The-Lucky-List-Rachael-Lippincott

“Valid point.” She nods, pausing to scan the farmlands all around us. “What are you going to get?”
“I have a good idea,” I say, reaching out to plug Sycamore Street Tattoos into the GPS.
e inside of the tattoo parlor is surprisingly dark, considering the detail I imagine is required for
tattooing.
e walls are lined with brightly colored designs, framed in an attempt at preservation, but the
corners are still yellowing with age. Black fold-out chairs sit underneath them, the seats o-kilter. It’s a
Russian roulette game to pick the one that won’t collapse underneath you.
I peer past the big counter to the room behind it, where, in front of a faded red curtain, a huge guy
with a big gray beard and a red bandanna is in the middle of tattooing an intricate heart on the wrist of
Katie Moore, the older sister of a girl in my grade.
You would never think that the best oensive lineman Huckabee High had ever seen could tattoo
something so delicate, but Big Eddie is a real artist. And also a total soie. I think he maybe cried the
hardest at my mom’s funeral, and they’d only been in homeroom together at school.
“Hey, Big Eddie!” I call out to him.
He glances up, beaming when he sees it’s me, his eyes practically disappearing behind his round
cheeks. “Emily! You here for the special?”
I nod, patting the enormous binder sitting on the front counter, pages of designs overflowing out of
it. Blake leans over my shoulder, her face lighting up when she sees the faded black Sharpie on the
cover: CLEARINSE BINDER.
“Let’s hope he tattoos better than he spells,” she whispers to me.
I elbow her in the side, and she elbows me right back, a big grin appearing on her face.
“You’re not gonna chicken out this time, are ya?” Big Eddie asks, the tattoo gun buzzing again as he
leans back over the girl’s wrist.
I grimace, cringing. I look over to see Blake open her mouth to tease me. “Say a word and I will
never talk to you again.”
“at’ll be pretty tough considering I’m your ride home,” she says, leaning casually against the
counter.
I give her a look before turning my attention back to Eddie. “Can I maybe get something not in the
clearance binder?”
“No can do, Em,” he says, his eyes focused on the tattoo he’s doing. “You know the rules of the
special.”
My heart sinks, but I refuse to turn back now. Yeah, this is an invincible summer. But it’s mine.
Maybe my tattoo doesn’t have to be the same as Mom’s.
Maybe this should be for me.
Determined, I lean over the pages of the binder. A purple butterfly, a devil smoking a cigarette, a
cup of coee with a halo, a disheveled-looking goat. I have no idea how these were all squeezed
together on the same sheet of paper, but all the pages are like that.
No theme. Just tiny, random drawings spread out on a blanket of white.
Blake points at a piece of pizza wearing sunglasses, amused. “Where would you even put a tattoo like