Gettin' Lucky (5 page)

It was worth a try. I just had to find it—my something new to try, that was. And I had to start as soon as possible.

I stood up hastily, nearly taking the table with me. “Thank you,” I gushed. “You’ve been terrific. Really helpful.” I pumped her hand up and down enthusiastically.

She withdrew slightly, clearly sort of grossed out by my exuberance. “You forget,” she said darkly.

“What’s that?” I asked brightly.

“For the palm reading. You forgot. To cross my palm with silver.” She coughed meaningfully.

Right. Payment.

I forked over my fifteen bucks, and we were done.

I was that much closer to shaking things up and, with any luck, turning my life around.

Or so I hoped.

School had become more of a hindrance than anything else. I’ve always read about women who throw themselves into their work to get their mind off of a problem (Danielle Steel novels are, like,
brimming
with these sorts of heroines), but that’s never quite done the trick for me. It didn’t help that in this case my work—school—was
where Jesse and Alana were. They were difficult to avoid.

Once upon a time, school had been a social outlet. I’d drive in early and spend the moments before first period milling around my locker with Jesse, Alana, and our friends. These days I was in and out as quickly and painlessly as possible. I did my work, but the rest of the time I had my head buried in a magazine, or I was zoned out to my iPod. It was kind of pathetic, actually.

Madame Lunichya had been compelling, but she had sort of raised more questions than she had answered. After all, she didn’t really tell me anything that I didn’t already know. I’d been hoping that she could give me a sort of “heads up” about my future. But instead, she seemed big on the idea that I was going to have to engineer my own fate. Which I had no idea how to do.

Annoying.

“… So I would argue that even if a reality television show purports to document footage of ‘real life’ events, in fact it is ultimately the product of the director’s vision as much as any fictitious work would be …”

Yikes, I’d almost dozed off during Kelly Connor’s report. How embarrassing.
Apparently Albon had liked hers enough to have her read it aloud to the class. I sort of admired her, but also felt bad. It could be so embarrassing to stand up in front of the class—the last thing I wanted to do was doze off.

It wasn’t that she was boring me—I really liked that she’d gotten the teacher to approve a topic that was sort of outside of what you’d normally think of. And Kelly herself was a very compelling presence. She was all quiet, coiled intensity, and you could tell that she actually believed the stuff that she was going on about. But I’d stammered my way through my own presentation (having Alana in the front row was a huge mind-freak) and had spent the rest of the period recovering.

“Thank you, Kelly,” Mr. Albon said, smiling as though he actually was impressed by her report. Pretty amazing—Albon wasn’t easily impressed.

The bell rang abruptly, sparing the last two students from having to present today. Lucky stiffs. All at once, everyone began gathering up their books and stuff and filing out.

I took my time, keeping my eye on
Alana and Katy the whole while. The last thing I needed was to end up strolling down the hall shoulder-to-shoulder with the two of them.

“I have a problem.”

The pronouncement came out of thin air, causing me to jump a few inches into the air. I landed and tried to regain my composure. “Yes?”

It was Kelly, her burning blue eyes fixed on me curiously.

“I’m Kelly,” she said, holding out one slim hand for me to shake.

I took her hand, wondering briefly whoall in high school introduces themselves with a handshake. But, whatever, she was being friendly enough, if a little bit weird. “I know,” I said, smiling. “I’m Cassandra. Cass.” This was a silly formality, this introduction thing. We’d been in school together since ninth grade. Even if we hung out in different crowds, we knew each other. But whatever.

“I know,” Kelly replied. “Okay.” She folded her arms across her chest and looked very serious for a moment. “Have you seen my website?”

“Of course,” I said, smiling, even
though it had a been a while since I’d logged on. “Everyone’s seen your website.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, completely deadpan. She was so crazy-focused, I thought she might actually be able to shoot lasers out of her eyes. That’s how bright they were. “Well, over Christmas break, I went back and took a look at the hits I’ve been getting. That one week alone, I had three times as many visitors as I had in any one week of the past semester.”

“Wow,” I said, wondering why she was telling me this.

“People are into it,” she said, essentially stating the obvious. “They’re getting more into it.”

“That doesn’t sound like much of a problem,” I pointed out.

She laughed. “Yeah. The
problem
is that I want to make sure that they
stay
interested. My website is going to be used for a portfolio so that I can get into design school next year. It’s important for me to keep the hits coming.”

It made sense—and made me mildly panicked about the complete lack of college planning that I’d done so far.

“I want to start a daily horoscope column,”
she continued, as if in response to my unasked question. “Everyone loves horoscopes.”

“You think?” I asked, surprised. I’d always thought it was a weird thing about me, my own obsession with superstitious stuff. Alana had humored me, but humoring was all that it seemed to be.

She shook her head at me like she was very sad for me. “There’s a reason that there’s a horoscope column in every major newspaper and magazine, right?”

“Right.” She had a point.

“Anyway, I suck at that sort of stuff. I’m a Scorpio?that’s as far as my knowledge of the subject extends.”

This was interesting news. A Scorpio and a Libra could hang, that was for sure.
If
that was what she was getting at, after all. I still wasn’t too sure where this was going.

“Scorpios are cool,” I blabbed, sort of without thinking. “Very creative and intense.” Which described Kelly to a T, as near as I could tell.

Who on earth would think that horoscopes weren’t valid? Madness. Sheer madness.

“Right,” Kelly said. “So the thing is, I
know we don’t really know each other all that well or anything, but I was hoping that you’d maybe be into handling the horoscope stuff for the site.”

“Oh, uh. Me?”

I’d never really done much writing, after all, beyond the occasional journal entry. And even those were … sporadic, at best. “What makes you think I’d be good at that?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “You’re kidding, right?” She pointed at the stack of books on my desk. Lying on top of the books were clippings from at least three different magazines—daily, weekly, and monthly horoscopes. Then she nodded toward the tiny four-leaf clover charm that hung off the zipper of my backpack.

“Call me crazy,” she continued dryly, “but I have a feeling you’d be perfect for the gig.”

I blushed. Obviously, being asked to do the job was sort of a backhanded compliment. It seemed like she maybe thought that I was insane. “Thanks,” I began slowly, “but I—”

“I thought you might have some free time these days too,” she interjected. Her voice was soft but meaningful.

I got her drift. If she had ears and went to school at Midvale (which, check and check), then she had heard about Jesse and Alana. The most recent news was that they were, for sure, dating. Ugh. It was like a fist to my stomach every time I thought about it, so I tried not to think about it too much.

I really didn’t know Kelly at all. And I’d never given any thought to writing my own column. Astrology was something that I took seriously—who was I to speculate about other people’s fortunes? I wasn’t feeling especially attuned to the forces of karma these days, and didn’t relish the thought of steering half of my class off onto the wrong course.

Then again, Madame Lunichya had instructed me to make my own fate, right? To shake things up? That meant trying something new. And I had a feeling that eating lunch in the library, while unusual for me, did not count as new. Especially since I’d been all but politely banned.

Working with Kelly would be a new experience. It was a scary thought, but also kind of cool.

What did I have to lose? Maxine sure wouldn’t mind seeing less of me. I had a
feeling that even she was getting a little sick of watching me mope.

And, anyway, I’d already paid for the palm reading. It was time to put my mouth where my money was.

I looked at Kelly, smiled, and took a deep breath.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

Five

You’re always the positive one, Libra, the person who steps in to help others even when you’ve already got tons to do. This week, it’s okay to give some advice, but you don’t have to take responsibility for everything other people are saying and doing!

I took it as a good omen that my own horoscope was clearly encouraging me to get involved with Kelly’s website. It wasn’t a ton of work, after all. Basically it involved going home and cross-referencing all of my favorite zodiac websites.

I made up a chart that listed all twelve of the zodiac signs, then went through each horoscope from each of my most trustworthy
sources, both online (
www.zodiaczone.com
) and in actual, real-live book form (
Who Do the Stars Think You Are?
). I pulled what I thought were the most significant points from each horoscope, then created a composite horoscope for each sign. The composites were what I e-mailed to Kelly in a Word document.

I’d started as soon as I got home from school and walked Maxine, around 4 p.m. I may or may not have taken twenty minutes to scarf down half a pint of Chubby Hubby. By the time I had finished and e-mailed my work to Kelly, I was surprised to find that it was after midnight. Never mind that I’d have to somehow get my homework done during study hall tomorrow; I guessed that this was what all those romance-novel heroines meant when they talked about “getting lost in your work.”

It was kind of a cool feeling.

I turned my feature in to Kelly on Tuesday morning. Two days later, I heard murmurs from kids who’d read their horoscopes up on the site. Kelly sure didn’t waste any time.

I didn’t even realize that I had been
nervous until I overheard one girl in the hall debating a point from her horoscope to a friend; she was all, “I mean, I think she actually, like, knew
me,
and
my situation.
It was amazing.”

I did not, in fact, know that girl or her situation—couldn’t even have told you her name. But man, was it ever a cool feeling to think that people were reading my stuff. And liking it.

Kelly cornered me just outside of Albon’s class. “Congratulations,” she said. “You’re a hit.”

“Thanks,” I replied, blushing modestly. “You think people are into it?”

“You know they are,” she said, calling me on the whole fake-shy thing. “It’s all anyone’s talking about today.”

I took a moment to look directly into her eyes and decided that anyone as focused as Kelly—not to mention anyone who’d wear a T-shirt that said I HATE WHAT YOU’RE WEARING—was probably pretty sincere.

“Yeah,” I agreed, grinning, “it sounds like people are into it.” False modesty was a waste of time, anyway.

“So,” she continued, still looking at me with the voodoo eyes, “will you do another?
I mean, will you do one for me every week?”

I blinked. Writing the feature for Kelly had been fun, sure. But to write one every week sounded strangely like … responsibility. “Um, I mean—every week?”

She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing her bangs out of her eyes. I noticed that her fingernails were a glittery baby blue. Alana and I had always been diehard devotees of the classic French manicure. “Look,” she began, “I tallied the hits on the site. The thing is that I got thirty more than usual—and that was just last night. I’m sure it was because of the horoscopes. People love that crap.” Her eyes widened as she caught my expression. “That’s not what I meant,” she said, smiling sheepishly.

“
I
love ‘that crap,’” I reminded her.

“I know.” She nodded, biting her lip. “And it shows. You did a great job.” She paused. “Why don’t you keep doing a great job. Please?”

Her eyes twinkled, and I had to laugh.

“Fine,” I said, watching out of the corner of my eye as Alana and Katy shoved past us and into the classroom. “I’ll do it. But we should get inside. We’re going to be late for class.”

I was wary of chatting with Kelly for too long, of her suddenly realizing the truth of why I was so a-okay fine with spending my nights tapping away at my computer. I mean, she knew about me and Jesse. And Alana and Jesse. And me and Alana. The whole freaking school knew, after all. But I didn’t need for Kelly to know that ever since the breakup, my most meaningful conversations had taken place with my dog. That would just be too pathetic.

A boy sidled up to Kelly and nudged her. “The second bell rang. You’re going to be late.”

I knew the boy. He was in our film class, which—duh, explained why he was encouraging Kelly to get inside. His name was Elliot Something, and the only person I ever saw him talking to was Kelly.

Kelly rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “Chill
out,”
she said, sighing dramatically. “Missing the first three seconds of class would hardly be the end of the world.”

“No, we should …,” I said, trailing off nervously. I wasn’t eager to get sent to detention for being late. Though detention was served at lunchtime. It would give me a good excuse for not hanging around the
cafeteria. “Anyway, I’ll do it,” I promised. “I can get the horoscopes to you on Mondays.”

“Sweet,” she said, winking at me. To Elliot, she said, “Cass is going to take over the whole star-sign crap on my website.”

“Cool,” Elliot said, barely meeting my eye. “People are really into that.” He nodded in my general direction, then led Kelly into the classroom without further comment.