Lucky Me (9 page)

Before we left on the bikes, she gave me a paisley handkerchief like hers, which I tied around my bulging curls. I was turning to wave good-bye, when I saw something I hadn't noticed on the way in. It was a rock with one word etched on the side.

O'Toole.

T
hat's Anna's last name!” I went back to the door. “Are you an O'Toole?”

“You mean the rock? No, that was here long before I moved in, but it's too heavy to move.”

I slumped onto the bike. For a second I'd thought I'd gotten lucky.

And guess what happened then? It started to drizzle. Again.

“What's with the weather here?” I asked Finn.

“It's an island. We get a lot of rain. But just look around at what we get for it, all of this beautiful green.” We called Mrs. Buck and told her we would pedal to Newcastle, look for Anna, get gas, and bring it to her. She really couldn't argue. My back and legs got plenty wet on the ride.

“It's only about fifteen miles,” Finn called over his shoulder.

Only
fifteen miles? Pedaling was really hard, and Finn was getting far ahead.

I looked down and noticed that my back tire wasn't exactly round. It was more like egg-shaped, which made it turn with a little hump each time around.

Snow globe moment: I'm riding a broken bike through Ireland in the rain wearing donated clothes, and a handkerchief on my head, with a boy (correction—a cute boy) who I've known for about twenty-four hours. If you look closely, you can see that the girl in the glass globe is developing blisters on her bottom. She wipes rain off her face, and she feels the beginning of a
très grand
zit.

After what seemed like forever, we finally leaned our bikes against some trees near the center of town. The streets were much quieter than in Limerick. A few people lingered at shop windows, and some rode by on bikes with baskets of groceries.

I was wet but not soaked. Just enough to look like a sponge but not a mop.

A kid sat on a bench fiddling with his cell phone, with
a hypnotized look on his face. He wore a long-sleeved shirt with a collar and a team logo that I recognized as a rugby team's. He was probably in the tournament.

Finn said, “Hey, guy, did you play today?”

“Yup.” He pushed buttons on his phone, hard, and tilted the screen to the right and left.

“Where is everyone?”

“Gone home. Tourney's been over for hours.” He let out a frustrated groan and finally raised his head, totally annoyed with us for interrupting his game. “It'll start again in the morning, around seven.” He went back to his game, clearly not interested in making friends.

I slumped. “Tomorrow?” Why should I have been surprised? Of course Anna wasn't here. I was cursed. I should've expected it.

“At least we know where she'll probably be tomorrow,” Finn said. “Let's get some gas.” At this point I was wet, tired, sore, and hungry. “Then we can get ourselves back to Ballymore.”

“We're so close
now
. If we leave, what if we can't come back tomorrow? Plus, I know those ladies on silent retreat don't want me there.”

“You peeked at the vote?”

“Just for a sec—long enough to see their hands up.”

“In their defense, a five-hundred-pound chandelier had almost just killed them.”

“Didn't Mrs. Buck say we were going to her brother's for dinner? Can't we stay there?”

“I guess we can ask her when we get back to the car.”

The clouds finally moved aside to let the day's last rays of sunshine warm our backs. That was when I saw it on the side of the lane. It was purple and puffy and growing from a crack in the sidewalk. “Look at this, Finn.” I bent next to the flower. “It's pretty.”

“It's more than pretty. It's a thistle. And that's the sign of good luck. We should go this way.” Then from right up ahead of us came a speedy tractor, the soup can right behind it.

Honey was behind the wheel of the tractor. “Got you two some petrol.”

It was truly good luck for the blisters on my butt. Honey helped us get our car, which was driven by our goggled lady, and extra gas. We gave her the bikes. And, perhaps best of all, she invited me into the tractor to give me another loaf of soda bread.

While I was thanking Honey, Finn somehow communicated with Mrs. Buck. He told me, “Her brother is
expecting us. She already texted with your parents and my da, so we can spend the night there.”

“That's great news!” I hugged him. Then I went back to the crack in the sidewalk and picked the thistle. I was going to keep that puppy close to me.

We were climbing into the back of the soup can when I asked, “Do you think we can stop at the store so I can get a few necessities?”

“Like what?”

“Pajamas, toothbrush, shampoo. You know? Necessities.” I left out clothes, shoes, mousse, hair dryer, flat iron, lip gloss, and skin cream.

Mrs. Buck navigated a roundabout—a circular island in the middle of the road that you need to go all the way around in order to turn—and pulled up at a small convenience store that looked like a 7-Eleven.

“How about a mall?” I asked.

“Mall? Is something wrong with this?” Finn asked. “This place has all the stuff you just mentioned.”

I sighed. How could I buy clothes at a place like this? I mentally willed my luggage to find me while I squeezed the thistle stem.

We went into the store and I quickly filled a cart with
undies, toiletries, and makeup. I couldn't find a single item of clothing I'd wear. I got a T-shirt to sleep in. Then I grabbed a duffel bag, crackers, candy bars, and a few cans of Coke, too.

Finn looked at my cart in amazement. “That's a lot of necessities.” He lifted a pink razor and quickly dropped it like he'd just touched a snake.

“Do you need anything?” I asked.

He held up a toothbrush. “This'll do it.”

Mrs. Buck held one up too and smiled.

At the last second I picked up two postcards of Newcastle. One for me and one to send to Carissa, who had never responded to my last text. Weird. I paid with my emergency credit card. This was, after all, an emergency.

We drove for only a few minutes before Mrs. Buck parked. We followed her down a cobblestone sidewalk. Streetlights had come on, and the night was very clear. The smell of peat still lingered in the air. I was getting used to it, but I didn't like it. It was like smoking dirt or mulch mixed with a litter box—not like wood at all. One by one the stars popped out.

Finn looked at them. “I love the stars,” he said.

I looked. “Me too.”

“I think it's cool how wherever you are you have the same stars.”

“Yup.” I looked at the stars again. It
was
a cool idea, and something I never would've thought about.

We stopped at a small house with candles lit in each window.

“Looks like we're here,” Finn said.

W
e could hear loud Irish music through the front door of the row home. The high-pitched sound of a flute and the fast strum of a banjo instantly made me tap my foot.

Mrs. Buck knocked on the front door, and after a minute when no one came, she knocked more loudly.

There were several seconds of pots banging and clanging or furniture falling before the door opened and revealed a leprechaun. Well, at least this guy looked just like something between a leprechaun and a man.

“Aha!” the leprechaun said, and he hugged Mrs. Buck and picked her up. “Come in. Come in.” His face was red, his hair light blond.

The house smelled like he'd been baking cookies. The music was louder inside than it had been on the front stoop. He raised his elbows and kicked his heels as he made his way to an old record player and turned down the volume. It gave me a quick sec to look around the house.

Every surface was covered with doilies and knickknacks: cats, teacups, fancy glass bottles. . . . The overcrowding of stuff and the smell of Christmas gave the place a very homey feel.

“Welcome. I'm Paddy Flanigan. I love having guests!”

I couldn't imagine being excited to have strangers spending the night. Our house was all chaos all the time. Never baking. The only music was Piper singing. No one wanted to hear that, trust me.

“How ya been, Sis?” Paddy asked Mrs. Buck.

She gave him a thumbs-up. He did the same, laughed with a snort, and asked, “What's this all about?”

Finn explained that Mrs. Buck was in silent retreat. Paddy asked in a very loud and slow voice as though his sister was deaf, “TEN DAYS?” He held up all ten fingers.

“She can hear just fine,” Finn clarified.

“Oh, how silly of me. Of course she can. OF COURSE YOU CAN!” he said to Mrs. Buck. “Really, TEN DAYS?
Actually, don't answer that if you can't talk. . . . YOU CAN'T TALK,” he repeated.

Mrs. Buck nodded.

“Oh, you're right,” Paddy said. “I think she hears just fine.

“Follow me now,” he continued, and scurried down a slender hallway doing a quickstep. “Here we are. The lily room. Just right for spring, don't ya think? My sis and the lass can sleep here, and the lad can use the sofa.”

We thanked him.

He said, “My third wife, Elizabeth, God rest her soul, she got laryngitis once and lost her voice for three days. . . .

“A cup of tea will crown ye. Out back,” he said, and dashed away.

I asked, “What did he say?” I dropped my duffel.

“He's bringing tea to the backyard for us.”

Mrs. Buck directed us to the back door, while she headed toward the kitchen. Finn went outside first, and he had to bend down so that his head wouldn't hit the top of the doorframe. I walked through with no problem.

It was a postage-stamp-size backyard surrounded by a fence that crawled with ivy. A wrought iron table and two chairs sat in the grass.

Paddy darted out through the low door. In a flash the
table was covered with cookies, cheese and crackers, and tea. It was just what I needed, because I was famished, despite the big piece of soda bread I had eaten earlier.

Paddy asked, “A bit of cow in your tea, lass?”

“Huh?”

Finn interpreted, “Do you want milk in your tea?”

“Oh, yes please.”

“Gimme a ring if you need me.” Paddy left a golden bell on the table.

I nibbled on a cookie. “I can feel my luck changing since we found CiCi and have gotten closer to Anna. Can't you?”

He leaned close to me and lifted the four-leaf clover off my neck. “You really believe in luck, don't you?” He dropped the silver chain and sat back with a cookie.

Then I toyed with the clover. “Do you think I'm too superstitious?”

“I don't know. Maybe you're just the right amount and I'm not enough.”

“Don't you have any good luck charms? Something that when you see it or hear it, or whatever, it makes you think it might be lucky?”

“Well, I guess I have a favorite number. Maybe I think it's lucky.”

“You do? So do I. What's yours? Wait. Let me guess. Four?”

“No.”

“Nine?”

“No.”

“Odd or even?”

“Even.”

“Mine too. Maybe it's the same. Is it ten?”

“No. Yours is ten?”

“Yup,” I said.

“Well, that's kind of cool.” He held up his wrist. “Look at the time. It's twelve minutes after ten. Your lucky number is ten and mine is twelve, so between the two of us, this is a very lucky minute.” We looked at his watch, which changed to thirteen after ten. “And it's over.”

I said, “Now I'm always going to think of you when it's 10:12.”

He spread some cheese on a cracker. “I like that. Kind of like a secret code.”

“Kind of.” We munched quietly.

“I've been wanting to ask you something,” Finn said.

“Sure. What?”

“It's about your cell phone. Do you have games on it, like that guy on the park bench?”

“Oh, yeah. That phone has everything. You can totally use it. But—”

“What? If you don't want me to use it, I understand.”

“No. It's not that. It's just that I don't remember seeing it lately. I'll be right back.”

I hustled to the lily room and scrambled through my purse and new duffel full of stuff. Shoot! My phone wasn't there. How could I possibly live without my phone?

I gave Finn the bad news and held back my tears. He assured me that it would be okay. “I don't have one, and I get along just fine.”

“But I'm used to texting and looking things up online and stuff.”

“You'll survive. Those ladies don't talk for ten days, and they manage.”

“Could you live without your games for ten days?”

“Well, you got me there. Probably not. It's only been one day, and I feel a little itchy.” Then he said, “You know, you could help me with that.”