My dad is thirty.

My mom is thirty.

I am twelve but pretty much almost thirteen.

Thirty Thirty Thirteen. 30 30 13.

First I drew the numbers.

Then I colored them.

Then I showed them to Berk. I said, “Look: Thirty Thirty Thirteen.”

She glanced over from her dolls.

She said, “So?”

“It’s a lucky year,” I said.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

I told her how the number three is perfect because it’s like a triangle—a number for each corner and how me and Mom and Dad would all have threes in our ages this year. And how Mom and Dad had me when they were seventeen and seventeen minus three is fourteen and we lived at 14 Sunny Pines Lane and in six months I would be turning thirteen and six divided by two is three.

She stared at me. “So?”

“So do you see all the threes? It’s lucky,” I said.

“Luck isn’t real,” she said, playing with her dolls again.

Luck isn’t real. Dad used to say this. Luck isn’t real. You make your own lot in life.

But he was wrong and Berk was wrong.

“Berkeley,” I said, “look at me.”

She glanced over. “What?”

“Luck is real.”

She shrugged.

~

Luck IS real.

~

I entered fifteen contests that day.