Page 5 of With a Little Luck

The Temple of … Vinylia?

The Temple of … Escalante?

The Temple of … Fortuna?

Looking up, I notice Ellie squirming in Mom’s lap, reaching the end of her short attention span. I call quietly to her, and she immediately rushes back to join me. I swing her up and place her on the counter, in the same spot Ari sat earlier, tuning her guitar. I hand Ellie a Ventures Vinyl–branded coffee mug full of guitar picks in all different colors, and she happily begins sorting them into piles. Mom shoots me a look of gratitude.14

The duet finishes, and Ari returns to the stage, the clipboard tucked under one arm. She waits for the performers to clear away their instruments before taking the mic.

“I’m not sure I would want to follow that,” she says, to a chuckle of agreement throughout the audience, “but it looks like I might have to, since we have reached the end of our sign-up sheet! While I play, Pru is going to pass this around again, and I hope we get a few more performers. Otherwise you’ll be stuck with me for the rest of the night.” She shrugs apologetically, even though that’s hardly the punishment she implies it would be.

Ellie looks up from her arrangement of guitar picks. “Are you going to sing?”

“Me? No way. This is Ari’s show.”

“All those other people were singing,” says Ellie.

“Yeah, but … they’re, like, good at it.” I shake my head. “I don’t like singing.” Better to tell her that, I think, than to try to explain why I would rather throw myself into a Sarlacc pit.

I’m sort of allergic to being the center of attention. It makes me break out in hives.

I wish I could say I’m joking.

Ellie’s expression grows increasingly confused. “You sing tome.”

It takes me a second to realize she’s talking about the lullabies I’ll occasionally stumble through to try to get her to go to sleep, when Mom and Dad aren’t home to put her to bed. I can never remember anyactuallullabies, so I mostly just sing whatever slow-ish songs come to mind. “Hey Jude” is one of her favorites, but she hates “Eleanor Rigby.” I might, too, if I was named after such a depressing song. Sometimes I even sing Ari’s songs to her, the ones that I’ve heard enough times to memorize.

Regardless, I’m not about to get up on that stage and singanything. But I also don’t want to plant the idea into Ellie’s impressionable little brain that things like singing in public are horrific and mortifying and to be avoided at all costs, not when she’s still at an age where she regularly—and shamelessly—belts out the ABCs in the middle of the15grocery store. So I just put my finger to my lips and tell her, “Shh. That’s our secret.”

Ellie gives me a solemn nod, always glad to be in on a secret.

Onstage, Ari plays a few chords on her guitar, then leans toward the microphone again. “I thought I might play something I’ve been working on for the past couple of weeks. It’s brand-new, and I haven’t really tested it out on anyone yet. So I guess you’re my guinea pigs.” A few people applaud encouragingly. Ari’s eyes dart in my direction, and I give her two thumbs up.

She looks away.

“This is called ‘Downpour.’”

She plays through the chords one more time, strumming a melody that strikes me as more melancholic than a lot of her other songs.

She closes her eyes and starts to sing.

Never could say when it started

Crept up like a storm in the night

Not sure when I got so brokenhearted

This love, a crash of thunder

This love, a flash of light

I lean against the counter and listen. Ari has written plenty of songs about love. First love, hopeful love, longing for love. But something feels different about this one. More emotional, maybe. More vulnerable.

Yeah, my love, it isn’t a sunrise

Was never the day shining through

Here comes the rain, and I’m crying again

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