Fortune Falls Read online

  For my mom—

  Thank you for teaching me the things worth believing in.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1: STEP ON A CRACK

  2: KNOCK ON WOOD

  3: LUCKY PENNY

  4: AN APPLE A DAY

  5: SEVEN YEARS BAD LUCK

  6: LIGHTNING STRIKES

  7: CAT AND MOUSE

  8: THE WISHING WELL

  9: HOLD YOUR BREATH

  10: WISHBONE

  11: LUCKY CHARMZ

  12: LEAVES OF THREE

  13: U-N-L-U-C-K-Y

  14: A PERFECT STORM

  15: CHUTES AND LADDERS

  16: GLOOM AND DOOM

  17: BLACK CAT

  18: MAKE A WISH

  19: FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH

  20: STARLIGHT

  21: JINX

  22: FOUR-LEAF CLOVERS

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.

  —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Petey’s sweaty little hand wriggled in mine. It was hard to hold on to, like a fish fighting to make its way back into a pond. If we’d been anywhere else in town, I probably wouldn’t have cared. I might even have let it go. Instead I said, “Petey, stop squirming.” Then I reached over and clamped my free hand around his scrawny upper arm, preventing my five-year-old brother from writhing out of my grasp. When he looked up from under his mop of wayward curls, I tipped my head ever so slightly in the direction of Tommy’s mom, Mrs. Mitchell. It was all the reminder Petey needed.

  Mrs. Mitchell had just dropped Tommy off at the Pot-of-Gold Child Care Center and was walking away, but even from a distance, it was impossible to ignore the halo cast encasing her head and neck as her fractured vertebrae healed.

  It might be called a halo cast, I thought, but there is absolutely nothing holy about the medieval contraption screwed onto Mrs. Mitchell’s skull. Unfortunately, it was all too common a sight in Fortune Falls.

  “Come on, Petey,” I said, collecting myself and turning my attention back to my brother.

  But Petey’s face was now ash gray, the same color as the cement we were attempting to traverse. His small blue sneakers were glued to a solid patch of it, and cracks sprawled like spiderwebs down the path in front of us. One false move, and somewhere across town, our own mother would feel something in her back snap, and crumple to the floor in agony.

  “It’s all right,” I reassured him, even though the stretch of pavement between us and Petey’s day care was particularly tricky. “Let’s pretend it’s just a game.” I acted braver than I felt as I hopped to the next piece of solid ground, still gripping his hand tightly. Petey eyed me warily, unmoving.

  “It’s like hopscotch,” I said. “Just don’t land on a crack.”

  Petey glanced over his shoulder, in the direction we’d come from.

  “Nope,” I said with resolve. “If I have to go to school today, so do you. We’re not going home.” I hopped back next to him. “Shoelaces tied?” I lifted the bottoms of his pant legs to reveal the double knots I’d tied as securely as possible before we’d left the house. “Check. Path clear of leaves, twigs, and other tripping hazards?” We both scanned the sidewalk in front of us. “Check.”

  I cupped Petey’s chin in my hand and waited until his hazel eyes were looking back into my own. “Trust me?” I asked.

  The flicker of doubt I saw there was a stab to the heart. Even my young brother was starting to see me the way everyone else did—as a vacuum for bad luck, a magnet for misfortune. Maybe he’d never been worried that his misguided footstep would cause our mother to cry out in pain and fall to the cold tile floor at the hospital where she worked. Perhaps all along his fear had been that I would step on a crack and break our mother’s back.

  I wanted to remind him that I hadn’t been tested yet. Technically, I was still classified as Undetermined, but we both knew that didn’t matter. My hand felt detached from the rest of my body as it started to slip from Petey’s. But then he squeezed it with a ferocity that surprised me, and squared his boney shoulders in stout determination. “Check,” he said in his tiny boy voice. “I trust you, Sadie.” And this time he took the first step.

  * * *

  As I approached the crosswalk in front of Fortune Falls Elementary a short while later, a commanding red hand popped up on the signal. I waited by the side of the road as a shiny, tanklike SUV with dark-tinted windows whizzed by.

  I didn’t have to see who was riding inside to know that Luckies had caused the light to change. The vehicle never slowed. Obviously they’d expected the light to turn green as they’d approached the intersection. Most lights probably did for them.

  Sure enough, after the SUV whipped into the parking lot, I saw Ian Silverman vault flawlessly from the staggeringly tall vehicle and land with both feet squarely on the solid pavement.

  Ian had been in my homeroom when we started school back in August, when we were all still Undetermined. However, he’d turned twelve in September, which meant he’d been part of the first wave to take the Luck Test.

  No one was surprised when Ian passed with flying colors and was transferred to a homeroom for Luckies only. That’s how it would go for the rest of the year. Every few months, a new group would take the test. Those who passed would go from Undetermineds to Luckies. Those who failed would be revealed as Unluckies. It might not seem like a big deal, having to switch homerooms, but that was only a temporary measure.

  After sixth-grade graduation, the Luckies would move on to Flourish Academy, a day school. On the other hand, after the Unluckies graduated, they’d be shipped off to Bane’s School for Luckless Adolescents—a boarding school designed to keep the Unluckies from endangering those around them. I’d never seen it with my own eyes, but I’d heard it was awful.

  Ian ran over to the basketball court where Simon Swift was waiting. Simon was still Undetermined like me, but there was no reason for him to fear the Spring Luck Test, which was now only a week away. I watched as Ian and Simon began swishing ball after ball through the hoops. It didn’t matter where they shot from—behind their back, a great distance away—it still went in. Simon even banked a shot off a nearby tree, something only a Lucky would be able to do. Something I couldn’t do if my life depended on it.

  It was mesmerizing to watch them play. The dribbling sounded so pleasantly rhythmic against the cacophony of chattering students waiting for the bell to ring. For just a moment, I allowed myself to be hypnotized by their fluid movements instead of thinking about what the next week might hold for me.

  A wall of muddy water shook me back to reality. The splash was cold and sudden. I whipped around in shock only to have a second spray kicked up in my face.

  If I hadn’t been so entranced by Ian and Simon’s game, I would’ve noticed the giant puddle in the gutter. Instead, I’d stood dumbly on the sidewalk nearby as one car, and then another, had driven through it. Now I was soaked and angry with myself for making such a careless mistake. Lights never magically turned green for me. I had to pay attention. I couldn’t afford not to.

  I wiped my eyes and lips with a dry spot on my sleeve, just as the bell rang and everyone else started piling in through the front doors. I sighed heavily. Mrs. Swinton wouldn’t like it if I was late again, but she’d like it even less if I dripped dirty water all over the classroom carpet. So as the other students rushed off to their classrooms, I found my way to the girls’ bathroom.

  I spent the next ten minutes dabbing water off my clothes and wiping chunks of mud out of my
hair. I splashed clean water onto my cheeks, but the mirror above the sink wasn’t really a mirror at all, so I couldn’t see if I’d gotten my face entirely clean.

  An Unlucky student named Hannah accidentally broke the real mirror in the girls’ bathroom two years ago. Not even an hour later, she was dead. A passing car had blown a tire, rammed through the fence, and crashed onto the playground. Hannah, sulking over the broken mirror, had been sitting close to the fence when the man’s car broke through. The entire school was grief-stricken, but not entirely shocked. Breaking a mirror brought a seven-year curse—one of the worst in Fortune Falls—but most didn’t outlive the duration. Still, Hannah’s ruin had been particularly swift.

  Two things changed after that. First, the Unluckies were no longer allowed on the playground at recess. Second, a construction worker removed the rest of the school mirrors and replaced them all with shiny metal sheeting. The metal sheeting was nearly indestructible, but it completely warped any reflections.

  I could see a wobbly outline of my face, framed by my own unruly curls, but my features were all distorted and I couldn’t tell if I’d missed any splatters of mud. It didn’t matter, though, really. It’s not like I could wash all the speckles off my cream-colored sweater or light blue jeans anyway. Or rinse all the Unlucky from my blood, for that matter. I’d have about as much luck doing that as a leopard would at changing its spots.

  I left the girls’ bathroom just in time to get caught in the small crowd of Unluckies slipping in through the side entrance of the school. I couldn’t help but notice the way they stumbled along with their snotty noses, stained shirts, and Band-Aids galore. Was this a glimpse of my not-so-distant future?

  One Unlucky student stepped on another’s shoelace, and it started a chain reaction as a group of them tumbled like dominoes. That was why they used a separate entrance and had a later start time. So that they wouldn’t hinder the other students. The idea was for the Unluckies to have as little contact with everyone else as possible until they were shipped off to Bane’s School for Luckless Adolescents next fall.

  The Luckies’ parents made a huge fuss whenever they thought their fortuitous children were being jeopardized by an Unlucky. Sometimes, even parents of Undetermined kids complained. Rumor was that Felicia Kahn’s mother and father had registered one hundred thirty-seven complaints so far this year. Most of their calls had been about me.

  They claimed I was a danger to everyone around me. At least that’s what they said at the beginning of the school year, right after I was blamed for the collapse of the gym bleachers.

  They’d made a big to-do about the whole thing, even though faulty welding could’ve explained why it crumbled when I leaned on it. No one was too seriously injured, thankfully, and the goose egg on Felicia’s forehead went away after about a week. So, really, they should’ve forgiven me for it by now.

  Still, the Kahns had blabbered to anyone who would listen that I should be identified as Unlucky right away instead of waiting for the Spring Test. “Let’s be honest,” I’d overheard Felicia’s mom saying to Principal Lyon, “Sadie was born on Friday the thirteenth, and her birthday lands on Friday, March thirteenth, again this year. Shouldn’t that tell us something?”

  I stopped in the middle of the hall and let the downtrodden pack sweep ahead of me. One more week, I reminded myself. I wasn’t officially one of them yet. I had one more week to increase my luck, before I’d have to prove to everyone that I wasn’t such a menace to society. Anything could happen in a week. Maybe, by some miracle, I could pass the test and go on to Flourish with my best friend, Cooper, and all the other Luckies.

  Then I looked down and saw a patch of mud on my sleeve that I hadn’t been able to wash out. Who was I trying to fool? I was destined for Bane’s. With my shoulders slumped, I continued down the hall and turned the knob to open Mrs. Swinton’s classroom door.

  I held my breath and barged right in. If a lifetime of mishap and embarrassment had taught me anything, it was the quicker you got the discomfort over with, the better.

  As expected, every single Undetermined student turned to look at me as Mrs. Swinton sighed loudly. In a voice that wasn’t entirely unsympathetic, she said, “What was it this time, Sadie? Were you chased by a swarm of bees? Did you fall down an open manhole again?”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Swinton. I—” But as soon as I opened my mouth, she cut me off.

  “Look, Sadie, since you know something is going to happen to you on the way to school, can you at least try to leave earlier?” Mrs. Swinton’s head hardly reached above the podium she stood behind. Nothing about her—from her close-cropped gray hair to her long, flowered skirt—seemed imposing. Yet the tight pinch to her lips and the edge, quite common in her voice, said she was a force to be reckoned with. “Please take your seat.”

  I nodded as I hurried past her, then scooted by four rows of desks. Fewer than half of the desks were occupied since most of our classmates had already been sorted into Luckies and Unluckies. Felicia whispered something to Betsy and Sabrina, and the three of them giggled. When I slid into my seat at the far back corner of the room, almost toppling my chair over backward in the process, Betsy stopped laughing. Felicia’s and Sabrina’s snickers grew into guffaws.

  Mrs. Swinton cleared her throat. All three girls sat up, tall and studious-like, and I dropped my gaze to the empty desk next to mine, the one where my best friend used to sit.

  I tried to picture his friendly face in place of the scornful glares Felicia shot when the teacher wasn’t looking.

  Cooper could do a terrific impression of a Lucky. If I was feeling low, he’d throw his arms up in mock indignation and say something like “Argh! I didn’t win that contest I forgot to enter. I’m having such a bad day.” Or “Can you believe the PTO president gave me chocolate cake for winning the cake walk? Doesn’t he know lemon poppy seed is my favorite?” Then Cooper would draw his lips into a pout and wait until I cracked. It wouldn’t matter how painful or embarrassing my day had been up until that point, in spite of myself, I’d laugh.

  If only Cooper were still Undetermined.

  No, I didn’t mean that. I was glad he’d passed the Winter Test. I hadn’t been sure that he would. Just, now that he was with the Luckies all day, I missed him terribly. And at least Felicia pretended to be nice when Cooper was around.

  Mrs. Swinton stepped up to the whiteboard, and I snapped back to attention. It took me a minute to realize what she was doing. She was drawing a horseshoe in the upper right-hand corner of the board. “As you all are aware, the Spring Luck Test will take place next Monday, one week from today,” she said. “I’ll add a horseshoe every day. After we have seven of them, it will, of course, be the day of the test.”

  Seven was a lucky number. Seven lucky horseshoes. For the Fall Test, she’d drawn rainbows. Four-leaf clovers for the Winter one. It was a daily reminder to do everything we could to increase our luck between now and then.

  “I’ve been blowing on my lucky dice every night before bed,” a boy named Manuel whispered to another boy, Nathan Small. Nathan’s eyes flicked in Manuel’s direction, but he seemed too filled with worry to speak.

  “You can’t even use your own dice on the test, stupid,” Sabrina interjected.

  “I know, but—”

  “That’s enough,” Mrs. Swinton said reproachfully. “I just hope that all of you remembered to use your birthday wishes wisely and didn’t squander them away on frivolous things.”

  At this, Nathan buried his face in his hands, and I recalled him bragging about a new gaming system after he turned twelve last month. Quite a few others students were fidgeting in their seats, and there were more fingers crossed than I could quickly count. Most of the squirmers were ones I would’ve expected to be nervous, like me. However, the beads of sweat on Betsy Williams’s freckled forehead surprised me.

  I double-checked the birthday calendar pinned to the wall. Nope. My name was the only one written in smudged black dry-erase marker for this
week. That meant, considering all the anxiety hanging in the air, a good number of students had wasted their wishes when they’d turned twelve—or perhaps they hadn’t been able to make their wishes at all. I knew far too well how difficult it could be to blow out all your candles, no matter how seriously you took the task.

  My stomach muscles constricted, and my heart pounded in my chest. Not this year. This year, I had to earn my wish, even if my birthday did land on Friday the thirteenth. Then I had to use my wish to pass the Luck Test. I just had to. If I didn’t … if I failed the test and was sent to Bane’s … I didn’t even want to think about what that would be like.

  My blood pulsed even harder as Mrs. Swinton launched into a speech we’d heard two times already—when she was prepping the students who’d taken the Fall and Winter Tests. I think it was supposed to be inspiring, but really, it only fueled my sensation of falling off a cliff. Especially when she said things like “Pass the test and you will prosper. Fail and you’ll find nothing but a lifetime of desolation.”

  Then I made the mistake of glancing at Felicia and Sabrina. The two of them were leaning back in their chairs, smirking and purposely stretching out their graceful swan arms, as if to show that they were above such ridiculousness as finger crossing. Those two had so much good kismet it was coming out of their ears—in Felicia’s case, literally. Dangly jade earrings hung like teardrops near the delicate slopes of Felicia’s jawbones, accented even more by her high, sleek black ponytail.

  In Fortune Falls, jade cost more than diamonds. But so did a lot of things: four-leaf clovers, horseshoes, and rabbits’ feet, just to name a few. All Felicia would have to do is show up for the Luck Test in those lucky earrings, and she’d breeze right through. She’d probably even used her birthday wish on the matching new green cashmere sweater she was wearing and thought nothing of it.

  Mrs. Swinton’s lips pursed at the corners as she said, “But I’m sure none of you have anything to worry about. You’ll all do just fine on your upcoming tests.”