Page 23 of With a Little Luck

I look back at her, then gesture down the street. “We’re less than two blocks from Ellie’s school. Can one of you walk with her the rest of the way, and we’ll pick you up at the corner?”

“Walk?” says Ellie, like I’ve just suggested she go climb Mount Everest.

“Don’t whine,” says Pru. “Jude is right. Lucy, can you go with her?”

“Why me?”

I don’t stick around to hear the ensuing argument. I jog down the sidewalk, all the while wondering if I was seeing things. Wishful thinking? A mirage?

But no. There she is, pacing back and forth in the parking lot, a cell phone held between her ear and shoulder. A small Toyota Camry sits in the next parking space, its hood propped open. Maya looks frazzled, her free hand scrunching some of her hair into a fist—and that look, more than anything, is what made me stop.64

“Maya?”

She swivels toward me, startled, then wilts with relief. She holds up a finger, then looks back at the car. “It just won’t start,” she says to the person on the phone. “It was fine. I just stopped for a second, ran in to get a coffee, and when I came back out …” She doesn’t speak for a while, nodding along to whatever the person on the other end of the line is saying. “Uh … the battery looks like …” She frowns, staring at a black box in the corner of the engine. “A battery? How should I know?” She sighs. “I know, I know. It’s just that I’m going to be late …”

While she talks, I lean over the engine. I can feel heat radiating off it.

“What’s going on?” asks Pru. I glance over to see her and Penny walking toward us.

“One second,” Maya says to whoever she’s talking to. She lowers the phone, looking flustered. “My car won’t start. My dad thinks it could be the battery, but I don’t have jumper cables or really any idea what I’m doing.” She laughs wryly. “I’m kind of stranded.”

“We can give you a ride,” I say hastily.

Too hastily? Do I sound eager? Desperate? Just the right amount of helpful?

But Maya’s smile is grateful, if still pinched with worry. “Thanks, but I might have to wait for AAA. I don’t want to make you late, too. So—it’s okay. I just … It’s probably something stupid, you know?” She heaves a heavy sigh, then lifts the phone back to her ear. “Sorry, Dad. Some of my friends were driving by and stopped to see if I needed help …”

While she talks to her dad, I study the engine. Metal and plastic, nuts and bolts. What would Ezra do? Admittedly, this is not a question I ever thought I’d ask myself, yet here we are. Ezra works at Marcus’s Garage, fixing cars and doing … mechanic-y things. (That’s a technical term.) He would have jumper cables, for starters. Probably an entire toolbox, just in case. If Ezra was here, he could probably take one look at this engine and know exactly what to do to fix it, whereas I might as well be trying to65translate a sheet of hieroglyphs. I’m not even sure itisan engine. Could it be a motor instead? I can never remember what the difference is.

Right now, I would give up my prized Gimli Funko to be able to fix this problem for Maya. I picture what that would be like. Sleeves rolled up, grease smeared on my palms, a wrench in my back pocket. (Where did he get the wrench, you ask? Well, don’t.)

I press my hand briefly to the outside of my jeans pocket, where I can feel the dice snugly inside.

I can do this. I can fix this. If this was a D&D campaign, I would roll for perception to see what was wrong, then a survival skill check to see if I knew how to fix it. And with a magic dice, the answer would be yes, of course. I can do anything. Right?

I imagine the way Maya would look at me as I diagnosed the problem. What she would say if I told her I could fix this for her, no sweat. She would look at me like a freaking hero as I tinkered away with this … thing. Whatever this is, that looks a little bit like a metal bolt next to the battery. It budges the tiniest bit as I reach over and give it a twist. Some white powdery dust flakes off.

“What are you doing?” Pru hisses at me.

“Hold on, Dad.” Maya lowers the phone again and looks at me, then down at the engine-motor-thing. “What did you do?”

“Uh—I’m not sure,” I say, heat creeping into my cheeks. “But that seemed … loose?”

Maya stares at me.

I clear my throat. “You could try turning it over?”

That sounds like something Ezra would say.

Maya opens her mouth, but hesitates a long moment. Then she nods, hope flickering in her eyes.

What am I thinking?

Which is exactly the question Pru hisses at me as Maya slips into the driver’s seat.

I flash my sister a panicked look. “I don’t know. I just thought—”66

I’m cut off by the sound of the engine roaring to life, so loud that Pru and I both jump back from it.

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