Lucky by Rachel Vail Read Free Book Online

around. It’s kind of sad, don’t you think?”
    “Aw,” said Gabrielle. “A puppy, yeah, with those big sad eyes of his.”
    Luke is so not the lovesick pup; if anybody was that, it would be Kirstyn, the way she constantly monitored whether Justin Sachs was online or not. But obviously I couldn’t say any of that to her. She has it harder than I do, I reminded myself, and as cute and fabulous as she seems, I know she gets jealous of me and my life sometimes, and it makes her act mean. She is right, I am a lucky person;everything comes easy to me. I can afford to be generous with her.
    “It’s not, it has nothing to do with that,” I said instead. “Anyway, whoa, I practically belly flopped onto the track there, huh?”
    But Kirstyn wasn’t letting it go. She turned to Ann and explained, “She looked over at Luke and just swooned.” Kirstyn smiled at me, but it was a cold smile, no happy humor anywhere in it.
    “We went out for like five minutes, forever ago,” I said, trying to keep it light. “Who even cares?” I shrugged at Gabrielle and Ann, who both shrugged back.
    “Not me,” said Gabrielle, slamming her locker shut.
    “Me neither,” Kirstyn said. “And I know Ann doesn’t care.”
    Ann opened her mouth and let it hang there.
    “Exactly,” Kirstyn said. “So that leaves…” Her head tilted toward me.
    I admit, I was getting pissed off. I reached back beyond Justin Sachs to sixth grade, where she was accusing me of getting lost. “Me and Luke are such ancient history nobody remembers it but you, Kirstyn. I mean, you don’t like William, right?”
    “William!” Her cheeks reddened immediately, as I had known they would.
    “Yeah, William,” I said. “We’re friends now, me and Luke, just like you and William, just like…”
    “William and I are not exactly friends. He’s so immature….”
    “Well, so is Luke.” I yanked off my own uniform. Okay, Luke is actually not immature, but we’re friends and that’s all. What’s past is past. I don’t like him, I don’t, because why would I? We went out in sixth grade, back when Kirstyn was going out with William and the four of us were like the center of the center and we were all practically babies.
    I mean, it was good then, sweet, even when Luke got that weird haircut that made his head look like a rectangle; so much better than seventh grade, trying to get the eighth graders to notice us past Gabrielle. Actually, seventh grade was really fine, too, but back in sixth grade, Kirstyn and I and William and Luke rode bikes together after school, hung out by the swings at lunch, swam in my pool almost every day in June.
    Well, anyway, that was a long time ago.
    “You girls finished torturing each other yet?” Gabrielle asked.
    “Almost,” Kirstyn said, and the three of them laughed. I didn’t. We finished getting ready without talking, and headed outside.
    Okay, maybe I have been kind of more, well, aware of Luke lately. But even if Luke is distractingly cute this spring, with his hair hanging down, curling on the ends by his ears, it doesn’t matter. I’ve known him way too long foranything else to evolve between us. He’s a nice guy, is all, and there’s no reason we can’t be friends. I don’t like him and he doesn’t like me. That’s how it’s been for almost two years, I told myself, and how it will always be.
    It is interesting, though, that the more people talk about a thing that is absolutely not true, the more it can start to feel a little bit true.
    Kirstyn’s mother picked us up in the circle. She asked if Gabrielle and Ann wanted rides but they said no, they were all set. Kirstyn settled in, shotgun, and flipped down the mirror to check her teeth. She does it all the time lately; she says she lives in dread of having a poppy seed stuck in her teeth and not knowing it. I would’ve told her there was nothing there, if she’d asked me. I took the seat behind her mother. I wasn’t sure if we were in a fight or