Just My Luck

by Jennifer Honeybourn

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  For my mom

  One

  People leave a lot of really strange things behind at hotels. In the five months I’ve worked at the Grand Palms Maui, I’ve come across some truly weird items—a rubber gorilla mask, a notebook with nothing but carpe diem written over and over in tiny block letters, a pair of dentures floating in a glass of water.

  And now, a cat.

  “Here kitty, kitty.” I’m down on my hands and knees, trying to coax the poor thing out from underneath the bed. One of the housekeepers heard meowing when she was cleaning the room, and for some reason my mom decided I was the best person to deal with the situation.

  The door to the suite opens. I know it’s one of the other staff, probably Leo, coming to check on me, because this is taking way longer than my mom thinks it should.

  “Howzit, Marty. Any luck?” Leo asks.

  Luck. That’s not something I have much of these days.

  I shake my head. “It hasn’t moved.” All I can see are two wide green eyes staring at me through the darkness.

  “Maybe this will help.” Leo’s knees pop as he kneels down beside me. He holds out an open tin of tuna, and the cat immediately comes out from beneath the bed. She’s small, with the same pale gray hair as Leo, and she’s wearing a pink rhinestone collar.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” he says, gently stroking the cat’s back as she dives into the food. “Who could leave you behind?”

  “Karl and Dana Hudson, that’s who,” I reply, silently cursing them. “They were the last guests in this room. They checked out this morning.”

  Leo shakes his head. “I guess there’s no point trying to track them down, then. They’re probably already on a flight to the mainland.”

  Maui has a lot of feral cats—seriously, they’re everywhere—so it’s not exactly a mystery how this cat ended up here. My guess is that this couple decided to “adopt” her during their luxury vacation, thinking they were doing her a favor. And now that they’ve returned to reality, they’ve left her behind for someone else to deal with.

  Leo sighs and turns to look at me. He catches sight of my face, and his eyes widen. I scowl at him as his lips pinch together, like he’s trying really hard to hold in a laugh.

  “It’s not funny,” I snap. I’ve lived on Maui my entire life; I always wear sunscreen. But I clearly didn’t apply enough to my face yesterday, because I got a wicked sunburn. Which would be bad enough, but I was wearing sunglasses, so while the rest of my face is the color of raw beef, the skin around my eyes wasn’t touched. I look like a raccoon.

  Maybe I’d be able to laugh about it too, if this were the only crappy thing that had happened to me lately. But it’s just one more thing in a long, long list of things that have gone very wrong for me over the past several months.

  A few examples: my computer crashed and wiped out an essay I’d spent a week working on, the morning it was due; I dropped my phone and cracked the screen, and two days after I had it repaired—using the money I was saving for a new laptop—I dropped it again; I was knocked off my surfboard in front of this creepy guy Hunter, and when I came up for air, the top half of my bikini was missing; and I caught my prom date making out with another girl in the back of our limo.

  The cat finishes the tuna. Before she can dart back under the bed, Leo scoops her up, cradling her in his arms like a baby. His navy Hawaiian-print shirt is immediately covered in cat hair. Management makes him wear it, along with stiff khaki pants, even though he’s the hotel handyman. Khakis aren’t the most practical choice when you’re unclogging toilets or fixing a broken air conditioner, but Leo doesn’t complain. Leo never complains.

  “So now what?” he says.

  “Now I take her downstairs, I guess.” I stand up and smooth out my skirt, which is more habit than necessity—I’m stuck in the same stiff khaki material as Leo, and it never wrinkles. God forbid our guests lay eyes on someone in a wrinkled uniform.

  “Your mom isn’t going to be too happy to have a cat in housekeeping.”

  I frown. He’s right about that, but I don’t know what else to do with her. “She sent me up here. She’s going to have to deal.”

  Leo rubs underneath the cat’s chin and her eyes drift closed. She starts to purr. “I’d take her home, but Beth would kill me. She made me promise not bring home any more strays.” His voice raises an octave as he says, “You should have a name.”

  “Don’t get too attached. She’s probably just going to the shelter.” I feel mean saying this in front of the cat, but it’s either the shelter or back out on the street.

  If Nalani were here, she’d tell me to take the cat home. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time I took something from a guest’s room. But I know better than to ask my mom if I can keep her cat. She’s not exactly Team Marty right now.

  “She looks like a Libby,” Leo says.

  “If you say so.” I straighten the bed’s immaculate white duvet and glance around to make sure everything is perfect for whoever is checking in next. The people who can afford to stay in the Grand Palms are rich—not just regular rich, but incredibly, unbelievably rich—and they have super-high standards. Although the room is simple—white and airy, like being inside a cloud—everything in here easily costs more than my family makes in a year.

  The room still smells like tuna, but hopefully no one will notice. I pick up the empty tin, and Leo and I leave the room. He follows me down the hall, still cooing to the cat. The carpet is so thick, I can’t hear our footsteps. When we reach the elevator, he sighs and passes Libby to me before punching the call button.

  “Don’t just dump her, okay, Marty?” he says.

  I nod, but I’m not sure why he thinks I’ll have any say in the matter. He’d be better off talking to my mom himself, but I think he’s scared of her. Most people are. My mom is the floor supervisor, but from the way she acts, you’d think she runs the entire hotel.

  Leo pats the cat one more time, then ambles off down the hall. Libby squirms in my arms like she wants to run after him, and I tighten my grip. The last thing I need is for her to jump out of my arms and take off. I’ve already wasted too much time trying to catch her.

  The elevator dings and the mirrored doors slide open. I stand back as two guys around my age step out.

  I flinch. Great. Guests my age are the worst. There’s nothing more awkward than having to serve someone who could be sitting behind you in history class. Most of the time we ignore each other—only for different reasons: me, because I’m quietly dying inside; them, because they don’t really see me. After all, I’m just the help.

  “We need to talk to the locals,” the guy with a messy black pompadour says to his friend, a scrawny kid with closely cropped dark hair. “They’ll know where the best waves are.”

  Surfers. Well, wannabe surfers. I see this a lot. Rich kids who come to Hawaii with the idea that they can conquer our waves. They won’t get very far talking to an
y of the locals. We’re friendly, sure, but there’s a definite line between the places we recommend to tourists and what we save for ourselves.

  Libby starts to wriggle again and lets out a sorrowful meow. The black-haired guy’s eyes flick to her and then to me. He’s good-looking, in an early Elvis, rockabilly kind of way. Skyscraper tall with thick eyebrows and full lips and ears that stick out slightly. Exactly my type. And so, when he smiles at me, a jolt goes all the way through me, right to my toes. And if my face wasn’t already burned, there’s no way he’d miss me blushing.

  Oh my god. My face! He isn’t smiling at me; he’s smiling at my ridiculous sunburn!

  I duck my head, anger and humiliation coursing through me. I’m in such a hurry to get away from them, I don’t notice the elevator doors have already started to close until I bump right into them. Libby digs her claws into my arm and I let out a scream.

  “Are you okay?” the guy calls, but I pretend not to hear him. The doors have slid back open and I quickly escape inside the elevator. Mercifully, it’s empty and the doors slide shut again before he can check on me.

  My heart is pounding. It’s fine. This is a big hotel, I reassure myself. I probably won’t ever see them again.

  But given the way my luck has been lately, I know the odds of not running into them again are not in my favor.

  I sag against the back wall of the elevator and close my eyes. How much worse can this day get?

  Two

  I haven’t been down to the housekeeping department since I was reassigned to the front desk last month. After my mom caught me sneaking out, she said that if I liked being awake in the middle of the night so much, I might as well do it at the hotel.

  She couldn’t have come up with a worse punishment. Not only do I have to work vampire hours the entire summer, putting a serious crimp in my social life, but Nalani is mad that I’ve been “promoted,” while she’s still stuck cleaning rooms. It’s put a real strain on our friendship. I get why she’s upset—she’s been at the hotel a lot longer than I have. I’ve tried explaining to her that working the front desk is not nearly as much fun as working with her—for one thing, all the other staff are at least ten years older than I am, and, with the exception of Benjie, most of them have lost their sense of humor somewhere along the way—but she says it’s still better than cleaning toilets. And honestly, it’s hard to argue that point.

  Nalani usually works the day shift, so I’m surprised to see her down here with the other night crew, haphazardly stuffing towels into her housekeeping cart. The huge concrete room is a warehouse of housekeeping supplies—cleaning products, plumbing tools, extra pillows and bed linens—all stacked neatly on tall metal shelves.

  She glances up as I walk toward her. Her eyes narrow as she takes in my weird sunburn, the blood running down my arm, the cat desperately squirming to get away from me.

  “I have so many questions,” she says.

  “I don’t know where to start,” I reply.

  Nalani lifts Libby out of my arms and the cat immediately settles down.

  “Someone left her behind,” I say, grabbing the first-aid kit from one of the metal shelves. I flip it open and take out an antiseptic wipe and a Band-Aid.

  She scowls. “God, I hate people.”

  “How come you’re here so late?” I ask, wincing as I gently dab at the scratch with the wipe. Being here at night means my mom is trusting Nalani with turndown service again—something I never thought would happen after she was caught eating the chocolate-covered macadamia nuts she was supposed to be leaving on the guests’ pillows.

  I’ve never helped myself to the macadamia nuts, but I have taken things that don’t belong to me. When I was cleaning rooms, I would sometimes take little things I didn’t think anyone would miss—things most people would assume they’d just misplaced. Stupid stuff, like a cheap pair of sunglasses or a travel candle. I never took from anyone who didn’t deserve it, but still, it was wrong and I feel bad about it.

  Nalani shrugs. “Andrea quit, so I’m picking up some of her shifts. We need the extra money. Our trip is coming up fast. Can you believe we’ll be leaving in less than two months?”

  I swallow and concentrate on cleaning my scratch so I don’t have to look at her. Taking a gap year and traveling after we graduated has been the plan since junior year. But so much has changed in my life recently, I just need to stand still for a minute.

  If our friendship weren’t on such fragile ground, I would have told Nalani months ago that I’m not going with her. But I’m not sure we can survive that bombshell and so, like a coward, I keep pretending I’m still on board. I feel super guilty about lying to her. I know I’m not making the situation any better by not telling her, but I don’t know how to break the news.

  “Are you off this weekend?” Nalani says as I stick the Band-Aid on top of my scratch. She hands Libby back to me and tucks a strand of her short dyed-blond hair behind her ears. “I’m having a party in Kaanapali. Remember the house with the huge pool?”

  Nalani’s stepdad works for a company that rents luxury houses all over Hawaii. He travels around the islands a lot and her mom usually goes with him. Sometimes they’re away at the same time one of the houses on Maui is empty, and since Nalani knows where they keep the keys, we usually take advantage and hang out in these crazy expensive places.

  “Is Kahale going?” I know I shouldn’t care if he’s there—he’s the one who acted like a jerk, after all. I haven’t talked to him since prom night, when I caught him with his hand down the front of Grace Hamasaki’s dress.

  Nalani rolls her eyes. “I didn’t invite him. Although maybe I should. You could confront him and be done with it.”

  “I am done with it.” But we both know that’s not true. I know it bothers Nalani that I avoid confrontation, but honestly, I want to forget the entire night even happened. Just talking about Kahale is making my palms sweat. I only need to steer clear of him for two more months, until he leaves for college somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

  Libby starts to wriggle around again. “I’d better get her in there,” I say.

  “Saturday. Don’t forget,” she calls as I walk toward my mom’s office.

  It’s almost eleven o’clock at night—long past the time when my mom should have left for the day—but she’s still here, frowning at her laptop. The fluorescent lighting is bright and unforgiving, and it highlights the dark purple bags under her eyes. Two deep wrinkles are engraved on either side of her mouth, the result of all the frowning she’s done over the past six months, ever since my dad left. All of her stress and unhappiness is showing up on her face.

  “When I said fix the situation, I didn’t mean bring it down here,” she says without looking away from the screen.

  “I didn’t know what else to do with her.” I can’t just stick Libby outside—the hotel is constantly trying to get rid of the stray cats; no one would appreciate me adding another one.

  My mom sighs heavily, a sound I’ve become so used to hearing, I barely register it.

  I’d like to tell her to go home, that we can do without the money she makes working overtime, but I know she’ll just snap at me. Money isn’t the only reason she works so much. She doesn’t like being at home. We’re still living in the house I grew up in, the one she and my dad bought together when they were first married. He may have moved to O’ahu, but there are still reminders of him everywhere in that house.

  “Leave it down here until your shift is over, then take it to the shelter,” she says, rubbing her eyes.

  Although I knew this was probably what she was going to say, I feel bad for Libby. I don’t want to think about what could happen if no one adopts her. It’s not her fault she’s in this situation.

  “What if we—”

  My mom’s already shaking her head. “Marty. Don’t even ask.”

  I purse my lips. Once upon a time, she would have let me keep the cat. In fact, keeping her probably would have been her idea. But no
w it’s just one more thing she’d have to deal with. One more thing on her already overloaded plate.

  And this is why I can’t leave Maui.

  My older brother, Ansel, is already halfway out the door, and if I go too, I don’t think my mom will ever snap out of this funk. Our family is already fractured, but if my brother and I both leave, we’ll officially be broken. Someone has to stay behind to make sure that doesn’t happen.

  “Fine. I’ll ask around and see if any of the staff will take her,” I say. I set Libby down on the floor then pull the office door shut behind me.

  I keep hoping that time will give my mom back to me. But with every day that goes by, I’m less and less sure that she’ll return.

  Three

  “Hey, any chance you want to adopt a cat?” I ask Benjie an hour later. It’s past midnight and the front desk is quiet. This is the worst time to be at work, because there’s nothing to do, and yet there’s still a million hours before my shift ends.

  “Zero chance. Leo already asked me,” Benjie says. “But cheer up! I know how we can pay those heinous people back for dumping her on us.” He taps something into his computer, then swivels the monitor so I can see the screen.

  I wrinkle my nose. “You want to send them a glitter bomb?”

  “It’s the perfect revenge,” he says. “They open the envelope and pow”—he mimics an explosion with his fingers—“glitter everywhere. They’ll be vacuuming it up for weeks!”

  “Um, maybe not.” The Hudsons are the worst, but sending them a glitter bomb isn’t going to help me find a home for Libby.

  Benjie’s lower lip puffs out. “You’re no fun,” he says. “Now, I could stand here and try to convince you, but it’s been an hour since my last break. I need to eat something or I will faint. You’ll be fine on your own?”

  I nod. The Grand Palms is in Wailea, an area on the south side of the island that shuts down ridiculously early. Aside from the occasional late check-in or guest complaint, at this time of night it’s usually just Benjie and me, jacking around.