Lucky Girl by Jamie Pacton (novels for beginners txt) 📕

bus, calling for silence as she takes roll, and then the bus rumbles to life.

I offer Holden an earbud and put some music on my phone. While we drive the hour and a half to Spring Green, Holden shows me all the photos from his trip to Hawaii. I try not to be jealous, but it’s impossible. There he is, smiling and nonchalant on the whale-watching tour his family took. Someday. I’ll get there someday.

“Want to trade seats, Holden?” says Bran, walking back toward us after we’ve been chatting for a while.

“Mr. Kim! Take your seat!” our teacher screeches from the front of the bus. Bran rolls his eyes.

“We’re pretty comfortable here,” Holden says. “What do you think, Jane?”

I think I’m in way over my head with Holden, since I’ve been fighting the urge to kiss him for the last hour.

“Yes, trade seats,” I say to Holden in a rush. “Bran and I have stuff to discuss.”

“If that’s what you want,” Holden says with a crooked grin. He shrugs and steps past me. I slide into the seat he just left and press my cheek into the coolness of the window.

“What are you doing?” Bran demands as he sits down beside me.

I let out a tired, oh-so-exhausted breath. What am I doing? Almost missing field trips because I overslept? Flirting with Holden? Hiding the fact that I’m a multimillionaire from my best friend?

I just shake my head. “I don’t know, but let’s not talk about it right now.”

It would be impossible to talk anyway, because Holden has traded seats again and now he sits behind us with a bunch of his cross-country buddies who are making loud, obnoxious jokes.

Bran raises one eyebrow. “Tell me there’s nothing between you two.”

“There’s nothing between us. Just a lot of history. Now, will you please tell me the next steps in your investigation?”

That’s all it takes to get Bran talking again. Soon, he’s got a notebook out and is walking me through his carefully plotted, fifteen-step plan to find the lucky winner. I keep my cheek against the window, half listening, all the way to the House on the Rock.

THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK IS WEIRD. LIKE, TRULY, DEEPLY, MIND-bogglingly weird. Most of us in my class know it from the TV show (or the book, in my case) American Gods. But even that doesn’t get at what it is to walk through hundreds of rooms full of tiny miniature circus figures, porcelain dolls, pneumatic machines, and everything in between. I’ve been once before, with Mom and Dad when I was very small. I remember thinking it was both magical and terrifying.

“The House on the Rock opened to the public in 1960,” our teacher calls out as we stand in the hallway at the front of the house. “Alex Jordan’s father purchased this land—some say in a bid to anger Frank Lloyd Wright, who lived ten miles away—and Alex devoted his life to making this house spectacular. Today I want you to wander through the house, and we will all meet for lunch in a few hours. Don’t break anything, and please fill out your question sheets as we go. You will be getting a test grade for completing them.”

She hands out long, stapled lists of questions. I glance at one: Where did Alex Jordan live most of his life?

“That one’s easy,” Bran whispers beside me. “I looked him up last night. He’s from Madison and only spent four nights in this house.”

“So strange,” I reply. “Imagine having all this space and just filling it up. It’s not a house; it’s a museum.”

Bran nods. “That’s exactly what it is.”

The parallel to my own home is not lost on me, but I don’t say anything about it.

As our teacher drones on, giving us all instructions for staying safe and what to do if we get lost, I wonder: If I find a way to cash the lotto ticket, could I purchase something like the House on the Rock? Or create something like it myself? What will my legacy be after all these years?

“Was Alex Jordan rich?” I blurt out suddenly, louder than I mean to.

The class stops whispering, and my teacher stops talking.

Holden snorts. “Of course he was. Look at this place, Jane.”

“I was just about to ask the same thing,” Bran whispers. “It was a good question.” He bumps his shoulder against mine. I want to hug him.

My teacher raises a hand to stop the laughs. “Actually, though this house is sprawling, it’s hard to say whether Jordan was rich or not. He was notoriously reclusive, and he financed much of this place through giving tours of it.”

That makes everyone stop talking for a moment. Imagine how many tours you’d have to give to build a place like this.

“Okay, everyone,” our teacher says. “If there are no more questions, go forth and enjoy.” She waves her hands in a wide swath. I can almost hear her racing for the parking lot to sneak in a smoke before she meets us somewhere deep in the bowels of the house. “And don’t break anything! I mean it!”

“We won’t,” Holden calls out. There’s a low wave of laughter from everyone else, and Holden, his cross-country friends, and most of the rest of the class head toward the Infinity Room.

Technically, the Infinity Room is neither a room nor something that stretches to infinity. It’s more like a long hallway with a carpeted floor that has three thousand small, wood-framed windows along its sides and a bunch of ceiling fans going at full speed. It narrows to a point and juts out into the sky—unsupported—like the prow of a ship. Total hell for a claustrophobic soul like myself.

Bran and I stand at the entrance to the Infinity Room as students from our class dare each other toward the end. Someone squeals as the room sways in the October winds.

“No way am I going in there,” I tell Bran. “Let’s get exploring.”

“Agreed,” he says. “Plus, I think Holden