Lucky by Rachel Vail

envelope. Four singles, nothing else. I put them back in, replaced the envelope, closed the drawer.
    Taking the back stairs by twos, I went looking for Allison or Quinn, to tell them what had happened, see what they thought.
    Allison was about to go out so she was in her room having her self-hate-fest first, trying stuff on and ripping it off, grunting that she was hideous. When I tried to compliment her she screamed at me and accused me of taking her white sweater, which I totally didn’t, and anyway I thought it was supposed to be for both of us and in case it had somehow ended up in my bottom drawer, I had to lock her out of myroom and lean against the door. Quinn was in her room studying the whole time until somebody beeped in the driveway and she sprinted out of the house. When I went by Allison’s room a little later with the white sweater, she was already gone.
    That’s okay, though, I told myself. I’m not a baby. I can handle all this stuff on my own. I put the sweater on Allison’s spring sweater shelf in her closet and quietly closed the door.
    I had just settled down in front of the TV in the family room with a pint of Cookie Dough Dynamo and a spoon when my phone buzzed. I checked caller ID. It was Luke. I shut off the TV and waved my hands around like a lunatic before answering as cool as possible, “Hello?”
    “Hello, this is Luke,” he said.
    “Hi.” I ate a spoonful of ice cream. My mouth was burning up.
    “Oh,” he said. “So, um, Memorial Day?”
    It was obviously a question but I had no clue what to answer. “Uh-huh?” is what I came up with.
    “You going away?”
    “I don’t know,” I said, downing another spoonful. “Is that next weekend?”
    He laughed. “Wow, somebody spacier than I am. That’s impressive.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “I knew I’d impress somebody someday.” Youch, that had come out way flirtier than I’dintended. We both kind of breathed for a few seconds. I read the ice cream label. Holy fat content! Luke, you called me!
    “Yeah,” he finally said. “So are you? Going away?”
    “Um, no,” I said. “I don’t think so. Nobody said anything about it to me, anyway. Not that that means anything. Ha ha ha!” What is wrong with me?
    He laughed one ha . “Yeah, I hear you. I mean, good. I mean, I’m not either.”
    “Oh,” I said. I swear he and I used to have normal conversations all the time, even when we were going out. Especially when we were going out. It was more like we were friends, like best friends, then. We played a lot of Stratego and Ping-Pong and laughed all the time. “What?” I asked.
    “I didn’t say anything.”
    “Oh,” I said again, slapping myself on the forehead. “I thought, nothing.”
    Silence again. Think of something to say, Phoebe! How about, Hey, remember when we kissed? Like less than a hundred hours ago? “So anyway.”
    “So I was thinking,” he said, “probably you don’t want to so you can say no, no problem but I am probably going to be, you know, working in my mom’s nursery? Repotting? And I was thinking if you felt like doing some transplanting there’s like a million pots of orchids and they all have to be replanted, transplanted, but probably you don’t wantto which is fine,” he said in one breath.
    I replayed that whole thing in my head, twice, and when I finally got it, said, “Sounds like fun.”
    “Really?” he asked. “It’s kind of a mess.”
    “I love dirt,” I told him. “You know I do.”
    “Yeah. Just, I didn’t know if you still did,” he said.
    He was right. We maybe didn’t know each other so well anymore. “I do,” I said. “I still do.”
    “Okay,” he said. “Good. Great. So, then, it’s a date. I mean, not a date. Not a date date.”
    I laughed or actually kind of brayed. Like a donkey. Unfortunately.
    “I mean, or we could go to the movies, after. At the mall. If you want.”
    I smiled. If I want? “Which day?”
    “Saturday. Okay? Week from