Page 61 of With a Little Luck

“I’ve never said anything against hard work and talent,” I say, my hand still tingling. “But even you can’t deny it. Things have been going my way lately.”

Pru opens her mouth—presumably to deny it—but she hesitates. Her gaze darts to Ari, and her jaw clenches briefly, before she turns back to me with a smile that seems almost … resigned? “You’re right. It certainly seems that the odds are ever in your favor.”

159

Chapter Twenty-One

The magic of Lundyn Toune does not let me down. A homeworkassignment that I thought was lost miraculously reappears in my binder when the teacher asks for it. I stop to tie my shoelace and find a ten-dollar bill on the sidewalk. And even though I forget to put my favorite cereal on the grocery list, my mom remembers to pick some up anyway, and thatneverhappens.

The luckiest thing of all, though, is that sitting with Maya and her friends at lunch becomes progressively less uncomfortable as the week goes on. I even dare to talk once in a while, and maybe I’m imagining it, but I think I’m sort of charming them? It’s mentally draining, I’ll admit, to listen to their conversations and constantly be searching for things I can respond with that are either interesting or clever or both, but when I do and everyone laughs, I feel like I’m totally nailing this. One time I even catch Serena giving Maya awho would have thought?look that I interpret as a really good sign.

Despite all that, it still takes me until Friday to work up the nerve to ask Maya out on a second date. She says yes and we agree to meet up after school, but do I just imagine the way her smile is more reserved this time? And why is it that her response doesn’t fill me with the same heart-jolting ecstasy it did the first time? I chastise myself, knowing that this is not something I can take for granted. The potential to be datingMaya. The novelty of impossible good luck might wear off, but that never could.

And besides, no amount of coin flipping or dice rolling can make me160worthy of calling Maya Livingstone my girlfriend. If this magic disappeared tomorrow, would she still see me as a guy she could like? A guy she might fall for?

I can’t become complacent until I’m sure that the answer to that question is yes.

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“Oh, that’s just beginner’s luck!” shouts Maya as my golf ball sails through the mouth of the shark, down the tube, out onto the lower level of the putting green, and straight into the little plastic cup.

Hole in one.

And that is the precise moment when I begin to question if mini-golf was a good idea. I smile nervously as we head down to pick up our neon-colored balls. Maya had gone first, and it took her six shots to get it in the hole, but she insists that she’s just getting warmed up.

I wish I could think of some witty remark, but I’m busy trying to figure out how I’m going to make it through the rest of the course without Maya thinking that I’m some sort of putt-putt prodigy.

Or that I’m cheating.

I’m not sure which would be worse.

“It’s notcompletelybeginner’s luck,” I say as we make our way to the next hole, the one where the ball is supposed to go up and over a small pirate ship. “I have played mini-golf before.”

She doesn’t need to know that the last time I played was with my family, and I don’t think Ellie was even born yet.

“Are you a golf savant?” says Maya, setting her orange ball down on the starting mat and lining up her club. “Because despite my lackluster showing on that first hole, I am actually pretty good at this game, and I will not let you intimidate me, Jude Barnett.”

For some reason, I like it when she uses my full name, and I can feel myself relaxing. “I’m sure I just got lucky that time.”

Maya takes her swing, and the ball goes straight up the ramp, past the161wooden masts, and down the other side. It comes to a stop about a foot away from the hole. “There is no luck in putt-putt golf,” she says, casting me a solemn look. “This is a serious game of skill and strategy.”

She gets the ball into the hole with one more swing and records her score while I line up my club. This time, I try to send it off-course and …

The ball strikes the side of the ship and bounces back, returning to almost the same spot I hit it from.

Maya makes a pleased sound in her throat, and I exhale with relief. After the D20 fiasco last weekend, I half expected the magic of Lundyn Toune to defy the very laws of physics to ensure I got another hole in one. Whoever would have thought that there could be times when a person just doesn’t want to be all that lucky? Turns out, sometimes it is better to be average.

By intentionally skewing my shots, it takes me four tries to get over the pirate ship, and I use the same strategy for the next few holes, hitting my ball into the water once, and landing in the same sand trap twice.

We fall into an easy rhythm. To my surprise, Maya fills most of our conversation with talk of our D&D campaign. She’s even started writing out her character’s backstory, thinking it would be fun to turn it into a short story or something. Not that she would ever share it with anyone. Her friends wouldn’t get it, she says, and she’s never posted anything online, and probably it isn’t that good, anyway—her words, not mine—but she’s having fun all the same. She talks about how she used to come up with stories when she was a kid, where she would put herself in as a character and pretend she was a ninja or a paleontologist, and sometimes she would write her stories down, but it has been so long and she’d kind of forgotten about it. She talks with a lot of nostalgia, like she’s connected with a beloved part of herself that has been neglected for too long.

If you’re wondering whether or not I get many words into this revealing monologue of hers, the answer is … not really, no. But I don’t mind. If Maya wants to talk my ear off about her long-buried dreams of fantasy adventure, who am I to stop her?162

Maya has lots of ideas about where the campaign might be heading. Actually … some of them are pretty good. Maybe even better than what I’ve got planned.

“You know,” I say, “you’d make a good DM.”

Her eyes widen. “No way. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

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