The-Lucky-List-Rachael-Lippincott

Until now. If I can stop chickening out.
My phone starts vibrating in my hand, and Kiera’s name flashes up on the screen in white letters.
Our first call since she left. She gets thirty minutes of phone time every Sunday night, and a chunk of it
usually goes to Nina, so I don’t want to waste a second.
If she’s calling me first, it means she has some news.
I sit bolt upright and tap the green accept button for her FaceTime.
“Kiera! Hi! How are you?”
“Em, are you trying to give me a cavity?” Kiera’s voice pours through the speaker of my phone, her
box braids and smiling face slowly coming into view, as blurry as it always is when she’s away at Misty
Oasis. e service is so bad up at camp, most of the calls are glitches and frozen screens. She holds up
the three shiny packs of Bubble Yum Cotton Candy Bubble Gum. “You know once I open a pack, I
have to finish it.”
Even through the screen I can tell her nails are freshly painted, one of the nail polishes I sent her
being put to use. Homesick box success!
“Give some to your campers! It’ll be a welcome relief from the cardboard and water they usually
get.”
She rolls her eyes, but the corners of her mouth turn up. From what I remember from my traumatic
week there, Misty Oasis made the sketchy buffet by the Goodwill look like a gourmet meal.
“How’s it going so far?” I ask.
“Pretty good! I got a weird rash on my leg a few days ago on our nature hike, but other than that
I’m doing great.”
I grimace as she flicks the camera down to show me a lumpy red patch just above her ankle. Of
course this is the moment the quality shoots straight from pixelated to ultra HD.
“Ew. That’s gross as hell.”
I still don’t fully understand how the same girl who cried over breaking a nail at our freshman
formal two years ago transforms into a mountain man each summer. It’s like two versions of Kiera
simultaneously exist in one body.
She laughs and the camera moves back up to her face. “Could be worse. One of the campers had to
be sent home a few days ago aer they got poison ivy on their eyelid.” Her eyes widen slightly, the
horror still palpable. “Now, that was gross.”
“I don’t even want to begin to picture that,” I say, glancing over at my alarm clock, the bright red
numbers blaring out 7:43.
I jolt, realizing how close it is to eight. My dad will be home from work soon. And I know for a fact
he hasn’t eaten since pancakes this morning. I push myself up and head down the hallway, giving Kiera
a wry smile as I tuck my long brown hair behind my ear.
“So. How’s ‘Nice Arms’ Todd doing?” I ask, eager to get the latest Misty Oasis gossip. Kiera has been
nursing a crush on Todd omas since he came back to camp two summers ago redefining the words
“glow up.”
“Emily. His nice arms got even nicer. I swear they quadrupled in size over the course of the school
year. It is unreal how good he looks. And”—she glances behind her to make sure the coast is clear, her
voice excited—“I found out his girlfriend broke up with him a month ago because she’s going to UCLA