Page 87 of With a Little Luck

But they’re empty.

The dice. It’s gone.

And so is the magic.

221

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The whole drive home, I’m tempted to ask Ezra to stop andturn around. We have to go back to the festival. I have to search for it.

But I know how that will sound to everyone, so I don’t say anything. Even as my stomach roils. Even as my heart withers. How could I have lost it? When?Where?

The next day, I look up the festival and call the phone number listed on their website. I ask if anyone turned in a red twenty-sided dice. I stay on the line, fingers tightly crossed, as the woman on the other end checks with their lost and found. But no luck. I give her my phone number, and she promises to call if it turns up.

I hang up, overcome with dread.

How could I have been so careless? I don’t even remember the last time I saw it or felt it in my grip. I’d gotten used to it always being there. I’d gotten complacent and now …

Now the magic is gone.

No—notgone, as I soon discover.

The magic, as it soon becomes apparent, hasturned on me.

Those scratch tickets were just the beginning.

Over the next week, I lose every coin flip, giving Ellie her choice of everything from the game we play on Monday night (Frozen Memory Match) to the movie we watch on Tuesday (Frozen) to the dinner I cook for us on Wednesday when Mom and Dad are out for their monthly date night (mac and cheese). I know I should probably give up on the coin-flip222thing, but I can’t help holding tight to my hope that my safety net hasn’t been pulled out from under me.

That hope slowly wanes.

The minivan gets a flat tire one morning on our way to school.

The soles of my favorite dragon shoes finally give up and split from the rest of the shoe—in first period, so I’m stuck walking around with floppy soles the rest of the day.

At lunch, the toppings mysteriously slip right off the crust of my pizza and right onto my brand-new sweatshirt, leaving a triangular-shaped splotch of tomato sauce that doesn’t wash out.

The laptop I share with Pru gets a virus, and it takes hours for me to recover a bunch of my artwork files, and I’m still not even sure I got them all.

The printer jams when I’m trying to print a last-minute report.

My locker door jams when I’m already late for fifth period.

My pointer finger gets jammed into the basketball during gym … and of course it’s my drawing hand.

My other classes don’t go any better. I guess I’ve gotten into the bad habit of not studying—what’s the point when I ace every exam effortlessly?—so when I bomb tests in both astronomy and Spanish, can’t answer any of the questions in English class, and forget all about our statistics and poli-sci homework, I feel the full, shameful weight of the disapproving frowns from my teachers. I blabber a number of inane excuses that I know they aren’t buying, and vow to try harder, my cheeks burning.

Even the one class I’ve always loved, visual arts, turns into a drag as we move from drawing into a unit on watercolor. I break a paintbrush and spill water all over my work—twice—before Mr. Cross asks me to spend the rest of the period tidying up the supply cabinet instead.

But wait—there’s more.

I discover a cockroach in my bedroom, and we have to call in an exterminator, forcing me to sleep on the lumpy living room sofa for two nights while noxious gases permeate the basement.223

The cactus that Lucy gave me for Christmas dies. (I didn’t even know you could kill a cactus.)

My debit card goes missing, and I have to cancel it and order another one and spend a week without any access to spending money.

For the first time in months, I get a pimple on my forehead and hives on my chestat the same time.

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