Chapter 1

Rosie

I know a thing or two about bad luck.

I've had bad luck all my life, from the time my parents died in a freak explosion at an abandoned fast food joint right up until now. I could give you lots of examples of my epically shitty luck, but I'd end up sounding like a whiner and bumming everyone out.

But here's how I like to look at it: all the bad things that have happened to me are just my backstory. Fate has been laying the groundwork for some amazing things to happen in my life. All the bad luck has prepared me to recognize the good luck when it comes along, so that I can seize it tight with both hands and never let it go.

My attitude might sound a bit na?ve. Sharon, my third foster mom, used to tell me I was willfully optimistic. I don't think she meant it as a compliment.

Maggie, my fifth foster mom, called it seeing life through Rosie-colored glasses. I like to think that she did mean it as a compliment, even though she also complained about my "stubbornness issues."

But here's one thing I've figured out. Luck doesn't start out as good or bad. At first, it's just things that happen to you. It's what you do with those things that matter.

For example, yes, it sucks that I bounced around in foster care my whole childhood. But, did you know there are scholarships and grants just for people who come out of the foster care system? And if you apply for all of them (which I did), it covers a lot of your tuition? And if, once you graduate, you write thank you notes to all the non-profits that provide those grants asking them for job references, eventually you might wear one of them down.

Was it a lot of handwritten notes to a lot of people at a lot of companies?

Yes, it was.

But this is what I mean about making your own luck! Because it's how I ended up with an actual job, working for Wells International Hospitality Industries. Now, at age twenty-two, after a mere seventy-two handwritten thank you notes to various people at various companies, I am the virtual assistant to the owner of the company, Mr. Hudson Wells.

I strongly suspect that I was a pity hire, but that is fine by me, because I make my own luck.

And I have every intention of making myself indispensable to Mr. Wells. I am going to work so hard, he won't know what hit him!

Now if I can just get him to give me something to do other than busy work ….