Carswell's Guide to Being Lucky (3 page)

any sign of her blush receding.

The next twenty minutes were spent scanning through Joel Kimbrough’s extensive body of work,

while his mind churned through different scenarios in which he could get Kate Fal ow to help him with

his math homework – preferably, just to let him copy of her so he wouldn’t need to put any more time

into that wasteful venture.

When Professor Gosnel finally told them to choose a partner, Carswell scooted his desk closer to

Kate’s without hesitation. “Would you like to work together?”

She gaped at him again, no less surprised than the first time. “
Me
?”

“Sure. You like histories, I like adventures. Match made in heaven, right?”

“Um. . .”

“Carswell?” hissed a voice behind him. He glanced around. It was Blakely behind him after all,

leaning so far over her desk that her nose was practically on his shoulder. “I thought you and I could be partners.”

“Er-one second.” He lifted a finger to her, then turned back to Kate and plowed on. “Actual y,

there’s something I’ve kind of been meaning to ask you for a while now.”

Kate’s jaw hung as Carswell feigned a sudden onslaught of uncertainty and scooted his chair a bit

closer. “You know how we’re in the same math class?”

She blinked, twice. Nodded.

“Wel , I was thinking, if you’re not busy, and if you wanted to, maybe we could study together one

of these days. Maybe after school?”

Kate could not have looked any more stunned if he’d just proposed that they move to Columbia

State together and become coffee bean farmers. “You want to . . .study? With me?”

“Yeah. Math, specifically.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not doing that great in it. I could

real y use your help.” He added a drop of pleading to his expression and watched as Kate’s eyes widened

and softened simultaneously. Those pretty, enormous brown eyes.

Carswell was surprised to feel a jolt behind his sternum, and suddenly, he was almost looking

forward to his studying time with Kate Fallow, which was a rather unexpected twist.

Because, of course, she would say yes.

Although it was Blakely who spoke next. “
Carswell
. We should get started on this assignment, don’t you think?” There was an edge to her tone that Kate must have noticed. Something that hinted at

jealousy.

With a glance back at Blakely, Kate looked more flustered than ever. But then she nodded and gave

an awkward shrug. “Sure. Alright.”

Carswell beamed. “Great. And also – I hate to ask this – but would you mind if I took a look at

today’s assignment? I tried to do it last night, but was completely lost. All those equations. . .”

“Mr. Thorne,” said Professor Gosnel, suddenly hovering between him and Kate, “this is literature

class. Perhaps you could use your time to discuss
literature
.”

He tilted his head back to meet her gaze. “Oh, we are discussing literature, Professor.” Clearing his

throat, he tapped the screen pul ing up Kimbrough’s 39th published work,
Marooned in the Asteroid

Labyrinth
. The explanation bubbled up as smoothly as they always did, a skil he’d been cultivating since childhood. “As you can see, dramatist Joel Kimbrough often played on themes of loneliness and

abandonment, in which the protagonist is forced to overcome not only external obstacles like space

monsters and malfunctioning spaceship engines, but also the internal devastation that comes with

complete solitude. His works often employ the vast emptiness of space as a metaphor for social

isolation. In the end, his protagonists overcome their feelings of insecurity only
after
they accept the help of an unlikely assistant, such as an android or an alien or . . .” His mouth quirked to one side. “. . .a pretty girl who happens to be a skil ed marksman when she’s handed a high-powered ray gun.”

A wave of tittering rolled through the class, confirming Carswell’s suspicions that he now had an

audience.

“You, you see,” he said, gesturing again at the screen, “I was just telling Miss Fal ow that the themes

in Kimbrough’s work are symbolic of my own personal struggles with math homework. I so often feel

lost, insecure, confused, completely abandoned . . .but by joining forces with a pretty girl who

understands the problems I currently have to work through, I may yet overcome the obstacles laid out

before me, and achieve my ultimate goal: high marks in math class.” He gave a one-shouldered shrug

and added, for good measure, “And also literature class, naturally.”

Professor Gosnel stared down at him with her lips pressed and he could tell that she was still

annoyed, although simultaneously trying to hide a twinge of amusement. “I somehow doubt you’ve ever

felt insecure about anything in your whole life, Mr. Thorne.”

He grinned. “I’m a teenager, Professor. I feel insecure all the time.”

The class chuckled around him, but Professor Gosnel sighed. “Just
try
to stay on task, Mr. Thorne,”

she said, before turning her back to her own screen and listing some of the literary terms students

should be using to discuss their assignments – words like
themes
,
metaphors
, and
symbolism
. Carswell smirked.

Then a voice broke out of the mild chatter, loud enough to reach Carswel , but quite enough to

make it seem like it wasn’t intentional. “If it’s a pretty girl that he needs to help with his ‘problems,’ it’s a shame Kate Fallow is the best he can find.”

Someone else guffawed. A few girls giggled, before putting their hands over their mouths.

Carswell glanced back to see Ryan Doughty smirking at him – a friend of Jules. He shot him a glare,

before turning back to Kate. Her smile had vanished, her eyes filling with mortification.

Carswel curled his hand into a tight fist, having the sudden, unexpected urge to punch Ryan

Doughty in the mouth. But instead as the class quieted down, he ignored the feeling and once again

scooted his chair closer to Kate’s.

“So, like I was saying before,” he said, teetering on the line between casual and nervous, “maybe we

could eat lunch together today, out in the courtyard.” He would have to cancel the afternoon’s card

game, which would put him behind schedule, but if he could submit today’s homework during math –

completed and on time – it would be the fastest way to start turning around his marks. And he only had

a week to show his dad that things were improving before mid-July break started. “What do you say?”

Kate’s jaw had dropped again, her blush having returned ful force.

“
Carswell
?”

Sighing, he didn’t hide his glare as he turned back to Blakely. “Yes, Blakely?”

Her glower put his to shame. “I thought you and I were going to be partners today.”

“Uh – I’m not sure, Blakely. I’m afraid I already asked Kate, but . . .” He grinned in Kate’s direction. “I guess she hasn’t given me an answer yet.”

Blakely harrumphed. “Wel then, maybe we should cal off our date to the dance, too. Then you two

can go fight obstacles and achieve goals together.”

He sat up straighter. “Huh?”

“Last week,” Blakely said, curling her fingers around the edge of her desk, “I asked if you were going

to the Peace Dance and you said I’d be the girl you asked if you did. I’ve been planning on it ever since.”

“Oh,
right
,” Carswell was losing track of how many girls he’d said some version of this line too, which was probably bad planning on his part, but at the time Blakely had asked, he’d been hoping to get

her to invest in his Send Carswel to Space Camp fund.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “it’s looking like I may have to be babysitting my neighbors’ toddlers that

day. Two-year-old triplets.” He shook his head, “They’re a handful, but so blasted cute, it’s impossible

not to love them.”

Blakely’s anger fizzled into war adoration. “Oh.”

“But if they end up not needing me, you’l be the first to know.”

She squinched her shoulders up from the flattery. “But do you want to work together today?”

“Ah, I’d love to, Blakely, but I did ask Kate already . . . er, Kate?”

Kate had her head down, her hair falling over her face so that he could only see the tip of her nose.

Her body had taken on a new tenseness, her knuckles whitened as she gripped the stylus.

“It’s alright,” she said, without looking up at him. “I’m sure the teacher will let me work on my own.

You can work with your girlfriend.”

“Oh – She’s not - We’re not-“

Blakely grabbed his arm. “See, Kate doesn’t mind. You said that you chose Joel Kimbrough?”

Clearing his throat, Carswell looked first at Blakely, then back up at Kate, now hidden behind her

wall of hair.

“Um, fine.” He leaned toward Kate again. “But, are we still on for lunch? So I can, you know, check

out that homework assignment?”

Kate tucked her hair behind her ear and leveled a look at him that was both annoyed and intelligent.

It told him that she knew exactly what he was doing, or trying to do. To her. To Blakely. To every girl

he’d ever asked a favor from. Carswell was surprised to feel a tingle of shame down his spine.

Her jaw twitched. “I don’t think so. And we probably shouldn’t study together after all.”

Turning away, she fitted a pair of speaker-plugs into her ears, and the conversation was over. In its

wake was a feeling of disappointment that Carswel couldn’t quite place, but he didn’t think had very

much to do with math.

~~~~~

“Seven card royals,” said Carswell, dealing another hand of cards. “Aces are wild. Triplets beat the

house.”

“Why don’t we ever play that doubles beat the house?” asked Anthony, picking up his cards and

rearranging them in his hands.

Carswell shrugged. “We can play that way if you want. But it means the pots will be smaller. Not as

much risk, not as big a payout.”

“Triplets are fine,” said Carina, needling Anthony in the side with her elbow. “Anthony’s just afraid

he’s going to lose
again
.”

Anthony scowled. “It just seems like the odds are a little biased toward Carswell, that’s all.”

“What do you mean?” Carswel waved his hand over the pot. “I’ve lost the last three hands in a row.

You guys are bleeding me dry over here.”

Carina raised her eyebrows at Anthony as if to say,
See? Do the math.
Antony duly fel quiet and tossed his ante into the pot. They were playing with markers scavenged from the school’s lunch bar –

olives where micro-unives, potato crisps were singles, and jalapeno slices made for fivers. The trick was to keep Chien, who was seated on Carswell’s left and had the appetite of a whale, to keep from eating

them in between games.

At the end of every school day, Carswell – as “the house” – would divvy up the wins and losses

between the players’ real savings accounts. He’d based his system on the same odds that casinos in the

val ey used, al owing him to win about 60% of the time. It was just enough to turn a consistent profit,

but also to give players frequent enough wins that they kept coming back. It had turned out to be one of

his more profitable ventures to date.

Carina took the next hand without much competition, but that was fol owed by a round in which no

on could beat the house’s required triplets-or-better, ending Carswell’s losing streak. He kept the grin

from his face as he raked the pot of food scraps into his dwindling pile.

He quickly did the math in his head. He was up from where he’d started the lunch period, nearly

fifty-five unives. Just twenty-nine more would put him at his goal for the day and push him into the next bracket of his savings account.

Twenty-nine unives. Such a smal thing to just about anyone in this school, just about anyone in the

entire city of Los Angeles. But to him, they equaled sixteen weeks of freedom. Sixteen weeks of being

away from his parents. Sixteen weeks of total independence.

He brushed his thumb over the Rampion tie tack for good luck, and dealt another hand.

As the betting began, he glanced up and caught sight of Kate Fal ow sitting against a palm tree at the

edge of the courtyard, the pleated skirt of her uniform pul ed snugly around her knees. She was reading

from her portscreen – no surprise there – but it was odd to see her out here at all. Carswell had no idea where she normal y spent her lunch hour, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t in this courtyard, where
he
could always be found.

The betting ended and Carswell began to dole out replacement cards, but now he was distracted.

His gaze kept flicking back to Kate. Watching how she smiled at something on the screen. Mindlessly

tugged at her earlobe. Seemed to sigh with a hint of longing.

Maybe she came to the courtyard every day and he’d never noticed. Or maybe she’d come here

today because he’d suggested it, even if the offer had ultimately been declined.

Either way, it was clear from the faraway look in her eyes that she wasn’t in the courtyard right now,

not real y, and he couldn’t help wondering where she was.

Holy spades. Was he developing a crush on
Kate Fallow
? Of all the girls who smiled and swooned

and giggled, all the girls who would have handed over their math homework for nothing more than a

flirtatious compliment, and he suddenly couldn’t keep his eyes off one of the most awkward, isolated

girls in the school?

No, there had to be more to this. He was probably just confusing his desperation to raise his math

grades and lift his dad’s punishment with something that bordered on romantic interest. He didn’t like