Out of Luck by Julie Steimle (classic literature list txt) 📖

with good eye hand coordination, and a good ear for imps looking to cause trouble, you can win nearly any carnival game without wasting so much money.
I tossed one. Clink. It went around.
I tossed the next one. Clank. I hooked another.
Tossing out the third and fourth, I got two more.
With the fifth, I tested my skill in throwing for a real fat bottle top. That one, I missed.
“Oh! You have such luck!” the carnival man said, reaching out for a stuffed bear.
“Can I pick?” I looked at the green bear and cringed.
He paused, blinking at me. “Ok? You aren’t in for the green today?”
I turned to Jane. “Which one do you want?”
Jane smirked at me, shaking her head. “The elephant, you silly.”
I nodded to the man.
He picked up the pink elephant, passing it over. “For the lucky girl.”
“In my experience, there is no such thing as luck,” I said as I handed the elephant to Jane.
“Yes, Obiwan.” Jane snickered, taking the elephant by the trunk as if to drag it home like a child.
But the carnival man shook his head at me, glancing at my orange eyes. I had decided not to wear my sunglasses today. They weren’t allowed when dancing and twirling anyway. “You are a strange girl. There was this other girl here with your kind of luck. But she won the big prize. Only two others got that, but they were men.”
I glanced at the big prize. It was a gigantic leprechaun with a leering grin. Cringing, I shook my head. “She had no other option?”
He laughed and waved us away. “Go on. You’re bad for business.”
And he wasn’t lying. No one wanted to be at the booth that I was at. The crowd, when they saw Jane and me, seemed to part somewhat.
“Hey!”
I turned, thinking the man was calling to us. It wasn’t him, though. It was Will.
He waved, carrying one of those large leprechauns under his arm. “Eve! Jane! There you are!”
I groaned just looking at it. My brother was one of the so-called men who won?
Panting, he stopped in front of us. “I have been looking for you two everywhere. I could have sworn Eve would be over at the baseball game.”
I just shrugged.
Jane was grinning with a blush, staring up at my brother the way she had since the Valentine’s Dance. Will was looking at her in a similar way. Things just weren’t going to be the same again, and it was all my fault. Oh, well.
“Have you, have you gone on the Ferris Wheel yet?” He was asking her rather than the both of us, going redder in the cheeks with that anxious glitter in his eyes.
I glanced the other way.
“Not yet,” Jane said. “We’ve gone on all the other rides, but we decided to play a few games before doing some more. You know, walk around a bit.”
“Mind if I walk with you?” Will asked.
Normally Will was my favorite brother, but I get really ill just watching all that mushy stuff. Besides, walking with a romantic couple makes me the third wheel.
I turned around and said to them, “Look, I need to go home and change. How about you two take a walk, go on the Ferris Wheel, and get it out of your system. When I come back, we can play around. Ok?”
Jane’s face went white. “Oh, we didn’t mean to—”
“It’s ok,” I said, waving it away with my hand as if the idea were a pesky imp. “I need to do this, and you two need to hang out. I’m fine with that.”
But I could tell both Will and Jane felt bad for me. And in a way, I was happy they did. Very few cared that I felt lonely at times. I think a little guilt on my behalf was a good thing.
So, I turned and hurried off before they could stop me. I didn’t go crying or anything like that. I have improved in that factor. No. I simply kept my direction and went back through the crowds, passed the baseball game that was now in full swing, and hopping over the curb to Jane’s car to stare at my bag, which was now locked inside. Heaving a sigh, I shrugged and crossed into the road to go home.
I had that feeling that I was being followed again. Only this time when I looked back, I saw that drunk.
“What are you doing? Following me?” I said, folding my arms across my chest.
He took a step back, staring at my face. I suppose this time he really saw me. Before, he didn’t seem to notice that I was different from everyone else.
“Uh, I’m lost,” he said, not sounding the least bit drunk.
I pointed back the way we had come. “The park is that way.”
He nodded, taking yet another step back.
“And keep going,” I said.
And he did, looking likely to run.
With that, I about faced, and marched back towards home.
The funny thing was, I still felt like he was following me. I could see him in the distance when I glanced over my shoulder. Why, though? Was he a vampire hunter like Mr. McDillan? I didn’t think so. The man did not react like Mr. McDillan did. I figured any cold-hearted hunter of things-of-the-night would not jump back in the way that he did when I turned around. He would have gotten that steely expression I knew so well in my History teacher. This man was hunting for something else, and the idiot was still following me.
Well, I reached home, intent upon getting out of my clogging dress and into some more comfortable clothes. Hopping up the steps, though I saw that Mom’s flower patch was tangled up in clover, and Dad’s lawn was nearly covered in it. Weird, to be sure. Dad never tolerated clover in his lawn. It wasn’t there when I came back this morning at any rate.
I opened the door, stepped inside and rushed through the house to the stairs. But I stopped, looking out to the open sliding glass door. Crossing over to it, I saw out into the back yard. Clover covered it, and my mom was cursing up a storm while kneeling in a flowerbed trying to rip it out.
“You’re missing the carnival,” I said, looking down at her.
Mom looked up and shook her head. “I know. But look at this. My garden is covered in weeds.”
“Take care of it tomorrow,” I said, shaking my head and turning to go back into the house.
My mom stood up with a handful of clover in each glove. “I suppose you are right. How was cake? Did it raffle off yet?”
I smiled. “Jane took it up for me. It got a top position, though I don’t know who won it yet.”
She handed me the fistfuls of clover. “Here. Four leafs. Keep them for luck.”
Looking down into my palms, I blinked at the plant in my hands. She was right. I lifted one to stare at it more closely, dropping the rest on the counter. “Four.”
“The garden is full of them,” my mom murmured as she pulled off her gloves. “I suppose this means we should be very lucky today.”
I fingered each leaf, and then just shrugged. “Mr. Beaver says four leaf clovers are nothing but genetic mutations. In fact, he said he found a five leaf clover once.”
“They said the same thing about you, I bet. I need a shower,” my mom murmured, shaking her head. “A garden full of clover. How did that happen?”
Genetic mutation. I wasn’t that. I knew I was the product of an ancient spell a coven of thirteen witches used to conjure a demonic assassin up. I was just this generation’s assassin, however reluctant to fulfil my destiny. I didn’t believe in destiny any more than luck. But this clover business; my mom was right. This was not normal.
But like her, I also had other things to do, and it was waste to dwell on it.
So, up to my room again, I closed the door and stripped. With another coating of suntan lotion, grabbing my sunglasses this time, I put on some jeans and a long sleeve tee. This at least would stop my mom from nagging me to wear a sweater. As I threw on my shoes, I looked out the window that overlooked the back yard to see the clover. What I saw was worse.
Climbing over our fence was that old drunk. He staggered into the yard and started to sing that stupid whisky song again.
I shook my head and clenched my teeth. What was this idiot doing in our yard? It just infuriated me watching him sing as he stumbled to the center of the lawn, dropping down like he was passing out. I had seen this retarded act before. It was the same as when he nearly crashed into me in the park. Only this time, this time I decided to so something about it.
But just as I was about to move from my windowsill to go down stairs, I witnessed the most peculiar sight. First, it just looked like clover started to sprout out in small places from the big patch along the fence. But as I watched I saw a small figure materialize, much like the first time I saw imps flying around my classroom, though less dramatic. It was a little man, but unlike all the pictures I had seen of leprechauns this man was dressed entirely in the leaves of clover and shamrocks. He even had a little hat like Robin Hood on his head made of two leaves of a shamrock.
I wasn’t the only one that saw him either. That drunk tipped his whisky jug for the little fellow to drink. Yet in the next second I saw the man’s hand snatch up the little guy, and the drunk let out such a cackle that it grated on my nerves. If this man weren’t human, I’d swear he was half imp with the way his own imps didn’t need to give suggestions to him. They were flapping around him with such glee, I knew they were eating up everything this man thought of doing.
“Ha! Now you owe me three more wishes!” the man shouted.
“Nuh, uh, uh.” The little man