A Whole Lot of Lucky (22 page)

“
I
wouldn't come anyway.”

Then I say the meanest thing I can think of. “You're just a witch with a B.”

Air rushes over the earpiece as Amanda gasps on her end. All my steam escapes, and I shrink against my bed.

“Amanda?” My voice is tiny.

My ear is still pressed against the handset when I hear the click, then the dial tone. I am disconnected.

I feel heavy as a rock and stiff as a board alone in my own backyard after the call with Amanda. I pace over our scribble-scrabble grass, then lean against my maple. The trunk rises tall and straight and explodes all the way up in green pointy leaves.

I ramble around in the garage. It's hard to remember what I used to do before we won the lottery. The old boy bike is keeping company with the garbage cans. I shove the trash aside and pull the bike through. The thin rubber tires flub over the ground. Neglect has let the air out. It pangs my heart to see this hardworking bike in such condition. Furthermore, no one should've put it with the garbage without asking me. It's
my
bike.

Sticky cobwebs trail from its handlebars like streamers. I grab one of Dad's shop rags and brush the debris from the bike. I straighten the front wheel. I pump the
tires so they go from floppy as an old man's gut to fat as fresh-baked doughnuts. The seat fits my butt like it's been saving my place.

My new bike will understand.

I rasp down the driveway and around the neighborhood in the direction opposite of Emily's, which is also opposite of Amanda's. Little kids shriek and play in a front-yard sprinkler while their mom weeds. A calico cat watches me go by, only his eyes moving. An old man shuffles down the sidewalk, waves, and smiles. He waves and smiles three more times because that's how many laps I do around the block before I turn back to my own garage.

Up in my room, I flop onto my bed and cover my eyes with my arm.

* * *

“Getting excited for your party?” Mom asks Friday when she picks me up from school. She smiles into the rearview mirror. She likes the idea of me having a bunch of Magnolia friends.

“Yeah,” I say. It's the best I can do. I mean, I
am
excited about my party, but whenever I get too happy about it, thoughts of Amanda pinprick my brain. She hasn't answered my calls. At first, it bothered me; then I checked my mental notes and decided she said some pretty mean things herself.

So I showed her.

I stopped calling.

As Mom and I unload the groceries, I picture Nikki, Alexis, and me eating them. Laughing at the TV with popcorn. Whispering secrets in hot-chocolate breaths. Giggling over breakfast in the morning because we stayed up all night long.

When the doorbell rings after supper, I race from the kitchen to be the one who answers the door. “Hi, Nikki!” I bark. If I had a tail, it would be wagging. I grab her sleeping bag, then my eyes fall on her mother. She's beautiful. I know I'm staring, but I can't stop myself.

Mom comes up behind me, introduces herself, and shakes Mrs. Simms's hand.

“Please, just call me Mimi,” Mrs. Simms tells Mom. Somehow, I'd imagined her voice would sound as thin and tight as a wire hanger, but it's sunny, like those tennis outfits she wears. She does that chitchat thing grownups do, and though I can tell Mom is a little nervous, she does okay.

Nikki Simms is in my house!

“Let's go upstairs,” I say, but before we turn around, Nikki's mother makes a throat-clearing sound. So here it is. I ready myself to see the dragon lady in action.

“C'mere,” Mrs. Simms says, gesturing with her hand.

Nikki lowers her head. She trudges toward her mom as if being dragged by heavy chains. Mrs. Simms gives her a quick hug, then says, “Have a good time!” She chucks Nikki under the chin. “Don't stay up too late.”

“We will!” I say and she laughs, which makes me feel good. When the door closes, I wonder what I missed—Nikki makes her mom sound evil, but Mrs. Simms is nice.

We've just gotten up the stairs when the doorbell rings with Alexis's arrival. I shout like Nikki does and we run down the stairs, but secretly, I was hoping to have Nikki to myself for a while.

After we put Alexis's stuff up, we hang around the house. Neither of them have baby sisters, so they play with Libby like Libby plays with Hannah, and it's all fun and games until Libby's diaper lets out a powerful stink.

Alexis recoils. “That's disgusting!”

“She's just a baby,” I shoot back. Everyone poops.

Alexis makes a gagging motion, moves to the other side of the living room, and flounces onto the couch. Thinking this is a game, Libby starts to toddle her way.

“No!” Alexis draws her legs up. “Oh, my God. Please take her away.”

Nikki laughs. “Hey, you wore a diaper once.”

I cast a grateful glance to Nikki. Swooping up Libby and her squishy diaper, I whisk her into the kitchen, where Mom and Dad are drinking coffee and talking. “Please, Mom, could you change her? I have to get back to my party.”

Mom stretches her arms out and holds up Libby. “Uh-oh! Uh-oh! Someone needs a diaper change!” she says playfully. “It's past your bedtime anyway.”

Problem solved.

I'm still grounded from my phone and Dad took the laptop out of my room. “Removing temptation,” he said as he carried it out. With Libby the entertainer gone, Alexis is quickly bored. She whips out her phone. Nikki checks a few things on hers, too. My sleepover is falling apart. I think of the games I listed—Light as a Feather, Bloody Mary, Penny Pitch—what was I thinking? Nikki and Alexis are too old, too cool for those kinds of games.

I've got it! “What about ding-dong ditch?”

Nikki cracks a grin. Alexis drops her shoulders and stares at me dead-on. “I haven't played that since I was … a little sixth grader.”

Oh, yeah. Like I really believe she said that by accident. The only reason I invited her was because Nikki invited her.

Nikki stands up. She coaxes Alexis. “It'll be fun. C'mon, it's dark outside and no one will see us anyway.”

I'm mortified as I realize I have to ask permission to go outside since it's dark. “I'll be right back,” I say. Dad's not in the kitchen, so I go upstairs. Libby's asleep in her crib and Mom and Dad are reading books on their bed.

“Can we go for a walk around the neighborhood?” Technically, not a lie.

Mom lays her book down. “It's late.”

“Just around the block. Please? Dad?”

Dad sighs. He glances at the clock. “It
is
late.” He
reads Mom's expression, then my desperate face. “Can it hurt?” he asks Mom. “It's almost summer.”

Mom stares at him like she can't believe he's disagreeing with her orders. She shakes her head, raises her book, and mumbles something about discipline and structure.

“Go ahead,” Dad says with a wink. “One time around the block and come right back, okay?”

I shirk the guilt that tries to cover me and run downstairs, thrilled with my temporary freedom. Nikki and Alexis aren't in the living room where I left them; they're in the kitchen. A liter of soda is out on the counter along with a carton of eggs.

“Change of plans,” Nikki says.

“We're eating?” I ask.

Alexis sneers. She opens the carton and counts. “Nine left.” Her thin lips move like worms as she smiles. “We're egging.”

I gasp, which gives her a sharp laugh. She cocks her head and asks, “Where does Emily DeCamp live?”

Nikki and Alexis crush the perfect green Emily DeCamp grass under their feet as we hide behind her mother's van. The porch is a still life of wicker furniture. Emily's window, the window from which the notes of her flute drop like soft petals, is dark with sleep.

I stare at the house where I was light as a feather and stiff as a board and laughing all night. “I don't think we should do this,” I say. We could change our minds right now. We could turn around, jog back to my house, and stick the eggs in the fridge where they belong.

Alexis turns slit eyes on me. “Nikki doesn't think it was your fault she got in trouble. But
I'd
be mad at you if I were her.”

“Shut up,” Nikki says. Her eyes radiate with daring and excitement.

She slips to the corner of the van and motions for us
to come over. Laying down the carton, she lifts the lid. The ammo is ready.

Alexis bends for an egg, but Nikki stops her.

“Hailee throws the first one,” Nikki says.

My heart beats in my throat. Blood whooshes to my feet, and a nervous, shaky feeling flows in its place. Nikki holds out a smooth white egg. I search her face for some way out, but her eyes spark like fireworks.

“Emily got us both in trouble. Come on,” she says. She bobs the egg in front of me. “Eggs are good for you.”

Alexis swipes two eggs and pitches them at the house. The night air cracks with egg yolks. My stomach drops but Nikki and Alexis laugh, grab more eggs, and hurl them. Nikki wraps my hand around one, but keeps up her own attack. A light comes on in the back—Mrs. DeCamp.

“Hurry!” Alexis urges. Her arm is an egg-throwing machine gun.

Nikki sees me standing, not throwing. She grabs my arm and launches it like a catapult. My egg arcs high in the air. It spins like a football and shatters against Emily's window.

“Run!” Alexis jackrabbits down the street.

My leaden feet don't move. My shameful eyes stay on Emily's window.

Nikki shoves me into action. We sprint down the street. I rocket past her, leap over a split-rail fence, and dart through shadows all the way to my own back porch.

All three of us gasp for breath, Alexis laughing between gasps and Nikki saying, “That was great!”

Their eyes are wide and bright under the porch light; energy beams from their bodies like sound waves. They're jazzed, pumped-up, happy. Alexis keeps breaking up as she describes the egg throwing.

Tonight, I'll pray for rain to wash Emily's house so the DeCamps will never know what happened. Tomorrow, I'll put one of my own dollars in Mom's purse for the eggs. On Monday, I will be extra nice to Emily. If I do all that, it will erase tonight.

Alexis is still laughing.

“We have to go in now,” I say. I open the back door and hold it.

“Got any more eggs?” Alexis cackles as she passes through.

I close the door behind Nikki and myself. We head upstairs, and I let Mom and Dad know we're back. I'm quick about it, because the guilty feeling I have is so strong, it's like another person standing behind me, ready to pop out.

I pad into Libby's room and peer into her crib. Her sleeping face is innocent. She breathes easily. Her pajamas are white and decorated with green and pink outlines of elephants.

I wish I could stay in here all night.

“Did you enjoy your party?” Mom asks Saturday after Nikki and Alexis have left. We stand by the front door, having just seen them off. “Nikki's mother is very pretty…. She's different from how I thought she'd be.”

I wait to hear the end of that.

Since I don't say anything, Mom goes, “She just seemed down-to-earth, that's all. I liked her.”

I'm glad Mom thought nice things about Mrs. Simms, and I know she wants to hear all about how fantastic she thinks the sleepover probably was, but I can't even remember the good parts to tell her. Instead, I say I'm sick and stay in for the rest of the weekend. My fingers want so badly to dial Amanda's number and whisper the whole story to her, but I know she doesn't want a phone call from me. Probably she would think it
serves me right to feel the way I do, heavy with a stomach full of rotten eggs.

I dread Monday, but it comes anyway. It's easy to avoid Emily during business tech, since we don't sit by each other anymore, but at lunch, I slide my hair forward, unable to bring myself to look at her.

You know how they say the crook always returns to the scene of the crime? Well, if you ever become a criminal, I can tell you right now you should stay as far away as you can. Cynthia natters on, but Emily's quiet. My conscience pecks at my soul, saying,
Tell her what you did! Tell her what you did!
It sounds like a parrot. I cram my peanut butter sandwich into my mouth; it's the only way to keep words of confession from leaping off my tongue.

I peek at Emily, and her eyes flick away. I slide my Rice Krispies bar across the table, but she ignores it.

Cynthia makes a move for the treat. “Can I have it?”

I nod. For once, I'm glad Cynthia talks with her mouth open because her chatter makes this lunch period feel almost normal.

Emily didn't take my dessert, but I promised myself I would be extra nice to her to make up for the egg-throwing. When we're done eating, I try to take her empty milk carton to throw it out for her.

Her hand moves lightning fast, clutching the plastic container with superhuman strength.

“Oh, I'll get it for you,” I say in my best waitress voice. “I've got to throw out my stuff anyway.”

Pulling the carton closer to her side of the table, she picks at her raisins without eating them.

Cynthia offers me her used-up hot lunch tray, gross, half-eaten chicken strips with ketchup bloodying the stumps. I tell her to take care of it herself, then I clear my stuff, throw out my trash, and say good-bye as the bell rings. Emily turns her head in the opposite direction.

I don't know how I'm supposed to do good deeds for her when she's in such a weird mood.

* * *

In history, Mrs. Fuller talks about the St. Augustine field trip. We are to divide ourselves into groups of three or four, and a chaperone will be assigned to each group. She passes out questionnaires that we all have to fill out to show we've visited the assigned places. I try to become invisible as my classmates' happy voices chirp in the air, shouting for this person or that person to be in their group.