Read Lucky for Free Online

Gosia,since the rest of my family was long gone by then.
    “Have a good day,” she yelled after me. “Come back if you miss the bus.”
    “Are you kidding me?” I yelled to her, halfway down the driveway. A girl in Quinn’s fifth-grade class used to get driven to school at least a couple times a week because other kids made fun of her on the bus. I think that family moved away. Toughen up, Allison said about her, and I totally agreed. We were all like, if you can’t even handle the elementary school bus, how are you ever going to manage real life?
    Kirstyn was talking practically before I got to the corner. While the bus wheezed its way down Beech Street toward us, I was trying to figure out what Kirstyn sounded like. I nodded when she looked at me. She smiled, relieved that I agreed with whatever it was she’d been saying. Just before we got to school I figured out what it was: It sounded like when somebody near me is wearing earbuds—noise and a beat but no tune, no recognizable words.
    Luke was already in his seat, behind mine, when I got to homeroom. As I sat down, he jiggled my chair a little with his feet. Just barely managing not to fall on my butt, I turned around to shoot him a look. He smiled. I smiled back.
    Ms. Alvarez, our homeroom teacher, mentioned that she was waiting, so I sat straight and smiled sweetly at her,my hands crossed in front of me on my desk. Ms. Alvarez sighed. She has a slight facial-hair issue but otherwise she is perfectly nice. She told us her announcements while I finished up the homework I hadn’t had a chance to do the night before and then the bell rang. As I passed her desk, she said, “Phoebe? How’s your commencement speech coming?”
    “Great,” I assured her. “Thanks!”
    “I’d like a draft by Friday,” she said.
    “No problem.” I smiled. “Bye!” I kind of drifted through the rest of the morning smiling, chatting in the halls between classes, nodding. It’s all good, I must’ve said ten times or twenty.
    I kept having this odd feeling like I wasn’t myself anymore. Instead I was watching a movie about a slightly familiar-looking girl named Phoebe, and not just watching but really half watching, like a dull movie you kind of watch on a plane while you are also flipping through a lame issue of People magazine.
    At lunch, after we made our way to our table past a few cliques of kids who casually mentioned they were looking forward to the party, wondered if there was anything they could do to help, and said how great one or the other of us looked that day, Ann announced that she had finally made an appointment with the Crazy Balloon Lady from Pleasantville. Kirstyn kept her eyes riveted to her notebook. Ann asked if anybody wanted to go to Pleasantvillewith her to look through the photo album of possibilities on Friday after track.
    That woke me up.
    “Friday?” I started to object: Since track ends at five thirty and Kirstyn wanted us over for the sleepover by seven, how would we have time to get all the way to Pleasantville and choose centerpieces? But Kirstyn stomped her flip-flop hard on my foot. I turned toward her. She was reading her notes in her notebook with intense seriousness, but then, very subtly, shook her head.
    “After track,” Ann repeated.
    “Oh,” I said. Kirstyn wasn’t inviting her? How weird! “Um…”
    “I’ll come with you,” Zhara said.
    “Great,” said Ann. “I’m just so indecisive.”
    “I’m not,” Zhara said, taking a big bite of her sandwich. “I always know exactly what I like.”
    “That must be nice,” Ann said, sighing.
    I didn’t get Kirstyn alone until after school, at track. Gabrielle is faster than we are, and Ann does shot put, down on the lower field (she mostly lies in the grass, looking at the sky; she has no interest in exercise of any kind but nobody gets cut from track and Ann’s mother said she had to do a sport, to get her head, ironically, out of the clouds). Zhara hates sports and her