Lucky by Rachel Vail Read Free Book Online Page B

was she even so mad about, anyway? Luke?
    What if Luke actually likes me, likes me?
    “So fabulous,” her mother continued. “Indoor pool, full-court basketball, a yoga studio and giant steam room upstairs. All designed by you-know-who…”
    I looked where she was pointing, at the huge house wrapped in Tyvek, with two giant green Dumpsters in the driveway and lots of machinery in the yard. “Cool,” I said. “I should get home.”
    “Sorry!” she said, and whipped the minivan like it was a sports car into a right-angle turn, and zoomed up my driveway. “Ask your mom to call me,” Kirstyn’s mom said. “I’ve left her a few messages but I guess she’s so busy. I don’t know how she does it, working full-time with three active daughters, but I guess she has a lot of help…. Anyway, I want to talk to her about the party, ask her what she thinks about overlays….”
    I willed Kirstyn to look at me, smile her meek apologetic smile she uses after she’s been bitchy to me. Nothing. Great, the silent treatment, one step worse on the Kirstyn emote-o-meter than biting sarcasm, just up from full-out tantrum. She might as well have been a statue in the front seat. Fine, I thought. Whatever, I could wait. I’m just lucky to be so uncomplicated. There’s nothing to figure out with me—what you see is what you get. Life is good and I bump along with it. Maybe it’s better to be deep and poetic and moody, like Kirstyn or even Allison, but honestly, I was thinking, I’m happy to be happy.
    Halfway up the driveway Kirstyn’s mom slowed the minivan down abruptly. We all bucked forward. My mother’s Porsche was in front of the house, and my father’s Jeep, too—neither of them in the garage—and also a cream-colored Jaguar two-seater.
    “We weren’t invited to the party?” Kirstyn’s mom asked laughingly.
    I sat there staring at the cars for a few seconds, trying to figure out what it meant. I couldn’t. It made no sense. Something must have happened. What? I jumped out of the car and slammed the door shut behind me, running as fast as I could up the driveway and through the gate and up the walk into my house, where I was hit with an intense blast of cold.
    “What’s going on?” I yelled, slamming myself through the mudroom door.

8
    “S HH .” G OSIA WAS ON ME in a second, taking my bag and pulling me into the kitchen. “You want a snack?” she whispered, fake-cheery.
    “No,” I said out loud. “Why are they home? And who’s here?”
    “Shh,” Gosia whispered again. “Sit down. Have a snack.”
    “Stop it, Gosia, seriously. What’s going on?”
    “Phoebe,” I heard Allison hiss from the back stairs.
    I ran toward her, kicking off my flip-flops.
    “Shut up,” Allison said, turning around. She took the stairs two at a time. I raced behind her. Instead of turning left to the upstairs den we have to cross to get to our bedrooms, she went right into the guest wing, where we almost never go unless my cousins from Oregon are visiting, and even then not so much. It smelled different in the hallway there, like Pledge, and the carpet was brown, thick and softlike moss, so my feet sort of sank into it.
    We passed the wall of school pictures of Quinn, Allison, and me—every school picture and class picture of each of us from nursery school on up, hung in identical Pottery Barn black frames with white borders, put together by Gosia. I couldn’t help noticing as I passed that Quinn, who is cool now, was seriously dorky in the early years of elementary school. Who cut her bangs? They were like tacky, badly hung window valances.
    I followed Allison into the second guest room. She kneeled on the floor right next to Quinn, who was perched on the edge of the bed. They both hunched toward the night table, heads bent close together.
    “What are you guys doing?” I asked.
    “Shut up!” Allison whispered fiercely. “What’s wrong with you?”
    “Shh,” Quinn breathed without lifting her eyes.
    I knelt