Just a few moments later, Sam Lewis was walking to school along Lake Street. He’d heard the screeching tires and honking horns, but he didn’t know it was his friend’s family. Noises like that came from a busy street like Lake Street all the time.

“I wonder where Jace is,” he muttered to himself. He’d waited on the corner for a few minutes, since he and his friend usually walked to school together.

Sam kicked a stone as he walked. He often did when he walked to school. It made the walk more interesting.

He had a game he played when he kicked rocks. He’d see how far he could keep one stone going. If he could get it all the way to the front of the middle school, it would mean he’d have a good day.

Sam was a little superstitious sometimes.

That morning, though, he made one wrong kick, and the stone slipped off the sidewalk and the curb. It fell right into the gutter.

“Shoot,” he said.

Sam hurried to the curb. Maybe he could kick the rock back up onto the sidewalk to keep going.

But what he saw was better luck than any stone would be.

There, a little muddy from the old rainwater in the gutter, was a rabbit’s foot.

The chain was broken, but Sam knew that the luck didn’t come from the chain. It came from the foot.

Sam picked it up, wiped off the mud with his fingers, and slipped it into his pocket.