Just My Luck

by Jennifer Honeybourn

  All stuff I stole from guests at the hotel.

  Looking at all of this makes me sweat. I kneel down and pick up the sunglasses, trying to remember why I even wanted them in the first place.

  Nalani knocked on the hotel room door. “Housekeeping.”

  When no one answered, she opened the door with the master key card and we pushed our carts inside.

  I groaned. The room was littered with pizza boxes and beer bottles. The duvet cover was in a puddle on the floor. The sheets were pulled off, showing the bare mattress. A bunch of snorkel gear was piled in the corner, along with an inside-out wetsuit. Haystacks of dirty clothes and towels were everywhere, and the teak floor was covered in sand.

  “I’d like to nut-punch these slobs,” Nalani grumbled as I gathered the dirty sheets into a ball and dumped them into the laundry basket attached to my cart.

  I’d only been working at the hotel for a few weeks, but the state that some guests left their rooms in still managed to shock me.

  After we remade the bed with eight-hundred-thread-count sheets, Nalani placed a couple of hand-towel swans in the middle of the bed, while I straightened a row of shiny black gift bags on the credenza. The bags were from one of the hotel’s luxury stores, which meant that I could never afford whatever was nestled beneath the cream-colored tissue paper. It bothered me that these people, whoever they were, could buy whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, without sparing a thought for the price, while pretty much everything I owned came from chain stores in the Queen Ka‘ahumanu Center mall. It wasn’t fair.

  Next to the bags was a pair of red sunglasses. I picked them up and slid them on. I’d been looking for a pair just like this for ages.

  “They look good on you,” Nalani said.

  It was just a pair of sunglasses. And these people already had so much—they probably wouldn’t even notice they were missing. What was the harm if I took them?

  I sit down on the floor, my heart racing. Nothing in this box means anything to me. I didn’t take any of this stuff because I needed it—I took it because I felt resentful of the people who could leave their rooms in a disaster state and not spare a thought for the staff who had to clean up after them. I was jealous of what they had and I wanted to punish them in some small way.

  And all of a sudden I know why my luck has been so bad. It has nothing to do with my dad leaving—and everything to do with me stealing this stuff.

  The universe is trying to settle the score.

  I put all of the items back into the shoebox, handling them as gently as if they were grenades. This time, I don’t bury the box at the back of my closet. I set it on my desk instead and sit down on my bed, wrapping my arms around myself.

  I have to return all of this. It’s the only way I’m ever going to get my luck back. And judging from how bad it’s been lately, I need to do this sooner rather than later.

  But it’s one thing to know I have to give this stuff back. It’s another to figure out how I’m going to do it. I only have a vague idea of which rooms I took each item from. On an average day, I’d clean ten suites, which were assigned at the beginning of each shift. I never wrote the room numbers down, because why bother? While housekeeping maintains a record of who cleaned which room on which day, I don’t have access to those records.

  But my mom does.

  I take a deep breath. Breaking into her files might not earn me any points with the universe, but it’s the only way I can get that information.

  I just hope that it works.

  Five

  The dentist promised that the freezing would wear off in a few hours, but my mouth still feels numb when I arrive at work later that evening. I keep wiping at my lips, worried that I’m drooling. I could have called in sick, I guess, but I really want to get the information about the rooms I cleaned. I want to start sending these items back to their rightful owners and free myself from this curse of bad luck.

  I’ve barely started my shift when Marielle walks up and thrusts a piece of paper into my hands.

  “Marty. What is this?”

  I glance down at the events rundown she asked me to create yesterday. We put them up in the elevators so guests know what’s happening around the hotel. Yoga classes, hula lessons, a massage on the beach. A Maui Pubic Transit meeting.

  Whoops.

  “Maui Public Transit,” Marielle says, tapping one red fingernail against the glaring typo. “This was up in the elevators all day!”

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “Don’t apologize; just do better,” she says. She adjusts the brass name tag pinned on the pocket of her Hawaiian shirt, even though it’s already perfectly straight. Benjie swears this a tactic to draw attention to the MANAGER title listed under her name when she’s about to ask you to do something you’re probably not going to want to do.

  And sure enough …

  “Now, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something else,” she says. “I need you to show some children of our VIP guests around the island. Take them to a luau, go to the beach, visit the aquarium. Whatever kids like to do.”

  I stare at her. She wants me to babysit?

  “Wouldn’t they be better off with a nanny?” I ask. The hotel has a roster of wonderful, caring trained nannies—why is she asking me, someone with zero experience with kids, to do this? I have no idea why she thinks I’m the right person for this job. It makes no sense.

  Marielle’s lips tighten, the only indication that she’s heard my question. “I’ll arrange for luau tickets for tomorrow night. And don’t worry about your front desk shift—I’ll find someone to cover it.” She turns on her sensible black heel before I dare ask her anything else, and disappears through the doors into the back room.

  I put my head down on the counter.

  “Wait,” Benjie says. “She’s going to pay you to do all sorts of fun touristy stuff and you’re pouting?”

  I lift my head to glare at him. “This is going to be a million times harder than working the front desk.”

  “You are such a negative Nelly,” he says. “People the world over take care of kids every single day. You’ll be fine.”

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  “I know so. You’ll be sipping mai tais while you’re entertained by fire dancers and hula girls. I’m the opposite of sorry for you.”

  Well, when he puts it that way, it doesn’t sound so bad.

  Later that evening, after playing three rounds of Hangman—all of which I lose—Benjie goes on his second coffee break. I’m finally alone behind the front desk, so I decide to use the opportunity to see if I can break into my mom’s files.

  I glance behind me, just to make sure no one else is around, before I type in her password. My mom uses her birthday for everything, even though I’ve lectured her a hundred times about changing it to something harder to crack. For once, I’m glad she didn’t listen to me.

  A quick search of my name in the scheduling software turns up more than four hundred results. I suck in a breath. I can’t believe I cleaned that many rooms in five months. How on earth am I going to figure out which of these rooms I took the stuff from?

  Except … the only time I ever had the nerve to steal anything was when I was working with Nalani. Maybe if I type her name alongside mine …

  The list immediately narrows down to 110 results. My shoulders relax a tiny bit. One hundred and ten is better than four hundred, for sure, but it still seems like an impossible number to try to wade through.

  I’m nervous that Benjie could come back at any minute, so I save the record and send it to my email, then delete the email from my mom’s sent box to cover my tracks. I’m busy setting up our next game of Hangman when I spot Will Foster crossing the lobby. My fingers tighten on my pen as I watch him head toward the yellow leather club chairs. He’s carrying a white Grand Palms mug and a book. Will must feel me looking at him, because he glances over and our eyes meet. Something inside me flutters as he reroutes and starts walking toward
me.

  My palms are sweaty. I’m usually a lot slower to warm up to someone, but something about Will really affects me. The way he smiles at me, like he’s really glad to see me, like he’s been waiting to talk to me, makes my heart race.

  He probably smiles at everybody like that.

  I hate the thought that he smiles at anyone else like that.

  “Marty, hey,” he says. He’s tall and thin, a lamppost of a boy in plaid board shorts and a washed-out X-Files T-shirt. His dark hair is messy and standing high on his head, completely defying gravity. He sets his mug and book—a worn copy of Ready Player One—on the counter.

  “You’re still awake,” I say. And then my face reddens because, hello, obvious.

  “Can’t sleep. Still on East Coast time, I guess.” He runs a hand over the stubble sprouting on his jaw. There are dark purple circles under his eyes that weren’t there when I saw him last night.

  I tap my pen against his mug. “Might help if you weren’t drinking coffee so late at night.”

  “It’s probably not the best idea,” he agrees. “But the coffee here is so good.”

  It’s my turn to talk but he leans forward, resting his elbows on the polished bamboo counter, and my mind goes blank. He’s inches from me, close enough that I can smell the coconut pomade he uses in that unruly tangle of hair. I twirl the pen in my fingers. Talking to people is my job—it’s never been a problem for me before. But other people are not Will. And they’re not usually staring at me so intently, with mesmerizingly deep blue eyes.

  The silence between us lengthens to the point of awkwardness.

  I clear my throat. “We grow our own beans.”

  My face burns. We grow our own beans?! God. What is wrong with me?

  But instead of stopping and salvaging my dignity, I keep going. I can’t seem to stop myself. “In Hawaii, I mean,” I add. “We’re one of only two states in America that grow coffee plants. The other is California.”

  I’m having an out-of-body experience. I can see myself delivering the most boring lecture ever on the history of Hawaiian coffee—who even knew I knew so much about the subject?—but unbelievably, Will doesn’t run away. In fact, from the way his face lights up, it seems like he actually might be interested in this conversation.

  “I’m planning to try every coffee place on the island,” he says. “I don’t want to go to the same place twice.”

  “Wow, you’re really into coffee,” I say. “Maybe you should open your own shop.”

  He drums his fingers against the counter. “That’s the dream.”

  “I can give you a list of some of my favorite places, if you like.”

  His smile widens. “That’d be great.”

  “Have you been to Maui before?”

  Will shakes his head. “My parents sent me as a graduation present,” he says. “Of course, they made me bring my brother, so in reality, it’s really a gift for them, too. Now we’re both out of their hair for the summer.”

  My smile tightens. My mom took me out for dinner to celebrate, which is not nothing, but it doesn’t exactly compare to an all-expenses-paid vacation. But then, I don’t think there is much in my life that compares to Will Foster’s.

  He glances around the open-air lobby, at the high ceilings and marble columns, the indoor reflection pool with a stone mermaid at the center. “It must be amazing to live here. Like being on permanent vacation.”

  This is something tourists say all the time. It’s hard for them to believe any different, when they’re faced with the crash of waves against the shore and air scented with plumeria flowers. Their real lives, with all the day-to-day worries and problems, are thousands of miles away. My problems—even if they’re mostly all of my own making—are still here.

  “I don’t have anything to compare it to,” I say. “I’ve never left.”

  Will blinks at me. “Wait, what? You’ve never been off this island?”

  “Well, I’ve been to the other Hawaiian islands. I just haven’t been to the mainland.” Hawaii is pretty remote—like thousands of miles from anywhere else on Earth—and we’ve never had the extra money to travel.

  The pen I’ve been spinning in my fingers suddenly flies out of my hands. I make a quick move to grab it while it’s still midair, which turns out to be a bad decision, because my elbow connects with Will’s mug. I knock the mug over and coffee spills all over his book.

  He snatches the book up, but it’s too late—it’s soaked.

  “I’m so sorry.” I grab a handful of tissues from the box we keep under the counter and try to wipe the book off, but it’s no use. Coffee has leaked through the cover and onto the pages.

  “Not a big deal,” he says. “I’ve read it a million times anyway.”

  Marielle picks that moment to return to the front desk. She frowns at the sight of me mopping up coffee from the counter.

  “Mr. Foster,” she says, a practiced smile spreading over her face. “Everything okay?”

  Marielle is very good at her job. She makes it her business to know as much as she can about our high-profile guests, so of course she knows who Will is. She probably knows more about his family than he does.

  “It’s fine. I just knocked over my coffee.”

  I shoot him a grateful look and finish cleaning up. It’s nice of him to take the blame—I don’t need Marielle yelling at me again tonight.

  “I see you’ve met Marty,” she says. “Good news. She’s agreed to show you and your brother around the island.”

  My brow furrows. My mind spirals back to our conversation earlier this evening when she told me the “other duties as assigned” in my job description included babysitting rich kids. Only, now that I think about it, she didn’t actually tell me how old the kids were.

  Marielle’s job is to make sure that our super-rich guests are kept happy. The only way she would have ever agreed to lend me out as a tour guide, rather than one of her other, more trusted staff, is if Will asked for me personally. And from the way his face is turning red, it’s pretty clear he did.

  “I thought you might like to go to a luau, so I’ve arranged for tickets tomorrow night,” Marielle says. “How about you and Hayes meet Marty at the front entrance at five p.m.?”

  “Great,” Will says. He raises his eyebrows slightly at me. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

  I nod.

  Marielle waits until Will has disappeared from the lobby with his soggy book before fixing her sharp gaze on me.

  “Remember, you’re representing the hotel,” she says.

  “Of course.”

  What she’s really saying, without really saying it, is that Will Foster is off-limits. But she doesn’t need to remind me that fraternizing with guests is against company policy. Will’s only here for the summer. He may have requested that I show him around the island, but that’s all I’m going to be showing him.

  After what happened with Kahale, I’m through with boys. And no matter how hot Will Foster is or how zingy he makes me feel, he’s not going to make me change my mind.

  Six

  Early the next morning, I’m walking out of the hotel, anxious to get home and comb through my list to see if I can jog my memory about which of the rooms I stole from, when I almost bump into Nalani. She looks like she just rolled out of bed and pulled on her housekeeping uniform.

  “Ugh, you’re so lucky you get to leave,” she says, dragging her hair into a ponytail. “I have eight solid hours of cleaning pubes out of bathtubs ahead of me.”

  I frown. I’m not sure if Nalani’s endgame is to make me feel guilty that I’m no longer in the trenches with her, but it works. Every time.

  “But eyes on the prize, right?” she says. “Only a few more months and we’ll be out of here. Speaking of which, we really need to book our plane tickets.”

  My mouth is dry. My promotion to the front desk may have created a crack in our relationship, but that crack is going to widen into a gulf when Nalani finds out I’m n
ot going to California with her. Putting off telling her isn’t going to make her any less mad at me, but I can’t drop this on her right before she’s about to start her shift. Then again, I’m not sure there’s ever going to be a good time to tell her. So maybe I should just do it and get it over with.

  “Right,” I say, swallowing. “About that—”

  Nalani glances at her phone. “Crap, I’m late,” she says, backing down the hall. “Text me later and we’ll figure it out, okay? And don’t forget about the party on Saturday.”

  Despite Nalani’s reassurances that Kahale won’t be there, I’m still nervous about going to the party at the rental house. There’s too much overlap in our friend group for him not to have heard about it. And while I’m pretty sure that Kahale’s been taking steps to avoid me, too, I can’t be sure he’d turn down a party just because I’m going to be there.

  I don’t like thinking about him or what happened on prom night, so I box up the memory and push it down with all the other emotions I’m not ready to deal with, way down deep where hopefully it will collect dust and never bother me again.

  I walk out to the parking lot. Someone in a red Jeep has parked too close to the hotel van. I can’t get the driver’s-side door open, so I go in through the passenger side, cursing as I awkwardly climb over the console. Once I’m settled, I start the van and pull out of the lot. It still feels unwieldy, especially when I’m trying to turn, but I’m starting to get used to driving it.

  At this time of the morning the streets are pretty quiet, but there’s usually a few people out for a stroll or jog, getting their exercise in before the sun fully rises and it gets too hot. I’m a few miles away from the hotel when I spot a familiar figure walking on the sidewalk, in the same plaid board shorts and T-shirt he was wearing when I saw him a few hours ago.

  Will.

  Marielle’s not-so-subtle warning about keeping things professional is still ringing in my ears, along with my own promise to myself to not get involved with him. The smart thing would be to ignore all these feelings churning inside of me, the ones that aren’t going to lead anywhere, and drive right past him. But that’s not what I do. Instead I pull the van over and roll down the window.