Page 39 of With a Little Luck

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Chapter Thirteen

I have to get up for school in three and a half hours, but I can’tfall asleep. Memories of the evening before spin through my thoughts—every smile, every touch, every time I thought maybe,just maybe, this could turn into something.

The date was perfect. There’s no other word for it. I made Maya laugh. We had a great time.

At least, that’s how I’m feeling about it.

But how do I know if Maya feels the same way? How do I take this from one date to … many dates? How do I build a bridge between the Sadashiv concert and … I don’t know. A first kiss? Dating? Happily ever after?

A door squeaks quietly, followed by the soft padding of feet as someone comes down the basement stairs. A small someone in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajamas. I can’t see Ellie, but I’m familiar with the particular way she walks down my steps in the middle of the night. The way she starts out quick, but then gets slower as she nears the bottom of the stairs, uncertain when her feet are going to hit the carpeted floor. I don’t have to see her to know she’s clinging to the rail with one hand, while her other arm clutches her beloved stuffed squirrel.

Then she’s darting across the carpet and crawling under the covers.

“Hi, Ellie,” I whisper, scooting closer to the wall to make room for her.

“Hi, Jude,” she whispers back, curling against my side.102

It’s been this way since the fall, when my parents determined Ellie was too big to keep sleeping in the toddler bed they’d set up in the master bedroom, and they needed their own space back. So Ellie’s bed was moved into Prudence’s room, which I’d expected Pru to argue strongly against, but she actually accepted it without much grumbling. Except, according to Pru, Ellie doesn’t spend a whole lot of time in her own bed, preferring to climb up and snuggle with Pru or—on nights when Pru feels stifled and kicks her out—trying her luck with Lucy, Penny, and occasionally even me, despite how she often said that my room in the basement gives her the creeps.

“I didn’t know if you were home,” she says.

“I didn’t get back until late. You were already asleep.”

She yawns. “How was your hot date?”

I smirk. “Who said I had a hot date?”

“Everyone.” She shifts around, tucking the squirrel under her head like a pillow.

“It went good,” I say. “I like this girl a lot. And it seemed like maybe she likes me, too.”

“Of course she likes you,” Ellie says, without even a hint of doubt.

“Yeah, well … I don’t know. It seems too good to be true.”

The words feel like the truest thing I’ve said in weeks.

Maya is friendly to me, always, but she isn’tintome.

I just happen to be the guy who won tickets to the Sadashiv concert, and I’m sure she would have gone with anyone who presented her with such an irresistible invitation.

Well … maybe notanyone. But I doubt she would have picked me, if given a choice.

Does that matter? I try to tell myself it doesn’t. Because she did go with me, and we had a great time, and now maybe she’s seeing me differently. For the first time ever, maybe she’s seeing me as a guy she could really like.

“This is my chance,” I whisper. “I can’t ruin it. I have to find a way to show her that I can be right for her. But … how am I supposed to do that?”103

The sound of Ellie’s long, steady breathing proves that she isn’t going to be any help at all, not that I expected her to be. What kind of guy takes dating advice from his five-year-old sister? EvenIknow that’s a terrible idea.

But then it occurs to me that I have other options, that maybe aren’t so terrible at all.

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“Lucy, I need your help.”

Lucy pauses in the middle of fancy-braiding her hair and looks at me in the bathroom mirror. “With what?”

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