Page 6 of With a Little Luck

Caught up in the downpour of me loving you

Her voice wavers the tiniest bit, the only hint that she’s baring her soul to a roomful of strangers. She opens her eyes as she starts in on the second verse. Her gaze drifts over the crowd.16

We used to be sunshine and ice cream,

Kicking sand at the sun going down.

Oh, you and me, how easy it seemed.

But now I can’t be wanting

’Cause this wanting is dragging me—

Ari’s eyes land on mine again.

And she stops.

Just … stops.

Her voice catches. Her fingers stall.

She gasps and looks down at the strings. “Uh—sorry,” she stammers, laughing uncomfortably. “I, um. I forgot the next part.”

The audience chuckles along with her, but not in a mean way. We wait for her to gather herself. To continue on. But Ari doesn’t continue on. She just stares down at her guitar, pink tinging her cheeks. She’s quiet for long enough that people begin to stir.

I glance at Pru, wondering if we should do something. I’ve never seen Ari freeze up like this before.

Pru, closer to the stage than I am, whispers, “You okay?”

Ari’s head snaps up, a wide-eyed smile plastered to her face. “Wow, I’m so sorry about that. I think that song is not quite ready, after all. You know what? Let me start over. I’ll do a cover instead. How about, um …” I can almost see the wheels spinning in her mind, flipping through the internal jukebox of the songs she knows by heart. “You know what? I heard this one earlier today, for the first time in a while. Maybe it can bring us all a little luck tonight.”

Cheeks still flushed, she launches into “With a Little Luck” by Paul McCartney and Wings.

Was that weird? That definitely seemed weird. Very un-Ari, anyway. I’ve never seen her clam up like that in the middle of a performance.

The new song choice reminds me that theLondon Townalbum is still on the turntable, still spinning from when Dad played it before, though17the music ended a long time ago. We try not to let the albums spin and spin—the needle can wear grooves into the vinyl and ruin them over time—but the night has been so busy I forgot all about it.

I turn away from Ellie, who has arranged the guitar picks into a flower, and open the lid of the record player.

I freeze.

There’s something on the record. A ball … or stone … orsomething. Spinning, spinning, spinning, just inside the needle.

I lift the needle and stop the record. It rotates a second longer before going still, the mystery object coming into focus.

“What the …” I pick it up and hold it in my fingers.

It’s a twenty-sided dice, exactly like the ones my friends and I use when we play Dungeons & Dragons.

Well—not exactly. The dice we use are mostly made of resin or acrylic … except Russell, who shelled out for an expensive stone set that the rest of us are still drooling over.

Butthis. This is something different. It’s heavy, like stone, but glints deep red and slightly opaque. Like a ruby or garnet. The numbers on each plane glimmer in delicate gold, their angular shapes looking more like runes than standard numerals.

In a word, it’sexquisite. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

But where did it come from?

I look around the store, from Ellie to Pru to my parents. Everyone is watching Ari. If this was left as some gift for me to find, then whoever left it isn’t watching to see my reaction.

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