The-Lucky-List-Rachael-Lippincott

13
I sit on the steps of my house, shiing my legs back and forth as the warm concrete makes my skin
prickle. I know absolutely nothing about cli jumping, but I would assume today is the perfect day for
it, just because today is the perfect day for just about anything. ere isn’t a single cloud in the sky.
e sun is hot, but not unbearable, and the trees rustle gently from a cool, relieving breeze that blows
through just as you get a little too warm.
At exactly two o’clock Blake’s truck chugs to a stop in front of my house, her tan arm slung casually
out of the rolled-down window. I push myself up o the steps, grabbing my backpack, and walk down
the path to her truck.
“You ready?” she calls to me as I get closer.
I swallow hard on my nerves.
“Uh, I think so?” I say, wrapping my fingers around the lucky quarter, tucked once more into the
pocket of my jean shorts.
“at’s the kind of confidence I was going for,” she says, laughing as I pull open the door, the hinges
squeaking noisily.
I buckle my seat belt as she plugs the state park into her phone’s GPS, the automated voice telling
her to drive down the street and turn right.
We talk about Huckabee High for the entire drive, and I give her a crash course on the ins and outs
of the school. I cover all the dierent social groups, how the cool people are basically her coworkers at
the pool, how our rivals are the Seymour Squids, how only one girl on the school cheerleading squad
can do something other than a cartwheel.
“Our football team is trash,” I say, serving up some brutal honesty, in case she, like the rest of our
town, really cares about stu like that. “In fact, two of the guys who chased us at Snyder’s Orchard
were starting varsity last year, if that’s any indication. But the stands are still packed every Friday.”
“at sounds cool actually,” Blake says when I tell her about the actual parade our town threw aer
we won our first game in five years. “My school was pretty small, so we didn’t even have a football
team.”
“I don’t know if that’s better or worse than having a crappy one.”
Blake laughs, reaching up to push some of her sun-streaked hair behind her ear. “Where do you fit