Chapter 19: Trudy

Saturday afternoon back at my dorm room, I called Rob to tell him about Laura and the bad luck bacteria vial I’d spilled on her.

“If she has so much luck, how could she let that happen?” I asked. He knew her. Maybe he could figure it out.

“You surprised her,” he said. “You were stronger than she thought, Trudy. But that doesn’t surprise me. I’ve always known you were stronger than she is. That’s why I love you so much.”

“Did she really think I would just sit there and do nothing to stop her?”

“She was drunk with her own luck,” said Rob. “And also, she sees you at school and thinks that being nice means that you wouldn’t defend yourself if attacked.”

“Does everyone think I am so pathetically easy to manipulate?” I asked. Being nice didn’t mean being a pushover. I’d never attacked Laura personally at school and I guess I could have tried. But so long as she kept away from me, I saw no need to do it.

“You don’t use power the way that most people do. You never have. But that’s not the same as being weak.”

“Well, I thought about doing it. For a couple of seconds,” I admitted.

“Giving up all your luck for me? Did you think it would be romantic?”

I snorted. “If I did, that would be pretty stupid. Being in love doesn’t mean making yourself into someone else’s doormat. It’s seeing the best part in the other person and being even more your own self than you were before.” It sounds cheesy to put it that way, but it was true. I didn’t want Rob to change for me, but I didn’t want to have to give up who I was for him, either.

“And that’s why I love you, Trudy,” said Rob. “You make me more myself.” There was something he wasn’t telling me. I could hear it in his voice, but I didn’t bug him about it. We would have time to talk, lots of time. When this was all over.

“I worry about Art, though,” he put in. “What about Excel Pharmaceutical? What are they going to do with his experiment? We can’t exactly trust them to use it for the good of all mankind.”

“I’m not that naive. They’re a company. They’re supposed to make money.”

“I just don’t know what we can do to stop them. I hoped that if I was lucky enough, it might just drop in my lap,” said Rob.

Lucky? “Rob, what did you do?” I asked.

He hesitated, and when he did speak, it was very softly. “I used the electricity treatment. Art told me how to build a device at home and I just used it, not more than an hour ago. I’m not sure what the results are going to be, other than that you called me. I consider that the best luck I could possibly have.”

“Rob, are you all right?” What had he been thinking? Did he have any idea what my life would be like if he wasn’t around anymore? Maybe that was selfish of me to think like that, but what I’d done to Laura was for him. For us. “You must have had luck of some kind if you survived the initial shock,” I said.

“Maybe it’s bad luck for me to get good luck,” said Rob. “After all, this is going to make my parents happy. And maybe even more interfering in my life.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible,” I said.

“Oh, believe me. It is.”

While I tried to wrap my mind around that idea, I could hear my parents laughing with Mabel and Arlee. My real friends were getting along well with them, which was a good sign for them staying here for a while.

“So now you have luck and I have luck. How could we not be happy together?” I asked.

“Trudy, us being happy doesn’t have to do with luck,” said Rob confidently.

“If you believed that, why didn’t you tell me before now? About you not having luck? You lied to everyone.” Including me.

“Yeah, well,” said Rob. “I was afraid. I shouldn’t have been. That wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”

“Maybe this is all a sign that we don’t belong together,” I said, not wanting to believe it.

“Are you trying to break up with me?” said Rob.

I was quiet.

“You know that’s exactly what Laura wanted, with all of this.”

And I was supposed to stay with him just to spite Laura? “She went to a lot of trouble just to break us up.” Not that this was just about breaking us up. It had something to do with money and her family’s company, too. And proving herself to her parents.

“But she’s Laura. She likes to do everything big and dramatic.”

“This was big and dramatic all right,” I said. Suddenly, I had an idea. “Rob, can you email me the information about the electricity? All the voltages and photos, whatever you have on it?”

“Sure,” said Rob. “But what are you going to do with it? Excel already has it.”

“Exactly. But we want to make sure everyone else has it, too. The specifics for the voltage and everything seem like they would be a lot easier to give to everyone than the bacteria.”

“I don’t—” Rob started and then he stopped. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, I see. That is genius.”

If everyone had as much or as little luck as they wanted, everything was going to change in my life, big and small. St. James would be completely different, if it existed at all after this. And what about politics and elections? Would they be cleaner? What about Hollywood? What about science? And weather? And everything? It hurt my brain even to think about it.

“You sure this is what we should do?”

“You have a better idea?” I asked Rob.

“Not really,” he said.

“Well, then, check with Art to be sure. But then you should do it, I think. You’re the luckier one now, I think. It will work best if you do it.”

I hung up and turned back to my parents while I waited for Rob to text me. It felt so strange now between us. Like we were really seeing each other for the first time. I wondered if that happened to other people, too. You think you’re in love, and you are. But something happens and things change, and you fall in love all over again, as if with a completely different person. Since you’re a completely different person, too.

“Is Rob all right?” Mom asked when I had hung up the phone. Mabel and Arlee had gone home and now it was just Mom and Dad and me.

“He’s fine.” I tried to figure out how to ask them what I needed. Once Rob and I had done this, Laura could have all the luck back she wanted. That could make her dangerous to people who didn’t choose to have as much luck, certainly. But it wasn’t Laura I was thinking about right now. It was my parents.

“Why don’t you sit down?” said Dad.

I sat down with relief.

“Now, tell us what’s going on,” said Dad.

Right. Single syllables or less for my dad. Not because he wasn’t smart, but because he had no interest in fancying things up for no reason.

I explained Art’s experiment to them as best I could in short words and simple sentences. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

“So you can give yourself luck with a shock?” asked Dad.

“A calibrated one, yes,” I said.

“And there’s a bacterial infection that takes luck away from you?”

I nodded. “Always has been. It may be the real reason that people have bad luck. It’s just we didn’t know before. But now we can control it.”

“So we can have all the luck we want?” asked Mom. “Anyone can?”

I stared at her closely. Her eyes were shining and she was looking at Dad, not me. She held out her hand to him and he reached toward her. Then they sat down on either side of me on the couch and their arms were around me.

“Isn’t that great? All your problems will be over,” I said. “No one will lack luck now. There won’t be any poverty anymore. No people starving in third world countries.” Heck, there might not even be such a thing as a third-world country anymore. Those beauty queen pageants where people talk about ending world hunger in vacuous terms, we were going to make them completely irrelevant. People would have to think of something else to worry about.

Mom and Dad could both get jobs up here, could probably earn enough money to get a nice house, and maybe they’d even be accepted by people like Arlee’s parents and Mabel’s.

“It sounds wonderful,” said Mom.

“I suppose it will change some things,” said Dad. “But nothing that really matters. Not to us. We always had enough to eat, shelter to protect us, and we had love for each other. The rest doesn’t seem like it matters much. Though I hope that it does help people truly in need.”

“Would you do the treatment, then?” I asked them.

Mom looked at Dad.

Dad looked at Mom. He shrugged.

I was surprised. I always thought they hated luck.

“It would seem silly not to,” said Mom.

“Like not getting vaccinated. As long as there is the technology, it seems like you have an obligation to use it,” said Dad. He was so blasé about this thing that was going to change the world.

“I thought you’d say it was bad.”

“We never thought luck was bad. How could it be, when you had so much of it and it was good for you? It was just that it took you away from us, I think. That made us suspicious of it a little.”

“I’m more worried about you, Trudy,” said Mom. “You wanted to stay here at St. James. But won’t everything that makes it special be gone in the blink of an eye?”

Dad nudged Mom. “She will always be special.”

“But not in the same way,” I said.

Dad waved a hand. “In a new way. A better way,” he said. “A way that is really yours. It will make everything clearer. Luck is only a crutch if that is all you have. Ask your boyfriend Rob about that and he will tell you.”

I stared at him and Mom. “I really love Rob,” I said.

“Well, I have to say I think better of him now. Telling the truth when it is difficult is admirable.”

Dad patted her hand and I knew everything was all right.