Page 3 of Lady Luck

Success.

“Frappe for Cody!” the barista yelled. He stepped up to the counter as he kept trying to free his fingers, getting more and more panicked.

I took pity on him and gave him a hint. “Accept your fate.”

He gave me a crazy look and pulled harder, so I gave him another. “Do the opposite of what you think you should do.”

And the lightbulb went on. He pushed his fingers together, freeing them from the trap. We shared a smile, and he tried to give back the trap. I stepped away, shaking my head. “Keep it. I’ll win us another one later at the arcade.”

“Awesoooome.” He tucked it into his pocket before grabbing his drink from the counter. He removed the lid and immediately inhaled the whipped cream and chocolate-sauce topping in a chaotic blur. I let out a giggle, and he smiled up at me with a whipped-cream-covered nose and chin. The uncertain boy from just minutes ago was gone, and I loved who he was underneath even more.

“So, what’s first?” he asked as he wiped some of the whipped cream onto the sleeve of his shirt while looking around curiously. He didn’t seem too worried about the whipped-cream mustache he still had or about being cool at all.

I liked that, which was why I took a chance and also did something uncool by grabbing his hand. “Well, you know what’s better than watching the people on security monitors?”

“What?” he asked, looking interested and not even a little weirded out by our clasped hands.

“Watching them in real life.” I tugged his hand and started walking. “Come on, I’ll take you to my favorite spying spot. The sky bridge.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like a hallway that’s also a bridge. It goes between the two sides of the Fortuna. Where we are now has the casino and a bunch of other stuff, but on the other side of the road is the resort and theater and a bunch of big rooms with really ugly carpet. The bridge has glass on all sides. I’m not explaining it well, but it’s freakin’ awesome. People walk through it to go to shows, and down below on the sidewalk, you can see people going to other casinos.”

Even with my bad description, Cody seemed excited.

I looked down at my purple watch swaying back and forth between us beside his multi-colored braided bracelets, feeling happier than I had in a long time.

It was a mental picture that I would never forget from the day that I, and my family, received the absolute best and the absolute worst that fortune had to offer.

The day I met my lifelong best friend.

The day Grandmother won big… and I never went home.

1

BREE

“Seven! Seven! Seven!” Grandmother chanted under her breath as she tapped the side of the Sizzling 7s slot machine with her index and middle finger—her favorite ritual—while also pulling the lever of the Double Diamond machine to her left.

My posture went rigid as my heart rate elevated like it always did in her presence.

I tried to get her attention again, speaking over the whir of the spinning reels.

“Grandmother?”

I waited until both reels stopped spinning to try again.

“Grandmother?”

Push. Crank.

The fiery spinning 7s held her in a trance.

I glanced up at the flashing marquee at the end of this particular carousel of slots: $5. Not high rollers, but not pennies either. This alone didn’t give me many clues as to her mood or why she wanted to see me, and I needed them. It was always better to be prepared. Interacting with Grandmother was a defensive game. I narrowed my gaze on the digital readout. She was playing the max bet on both machines. I started to mentally calculate how much each push and pull was costing her, but the instant nausea that accompanied that train of thought demanded that I derail that train.

With a deep breath, I took a risk. “Barb?”

Her ministrations froze as she shifted her gaze from the frenzied flashing lights of the machine to me. My spine somehow managed to straighten even further to the point where I must be over six feet tall by now, and my heart hammered into a gallop.

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