If You're Lucky

by Yvonne Prinz

  My mom and dad stood on opposite sides of my bed. My dad was still wearing his work clothes. My mom dug through her bag and handed me my glasses. I put them on.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I know you probably don’t believe me, but I saw Lucky.”

  My mom patted my arm. “Of course you did, honey. The mind is a powerful thing.” Her eyes pleaded Please don’t get weird on us again.

  “No, it wasn’t my mind. He was sitting on the pier. He was watching Dad and . . . Fin. Mom, he looked so scared.”

  My mom and dad exchanged glances.

  “Look, I’ll prove it. He had that big striped towel wrapped around him, his favorite. Remember that one? He dropped it in the water. I saw it there when I went under. Promise me you’ll look for it at home. It’s not there. I know it.” They looked at me with pity.

  “Please believe me,” I said softly. “I saw him.”

  A nurse came in and gave me a shot of something. My eyes started to close. I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. I slept like this, on and off, for what seemed like days, but it couldn’t have been. I surrendered easily. I was drawn to the mindless, painless, beautiful floating feeling that the drugs brought. When I woke up the room was dim. It must have been nighttime again. The drapes were pulled closed and the light above my bed was on. Fin was standing over me. He pulled up a chair and sat down next to my bed. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  My heart started pounding. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He ignored me. “So, you finally ended up in the loony bin.” He looked around the room. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. This place is hilarious, though. There’s a guy wandering around the hallway who thinks he’s still in the Vietnam War.”

  He squeezed my forearm in his hand. “You’ve gotten so thin, like a sad little bird.”

  I yanked my arm away.

  “You poor thing.”

  “What do you want?”

  He leaned in close to my face. “You might think you know something, but you don’t; it’s all in your head, and if you’re smart you’ll keep it there. Anyway, it’s not like anyone will believe you if you start chirping, especially now that you took a swim in the estuary.” He laughed. “That looked pretty crazy.” He stroked my cheek.

  My eyes filled with tears. I looked away from him.

  “Poor, poor Georgia.”

  “Get away from me.”

  “I bet they give you shock treatments.”

  “No. They won’t.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  He stood up slowly and carefully put the chair back in its place. He started to leave.

  “Why’d you have to kill him?” I asked. “Why couldn’t you just be his friend?”

  He turned back to me slowly and smiled. “Why would I want to be his friend when I could be him? And you know what? It wasn’t even that hard. Oh, and before I forget.” He pulled something out of his inside jacket pocket. “This is from Lucky.” He placed the necklace with the fearlessness charm on the metal table next to my bed. “He wanted you to have it.”

  Then he leaned over and whispered in my ear, “You’re going to be quiet from now on, right?” He looked at me menacingly, inches from my face. His hair touched my cheek. I slowly nodded. He kissed me hard on my lips. “That’s a good birdie,” he whispered, and he was gone.

  When I woke up again the room was bright. The drapes were open and sunlight streamed in. A nurse stood next to my bed. She smiled at me.

  “Hello. How are you feeling?”

  I looked over at the bedside table. The necklace was gone.

  “Did you see a necklace?” I asked the nurse.

  “Where?”

  “On the table. A black cord with a silver charm?”

  “No, Sweetie, I’m sorry. I didn’t see it.”

  “Has anyone been in my room?” I asked

  “No one but me,” she said.

  Twenty One

  On Sunday, two days after I was released from the hospital, I was feeling well enough to go to the Heron. When I went to get my backpack off the hook by the door, it wasn’t there. Then I remembered that I’d left it on the picnic table at the oyster farm.

  “Dad, have you seen my backpack?” I asked, loathing that I had to remind him of that day.

  He looked up from reading the newspaper. “Don’t think so. Where did you see it last?”

  “The farm, on the picnic table.”

  “It’ll turn up. Eduardo probably put it in the shed.”

  When I arrived at the Inn, I went to the pantry to get my work clogs and my apron. Someone had squeezed my backpack into my cubbyhole. I pulled it out and sat down on the floor. I dumped the contents out and did a quick inventory. My wallet, Lucky’s shoes, the Swiss Army Knife, the book, and my phone—everything was there. I fanned through the Vonnegut book. Jennifer’s note fell out and drifted to the floor. I looked for the page with the phone number. I found the spot. The number was still there. I opened my phone and turned it on. A sliver of battery life was left, but the phone had been fully charged just before I dropped it in my backpack on the way to Katy’s. I went to the list of recent calls. Professor Hastings’s number in New York was still there. I looked at the back of my hand. There was no sign of Winston Hastings’s number left, but Fin had to have seen it when he pulled me out of the water. I knew that Fin was the one who put my backpack in the cubbyhole and that he’d looked at my phone. He knew that I’d made that call.

  A big bowl of strawberries sat on the prep table. Each one of them was perfectly shaped and a deep-red color. I took the first one off the pile. I hulled it and started slicing it for the strawberry rhubarb tarts I had planned for that night’s featured dessert. The heavy knife made a satisfying tap-tap-tap sound on the wooden cutting board. But I was distracted. Lucky’s face at the estuary, the terrible fear in his eyes, was always there, the minute I went inside my head. I couldn’t get him out of my mind.

  My mom and dad had made it very clear that I would be seeing Dr. Saul regularly now. No more missed appointments. I agreed to go, but I had no intention of going back on my meds: Lucky was trying to tell me something, and if I went back to being medicated I’d never know what it was. I’d spent some time over the last couple days weighing out what was real and what was not. I saw Lucky at the oyster farm. He was real. But then had I seen Fin in the hospital? Was that real? His sinister-looking face, inches from mine, threatening me, certainly seemed real. And I could still feel his lips pressed against mine. There was no necklace, though.

  I rinsed the leggy pink rhubarb stalks in the sink. Out the kitchen window I watched Fin’s truck pull up into the gravel driveway that runs next to the kitchen garden, as though I’d conjured him. The bed of his old truck was loaded down with plants and shrubs and bags of soil. Almost immediately, Miles and Jeff appeared outside. Fin seemed to be describing the beautiful garden he was about to create for them. I could see Miles and Jeff visualizing it, giddy with anticipation. Fin was wearing his newsboy cap and a black short-sleeved T-shirt over a gray long-sleeved T-shirt. His jeans were torn at the knee and his olive skin peeked through. There was a pair of worn leather gloves stuffed into one of his pockets. The three of them were acting like old friends. The passenger door of the truck opened and Sonia got out. She was sipping a take-out coffee. Her lipstick left a dark-red smudge on the plastic lid. She wore large, delicate silver hoops in her ears, which made her look especially French. When she met Fin’s eyes there was no doubt in my mind that she was in love with him.

  I wanted to talk to Sonia more than ever, but this was not the time. I would have to wait till I could get her alone. Suddenly Rocket poked his head out of the driver’s side of the truck. He was also in love with Fin. I felt an overwhelming wave of loneliness wash over me. I’d lost Lucky, I barely saw Sonia, and now even Rocket had abandoned me. Everyone I loved thought of me as unhinged.

  I went back to my work at the prep table, bearing down on the knif
e to cut through the first rhubarb stalk. I gasped as it sliced through the tip of my index finger. Pain shot through my hand. I rushed back to the sink and ran cold water on it. I watched the blood swirl down the drain. With my good hand I grabbed the metal first aid kit from above the stove. I gently dried my finger on a paper towel. Blood still seeped out of the cut. I opened the disinfectant with my teeth and dabbed some on, yelping when it soaked in. Karl, who’d been out in the storeroom, arrived back in the kitchen carrying a bag of potatoes.

  “Holy shit! How’d you do that?” He dropped the bag on the floor.

  “It wasn’t Plan A,” I said. “Can you help me bandage it?”

  “Nasty,” he said, as he tore the wrapping off the biggest bandage in the kit and carefully wound it around my finger. “Too tight?”

  I shook my head.

  “Hold it up in the air. It’ll slow the bleeding.”

  I took some deep breaths and watched out the window with my throbbing hand held up in the air. Fin and Sonia looked over at me. They thought I was waving at them. They waved back.

  “That Fin guy’s kind of cool,” said Karl, standing next to me, watching out the window. “Who’s that girl?”

  “Sonia,” I said abruptly. The pain in my finger was becoming unbearable.

  “That’s Sonia? Did she get a makeover?”

  I rolled my eyes and walked away.

  I headed to Katy’s and arrived late again. A couple of tourists were on the porch, reading the hours posted on the door and then looking at their watches like mimes. I apologized to them. They actually had the nerve to look disappointed that they’d had to wait, like I was Amtrak or something. I unlocked the door and turned off the alarm.

  Sharona pulled up, looking surprised to see me there. She went inside and helped the tourists while I hung the kites outside. While I was doing that I realized I’d forgotten our coffees too.

  “Hey, great glasses,” said Sharona, when I came back inside.

  “Thanks.”

  Sharona said nothing about my absence over the last few days and I didn’t bother trying to explain anything to her. Several messages from Katy’s number were on my phone when I found it this morning but I’d deleted them. My dead brother seemed to be trying to tell me something probably wouldn’t fly with her as an excuse for missing work.

  Sharona looked at my hand. “What happened?”

  The blood had seeped through the first bandage so I’d piled a few more on.

  “Kitchen accident.”

  “Does it hurt?” She pulled the change bag out of the safe and unzipped it.

  “Yeah, a lot. It’s throbbing.”

  “Take ibuprofen. Have you got some?”

  “No.”

  “I might.” Sharona dug through her purse until she found two tablets at the bottom. She blew the lint off them and presented them to me. “A bit dusty but they should work.” She brought me a glass of water from the bathroom.

  I swallowed the painkillers and tasted Sharona’s perfume in my mouth.

  “Hey, do you believe in ghosts?” I asked, knowing that Sharona was definitely someone who would.

  Without looking up from the cash drawer, she held up her index finger and finished counting a stack of dollar bills before she answered me.

  “Believe in ghosts? Hell, yes. Have I not told you the story about my great-granny Dotty?”

  I shook my head.

  “She died in her bedroom on the second floor of our house. My mom was taking care of her. Dotty was ninety-seven and mostly blind and all she did all day was listen to gospel music on an old radio in her room. She used to spray Yardley English Rose perfume everywhere. Anyway, my bedroom is right above that room where she died and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I can hear gospel music coming up through the floor and guess what I always smell?

  “English Rose?” I said.

  “That’s right. Totally freaky.”

  “But did you ever see her ghost, like, in person?”

  “Well, I never did but my mom swore she did. She claims she used to see great-granny Dotty wandering around in her favorite pale-blue nightgown all the time, but then my mom used to hit the sauce pretty hard, so you never know. I haven’t heard much about Dotty’s ghost since my mom got herself into AA.” She finished counting out the change in the drawer and slid it under the cash register. “Now all she talks about is AA.” She closed the cash drawer. “You got a ghost in your house? I know a woman who does séances. She’s super-connected to the spirit world. She made these earrings.” She touched a tiny silver angel dangling from her earlobe.

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks. I was just wondering.”

  “Okay, well, just say the word.” Sharona headed to the storeroom in the back to get taffy to restock the bins.

  “We’re out of piña colada!” she called out, “and banana!”

  I made a note next to the register.

  The phone rang half an hour later. Sharona picked it up. I could tell it was Katy by the way Sharona was talking. She was never herself when Katy called. Sharona glanced at me once while they spoke.

  “Sure. She’s right here.” She handed me the phone with a grimace. “Brace yourself,” she said.

  I reluctantly took the phone. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Georgia. How are you?” Katy had an officious way of talking that always made me nervous.

  “Okay.”

  “Listen. I’m really sorry to have to tell you this but we’ve decided to let you go.”

  “Why?” I knew why.

  “Well, we haven’t been very pleased with your work lately. It’s bad enough that you’ve been coming in late, but on Friday I had to drive out there and open the store myself.”

  I heard the twins screaming in the background. She covered the phone and I heard muffled yelling. “Brandon, Brandy, don’t make me say it again!” I waited. “I’m sorry, what was I saying?”

  “You were firing me.”

  “Right. Look, we’ll put your paycheck in the mail. I’m sorry. I know this is a tough time for you with what happened to your brother and all—”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  I clicked the phone off and handed it to Sharona.

  “I guess I’m done here.”

  “That freaking uptight bitch. I knew she was up to something. What is her problem?”

  “Me, I think. Problem solved.”

  “Hey, you want me to quit? I’ll quit. This job sucks anyway.”

  “Nah. Don’t worry about it. I don’t even care.”

  I gathered up all my things: books, gum, sweaters, bandannas, sunglasses, a bike lock, magazines. Sharona followed me around the store bad-mouthing Katy, but I knew this wasn’t really Katy’s fault. I jammed everything into my backpack with Lucky’s stuff and then I hugged Sharona. She held on to me tight and I felt tears prick at my eyes. It was likely I’d see her plenty, but still, I really liked this thing we had together. I would miss it a lot.

  “I’m gonna fight to get your job back,” she said, sniffing.

  “Don’t. I don’t want it.”

  “And if she thinks I’m picking up your hours, she’s delusional.”

  I put my backpack on and looked around.

  “Take some taffy. Take as much as you want. I won’t tell.”

  “No. Thanks.” I walked out the door and my career in retail was over.

  Twenty Two

  Dr. Saul looked at my bandaged finger but he didn’t comment.

  “How are things?”

  “Okay. I got fired from one of my jobs yesterday.” Was it yesterday? Why couldn’t I keep my days straight?

  “Why?”

  “I sucked at it.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “Well, I guess I don’t really care that much.”

  “And you’ve lost some weight, I see.”

  Had I? Maybe. “I’m good. I feel good.”

  “How are you sleeping?”

  “Fine. I gue
ss. Sometimes. I’m not really tired.”

  “Georgia, are you back to taking two pills a day?”

  I looked away. “Not exactly.”

  “Georgia, this is extremely dangerous, what you’re doing. The dosage isn’t for you to decide.”

  I said nothing for a couple of minutes. He watched me expectantly. It had never occurred to me before that he looked exactly like an owl.

  “I’ve been feeling better.”

  “How so?”

  “Stronger, sharper, smarter, more alert, more energetic. Everything is better. I can even hear better. I can hear conversations that other people are having across a room.”

  He looked at me gravely. “It’s dangerous and irresponsible, what you’re doing. You could have a schizophrenic episode at any time.”

  I scratched my cheek and looked out the window.

  “Georgia?”

  “What?”

  “You need to go back on your meds. I had you admitted last Friday and I can admit you again if I feel that you’re a danger to yourself.”

  I shook my head vigorously. “Dr. Saul, no offense, but you don’t know the first thing about danger. I know danger. Believe me, I do. And guess what else? No headaches anymore. Poof! They’re gone. And you know what else? I’m not scared, not at all.” That was a lie. I scratched my scalp. I looked around the room. It felt smaller than before.

  “Did you change this room? It looks different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s different. Like, smaller.”

  “No, Georgia, it’s the same room.”