Black Cats and Ladders
By the time lunch rolled around, Madeline was more than ready for the day to be over. Barely past noon and she had already managed to ruin her favorite shoes, and fail a chemistry test. Actually, that wasn’t too bad compared to some days. Since she was little her family had told her that if it weren’t for bad luck, she wouldn’t have any at all. She was just waiting for the day when lightning finally struck and finished her off. Or maybe she’d live, just to die in a plane crash. She frowned down at her plate and shoved the unnaturally bright-green peas around. Most days she had the table to herself, because every single one of her friends, of course, had a different lunch period than Madeline. So when she heard someone set down their tray near her, she looked up, surprised.
She’d never seen the girl in front of her before, and before she could stop herself she asked, “New?”
The girl nodded. “Yep.”
“I feel bad for you,” Madeline said, then thought maybe she shouldn’t be so blunt.
The girl’s blue eyes sparkled. “Honest. I like that.”
“Yeah, well. Honest, rude. It’s easy to get the two mixed up. I’m sure you’ll be fine. Welcome to James Madison.” She held out her hand, and immediately felt awkward, but the girl just smiled and shook it. Madeline wasn’t sure what to say after that, and lapsed into silence. The other girl didn’t seem in a hurry to make small talk, so they finished their lunch in silence that sometimes edged on uncomfortable.
It was only half way through her history class after lunch that Madeline realized she’d never gotten the girl’s name.
-
The next day Madeline looked around her classes, to see if maybe the new girl was in one of them, and she had just missed her, but she wasn’t there. She didn’t even see her at lunch until she sat down across the table from Madeline.
“Hey. I survived,” the girl said.
Madeline frowned. “What?”
The girl smiled. “My first day. It wasn’t as terrible as you led me to believe.”
“No packs of rabid wolves attacked?” Madeline can’t keep herself from smiling back.
“Do the freshmen count?” Her smile blossomed into a grin.
Madeline laughed. After that, their conversation waxed into silence, again, this time less uncomfortable than yesterday. Afterwards she realized that she had failed to get the girl’s name once again.
She tried asking around, asking her friends if they knew the girl’s name. Most of them weren’t sure who she was talking about.
“The new girl?” Sarah asked. “I think she’s in my English class. Didn’t catch her name, though.”
-
It’s about a week before Madeline realized she hadn’t tripped or broken something. That’s absolutely unheard of for her, and she started to get nervous the longer the streak lasted, worried that it just means the universe was gearing up for something big. Maybe lightning really would strike her. She checked the weather every day, and it predicted sunny days, but that didn’t mean anything. People die all the time from freak lightning strikes, and she’s next, she was sure of it.
One day at lunch someone dropped their tray, and Madeline startled so bad she knocked into her own tray, and scattered food all over the table.
“You okay?” the girl asked. Madeline still didn’t know her name, and now it seemed like it would be rude to ask; they’d been having lunch together every day since the girl got there.
“Yeah. Just. Antsy, I guess. I usually have really bad luck, but nothing disastrous has happened lately. I feel like that just means that when it does happen, it’ll be really bad.” She tried not to feel stupid, she was just giving the facts of her life.
“Maybe your luck has changed.”
She snorted. “Yeah right.”
-
One day the girl wasn’t at lunch, it was also the same day that Madeline’s rotten luck had returned. It finally had rained, but no lightning struck her. A car splashed muddy water on her while she was walking to school, and she’d gotten partnered with one of the dumbest kids in her English class for a project. After history she was supposed to get a math test back, and she was sure she had done horribly on that one, too.
The day stretched into a week, which stretched into a month. Asking around bore the same results it had when she wanted to know the girl’s name. Either no one had noticed she was gone, or no one knew why she was gone.
Before Madeline knew it, the school year was over, and the girl had never come back. Her luck remained just as bad as ever.