Chapter 4: Rob

Monday morning, I ended up watching Laura Chevely break up with her latest boyfriend, James Phipps in the middle of the main hall of the school. I knew James and I’d been tempted when Laura started dating him to warn him to stay away. But it seemed so hypocritical of me, after I dated her for so long.

Besides, James was a football star, the debate team captain, and probably spit out more luck after he brushed his teeth than I had ever tasted in my life. What did he need advice from me for?

In the last two weeks, I’d seen Laura in action now and again—not that I was looking for it. But she made sure the whole school saw it.

She’d started with James’s younger sister, a freshman who was awkward and naïve. Jenna Phipps had always been cute, but once Laura took her shopping and helped her with makeup, she was stunning. The long legs that had seemed a little like a giraffe’s had become more gazelle-like, and Laura had arranged for her to get in with a modeling agency that Laura had connections with. After that, Jenna had followed Laura around like a long-lost twin.

If I’d said anything bad about Laura, I was sure it would sound like sour grapes. And all right, maybe there was a part of me that was afraid of Laura. I didn’t want her to turn her attentions to revenge on me. After all, I’d gotten off pretty easy with her.

When I told her that I didn’t think things were working out between us, I remember her staring at me and saying, “You mean you’ve fallen in love with that new-luck girl?” She didn’t say Trudy’s name.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, dry-mouthed.

“You always were a bad liar,” said Laura. We were at her dorm room, which was technically supposed to be against the rules, but Laura never followed them and no one bothered her about it.

“It’s not about anyone else. It’s about you and me. We don’t work together. I’ve been pretending for a long time because I like you so much. And I didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” I said.

“Oh, so it was all a favor to me?” said Laura.

“Uh—I don’t mean it like that.”

“No? You’re not saying you want to break up because it would be unfair to me? Because you want me to go on and find the right person and have a happy life?” said Laura.

“But I do want that,” I said. “I wish the best for you.”

Laura put a finger to my chest. “You don’t say that to me. You don’t condescend. I don’t need your good wishes to have the life I want. And I don’t know why I’ve spent so long with you, Rob Chiltern. You aren’t worth it.”

I didn’t argue with her. I knew I wasn’t. But even if I were, I wouldn’t have argued with Laura in that mood before. She’d never turned the icy hot stare on me, but I’d seen her use it on other people.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Oh, I’m sure you are. But not as sorry as you’re going to be, once you spend a little more time with this trumped up, new luck slut.”

“Trudy isn’t—” I said, then closed my mouth. I’d said her name, and I’d given everything away.

Laura’s eyes narrowed.

“Please,” I said. “She hasn’t done anything to you.” I wanted to protect Trudy. If Laura wanted to hurt someone, I figured it should be me.

“No, she hasn’t. But I think I will be patient this time. Oh, yes. I have bigger plans in store for you two. Don’t think I’m letting you off easily. I don’t forget pain, Rob, or who caused it. And I never, ever, forgive.” She walked off, leaving me trembling.

But it had been a year since then and she’d left me and Trudy mostly alone. The list of boyfriends she’d been through since was so long it would have made Santa Claus’s elves get carpal tunnel syndrome keeping up with them. And when she broke up with them, it was always public, like it was with James Phipps.

This morning, she’d put up a big sign on his locker that read, “It’s over, Loser.” There were lights on it and a siren, too. It was annoying and you’d think the school administration would have a fit about it, but they never had before and she’d done worse.

James got to his locker just before class and saw the sign. His face looked like he had been run over by a semi-truck. He was utterly confused. “I thought—” he kept muttering to himself. “She said.”

I tried to tell him that he’d be fine, that he’d get over her. He’d see how lucky he was to get rid of her.

But then Laura showed up herself, I guess so she could enjoy the reaction.

“Laura, please. Give me a second chance. I’ll do anything,” said James, down on his knees in front of her.

I thought about the way Laura had kissed him on the football field at half-time. She’d made sure his sister got on the cheerleading squad first, and then had coordinated the kiss so that it was part of the half-time routine. The whole school had cheered.

Then she’d brought him lunch every day in the cafeteria, wearing a different costume. The belly dancing one had been particularly riveting. And feeding him with her hands, using her stomach as a plate.

“You just weren’t good enough for me,” she told James. “You didn’t give back enough. I felt like I was the one always doing more and more for you.”

James had tried to do things for her, like having the whole football team do a dance on the field to spell out the letters of her name at their last game on Friday night. Laura had acted like she thought it was the most amazing gesture she’d ever seen. She’d cried and then kissed James again. But people who knew Laura had to have been worried. People who weren’t James and his sister, caught in Laura’s spell.

“But I love you,” said James.

“I don’t think you love anyone but yourself,” said Laura. “And that will always be the reason that people leave you.”

Then Jenna walked by and saw the poster and her brother. “What—?” she began.

“Look at those shoulders poking out of that shirt,” said Laura. “Like a scarecrow. And what size is that bra we bought you? Double A? I was trying to help you, but I can see now it was hopeless.”

“But you said I was the next big thing. You said everyone would want to look like me,” said Jenna.

“I was trying to be nice,” said Laura. “But no one should have to try that hard for anything.” She walked off, and left Jenna and James broken.

Was it my fault that Laura had gotten so bad? If I’d stayed with her, maybe she wouldn’t be doing things like this to hurt other people. Or maybe she’d been doing it even then and I’d ignored it because I thought it was funny and didn’t really matter.

Trudy had changed me so that I couldn’t think about what I’d done with Laura without feeling a little queasy inside. Maybe that had been the only way I could feel good about myself when I had no luck, pushing other people beneath me. But what was Laura’s excuse?

I walked up to James. “Look, she’s not worth it,” I said softly. “Really, ask other people. She does this. Don’t make yourself crazy.”

That was part of what Laura did so well. She made people believe it was their fault, not hers. And that took a lot longer to get over.

“Don’t you talk about her like that,” said James. His hands were in fists and he looked like he was getting ready to hit me.

I backed off, my hands up. “Fine, whatever. She’s wonderful. Suit yourself.” I’d gotten off easy with her and just thinking about that made me nervous.

But I also had Trudy in my life, and as soon as I saw her later that morning, I felt like the sun had started to shine and the whole world was a better place. That’s just the way Trudy is, and it’s not just because she has luck.

“You’re so beautiful,” I said to her.

“Am I?” said Trudy.

“You always are,” I said, putting my hands on her shoulders to pull her close.

“You mean because I have luck?” she asked.

“Huh? I didn’t say anything about luck.”

She pulled away from me. “But if I lost all my luck, do you think I would be ugly?” she asked.

“What? No!” I said, and then wondered what I was supposed to say here. What was going on? It was like I’d missed the first half of this conversation.

“Don’t you wonder sometimes about how much of our lives have to do with how much luck we have. If I lost all my luck, and I couldn’t go to St. James to school anymore, would you miss me?” asked Trudy.

“Um, you can’t lose luck like that, Trudy. You’re born with it.” Or you’re not born with it, as the case may be.

“Would you drop out of school and come to school where I was?” asked Trudy. “Or would we never see each other again? Would we ever find happiness if we didn’t have luck? Some people without luck fall in love, but how long does it last? Do they just pretend they’re happy without luck or are they really?”

“Trudy, it doesn’t matter because it’s not going to happen to you,” I said. Maybe this was about her parents?

“Would you give up your luck to be with me?” said Trudy, looking deep into my eyes for an answer.

I felt as if I was going to choke on my heart, which had risen out of my chest and was now lodged firmly in my larynx. “I’d do anything for you, Trudy,” I said. “You know that, don’t you?” It was the best I could do, standing here in the middle of the hall during school.

Trudy took a deep breath and nodded. “I know,” she said.

What was I supposed to do now? Kiss her? Hold her? This seemed like an important moment, but she said, “I have to get to class,” and was gone.

What had just happened between us? I went into Government feeling like I’d just fallen off a bike and taken a long skid across gravel. Not deeply hurt, but with all the skin taken off and bits and pieces of foreign objects stuck into my bleeding tissue which would have to be picked out with excruciating patience. Vulnerable.

What if Trudy had guessed that I didn’t have luck? Was that what she had been hinting at?

That, of course, was the moment that Laura Chevely came up to me and put alcohol on my open wound. “You look like you just saw a puppy killed, Rob.” She leaned into me.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to edge away from her.

“You are definitely not fine, Rob. Is this about you and Trudy? Something wrong between the perfect couple, after all? Because you know I never thought you two worked together. She’s just not in your class, you know, Rob, no matter how much luck the tests say she has. There is something about luck that is just born and bred, I think. It must be such a strain to pretend.”

“There is nothing wrong between me and Trudy and there never will be,” I said.

“Yeah, you keep saying that and maybe someone will believe it,” said Laura. “Maybe even you.”

I thought about the time when I was ten and Dad took me out hunting for the first time. I told him over and over again I didn’t want to go.

“He has such a soft heart,” Grandma said, when she was still living with us.

“He doesn’t have to shoot anything if he doesn’t want to. He can miss. Plenty of the men who go up with us miss and who knows if it’s on purpose or not? That’s not what the shooting is about.”

“Then what is it about?” asked Grandma.

“It’s about spending time with other people of his level of luck. He’s always making friends at school with people beneath him.”

“Just proof again of his kind heart,” said Grandma.

“A kind heart is one thing, but it will keep him from going the places he needs to go if he doesn’t work on making the right friends.”

It would have been nice if Grandma was right, that I had a kind heart, but the reason I didn’t want to go hunting with Dad was that I was terrified of the guns. With my bad luck, someone might shoot me and I had no idea how I could pretend that I wanted that to happen.

In the end, I convinced myself that if I was shot, I wasn’t going to be around long enough to complain about the pain. I’d probably just die, and that was the best thing.

I spent the entire weekend ready to die at any moment. The sight of the guns made me freeze in terror, and the whole time, I had to laugh and joke about it. We had dead animals in the back of trucks and made jokes about them, too, even while I stared into those lifeless eyes and wondered if I would be next. I even had to laugh when they talked about luckless people who went hunting and accidentally shot themselves.

After that weekend, when I went back to school, I stopped being friends with anyone who didn’t have a lot of luck. It was self-preservation. If I didn’t have luck, I had better be around people who did. It seemed the only protection that had kept me safe while on the hunting trip.

Dating Laura had been part of that same strategy. Maybe that was why I’d been OK with the way she treated other people, putting them down so I could feel a little superior.

But dating Trudy was different. I was different.

“Class, can we get to the agenda now?” said Mrs. Wilde, drawing my attention back to the present moment. Going through an agenda was a lot easier than thinking about my lack of luck.

But a few minutes later, I saw a note sail through the air and looked up to see Laura nodding to me. I was nervous enough about what Laura could possibly want to send me in a note that I opened it.

“I know your secret,” it read. “I always knew it. Don’t you think it’s time you came clean—with everyone?” It was signed with Laura’s signature lips in a kiss, drawn with pen.

I didn’t look up. I didn’t dare to let her read my face. Laura was too good at that.

It was probably a joke. Or some other secret that I didn’t care about anyway. But if I gave her a hint that there was something I was really nervous about, she would figure it out. That’s the way she is. She might not care about things like truth or mathematics or the laws of the universe. But human laws she manipulates quite freely.

With careful movements, I took the note and folded it back up. I wanted to rip it into tiny pieces and then burn them with acid and watch the smoke rise, but I had to resist the temptation to do that. Talk about bad luck.

I had planned out a hundred different scenarios in my head for when the moment of truth came. I had told myself that I was ready to lose everything. My parents’ approval. My place at school. All my friends. My status. My hope for the future.

I’d planned to be strong about all that after I told Trudy. But if it happened before I had a chance to tell her the right way—

I threw the note toward the garbage can.

It didn’t make it.

Bad luck again.

Mrs. Wilde picked it up.

I dropped my head. My ears were pounding with the sound of my heart beat. There was nothing I could do now. Nothing. If she opened that note—

But she didn’t.

Laura’s luck was at work there, I guess, not mine.

Mrs. Wilde looked at me and shook her head, then dropped the note into the garbage herself and went back to the agenda.

I tried to hurry out of class, but Laura caught me about ten feet down the hall.

“Rob, let’s talk privately.” She put an arm around mine and I flashed back to all those times when she was my girlfriend. She had been in charge of everything. “You should do as I say because with your lack of luck, Trudy will hear all about this and wonder if you’ve decided to come back to me.”

I pushed open the door to the party room and pulled her in after me. “Don’t do that!” I shouted at her, putting my face in hers. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”

“Ooh, scary,” said Laura. She held up her hands and stepped back. “I haven’t told anyone, Rob. All these months I could have done it, but I was waiting. I knew there would be something special that you could do for me, at just the right moment. And now it has come. A little favor I need you to do for me.”

“A favor? You’re blackmailing me, is that it? You want me to drop Trudy and be your boyfriend again? Well, forget it. I’m not doing that. I would never do that. I love Trudy and I know that she loves me back, luck or no luck.”

Laura didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she made a big production out of stifling a yawn. “The last thing I want is you back, Rob. I had you for two years and that was plenty. Besides, you aren’t any fun anymore. Not that you were ever that much fun to begin with, but at least you tried before Trudy ruined you.”

“Trudy didn’t ruin me,” I said.

“She ruined you for me. You are so worried about what other people think and feel that you can’t focus on having fun yourself.”

“And that’s what you were doing with James and Jenna this morning? Having fun?”

She laughed at that. “That’s exactly what I was doing with James and Jenna.”

“Then you’re right. I have changed.” There was nothing fun about that. “I love Trudy and that’s what has changed me. I have a future with someone. I have a forever. Trudy and I are going to be with each other for the rest of our lives. Nothing and no one is going to keep us apart.”

Laura’s has a quirky eyebrow that goes up at times when she wants to make you think she sees through you. “And yet you haven’t told her your secret, apparently. So what does that say about your relationship? It’s all based on a lie, isn’t it, Rob? She has all that luck, all proven, and she is attracted to you because she thinks you are just like her.”

“That’s not—it isn’t like that. She doesn’t love me because of that,” I stuttered.

“Let me give you a hint, Rob. Women don’t like to be lied to. And they especially don’t like to look like fools.”

“She’s not a fool,” I said.

“No? When I guessed your secret years ago and she hasn’t got a clue? I think she will look like a fool. And she will feel like a fool. And that is never good for romance, is it?”

I didn’t say anything. I was thinking of what I could offer to Laura to get her to promise not to tell Trudy the truth. I had to be the one to tell her, and it had to be just the right way. I would do it, too, just not quite yet. “What do you want, then?” I asked Laura. “Money?”

She tsked. “I’m not that kind of girl, Rob. I thought you knew me. But now you’re insulting me. Not the best thing to do when I’ve got you by the short and curlies, eh?” Laura’s voice was soft and purring.

“If not money, then what?”

“I want you to get something for me. A key. From your friend Art Goring.”

“Why?” I asked immediately.

“I want something that he has, obviously. And to get it I need the key to his basement apartment. It’s the small one with the green plastic on the top. I need you to get it from him without him knowing and then give it to me during school tomorrow. I’ll copy it and give it right back to you, but you have to make sure that he doesn’t know that it’s gone during that time, and that he doesn’t know that I have a copy.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

She smiled at me. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. Distract him.”

“Why can’t I just ask him for the key?” I asked.

“Because I told you not to and I’m in charge,” said Laura.

“What are you going to take from him?”

She shook her head.

“Come on. You have to tell me something. I can’t just give you a key to my best friend’s room without asking if you’re planning to kill him or something.”

“I’m not planning to kill him, Rob,” said Laura. “I swear.”

And I was supposed to believe her promise? “Then what?”

“If I promise that he won’t get hurt, will you stop asking me questions?” said Laura. She leaned in close to me.

“OK,” I said.

I won’t hurt a hair on his head,” Laura whispered.

I squirmed away from her when she was done. Could I trust her?

“You’ll thank me in the end, that Art doesn’t realize you’re the one who took the key,” said Laura.

I stared at her. That did not actually make me feel any better. “He doesn’t keep money in his room. Or valuables.” Art came from a wealthy family, but his basement dorm room was a disaster. I’m not sure anyone could find anything in there. The last time I’d gone over there, it was full of smoke from some experiment he’d been doing.

“I know exactly what he has in his room right now,” said Laura.

One of Art’s experiments, then. I thought about what I’d seen of them. Sure, Art won science fair contests a lot, but it wasn’t like they were valuable. Maybe Laura had figured out a use for them, but that didn’t mean that anyone else would. And besides, Art was my best friend. He knew how much I loved Trudy. He would understand, in the end, why I’d had to do this. He would forgive me. In fact, Art might be the only person I wasn’t afraid of telling the truth about my luck to.

“Fine. I’ll get you the key,” I said. “But I’m not getting you anything else. You can’t keep holding the truth over my head.”

“Actually, I can,” said Laura. “For as long as you don’t tell Trudy.”

Yeah, she had that right. I had to figure out a way to tell Trudy, and soon. Everyone else could come after that.

Laura opened the door. “Thank you,” she said, winking at me. Then, before I could think to stop her, she leaned in and gave me a big kiss, long and loud.

About half the student body of the school saw it.

“Why did you do that?” I muttered, and put my hand to my face.

“It gives us a good reason to be together. You know, remembering good times together. Now where and when should I meet you to get the key?”

“Tomorrow in the library after lunch,” I said. I would see Art in the cafeteria, and I would have to figure something out.

Laura waved at me and walked away.

I tried rehearsing various speeches for Trudy. There was always one big problem. Why I hadn’t told her before. I’d lied to her for over a year. Why? Because I was afraid she didn’t love me as much as I loved her. Honestly, I was still afraid of that. But it didn’t exactly make a great opening line.