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

kissing, I want to shout. At least those are the things Holden used to tell me.

Honestly, though, I’m not even sure those things are true anymore. I mean, of course they are on some objective level, and my self-esteem isn’t so low that I really think I’m worthless.

Fuck, though. Sometimes I struggle to remember who I am outside of the couple Holden and I were.

“I hate what she did with her hair,” says another girl in the group.

I chopped off all my hair the night of the breakup, giving myself a horrifying mullet that Bran helped me fix by shaving my head. Two months later, it’s still super short, and I adore it.

“Why did she even do that?” asks the first girl. “It’s hideous.”

I did it because Holden liked my long hair but not me anymore. And because I needed to feel like I was in control of something. And mostly because I always cut my hair when I want to scream.

I take a deep, steadying breath, come out of my morose thoughts, and turn around. “Oh, get a life,” I say to the girl. “My hair is cute, and girls shouldn’t bring other girls down like this. Life is hard enough for women. Don’t make it worse by commenting negatively about every female body you see. Let me know if you want some book recommendations about that, and have a gorgeous day.”

And flounce.

The girl’s mouth drops open. I walk away, unable to stop the grin that spreads across my face as I head to my favorite place in the school: Mrs. Davis’s biology classroom.

MRS. DAVIS’S CLASSROOM SMELLS LIKE WHITEBOARD MARKERS, SWEATY students, and a bit of biology funk that’s decaying leaves with overtones of formaldehyde. Ecology Club starts in ten minutes, but the room is empty when I walk in—though I can hear Mrs. Davis in the teacher’s office that’s connected to the back of the classroom. Setting my backpack on the closest desk, I breathe in deeply, as if I can take the quiet and calm into myself, letting it fill me like water racing into a tide pool. To keep myself from stewing about Holden or the benightedness of some high-school girls, I focus on yesterday, when I bought the lotto ticket.

It’s not like I intended to buy it when I walked into Wanda’s Quick-Go Shop—or even thought I could. Sure, I’d tried to buy a ticket before at Wanda’s, but Wanda or her wife, Mary Anne, always carded everyone who looked under eighteen. No exceptions. No questions asked. Those were the rules, and we all knew them.

Except yesterday was my dead dad’s birthday and the two-month anniversary of Holden dumping me. So, no. I wasn’t thinking of the rules. Or Wanda and Mary Anne. Or getting in trouble for buying a ticket. I was thinking about how in love my parents used to be. And how Mom, Dad, and I would go to my dad’s favorite seafood restaurant every year on his birthday. And how I haven’t eaten seafood since he died five years ago.

Knowing our fridge was probably empty at home, I’d stopped by Wanda’s for an after-soccer-practice snack. I wore sweats, a hoodie emblazoned with our school mascot (Go, Honey Badgers!), and a light-pink jacket. I even had on my backpack, so I definitely looked like a student. But there was someone new working the counter at Wanda’s. It was some middle-aged guy who kept pressing the wrong button on the register. His face got redder with each messed-up transaction, and he swore under his breath.

“Sorry, sorry,” he’d call out, as he mis-rang another item. “Work with me here; I’m new. Wanda is out running some errands. She’ll be back soon.”

As I shuffled forward in the long line of customers snaking through the store—some truck drivers, some parents with whining little kids, but no one from my school—I glanced up at the sign above the register: Today’s Jackpot: $58,642,129.

That’s a lot of money, I remember thinking. A ridiculous amount.

And then—and I’m about the least mystical person around, truly—I swear I had the clearest sense that I should buy a lotto ticket. Just one. Just because.

Maybe it was my dad nudging me from the Great Beyond. Maybe it was me wanting to break a rule. Whatever it was, when it was my turn to pay for my items, I stepped up to the register confidently.

“Is this all?” asked the flustered clerk. He didn’t look up at me but gestured instead at my bag of pretzels, my juice, and the two frozen burritos on the counter (dinner for Mom and me).

“All this and a Mega-Wins ticket,” I said, making my voice assured and breezy.

Still not looking at me, the clerk pushed some buttons on the lotto-ticket machine. It spit out an orange ticket. The clerk pushed the ticket across the counter toward me.

6 28 19 30 82.

I stared at the numbers on the ticket, feeling vaguely disappointed that I had a ticket with a bunch of random digits on it, when I could’ve done something symbolic, like played my dad’s birthday—10/13/77—or his death day—8/17/16—or something else, but I didn’t say anything because making a fuss might’ve made the clerk take a closer look at me. Or remember that minors weren’t supposed to buy lotto tickets.

“That’ll be nine dollars and ninety-two cents,” said the clerk.

“Keep the change,” I said, quickly handing over a ten-dollar bill and turning around with the lotto ticket still in my hand.

I stepped out of the way so a dad with a crying toddler in his arms could pay for his items, and then I stuffed all the food into my backpack. With one more glance at the ticket, I whispered under my breath, “Okay, universe. I bought a lotto ticket; let’s see what comes next.”

Never taunt the universe, right?

“Ahhh, Jane,” says Mrs. Davis, walking into the biology classroom from her office. She’s a spry woman in her early sixties. Today, she’s wearing her customary socks and Birkenstocks, a T-shirt with