Page 36 of With a Little Luck

“I feel like I’m going to be sick,” Maya whispers.

I snort, thinking she’s making a joke—but then I look at her face and reconsider.

“He’s just a guy,” I say. “He’s human, like the rest of us.”

She guffaws. “Yeah. Right. He’s so talented, and so attractive, and so …romantic.”

I smile. “So that’s all you’re looking for in a guy?”

I want to bite back the words immediately. I’d meant them as a joke, but they come too close to the unspoken truth of my enormous crush.

For a second, Maya looks away, and it is awkward as hell. But then she perks back up. “Tell me about your T-shirt.”

I glance down at the gray tee with the white twenty-sided dice. “What about it?”

“It has something to do with Dungeons and Dragons, right?”

“Um.” Heat pricks at my neck. “Yeah.”

No nerd talk.

“I’ve never played. How does it work?”

I frown, feeling a little bit like I’m opening a treasure chest without rolling a perception check first. Like this is bound to be trap.

But Maya seems honestly curious. Or at least, like she wants a distraction.

“Well,” I start, sorting through the billion possible answers to that seemingly simple question. Howdoesit work? “The dice are used to … determine things. In the game. Like … if you want to see if an object has been cursed, you would cast a Detect Magic spell, and then you’d roll to see whether or not you succeed.”

Maya is watching me, listening intently. “Okay,” she says slowly. “So if you roll a high number, then the object is cursed?”

“Well … no. The roll just determines whether or not you can detect it. The Dungeon Master decides whether or not the object is actually cursed.”96

“Who’s the Dungeon Master?”

“I am.”

Her eyebrows raise. “That sounds important.”

“I guess. I come up with the campaigns, and help guide the other players. Try to come up with surprises for them, and challenges they have to overcome. I make up the puzzles that need to be solved and decide when they run into a horde of monsters … that sort of thing.”

It sounds as ridiculous out loud as it does in my head, but for some reason I keep talking, hoping to stumble onto the words that might convey a little bit about how it isn’t just a group of friends playing make believe. How it’s about teamwork and puzzle-solving, imagination and storytelling. How it gives you a chance to become someone new. To have magic and strength and power. To save the day, sometimes. Or sometimes you just goof off and hunt for treasure and kill orcs and get lost in the woods until you stumble onto something amazing, and how I’ve started making a comic that will follow our newest campaign but I can’t work too far ahead, because things always change when we’re playing and—

Maya’s eyes widen excitedly. “You’re making a comic?”

My gut twists. I shouldn’t have mentioned that. “Oh. Yeah. It’s not very good, though. It’s just a hobby.”

“Can I read it?”

I reel back. The thought of Maya reading my comic, the one with the beautiful elven statue that looks likeher? The very thought makes me want to swan dive into the lava pit of Mount Doom.

I’m epically relieved when a voice interrupts us, keeping me from having to answer.

“Okay, you two. Go on.”

Maya turns around, facing the front of the line. And it’s us.Weare the front of the line, and the publicist is beckoning us forward.

We turn the corner into a small room with a potted plant and a couple of posters from artists who performed at this concert hall years ago, and there at a table in the center of the room—sits Sadashiv. As startlingly gorgeous as he looks on the cover of the teen magazines Penny likes,97but also looking … younger. It’s easy to forget when people cast around words likeworld’s sexiest manand women twice his age are swooning over him.

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