Confidentially Yours #5 Read online

  “Yeah . . . ,” I said noncommittally. “Mom, why don’t you want good luck to be real?”

  She smiled. “It’s not that I don’t want it to be real. I just don’t think people should rely on it to get what they want. And I definitely don’t think they should use it to justify doing the wrong thing, like peeking at the coach’s playbook.” She poked my stomach.

  I laughed. “I won’t do it again, I promise.”

  “Good. Sleep tight, honey.” She gave me another kiss on the forehead and walked away.

  “Mom?” I sat up a little. “If you ever want me to make you a good-luck charm, I will.”

  Her expression softened. “I already have one. Her name is Brooke.”

  Mom turned off the light and closed the door.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Karma

  The next morning in the student lounge I gave V the good-luck charm I’d made for her. It was a shiny brass button.

  “And not just any button,” I pointed out when I put it in her palm. “This is the button we found when we were in first grade. Remember?”

  V smiled at it fondly. “We both thought it was solid gold and tried to figure out how to spend our riches.”

  “Did someone say riches?” Tim popped up from behind a chair, and V and I both jumped.

  “What are you doing back there?” I asked.

  “Millionaire by Monday says you should always bet on yourself, so I bet some guy I could make a basket into the trash can and I lost. Now he’s trying to collect.”

  V and I looked at each other and cracked up. Tim shushed us.

  “It’s not funny! I don’t carry that kind of cash!”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the quarter he’d given me. “Well, here. Hopefully this will bring you some luck.”

  “Aw, sweet!” Tim cupped a hand around his mouth. “Hey, Alex, I have that money I owe you!”

  I gave him a bewildered look. “All you owed him was a quarter?”

  “Yeah.” Tim nodded to a guy and flipped him the coin.

  “But you said you don’t carry around that kind of cash,” pointed out Vanessa.

  “Yeah, because usually I spend it on soda,” he said. “Thanks, Brooke. That quarter was lucky.”

  “No problem,” I said as V and I started laughing again.

  When Heather walked up a minute later, Vanessa tugged on her arm. “You wouldn’t believe what just happened!”

  Heather frowned. “You’re not going to believe what happened to me either. Emmett cancelled our date.”

  Instantly, Vanessa and I were no longer in laughing moods.

  “What?” I asked. “Why?”

  Heather turned to me. “Because you made him.”

  “Me?” I squeaked.

  “Hold up, hold up.” Vanessa waved her hand in the air. “Brooke would never do something like that.”

  “Never!” I agreed.

  “Did you talk to Emmett about the date?” Heather asked.

  I cringed. “I mean . . . never on purpose.”

  V shook her head. “Oh, Brooke. What did you do?”

  “She made me sound like a diva,” said Heather, dropping onto the couch. “Apparently, I won’t date a guy without a horse-drawn carriage and flowers?” She raised an eyebrow at me.

  I took a seat next to Heather and squeezed her hands. “I only had the best intentions. The best. I didn’t know he’d give up so easily.”

  “Can you blame him?” asked Heather. “This was only our first date! Geez, Brooke, did you have to get involved?”

  “Yes! You’re one of my best friends,” I said. “And one of the nicest people I know. I just wanted to make sure you were treated like the princess you are.”

  Heather leaned back and sighed. “Well, much like Cinderella, this girl won’t be going to the ball.”

  “Yes, you will! I’m going to fix this.” I stood and immediately sat back down with one tug from Heather.

  “No,” she said firmly. “He’s made his choice. And I don’t want to go out with a guy who lets other people change his mind for him.” At the worried look on my face, she attempted a small smile. “I’ll be fine.”

  But it didn’t make me feel any better. My good-luck charm should’ve ensured the horse-drawn carriage, the flowers, and a happily ever after!

  “I’m really sorry,” I said. “I thought I was helping.” I reached into my book bag and pulled out the lipstick. “I guess it’s a little late for this, huh?”

  “Heh. Yeah.” Heather managed a real smile this time. “But who knows? Maybe I’m supposed to save it for a date with someone else.” She put the lipstick in her bag. “I’ll see you guys later, okay?”

  She got up and headed for the exit, leaving V and me to stare after her.

  “I feel so horrible,” I said, sinking into the couch.

  “Hey, you were only trying to help,” said V, bumping my shoulder.

  I shook my head. “I just don’t understand it. My—” I reached into my back pocket for my good-luck charm but felt only fabric.

  My good-luck charm was missing.

  “Are you okay, or is this some new dance?” V asked as I stood and patted down the pockets of my jeans and hoodie.

  “I can’t find my good-luck charm!” I said, ripping my backpack open and rummaging through it.

  “Here, you can have mine.” She offered me the button, but I shook my head.

  “It doesn’t work like that.” I pulled my cell phone out of the side pocket of my bag and dialed home.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Mom answered. “Did you forget your homework?”

  “Worse! I forgot my good-luck charm!” I lamented. “Can you bring it to me?”

  The gentle tone in Mom’s voice disappeared. “Brooke, you can’t be serious. I’ve got clients all day. I’m not driving up there to drop off some lucky rabbit’s foot.”

  “It’s not a rabbit’s foot; it’s a piece of paper,” I said.

  Silence from the other end.

  “Mom?” I checked to make sure she was still there.

  “Um . . . where was the last place you had it?” she asked.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. She was going to do it! “The pocket of my warm-ups last night. It should still be there.”

  Mom breathed through her teeth. “It was there. Now it’s all over the inside of the washing machine.”

  “What?” I cried loud enough for everyone in the student lounge to look my way.

  “Everything okay?” asked V.

  I shook my head and walked to a quiet corner of the room. “What do you mean it’s all over the washing machine?” I hissed into the phone.

  “I needed extra clothes to fill out a laundry load, so I threw in your clothes from yesterday,” said Mom. “I didn’t think to check the pockets. I’m sorry, sweetie!”

  I clapped a hand to my forehead. “No wonder my day’s off to a bad start!”

  “Brooke, I’ve told you before, luck has nothing to do with it,” said Mom.

  “Yeah, that’ll be a great inscription for my tombstone,” I muttered. “Talk to you later.”

  I trudged back to V, who was now sitting with Gil.

  “Uh-oh,” she said when she saw me. “Bad news?”

  “My good-luck charm is gone forever,” I said. “Bad Luck Brooke is back.” I held my hands out like barriers. “You may want to keep a safe distance.”

  Vanessa elbowed Gil, who said, “Uh . . . that’s not true! When I was doing the horoscope, I saw that you’re in for happier days.”

  “Really?” I perked up but then narrowed my eyes. “Wait. What’s my sign?”

  Gil wrinkled his forehead. “Capri . . . gemi . . . taur . . . ies?”

  Vanessa patted his back. “Nice try.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t expect her to call my bluff.”

  V turned to me. “Not that I support this in any way, but why don’t you just make a new good-luck charm?”

  I snapped my fingers. “Of course
!”

  The bell rang, and we said good-bye to Gil in the main hall. On the way to homeroom, I saw Mary Patrick coming out of the girl’s bathroom.

  “Hey, I’ll catch you later,” I told Vanessa, and changed course to catch up to Mary Patrick. She glanced at me as I fell into step beside her but didn’t utter so much as a hello.

  “I came up with some great ideas to make the Lincoln Log stand out!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Mary Patrick.

  I tried again. “Well, don’t turn them down until you’ve heard them. See—”

  Mary Patrick stopped in the middle of the hall, causing a pileup of angry kids behind us. “It doesn’t matter because we’re not entering.”

  That was when I noticed her eyes were blotchy and her nose was pink.

  Mary Patrick had been crying. And as we stood there, she looked ready for round two.

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her to the side of the hall. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  “Mrs. H got really upset because everyone was fighting over which section was best, and she said this contest was just going to drive us all apart.” The longer she spoke, the more Mary Patrick’s voice quavered. “This was my last year to enter, and I won’t even get a chance.” Mary Patrick burst into tears.

  I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall.

  Here was something else that was my fault. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed out of Gil and Stefan’s argument and hadn’t bragged about how much better my team was.

  I opened my eyes and said, “Mrs. H should still let us compete in the overall competition.”

  “She says if we don’t win, each section will blame another.”

  “If we don’t win,” I mumbled. “Thanks for the confidence boost, Mrs. H.”

  “I know, right?” Mary Patrick sniffled and pulled a tissue out of her pocket.

  “Well, with my ideas I think we’ve really got a shot at taking this contest. We just have to convince Mrs. H to let us enter.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Mary Patrick.

  I winced. That seemed to be the theme of the week.

  I made it to homeroom right before the bell rang and shared my dilemma with Vanessa.

  “Shoot!” She banged a fist on her desk. “I already had something in mind for that money too.”

  “You might still get it,” I said. “If I can convince Mrs. H we’re one big, happy family. Do you have a box of matches?”

  V’s eyes widened. “What exactly are you planning?”

  “Nothing dangerous,” I assured her. “I just need to make another good-luck charm. All this bad luck is starting to snowball.”

  “Oh. Well, sorry, I don’t.” V smiled at me. “But I’m sure it can’t get much worse.”

  Needless to say, it did.

  In math I had an algebra quiz. I’d expected my good-luck charm to help me ace it, but since the charm was destroyed, it was up to me and my math skills to get things done. I worked all the way up until the bell rang and ended up making random guesses for the last few problems. When I handed in my paper, the teacher frowned.

  “Ms. Jacobs, you answered ‘true’ for question eight.”

  I cleared my throat. “I was going to go with ‘false’—”

  “Which would have also been wrong,” she said, “since this was a multiple-choice question.”

  “Ah. Well, true and false are more than one choice, so technically . . .” I pressed my lips together as her red pen turned my paper into the site of a math massacre. Then she scrawled a note at the bottom, followed by a line.

  “Please take this home to your parents and have them sign on the line,” she said. Then she reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a laminated card. “I’ll expect to see you in here Monday during homeroom for tutoring.”

  I hung my head and put the card and quiz inside my math book.

  “That bad already?” asked Abel when I ran into him in the hall.

  I opened my math book and showed him.

  “Ouch. Looks like you’ll have to study harder next time,” he said.

  “Yeah. I guess I can’t count on good luck for everything.”

  Abel laughed loudly. “Are you serious? You thought you could rub a rabbit’s foot and get an A?”

  “It wasn’t a rabbit’s foot! Why do people keep thinking that?” I frowned. “My good-luck charm was the first note you ever gave me.”

  “Aww.” Abel squeezed my hand. “Really?”

  I smiled despite my situation and squeezed back. “Of course. It’s special to me.”

  “And you’re special to me.” Abel pulled away. “I can help you with algebra this weekend if you want.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Maybe if I can show my math teacher I’ve improved, I won’t have to go to tutoring every day. But for now, I have to get to PE.”

  “I hope your day gets better!” Abel called as we parted ways.

  The gym was set up with a line of about twenty balls at half-court, and I remembered that it was Dodgeball Day. That lifted my spirits a little. Until the PE teacher told me I’d have to sit it out.

  “But the balls are made of foam!” I told her. “They don’t even hurt.”

  “Sorry, kiddo,” she said at my crestfallen expression, “but I don’t think you should play. You can help me referee, though!” she continued, trying to make it sound exciting.

  “I guess,” I mumbled.

  She handed me a whistle and pointed out the best judging spot.

  “Watch for kids who get tagged out but try to stay in,” she said. “And for kids who claim they tagged someone out but didn’t.”

  I nodded and walked to the other end of the court while my classmates ran out to be assigned to teams.

  “Hey! How come Brooke isn’t playing?” asked Berkeley Dennis once the teams had been decided.

  I held up my arm and pouted. “I’m not allowed.”

  “But the balls aren’t hard.” He spoke to the PE teacher now. “And we won’t aim for her arm.”

  The PE teacher shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Why do you care so much anyway?” I asked Berkeley.

  He grinned mischievously. “Because last time you said you could take on the entire class. I wanted to see if it’s true.”

  Several kids laughed, and the PE teacher blew her whistle. “Everyone to your places!”

  The other kids bolted for opposite ends of the court and huddled together to talk strategy until the whistle blew a second time. Instantly, the tension in the room increased as the two teams faced each other.

  “Charge!” the teacher yelled.

  With various battle cries and shrieks, the kids ran for midcourt, where the balls were lined up. The more daring kids grabbed them while the timid kids stopped halfway and backed up for safety. It was difficult to keep up with the flurry of action, but I caught several kids breaking the rules and sent them off the court.

  Then the coach blew the whistle and uttered the most dreaded of all dodgeball words: “No lines!”

  The court was now completely open and there was no border to protect the active players.

  Or as it turned out, the temporary referee.

  “Now!” cried Berkeley.

  Eleven kids, dodgeballs in almost every hand, formed a massive half circle and closed in on me.

  “Wait! I’m not even playing!” I cried as they surged forward. The PE teacher blew her whistle, but nobody paid attention.

  “Remember, no arm shots,” Berkeley said to his teammates. “Brooke, you might want to put your wrist behind your back.”

  This was really going to happen.

  Well, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  I picked up a ball and grinned at Berkeley. “You’re going to regret this,” I said, hiding my injured wrist. There was a pattering of footsteps behind me, and Katie appeared by my side.

  “Don’t worry, Brooke! I’ll protect you!” she cried, waving the remaining half of a ball in one hand.

/>   “Where’s the other half?” I asked.

  She winked at me. “Won’t need it.”

  “Let’s get ’em!” cried Berkeley, and he and his friends unleashed a flurry of foam.

  But they were no match for a girl with one good arm and a girl with half a dodgeball.

  Katie used her half ball as a shield to knock away attacks while she flung fierce dodgeballs with her other hand. She aimed at the feet of her enemies and they had to dance to avoid getting knocked out. I used my good arm and stomach to catch balls thrown my way and then passed them to Katie to use. When Berkeley, the last opponent standing, was taken out, a cheer went up from the other students . . . followed by him being escorted to the principal’s office for starting trouble.

  “That still wasn’t the whole class!” Berkeley called over his shoulder.

  “I’ll rematch you any day!” I shouted back.

  He grinned and gave me a thumbs-up.

  I turned to Katie and hugged her. “Thanks for having my back. You were awesome!”

  “You were pretty awesome too!” she said with a grin. “I wish I’d had a camera at the end.”

  “I needed that win after all the bad luck I’ve had lately,” I confided. “I messed up Heather’s date with Emmett, I messed up the newspaper’s chance to compete, I failed an algebra quiz, and I almost got my butt handed to me in dodgeball.”

  Katie whistled. “Wow. That’s a lot.”

  “I’ve really got to make another good-luck charm. Do you have any matches?” I asked, miming lighting one.

  “No . . .” She gave me a strange look. “I don’t start a lot of fires at school. But you could check in the science lab.”

  Lunch hour was the only time I could be sure the sixth-grade classrooms would be empty, so while everyone raced to the cafeteria, I raced to the lab with another one of Abel’s notes.

  Feeling a bit like a high-tech spy, I grabbed a flint lighter and went in search of a Bunsen burner. They appeared to be locked away, but I found the right keys in the teacher’s desk. I’d just opened the cabinet and grabbed a burner when I heard someone clear her throat.

  “What are you doing in here?” asked the teaching assistant.

  I held up the burner and smiled. “Science?”