Chapter 18: Rob

My parents bailed me out of jail on Friday afternoon, but they claimed they couldn’t do anything for Art. Apparently, he was the dangerous one, since he knew how to remake the experiments, and Excel Pharmaceutical had enough pull that they didn’t want him allowed out. I didn’t know how to feel about the fact that no one thought I was dangerous. Since I’d admitted I had no luck, I guess people thought that I couldn’t do anything worth anything. Maybe they were right.

“We could have gotten you some help. You should have told us as soon as you suspected your lack of luck,” said Mom, when we were on the way out to the car. There were plenty of reporters and cameras to get past, but we were used to those. It was Trudy I was worried about, though. She and her parents had already left, but I didn’t know where they had gone. I hoped they’d found some place away from all this.

“I still think that test you took could be wrong,” said Dad.

I had been mad at them before, but it was fading now. I felt bad that I’d come out like that, in public, without giving them a chance to deal with it first. That hadn’t been fair. How had I expected they would act?

“It wasn’t wrong,” I said. “I don’t have luck, Dad. I never have.”

He got into the car and put his hands on the wheels. I thought he was going to start driving without saying anything else, but he let the engine idle for a minute or so. Then he said, “I meant that you might have luck in certain areas. The expensive, complicated tests, the ones you have to take in a hospital, can show you luck in every area.”

So maybe I was only below average in school, money and politics—the things that mattered to my parents? And maybe I could be great in cooking? Or fashion? Or volleyball?

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mom.

“It might, at some point,” said Dad. “I’m only trying to be precise. The test he took was a basic one.”

“You’re not still hoping that my test scores got mixed up with someone else’s, are you? I know I thought that at first. I wanted to believe it more than I really believed it, though. I’d suspected for a long time. The test was just confirmation for me.”

“I think your grandmother tried to hint to me something about you being different. Before she went away,” said Dad.

“I’d like to go talk to her. See if spending more time with her would help.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Dad.

I hoped he had changed, even if only a little.

“We’ve disappointed you, I think,” said Mom. “You were afraid of what would happen when it all came out, and you were right to be afraid. We should have handled it better.”

“I’m pretty sure I disappointed you, too,” I said. “Lots of times.”

Once we got home, though, the family togetherness thing was over. Dad said he had to get back to work. Mom had an appointment outside of the house. I was left wandering around, seeing the signs of the police search. The racquetball room was empty, but there were bits and pieces of Art’s experiments left. Nothing that mattered, I was sure.

I went back upstairs into my room and lay on my bed, doing nothing, trying to think about nothing. I had dinner that night with my parents, and tried to go to sleep. I finally fell asleep about dawn on Saturday morning. When I woke up, it was late in the afternoon and I realized that I had no idea what was going to happen with the rest of my life. No one had said anything about sending me back to St. James.

Trudy had been bailed out before I was, and I picked up my phone, considering calling her. That when I realized I had a message waiting for me, from Art.

It was dated from Thursday night, when I was in the midst of the reporters on my parents’ lawn, telling them about my lack of luck.

Curious, I pressed play. I listened.

It was Art, giving my step by step instructions on exactly how to do the electricity experiment that would give me more luck. He said that the device the police were taking was more reliable and more complex, because he’d had a chance to refine it after a few iterations. But the first time the idea struck him, about electricity maybe giving someone more luck, he had made a very simple device to shock himself. I needed a lot of current, so I had to gut our oven, and use its wires.

It made me laugh while I was doing it, that this was Art’s idea of a “simple” experiment, what he’d try to do first. No wonder he’d been kicked out of every dorm room he’d tried to share with someone else, along with a list of fines for things he’d ruined.

When I was finished, I checked each step three times, and finally, I deleted Art’s message.

I stared at the wires I was about to hook myself up to. Was I crazy to shock myself with that much electricity? Or was it more crazy not to try it?

I wasn’t born with luck. I’d lived my whole life without it. I wanted to be accepted for who I was without luck. I wanted to believe that luck had nothing to do with Trudy loving me.

And here I was, ready to jolt myself with electricity to get more luck. Because I couldn’t see any other way for us to get out of this mess. The only way to fight Laura was to use fire to her fire. In this case, rather literally. She had tons of luck and that meant she could manipulate everything. She had made sure her family’s company Excel Pharmaceutical had all the information to do the experiments. She was going to keep coming after me and Trudy until she had her full revenge on us. And what about Art? He had given up some of his luck, too, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to try to get it back, even if he did get out of jail anytime soon.

But what if I killed myself? It seemed entirely too likely that I had made some mistake with Art’s instructions, or that I hadn’t made a mistake and something would go wrong anyway. Art promised me that he’d figured this all out, that there was no risk to me doing this. He said that so long as I was grounded, the electricity would go straight through me. And after all, this was probably the way humans had started getting luck from ancient times.

Art claimed that being hit by lightning strikes frequently during some weird weather early on was probably what gave the Romans the edge in terms of civilization. And the Greeks before them. Lighting might even have been the reason the first ape walked upright, or the first human learned how to use a tool. It might have caused the first human to speak a word. It wasn’t fire, Art said, and he sounded excited as he said it. It was electricity. That was what gave man the ability to touch fire without being burned, to use fire. Luck.

I trusted Art. It was myself I didn’t trust so much.

Trudy loved me whether I had luck or not. My parents were going to come around to accepting it, probably. But what is it they say? A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. I had to do this.

I let the crude device charge up. Then when I could hear it humming, I reached a hand out for it. I started counting. Art had said to start counting first, before I touched it. He said to count to five and then let go. I hoped I made it to five. I hope I could still let go then.

One, two. . .

I touched it and all thought went out of my head.

My whole body started to shake. I thought I could see stars in my eyes, and then my vision went wild. There were weird sparks and fireworks everywhere and I could hear music in my mind. Not any music I’d ever heard before. It was like the music of the universe, the music of stars shooting through the sky and mountains moving on the mantle beneath the earth, the music of the rising chaos and of black holes churning through matter, and of luck itself, the purest form of power and connection. It was luck that was at the base of the universe, luck that set life itself into motion, life that caused the Big Bang. It was luck that kept the universe from exploding, and it would keep it going until bad luck took over, and became stronger than the good.

Five, I thought, and I let go.

I don’t know where the two, three, and four had gone, but it felt right somehow.

And once I had let go of the device, I knew that I had let go at just the right time, before it started smoking and jerking around the room. I must have gotten enough luck by the time I thought of letting go that I had survived what could have killed me. What should have killed me.

What had Art been thinking? He’d survived it, but he had luck. It made me wonder how many scientific experiments were completely bogus because the person who did them had luck. Yeah, they were supposed to be repeatable, but I don’t think many people without luck went into science in the first place. It was too dangerous.

I was breathing hard, but I felt good. Different. It’s hard to describe what the difference was. Not stronger or tougher. Not happier. Not especially sensitive. I was no super hero.

But I felt—lucky.

I felt like good things were about to happen to me. And when the phone rang, I was sure it was just the beginning.