Chapter 21

Lucky woke up before sunrise when her phone vibrated against her boob with yet another unknown call. She really had to stop sleeping with the damn thing.

Last night she’d almost kissed Maverick.

Never in her life had she ever made the first move. She never even wanted to before. Her first crush wasn’t until sophomore year of college—Holly Jenkins, who she sat next to in Religion and Mythology—and she would’ve chosen death over confessing. And now here she was almost kissing people first. Look at her go. Moving on up.

After Louis broke up with her, she just couldn’t bring herself to try dating again. She had truly convinced herself it’d never be worth it. But Maverick was proving her wrong.

Georgia’s gentle snores in the background kept her grounded lest she float away from feeling too buoyant and optimistic. For the first time, in a very, very long time, she felt disgustingly, overwhelmingly hopeful.

Was her abundance of good feelings solely because of Maverick? Or was it because her life was suddenly filled with a kaleidoscope of different people who were all kind and interested in her, in one way or another? The answer, she knew, was both.

Their room’s door forcefully swung open, and Rebel marched in wearing pajamas covered in cartoon koala bears. She stopped beside Lucky’s bed. “Oh, you’re awake.”

“Disappointed?”

She shrugged.

“She likes to poke people repeatedly until they open their eyes.” Georgia sat up. “I heard she slaps Super Dad on the forehead.”

“She does,” Maverick added as he walked past their open door. “Rebel, leave them alone and go finish getting dressed.”

“Okay,” she called after him. “We’re having savory oatmeal and eggs for breakfast and lasagna for dinner. He’s gonna get ice cream at the store too.”

“It was a good day if my dad made me Pop-Tarts for breakfast.” Georgia threw her blankets back, gracefully gliding out of bed as if she never heard the word hangover before. “You don’t even know how good you have it, little miss. Dibs on the shower.”

Rebel watched her go and then turned back to Lucky. “Yes, I do.”

“She’s just teasing. I don’t think she meant anything bad by that.”

Rebel nodded silently, gaze drifting to the bedspread. Oh, shit. Georgia must have struck a nerve.

Kids were far more perceptive than adults gave them credit for. Lucky didn’t know Rebel well enough yet to automatically zero in on the issue, but knew she was quite sensitive when it came to her dad.

Surprisingly, Rebel’s magical, fairy tale gaze didn’t extend to Maverick. She had a steady, realistic grip on who he was and what he meant to her. She wasn’t possessive; rather, devoted and protective were the better fit.

Lucky asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” Rebel shrugged.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay. We don’t have to,” she said. “Do you want to talk about logistics for the shoot today?”

“We do that during the team meeting.”

“Oh, see, I didn’t even know that. Hennessee House is different since I live there. This is my first time on an official shoot, so I don’t know all the rules. Would you be okay with helping me out today, so I don’t look silly?”

“You won’t look silly. You’re allowed to ask questions if you don’t know something, but I’ll teach you everything you need to know anyway.” She nodded. “My dad said you’re supposed to follow my lead. I’m a good leader.”

Lucky smiled. “Thank you, Shortcake. I appreciate it.”

After breakfast and their first meeting, Lucky was in the middle of putting on her socks when she got another unknown call. She stared at the screen, not quite at her breaking point. Yet.

“Are you going to answer that?” Georgia demanded as she walked into the room.

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Is someone harassing you? I swear I heard your phone buzzing nonstop last night.”

“It might be telemarketers. I started a spreadsheet to track what times they call. So far, there’s no discernible pattern other than often.”

Her money was currently on an automated bot trying to reach her regarding her car’s extended warranty.

Which was very nearly hilarious considering her car was so old the warranty probably ended before she’d even learned to walk. It was a small miracle the hand-me-down car hadn’t totally broken down from old age yet. Every time she started it, the engine sputtered to life and sent its usual barrage of pleading telepathic signals: LET ME RETIRE! LET ME DIE!

In return, she patted the sun-bleached dashboard while thinking, You’re fine. You’ve barely hit your Toyota prime.

“That is such a you thing to do. Wait, where are your glasses?”

“Don’t need them in the house. Unless we’re having a visitor?”

“Since when?” Georgia gasped, hand flying to her mouth. “You weren’t wearing them when you came in the room last night. You read me? Oh my god, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

She seemed genuinely panicked about it so Lucky said, “Sure. That’s actually how it’s supposed to be, I think. Starting to tell people what I’ve read again is kind of a new thing. Before Maverick, I hadn’t done it in years.”

“Why did you stop?”

“People didn’t like it.” She slid on her shoes. “Once, in high school, I had this art teacher who asked if anyone wanted her to sketch their portrait. When no one responded, she started calling on us. She asked me. I said no. And she said, ‘Not ready to see the truth, eh?’?”

Georgia’s jaw dropped. “The fuck was she implying?”

“Take a guess. For a long time, whenever I read someone and considered translating for them, I’d think of that moment. She really thought it was okay to use her talents to insult a confident teenager in front of the whole class,” she said. “I think people used to react badly to me because I must have been insulting them too.”

“No. No way. I don’t believe that. You’re not that kind of person.”

“I might’ve been. It’s also possible I made them feel like I was. Both have the same result. All that to say, I respect your decision. If you don’t want to know, I won’t tell you.”

“People are the worst. Not you. That raggedy bitch who had no business being a teacher.”

“All right.” Maverick met them near the front door. “Are we ready?”

Lucky grinned at Georgia before sliding on her glasses. “Ready.”

“Let’s go! Come on!” Rebel yelled from outside, standing near their rental car.

Penny Place Amusement Park’s main selling point was that it was one of the last standing and fully operational vintage parks. A family business since the early 1980s, Georgia’s uncle had taken it over in the mid-2000s with hopes of modern renovations but ended up leaving it as is, following in every one of his predecessors’ footsteps.

Tourists reportedly came from all over the world to enjoy the nostalgia. It helped that the park’s aesthetic looked fantastic on social media because it wasn’t run-down. Georgia’s family treated the park as a historic site, maintaining it with the utmost care.

“It’s tradition at this point,” she explained. “Only fix what’s broken. Touch up the paint here and there. Any new rides or attractions have to be in line with the spirit of the park. That kind of thing.”

Lucky didn’t know what living in the 1980s was like, but the staff dressing in decade-appropriate clothes certainly enhanced the experience. They even wore buttons noting the year their look was based on.

The majority of their production schedule consisted of…Rebel being a kid with a camera having fun at an amusement park.

Now that, Lucky could do. She effortlessly slipped into nanny mode, ready to make this day everything Rebel wanted and more. She wasn’t privy to the budget for Shortcake. She’d thought it’d been shoestring-tight since they were staying with Georgia’s family, but prior to their departure Stephen handed her a credit card with instructions to “buy Rebel whatever she wants, courtesy of Xander.”

They trekked around the park, running through the hall of mirrors, bouncing through a questionably challenging funhouse, riding the giant swings, and yelling (and praying) on rickety roller coasters that clicked a little too often for Lucky’s liking. They ate thickly battered corn dogs, salty giant pickles, crunchy brick fries, sweet funnel cakes dripping with ice cream on top, and enough cotton candy to get Lucky in trouble with Maverick later. All the while, Georgia trailed them, filming shots from an outsider POV as if they were being watched. That set of footage would have a distinct editing style and would be spliced with Rebel’s.

The anonymous vlog style tripped Rebel up a little at first. Lucky ended up stopping her multiple times from turning the camera around out of habit, often with a sharp “Shortcake. No.”

That was a part of the script. Lucky was only supposed to refer to Rebel as Shortcake on camera. Rebel’s vision entailed her nanny being calm and mysterious like a tour guide full of secrets. They settled on her using a moderate tone in Lucky’s chest voice, but she would speak slower and more deliberately.

“But why?”

“Because it’s not for us.” Which also was in the script.

She managed to say every one of her lines at random moments as a natural response to something Rebel was doing.

In the afternoon, they found a large tree to sit under while waiting for Maverick to pick them up.

“I’m wiped. How did you do that full-time?” Georgia lay flat on the grass, arm thrown across her eyes.

“Not getting drunk the night before a shift helped immensely.”

Georgia snorted. “I am a consummate professional who can also hold her liquor. This has nothing to do with that. It’s her.”

“It’s the sugar.”

Rebel, still revved up on cotton candy and maybe the chocolate-dipped pretzels Lucky caved and bought her on the way out, spun in circles while staring at the sky until she collapsed, laughing.

Georgia continued, “I didn’t realize how much energy a ten-year-old truly had. How does Super Dad do it?”

“Quite well.”

Rebel collapsed again after spinning round number two.

“Shortcake. Look.” Lucky gestured toward a group of kids, probably around Rebel’s age, playing some kind of tag game in the adjacent open field. The poor grass looked dry enough to start a fire if someone ran too quickly. “Do you want to ask if you can play with them while we wait? Make some new friends?”

Rebel, perhaps unconsciously, moved closer to Lucky’s side. “No.”

“Eh, friendship is overrated anyway,” she joked, ignoring Georgia’s sudden sharp glare.

Rebel scrunched her nose in doubt. “Really?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes, it just takes some of us a lot longer to find our people.”

“I have people. Um, person? People? Person.” Rebel nodded, finally confident in her word choice. “Riley’s my person, not my people. He’s just one person.”

Georgia said, “Little miss and little menace.”

Rebel began to smile, high beams on. “He’s ten like me. We’re exactly three months, two weeks, and one day apart. Isn’t that cool?”

“The coolest,” Lucky agreed.

“He lives in the apartment building across the pathway from mine. Our windows face each other and everything.”

“Oh, wow.”

“Where do your people live?”

Lucky hesitated. “I, uh, haven’t found my person-people yet.” Not a lie, but maybe not the entire truth.

Georgia was more than willing to correct her. She sat up, openly glaring. “You’re gonna stop insulting me to my face. I am sensitive. We’re friends now, damn it. No more of this pity party shit, got it?”

Guess that meant she was off the clock. She hadn’t said a single swear word the entire day while filming.

Rebel giggle-whispered, “I think you made her mad.”

“I think so too,” she whispered back.

Georgia continued, “And that goes for the rest of the team. You’re one of us now. Get over it because it already happened.”

Lucky said to Rebel, “I guess I missed the memo.”

“You did. I signed it and everything. My dad too. I wish he were here.” She side-eyed Lucky. “He’s really fun.”

Not quite having mastered the art of being surreptitious yet, Lucky sensed where Rebel was going before she got there. “There might be time for you two to spend the day here before we go.”

“No,” Rebel whined. “The three of us together. That would be the most fun.”

Georgia said, “You see what you started? Now she’s insulting me too, acting like I wasn’t even there today. I get no respect. None.” She dramatically lay back down, arms crossed and pouting.

“A group trip would be nice. Chase would come. I feel like we could all bully Xander into it. Stephen might be harder,” Lucky said. “He probably needs a day off.”

“Stephen doesn’t even know what that means,” Georgia said. “You’d catch him typing an email on a roller coaster, completely calm.”

Lucky’s phone vibrated for the sixth time that day. The unknown caller once again.

“Maybe we can go to Canada for the group trip.” Rebel stood up and resumed her spinning game. “I want to see the northern lights!”

“What made her think of that?” Georgia asked.

“The sugar.” Lucky laughed. “She’ll come down soon.”

Rebel continued spinning and falling until she decided to sunbathe on the grass, face up with her eyes closed and arms stretched at her sides. Lucky remembered most of her life because her brain wasn’t set up to forget. She knew for a fact she’d never felt that free and happy growing up. Her decision to become a nanny came from an unshakable belief that all kids deserved to experience that kind of peace. If she could give it to them, even if it was for only a few hours, then she’d done her job.

“Hey, Lucky?” Georgia’s voice was unexpectedly quiet. “Did you see something bad when you read me?”

“I thought you didn’t want to know?” Lucky sighed, busying her hands by plucking the dry grass. Having a sort-of-friend was fun while it lasted. She knew her terrible odds were bound to kick in eventually. Interpreting her readings almost always ended with her being ostracized.

“I don’t. I really don’t. Ignore me.”

Lucky glanced at her. She was covering her eyes again. “If it’s stressing you out—”

“I’m not stressed about it.”

“—don’t think about it as good or bad.” Lucky didn’t. Mostly. Sometimes, some people were objectively bad. Nothing to be done about it. That wasn’t the case with Georgia.

Maverick believed she was meant to help people. If she believed it too, how would it look? Georgia wanted to feel reassured without knowing anything about what Lucky read. There was a tenderness to her reading—rife with insecurities and burdened by doubt. She would hate feeling as if Lucky were judging her.

“How should I think about it, then? Something obviously changed.”

“Changed when?” Lucky frowned as she stared at Georgia, who didn’t answer and kept her eyes hidden.

She must’ve missed something. They’d had a good night and day, but something shifted—she quickly relived the conversation, using Georgia’s reading to sift through any subtext.

I’m sensitive. Stop insulting me.

Georgia always stated her feelings plainly. Her truths were just wrapped in a playfully dramatic protective veneer. Like when Georgia told Xander it would hurt her feelings and she’d cry if he didn’t wear the pajamas on experiment night. He believed her because he knew she was being honest.

I think you want to be friends.

Georgia must’ve assumed the reading changed Lucky’s mind. “I—” She paused, a little unsure. “Reading you didn’t change anything for me. I liked who you were before, and I still like who you are now because you’re the same person. I can provide insight into who you are and maybe explain a couple things you might not understand about yourself. That’s all. Ultimately, what you choose to do with that information is up to you.”

“I don’t want to know. Don’t ever tell me.” Georgia was quiet for a moment before saying, “Thanks for giving me a choice.”

Lucky hesitated too. “Thank you for wanting to be my friend. When I said I didn’t have any earlier, that was me trying to not be presumptuous. It’s hard to leave the pity party when I’ve lived there for so long, I started paying rent.”

Georgia sat up. A delicate frown graced her features. “You’re too cute to have low self-esteem. Stop it.”

None of that was true, but she said, “I’m working on it.”