tour bus. I didn’t get on the bus right away because I heard a familiar sound and started to wander toward it. A guitar. There was a guy with a full beard, knit cap, and sunglasses (at night), strumming and singing. The words were in English, something about running away and leaving worries behind. Brigitte frowned and nudged me to get on the bus. I did, but I wanted to come back later and hear more. In my town, no one hangs out on the street and jams like that.

  Many seats were already taken, so all three of us couldn’t sit together. Henri called me over to sit next to him.

  Brigitte sat with Mom, and the two of them began to chatter.

  I looked at the guitar guy through the window. “Is he there a lot?” I asked Henri.

  “Every day. I see him at other places too. Do you like music?”

  “I love it. My fave band is Shock Value. Do you know them?”

  “Everyone knows Shock Value. They are very famous in France. One of the guys is French.”

  Together we said, “Winston!” He was the only French member of the band.

  We started to laugh. “They’re big in America, too.”

  Henri asked, “You hear of the legs?”

  “The legs?” I asked. Then I pointed to my legs. “Legs?”

  “Non. Non. Not legs. It is like a story that I tell you and then you will tell another person . . . How you say? . . . Leg—”

  “Legend?”

  “Oui! Legend. You hear of the legend of the lanterns?”

  I love a good legend almost as much as I love Shock Value. “Tell me.”

  “Parisians, they fly lanterns to the night sky at la Côte d’Albâtre Étretat to welcome été . . . er . . . summer,” Henri explained. “If you make a wish as you let your lantern”—he raised his hands over his head and then made a pushing motion—“out of your hands, it will come true.”

  And at those words, I knew exactly what my wish would be—an awesome week in Paris.

  3

  As the bus lurched down the streets of Paris, Henri asked me questions about home—Pennsylvania—and my school, and I asked him questions about France and his job. I thought it was pretty cool that he had a job at age fourteen. It was because friends of his parents own the hotel.

  “I play football,” he said. “You call it soccer.”

  “I knew it!” I said. “Me too.” I didn’t add that I could play football, too, and that I knew how to box, wrestle, and lift kinda heavy weights. He didn’t need to know.

  “I scored a winning goal today,” he added.

  “That’s great! Congratulations.”

  “My friends were on the other team and they are”—he made a growling face—“about me.”

  “They’re mad?”

  “Oui.”

  “We call that sore losers,” I said.

  He nodded at the new term, but I don’t think it actually made sense to him.

  Our chat was cut short because Beef called Henri from the driver’s seat in her loud, husky voice.

  He hesitated to respond, like maybe she would forget.

  She bellowed, “Henri!” again.

  “Are you afraid of her?” I asked him.

  We studied her. She had pulled a paper clip off a stack of stuff set on the armrest. She unfolded it and used an end to pick at her teeth.

  “A little,” he said as he reluctantly made his way up the aisle to the driver, where he listened to her.


  While he was away, I took my notebook out of my drawstring backpack and crafted a few lyrics:

  I met a boy in France.

  He told me about a legend.

  I planned to make a wish.

  And let it sail away on a lantern.

  La Côte d’Albâtre Étretat was a dirt field leading to a rocky cliff. Beef handed everyone in Group C a paper lantern, and Henri followed her with candles and a lighter.

  There were a lot of other people launching lanterns off the edge of the cliff, and many other tour buses parked on the dirt.

  I took a candle from Henri and stuck it on a pokey thumbtack thingy inside the paper lantern. He lit it with a long lighter, careful not to burn the paper. I walked to the rope line, which held people back from the edge of the cliff, and just like Henri had pantomimed, I gently pushed it out toward the stars and made a wish. I watched it glide into the sky, which was blacker and had brighter stars than in Pennsylvania.

  All the tourists in Group C and hundreds of others threw their lanterns into the sky too. It looked like a swarm of slow-moving fireflies gliding in the blackness until the twinkle of the lantern blended into the sparkle of the stars.

  Henri stood next to me. “Did you wish?”

  “Yup. And I’m very good at keeping secrets,” I said.

  “I will tell you mine. I cannot hold a secret.”

  I said, “No. Don’t. Then it won’t come true.”

  “It still might,” Henri said. “No one knows.”

  “I’m still not telling you mine.”

  “Ça va,” he said. “My wish was—”

  I put my hand over his mouth. I don’t think I’d ever actually touched a boy’s lips, besides JTC (That’s my abbreviation for Josh, Topher, and Charlie.) And when I covered their mouths with my hand, they would lick it. So gross. I moved my hand away before Henri could consider doing the same. “Don’t tell me,” I said.

  He slouched like he’d given up.

  I don’t know how long wishes usually took to come true, but these lantern ones seemed to take effect fast, because I was already having an awesome time in France with Henri.

  Just then he blurted out, “I wish Les Bleus win the World Cup!” And he ran away.

  Leave it to a boy to waste a wish on soccer!

  I chased him and caught him easily.

  “Mon dieu, you are very fast for a girl.”

  I smacked him in the arm. He rubbed it. Maybe I’d run a little too fast and smacked him a little too hard. I could hit JTC as hard as I wanted, but I had to be more careful with other boys. “Now they’re going to lose and it’s going to be all your fault.”

  “They cannot lose.” He rubbed his arm. “They are formidable!”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket. This only happens when I get an important update in my Twister social media account. I looked at the notice flashing on my screen. It was from Shock Value. It said, “Concert: Shock Value has added one additional spot to their tour. PARIS. One night only.”

  “Shock Value is coming to Paris,” I practically yelled in Henri’s face.

  My phone vibrated again. Another Twist from Shock Value. It said, “Paris concert SOLD OUT.”

  “Holy cow! It’s already sold out,” I said.

  “A cow?” Henri asked.

  “Sorry. It’s just an expression in English. Kinda like ‘oh my gosh!’ ”

  The phone vibrated for a third time. What now? It said, “Shock Value ticket contest! Follow the hunt around Paris and win tickets to the special one-night engagement in Paris.”

  “Check this out.” I showed Henri.

  “Cow!” he yelled.

  I looked at my watch. We’d only been here for fifteen minutes, but we had to get on this, like, double pronto.

  “We’ve got to get Beef to get this train moving.”

  “Train?”

  “Bus. Small van, actually,” I clarified. “We’ve gotta start looking for those tickets!”

  Henri waved me ahead. “Ladies first.”

  Yeah, my wish had already started.

  Miss (or ma’am?) Beef was going with the paper clip again. “Hi there,” I said. “Bonjour,” I added. “I kinda have to get back to the hotel, like, now.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “You see, there’s this band. I really like them. They’re called Shock Value.”

  “Who doesn’t love Shock Value?” she asked. “I love that one they call Clay. Too bad he quit. Anyway, they’re still great.” She looked at her watch. “But we’re on a schedule, and this bus don’t move until it’s time.”

  “Right. I totes agree with you on Clay, and schedules. I love to be on schedule,” I said. “But the band, Shock Value, they’re having this contest for tickets to a one-night concert they just added right here in Paris. And—”

  Beef dropped her paper clip, jumped into the bus, and started honking the horn. She took her phone out and brushed her finger across the screen, scanning pages. She honked again and again. Then she stood on the ground next to the hotel bus with a megaphone. “Let’s go, people! We’re cutting this excursion short because musical history is being made. Shock Value has just announced a new concert, and I wanna get tickets. Let’s go!”

  Cindy Callaghan is also the author of Just Add Magic and Lost in London, both with Aladdin M!X. She is a full-time writer, animal advocate, and supermom. Cindy lives, works, and writes in Wilmington, Delaware, with her family and numerous rescued pets. She loves hearing from fans, speaking at schools and conferences, and zip-lining. Please visit her website, www.cindycallaghan.com.

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  Also by Cindy Callaghan

  Just Add Magic

  Lost in London

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALADDIN M!X

  Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

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  First Aladdin M!X edition July 2014

  Text copyright © 2014 by Cindy Callaghan

  Cover illustration copyright © 2014 by Amy Saidens

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  The text of this book was set in Goudy Old Style.

  Library of Congress Control Number 2014939061

  ISBN 978-1-4424-8950-9

  ISBN 978-1-4424-8951-6 (eBook)