Samantha awoke to thumping and banging across the hall. She sat up and looked at her clock. It was eight a.m. She’d slept all afternoon and night!

She’d had no intention of sleeping so long…but she felt great. She stood up and stretched. She took a quick shower, got dressed, and then headed across the hall to make sure her brother had made it home safely.

Samantha walked through Nipper’s open bedroom door and into his room. He was crouching in front of his dresser, pressing hard on the bottom drawer with both hands.

“Oh. Hi, Sam,” he said, looking up at her. “Mom and Dad came by last night, but you were snoring so loud, they let you sleep.”

Samantha frowned.

“I don’t snore,” she said. “Well, maybe I was so tired that I— Wait. When did you get home?”

“Uh…a while ago,” he said, standing up.

She sniffed. He still smelled like spices. Dried powder streaked his shirt. She glanced down. He had spices on his pants, too.

She looked farther down to see he was pressing one foot against the drawer.

“And what’s in the dresser?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he answered quickly.

Nipper glanced down at the bottom drawer, then back to her.

“I think I…need some socks,” he said, looking around the room. “Oh, right here.”

While keeping his foot pressed against the bottom drawer, he opened the top drawer of the dresser.

Everything about this seemed very strange to Samantha. Stranger than regular kid-brother strange, and that was already strange. She sniffed again.

“Did you really sleep in your spices?” she asked.

One at a time, Nipper pulled socks from the drawer and used them to wipe away powdered spices from his body.

“I’m kind of like a chinchilla, Sam, if you think about it,” he said. “I’m taking a dust bath.”

“Or…you could just take a real bath and put on clean clothes,” she replied.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll get to it tonight.”

Samantha looked at him, then at the sock drawer. It was almost empty. Socks were scattered all over the room now.

Still holding the bottom drawer of the dresser closed with a foot, he reached into the back of the sock drawer and pulled out a rolled pair of tube socks.

“Gotcha,” he said. “I always keep a special emergency pair in the back.”

“Really?” asked Samantha. “Since when?”

Nipper whipped the socks in the air to unroll them. Something flew out and clattered to the floor. He bent down and picked up a shiny silver object. It was a coin from 1913 engraved with a woman’s head surrounded by stars. He turned it over. There was a big letter V on the back.

“My lucky nickel!” he shouted.

Uncle Paul had given Nipper the coin a year ago.

Samantha remembered her uncle telling Nipper, “She’s one of a kind. Look after her,” and then giving Samantha a wink. Her brother lost track of the coin a few hours later.

“It’s a sign,” said Nipper, waving the coin at her. “Today is a lucky day.”

“Maybe,” said Samantha.

She thought about the last time Nipper invoked the Lucky Day.

A little over two years ago, Samantha’s parents threw her a deluxe birthday party with a magician, a pirate, and a clown. Their dad did lightbulb tricks and put on a super-bubble science show. Uncle Paul dressed up in his “formal” tuxedo T-shirt and made snow cones for all the kids in the neighborhood.

Right before the magic show started, Nipper picked a clover. He told everyone it had four leaves and that this meant it was his lucky day.

Uncle Paul offered him a sour-cherry snow cone, but Nipper insisted he make it extra-super sour. Uncle Paul doubled the syrup. When no one was looking, Nipper poured the rest of the bottle on his snow cone.

Then Nipper tasted the extra-extra super-sour snow cone. He screamed and flung it across the yard.

It splatter-painted half the kids bright red and knocked the hat off the magician’s head. The magician had been hiding a pet rabbit in the hat, and Dennis chased the terrified animal around the backyard for an hour, knocking over kids and Samantha’s cake. The party ended early that day. After all the guests left, Samantha took the clover from Nipper and counted five leaves.

Samantha ignored the silver coin her brother was waving in her face.

“Lucky, huh?” she asked him. “Should I move everything out of the way?”

“No, this really is a lucky day and things are going to go my way,” he insisted. “You keep using your big brain to figure out what ‘Watch out for the SUN’ means and where we should have gone instead of Africa. While you do that, I’m going to go and get my Yankees back.”

Nipper tucked the coin into his pocket, put on the tube socks, and forced on his dusty shoes without untying them.

“Lucky day,” he said one more time, and headed downstairs.