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

“There’s nothing funny about crime, Jane,” Bran says in a cheesy voice, like he’s giving a PSA.

I can’t help it. I start laughing again. It’s what I do when I’m nervous.

“Honey badgers don’t give a shit,” I reply.

Bran laughs at that and then gestures toward my backpack. “What do you have in there? A table saw?”

“Possibly. I just grabbed everything I could find.”

“Hedge trimmers?” He points to the pair poking out of the top of the backpack.

“You never know what will arise during a heist,” I say, quoting some of my research material.

We get to Wanda’s far too quickly. I mean, of course we do, our town is tiny, but I’m not ready to actually begin the heist.

Bran peers into the darkened window. “It looks the same as always. Except, you know, closed.”

I shift my backpack again. We’re really doing this. Breaking into Wanda’s. The part of me that was secretly guilty of breaking the law by buying a lotto ticket is now fully guilty as soon as we bust in. But I can’t let Holden get those tapes. Who knows what he’ll do with them?

Thinking of Holden makes my stomach lurch. A great, slimy feeling of sadness, regret, and rage fills me.

Fuck this. No more being sad.

“Let’s go,” I say, taking a lock-picking kit out of my backpack. “I’ll get the door open. That way, you’re not guilty of the actual break-in.”

I do indeed know how to pick a lock, thanks to all the times I’ve accidentally locked myself out of my room.

I pull a thin strip of metal out of the kit and slip it into the lock.

Bran steps forward, hand outstretched. “Jane, are you sure? Let me. I was researching lock picking all last—”

Before either of us can show off our lock-picking skills, the door swings open with a little tinkling of a bell.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whisper. “It’s unlocked. What if a real criminal is in here?”

What if it’s Holden? Of course it’s going to be Holden. What am I going to say to him if he’s already seen the tape? Will he really be able to tell it’s me buying the ticket?

“This isn’t very Ocean’s Eleven,” whispers Bran.

“Ocean’s 8 is what we’re going for,” I reply. “I’m Cate Blanchett.”

Bran glances at my knockoff Ray-Bans, gray thrift-store overalls, black T-shirt, and my purple knit hat (in my defense, it was the only one I could find in my closet). He snorts.

I shift my backpack. “Before the Met Gala, dork. When she was just cool and planning stuff out.”

He laughs harder.

“Never mind. Let’s go. Keep your eyes open.”

With a glance at the street behind us, we step through the door. I flick on my flashlight and send it around the store. The beam bounces over metal racks full of chips, making enormous lumpy shadows on the floor. I slip my sunglasses into my pocket.

Bran’s eyes meet mine. In his black jeans, black turtleneck, and black snowboarding jacket, he definitely got the memo on how to dress for a heist.

We creep through the darkened space, moving quickly past coolers still humming as they keep drinks cold.

“Weird that we could take anything we want,” I say, half to myself. “Want some Cheetos?”

“We’re not thieves,” Bran hisses.

I scoff.

“Well, not regular thieves.”

A drawer slams from the back of the store, making Bran and me jump. My fingers dig into his arm.

“Back there,” I mouth, pointing. I lower my flashlight so its beam skims the floor. Bran grabs a snow scraper off a shelf and holds it like a weapon.

“You look ready to attack a very frosty windshield,” I whisper, nodding at the snow scraper and his puffy jacket.

“Shut up,” he mutters as I cover my mouth, trying not to laugh.

There’s another noise, a loud banging as if someone’s going through a filing cabinet, and we both stop laughing. This could be bad. If it’s not Holden back there, it could be a real criminal. They could be breaking into Wanda’s while the owners are gone. They could have guns, or there could be more than one of them.

You know it’s Holden. I shove that thought away because the truth is, I don’t want it to be Holden. I want Holden to like me for me, not for my millions of dollars or for any information I could give him about the lotto ticket.

Ha.

I deeply hate this perfidious heart of mine.

Bran and I tiptoe through the stockroom, past the bathrooms, toward the small office at the back of the store. A light shines from under the door.

“On three,” I whisper to Bran. I rest my hand on the door.

“One, two, three …” he counts it down. I push the door open, and we burst in.

Dammit.

It is Holden.

He’s hunched over a small wooden desk, watching security footage on a TV-VCR combo that looks like it’s from the ’90s. On the small TV screen in front of him is a girl in a hoodie and a light-pink jacket, buying a lotto ticket. Her back is to the camera, but I don’t need to know that when she turns around, her face will match mine. Or that the ticket she holds in her hand has a very specific, very familiar row of numbers: 6 28 19 30 82. Though surely you can’t make out the numbers on the security footage. Right?

Holden spins around as we burst through the door.

“Jane? Bran?” he asks. His voice is full of surprise. “What are you doing here?”

I don’t greet him. I don’t think. I just slam my finger into the eject button on the VCR. When the tape spits out, I snatch it and smash it as hard as I can against the desk. It shatters into pieces. With one quick motion, I pull the gray magnetic ribbon out of the insides, like a child tearing open a package.

“Jane!” Bran’s voice is startled. “What are you doing?”

“That’s the security footage from the day the ticket was sold,” Holden says. His