If You're Lucky

by Yvonne Prinz

  “I could swear it’s different.”

  “I’m going to have to talk to your parents again. I’m afraid I can’t trust you. I’m sorry.”

  “Please don’t do that.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to. You’ve left me no choice.”

  I shrugged. “Fine. Tell them. They don’t care anyway. They wish it was me who died instead of Lucky.”

  He sighed. “That isn’t true.”

  I got up and picked up my backpack. “Well, I’m not taking my meds. Do whatever you have to. I don’t care.” Then I walked out of there.

  Twenty Three

  “Can I have this?” I dangled a lacy violet bra from my finger.

  “Where did you find that?” Sonia snatched it out of my hand and tossed it onto the floor.

  “Here.” I held up her sweater. “It was in the pocket.”

  Sonia blushed. Rocket looked from me to her and back to me.

  “Shut up.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  Sonia hurled a throw pillow at me.

  “Ow, careful.” I held up my bandaged finger.

  “What happened?”

  “I was slicing rhubarb.”

  “Did it bleed a lot?” she asked. Sonia is squeamish about blood.

  “Yes. I could have died.”

  She smiled.

  “Where’d you get that shirt?” She looked at my Bugs Bunny T-shirt.

  “Jennifer in Australia sent it to me. It was Lucky’s.”

  “I know. There’s a bloodstain on it.”

  “That’s mine.” I held up my finger again.

  “Right.”

  “Katy fired me, by the way.”

  “She did? Why?”

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I hated working there.”

  Sonia looked concerned. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I’m great.”

  I had come over to Sonia’s place to talk to her as soon as I got home from Dr. Saul’s, but I still hadn’t quite found the words. Instead I lay next to her on her big bed. Rocket sighed and curled up on the braided rug on the floor. A framed photo of Sonia and Lucky, rosy-cheeked and smiling, sat on her bedside table. It looked like it was taken at a ski resort. Sonia saw me looking at it and her face became wistful. She looked up at the ceiling and we were quiet for a minute.

  “So?” she faced me again.

  “So what?”

  “I hear you took a swim at the estuary.”

  “Yup.”

  “Are you okay? You wanna talk about it?”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Fin?”

  “No, Tom Cruise.” I smirked at her.

  “He said you . . . went a little crazy.”

  “Sonia, I saw Lucky . . . I . . .”

  She interrupted me, shaking her head. “No. You didn’t. Lucky’s gone.” I heard impatience creeping into her voice.

  “I did, Sonia, I swear. He was right there on the pier.”

  “Look. I understand that you think you did, but it’s hard for me to hear that from you. You know?” She rubbed my arm.

  I rolled over and stared at the ceiling. “What happened in Australia?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something happened between the three of you. Was it when you took the trip to Sydney?”

  She was quiet for a minute. “Who told you?”

  “Jesse.”

  “But he didn’t . . .”

  “Look, I’m not stupid. I know that you were both lying to me about how well you knew each other when Fin got here.”

  I looked over at her. A tear was rolling slowly down her cheek.

  “Oh, God. You must think I’m a horrible person,” she said.

  “I don’t think that at all.”

  She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me. “You have to know that I had nothing to do with him coming here. I never thought I would see him again after Australia.”

  “Okay. What happened there?”

  She sighed. “Lucky invited him along on our trip to Sydney. He didn’t even ask me first. I was so angry. I wanted just the two of us to go on that trip. I’d worked every shift I could get at that shitty restaurant on campus to save for the flight and then I flew fourteen hours to get there and we’d been with his friends the whole time. I just wanted to take off for a few days alone before I flew home, you know?”

  I nodded.

  “I was really excited about it. But you know Lucky, always surrounded by people. So, he invited Fin along without asking me first, and the thing is, he barely knew him back then. So now we’re in the car and it’s the two of them talking surfing the whole way. I put on my headphones and listened to music and fumed. Lucky knew I was pissed but he didn’t do anything about it.”

  She stopped talking. She was thinking a moment and then she said, “There’s a reason I didn’t tell you this story. I didn’t want things to be weird between us. I felt ashamed because I loved Lucky so much. I still love Lucky. He’s all I see when I close my eyes.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Tell me the rest.”

  “We stopped in Coff ’s Harbor and checked into a cheap motel. We got the boards off the top of the car and went down to the beach. Conditions were good: medium swells, the size I like to ride best. I was surfing really well that day. I could see Fin watching me and I knew he was attracted to me, but, you know, whatever, I guess I was flattered. Lucky didn’t even notice.” She sighed. “That night we went to a bar in town. It was one of those noisy, crowded places, filled with young people, mostly surfers and tourists. We were squeezed together, shoulder to shoulder. Lucky was getting drunk. He’d already made friends with a pack of Aussies and I was left alone with Fin. He hung on every word I said and didn’t even seem to notice anyone else in the bar. I’d had a few beers and I was getting a little drunk myself. The bar was hot and stuffy and I started feeling nauseous. I said I was going out for some air. Fin came with me and we ended up walking down to the beach. I thought the fresh air would clear my head but it made me feel drunker.”

  She stopped. She looked pained. “Fin kissed me and I kissed him back. We started making out in the sand. It was just because I was drunk and I was so angry at Lucky.” Tears appeared on her cheeks again. She wiped them away.

  “So, I guess Lucky finally noticed we weren’t in the bar and he started looking for us. And then he found us.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

  “What did he do?”

  “He looked like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and then he looked as hurt as I’d ever seen him.” Sonia sobbed. “And then he just walked away. The next morning we left the motel without Fin and drove the rest of the way to Sydney. I apologized over and over. I told him I was drunk, I told him I was mad, and he said it was okay, but I knew it wasn’t. A few days later we said good-bye at the airport in Sydney and I flew home. Lucky had to drive back to Brisbane alone. It was the last time I saw him alive.” She sniffed.

  I thought about the video and about what Fin had written in the Vonnegut book. “But Fin was there the day Lucky died. Did Lucky forgive him?”

  Sonia shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never talked about it with Fin, or with Lucky, for that matter. I think we all wanted to forget that it happened.”

  I lay there thinking. Maybe that’s why Sonia got so angry when I said I saw Lucky. She didn’t even want the ghost of Lucky seeing her with Fin like this.

  “I have to pee,” I said, getting up off the bed.

  I walked down the hall to the bathroom and closed the door. I sat down on the toilet seat. Something bright pink in the garbage next to the toilet caught my eye. I dipped my hand into the garbage and pulled it out carefully. It was an empty box from a pregnancy test. I sifted carefully through the tissues and Q-tips and makeup remover pads until I found it: a long, narrow shape wrapped carefully in toilet paper. I slowly unwrapped it, dreading what I would find, as the package got smaller and smaller. Finally I was staring at a pla
stic stick. The little window had two pink lines in it. Pregnant. Sonia was pregnant.

  I hurriedly wrapped the stick up again and hid it at the bottom of the garbage and went back to Sonia’s bedroom, trying to look calm while I was freaking out.

  Sonia was staring up at the ceiling.

  I heard a truck pull into the driveway and I knew it was Fin. Sonia sat up in the bed and looked out the window.

  “Fin’s here.” She quickly wiped her eyes and patted her hair into place.

  “I know,” I said

  Rocket jumped up and ran for the door.

  “Do you love him?”

  She hesitated. “Oh, George, don’t make me answer that. Not today.”

  I tried to smile. “Okay.”

  “Hey, come with us. He’s playing down in Point Reyes. Come, okay?”

  “I can’t. I got stuff to do.”

  I heard his pointy black boots on the porch steps and then he opened the back door. A flurry of fear ran down the back of my neck.

  Sonia got up off the bed. I lay there, listening to Fin’s voice as he talked to Rocket.

  “Hey boy, whassup?” Rocket’s nails click-clacked on the hardwood. He was dancing around in excited circles.

  “Hey. What’s wrong?” I heard him say softly. He must have noticed that Sonia’s eyes were red from crying.

  Sonia didn’t speak but I knew they were kissing. I could hear them. Sonia laughed softly and Fin pushed her down the hallway and up against the wall next to her bedroom door where I could see them. Fin pressed himself up against her. Sonia’s eyes drifted over to me. He followed her gaze. He seemed amused, seeing me there, watching them. He winked at me. He was wearing a gray cashmere sweater and a soft-looking wool scarf.

  “Hey, George, how ya doin’?”

  “She should come with us, shouldn’t she?”

  “Uh, definitely. You want to come with us, George?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  On the porch Sonia hugged me and whispered that she would call me later. “I love you,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  I clipped Rocket’s leash on and we walked down the hill, toward the beach. Fin’s truck came up behind us, and Sonia blew me a kiss as they drove by me.

  Twenty Four

  After my visit with Sonia I started sleeping even less. When I did sleep, it was in short spurts and I had bad dreams. Sleep was not my friend anymore. Staying awake was safer. Besides, I didn’t seem to need sleep. I wanted to be alert when Lucky came back. I wished he could just tell me what he wanted me to know, or what he wanted me to do. If I could just talk to him I could make a plan. I could get ready.

  My mom was doing another wood firing in the backyard kiln. She was getting ready for a big show in Santa Fe. She’d started the fire early in the morning with a ceremonial match, a quick prayer to the fire gods, and some lighter fluid. She’d been feeding logs into the kiln all day.

  From my bedroom window I could see sparks shooting out from the chimney into the inky night sky. I fell onto my bed and though I was wide awake, my eyelids started to grow heavy. I guess I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up it felt like hours later. I was in Lucky’s bed. I couldn’t remember how I got there. I sat up and looked around the room. A great horned owl was sitting on Lucky’s dresser, watching me. His eyes were a beautiful shade of amber. One eye lazily closed and opened again. He slowly stretched his massive wings out like an accordion and then drew them in again, shifting his white talons, which were clutching the edge of an open drawer. He made a strange jerking movement with his head, like there was something caught in his throat. He seemed to be gagging on something. He opened his beak wide and regurgitated a large egg-shaped pellet onto the floor beneath him. I stood up slowly and walked over to him. He stayed where he was, calmly watching me. I crouched down and picked up the pellet. It was warm and slimy. All the little white pills I had thrown out my bedroom window were tangled up inside a grey clump of hair and fur and tiny bones.

  When I woke up I was back in my own bed again, but it was still dark out. I looked around my room for the owl but there was no sign of him. The house was cold. I wrapped a quilt around me, slid into my slippers, and walked into the kitchen. I put the kettle on for tea and went into Lucky’s room. His bed was neatly made. I went over to the dresser. The open drawer that the owl had been perched on was shut. I saw something on the floor. I crouched down and picked it up. It was an owl feather, a small one, striped with a bit of downy fluff on the end. I brushed it against my cheek. Back in the kitchen I put the feather in an abalone shell on the counter. I stood at the window and watched the kiln burn. The kettle started to hiss. I filled a mug and dangled a tea bag in the water. I carried the mug with me out the back door. There was a damp chill in the air. I put my tea down and grabbed an armload of wood off the pile and dropped it in the sand next to the kiln. I opened the kiln door and the heat smacked me in the face.

  I fed the pieces of wood in, one at a time. The fire was so hot that the pieces caught immediately. I loaded in piece after piece. I was standing there watching the flames lick up onto the wood when suddenly I got a tingly scalp feeling and I was certain that someone was standing behind me. I spun around and peered into the darkness.

  “Is someone there?” I said. I couldn’t see anything but I felt something or someone near me. I resisted the urge to reach out into the darkness for fear I might touch someone. I wrapped my quilt tighter around me and walked tentatively along the stone path that led past my mom’s dark studio and out to the street. A moth beat itself against the glass porch light above the front door of the house. The moon was almost full, and it shed light onto the pavement. I looked up and down the quiet, empty street and then I noticed that the bushes along the side of the house were trembling though the air was perfectly still. Something had brushed past them seconds ago. I took a few steps till I could see all the way to the bottom of the hill. I thought I saw a shadow, a tall thin shadow, turn the corner and dart quickly across the Coast Highway and disappear.

  The sky started to lighten to mauve as I made my way down the hill. Most of the houses in False Bay were still dark. Porch lights burned and smoke drifted lazily from the chimneys. The only sound I heard was my bedroom slippers slapping against the cracked pavement and the occasional car winding along the coast.

  I don’t know why I started walking down the side of the highway. I passed by the Heron and turned right at the small lane that led to Jeff and Miles’s house. A dog barked off in the distance, but their street was quiet. I turned into the driveway and walked along the side of the house. I stopped suddenly. Fin was sitting cross-legged on a bench on the redwood deck. He had a beach towel wrapped around him. He sat perfectly still, facing the water. I quickly backed up and ducked behind a small tree. Soft light glowed through the red-and-white-checkered curtains that hung in the windows of the redwood cottage at the back of the property.

  Fin looked off to his right and my heart raced, thinking he may have sensed me watching him. He dropped the towel and hopped off the edge of the deck. He walked toward a stand of old redwoods and stopped next to the biggest one, gazing up into the branches. He stayed that way for what seemed like minutes and then he turned and headed toward me. I darted behind Jeff ’s SUV and crouched down. Fin walked over to his truck, which was parked right next to Jeff ’s in the driveway. He rooted around in the truck bed and came out with an armful of heavy rope. He opened the truck door and took the hunting knife out of the glove box. He put it in his back pocket and headed back toward the tree. I returned to my spot and crouched down again. Fin took aim and threw a heavy coil of rope up and over the thickest limb with ease. He caught it as it fell. He pulled the knife out of his pocket and sawed through the rope and threw the remaining rope over the limb, a few feet closer to the trunk. He looked around and then he walked over to the metal storage shed where the lawn mower is kept. He went inside and came out with an old tire under his arm and walked back over to the tree. He wrapped both ropes around
the tire and then expertly knotted them. He climbed inside the tire, testing it with his weight, and then he swung back and forth like a child, his legs straight out in front of him. He was smiling. He seemed delighted with himself. The sun was starting to come up now and it filtered through the redwood branches. He untangled himself from the swing and jogged back toward the cottage. He was in there for a while and I was starting to think I should get out of there when he reappeared in the doorway with Sonia ahead of him, blindfolded with her own green scarf. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt and pajama bottoms. He guided her from behind with his hands on her shoulders, over toward the tree.

  “This better be good, Fin,” she laughed. He caught her by her elbows when she stumbled.

  “How much farther?”

  “Ten feet, almost there.”

  He pulled off the blindfold. She looked at the swing and squealed with delight.

  “You made this for me?”

  “Yes, get on.” He held it steady while she climbed in and he pushed her from behind, higher and higher. She tipped back and let her long hair dangle down. She squealed like a little kid. I felt an awful ache watching them. I felt like a bitter, jealous troll. I got up and walked down the drive. I looked back once more before I started up the street. Fin was looking in my direction. He’d seen me. He slowly lifted a hand and waved.

  Twenty Five

  “Hey, are you okay?” Jeff examined my face.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “ ’Cause you look sort of . . . flimsy.”

  “I’m fine.” I tapped my sneaker impatiently. I had things to do.

  “And Miles said he saw you walking away from our place early this morning. He said you were wrapped in a quilt and wearing bedroom slippers.”

  “I was out for a walk.”

  “Really? A walk? At six a.m.?”

  I sighed heavily. “Yeah, I’m a morning person now but I haven’t quite got the wardrobe worked out.”

  He cocked his head at me and looked confused.

  “So, you said you wanted to talk to me?” I squinted at the morning sun streaming in through the tall dining room windows. The bright light felt like an assault to me. Inn guests sat at the tables, enjoying breakfast. Cutlery clattered on plates. I felt raw and exposed.