The-Lucky-List-Rachael-Lippincott

certainly worked out well for you. Did you come up with that one?”
He snorts, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, right.”
I see his face change the longer he looks at it, his eyebrows furrowing, his jaw locking. I can tell he’s
closing off, a door slamming shut.
I claw my way into the tiny space, wrapping my fingers around the doorframe before it can close
completely. “Why did she do it? Do you know?”
He takes a bite of his pancakes, chewing slowly, swallowing deliberately. “Your mom spent most of
her life doing what people expected of her. She was the president of all the clubs at school. She was
always on honor roll. She was always doing what her parents wanted her to do.” He reaches out, taking
a sip of his coffee. “But then she bombed her SATs.”
My head snaps up as I remember the taped piece of paper I found yesterday.
“Didn’t get a lick of sleep the night before and ended up passed out over her reading section. She’d
completely worn herself out. Me and Johnny found her crying in the parking lot aerward. But it
wasn’t hard to see it wasn’t really the test that was weighing on her.” He stares at his plate, his face
thoughtful.
“Is that why you decided to help her? How did she come up with the list? Was it like—”
“I gotta get to work,” my dad says, cutting me o midsentence. He shovels the rest of his breakfast
into his mouth and stands up, the wooden chair screeching loudly on the kitchen floor.
I glance at our oven clock. Ten fiy-five. He’ll be a whole ten minutes early if he leaves now. I
should’ve quit while I was ahead.
“I can clean up,” I say as he puts his plate on the counter.
He nods and rips off the apron. Hard to believe we were just joking about it ten minutes ago.
I watch as he takes one more swig of coee. “anks, Em,” he says, giving me a quick kiss on the top
of my head before heading to the hall closet, where his work boots are. “I’ll see you tonight, okay?”
“Okay!” I call after him, hearing the front door creak open. “I love you.”
“Love you too,” he calls back, the door slamming shut behind him.
I eat the rest of my pancakes slowly, the silence of the house ringing uncomfortably in my ears. I
turn on music and clean the dishes, putting the syrup in the pantry and the es back in the fridge, all
the while Blake’s words from yesterday still circling around in my head, my conversation with my dad
layered just over the top of it.
My mom, completely worn out, bombing her SATs, wanting to… what? Do the things she had
always wanted to do? Face her fears? Have a fun summer?
His closed-offness makes me want to know more.
But it’s pretty clear he isn’t going to tell me.
If I want to find out more, if I want to have this connection, I have to…
I grab my phone and bring up Instagram, my thumb finding the tiny circle that’s Blake’s smiling
face, an unwatched story tempting me.
I click it to see her launching a tennis ball in the middle of a spacious field, a blur of a golden
retriever barreling after it.
I let out a long sigh and chuck my phone onto the table, watching as it lands on top of my mom’s
list, the paper crinkling underneath the weight, the thought I’d tried to push away coming back to me.