chapter 1
My mother had always said that everything I ever had in this life came down to luck.
When I ranked first in my grade, she said, “Wow. You guessed right again.”
When I won a gold medal in competition, she said, “The judges must’ve made a mistake.”
When I got into one of the best universities in the country, she went around telling everyone, “That kid doesn’t have any real ability. She just happens to be lucky.”
So on the first day of freshman year, she tossed me a book of scratch-off lottery tickets.
“Since your luck is supposedly so great,” she said, “you might as well let it pay your living expenses too. One book per semester. Whatever you win is what you get. And just so you can’t call me crying that you’re broke, I’m blocking you now. I’ll add you back next semester.”
Then she hung up, no matter how desperately I begged on the other end of the phone, and blocked every possible way I had to reach her.
I was so stunned I couldn’t even cry.
From then on, all I could do was scratch two tickets a day.
On lucky days, I might win twenty or fifty dollars.
Most days, I got nothing.
I stayed alive by secretly picking expired snacks out of my roommates’ trash.
By the last week of the semester, I had severe anemia. I was dizzy all the time, weak to the bone, and when I finally used the last of my strength to scratch the final ticket from that book, I laughed.
My mother had been right about one thing.
My luck really was good.
By then I was so hungry that my vision doubled. Bright spots swam in front of my eyes. The scratch-offs my mother had given me, each one with a face value of twenty dollars, felt like the countdown clock on my life, and there was only one ticket left.
The thirty dollars I’d won before that had already been stretched as far as humanly possible. I lived on plain rolls, pickled vegetables, and hot water, and even that barely lasted two weeks. My stomach felt like an invisible hand was squeezing it all day and all night, twisting until it cramped.
Still clinging to the last shred of hope, I tried calling my mother again.
Reality answered with another bucket of ice water.
I was still blocked.
Desperate, I borrowed a phone from a classmate I barely knew and called her from that number instead.
“Mom—”
Before I could say anything else, her sharp, bitter voice came through the line.
“If I remember right, you’ve still got one scratch-off left, don’t you? Don’t come whining to me about money. I’m not buying it. If you were able to get into college and win scholarships on luck, then use luck again.”
She hung up so hard it felt like the sound slapped me across the face.
When I called back, her phone was already off.
I stared down at the final ticket in my hand. It suddenly felt heavy, like a stone. I was afraid to scratch it. Afraid it would be another loser.
When school started, I’d still looked healthy enough. Now I was skin and bones. I was five foot five and weighed barely eighty pounds. My skin was pale enough to show bluish veins underneath. There wasn’t a trace of color in my face.
When I got back to the dorm room and found it empty, I staggered toward the trash can out of habit, checking to see whether my roommates had thrown out anything edible, anything expired but not totally rotten, anything I could pick up and swallow without getting sick.
That was how I’d spent most of the semester.
The first time I was caught digging through the trash, the dorm door opened behind me.
“Seriously, Zoe? You’re doing that again?” my roommate Lauren said in disgust. “That’s so gross.”
I flushed instantly and yanked my hand back like the trash can had burned me.
Her gaze swept over the scratch-off tickets on my desk, and sudden understanding flashed in her eyes, followed immediately by contempt.
“I can’t believe you. Your gambling problem is that bad? You’d rather starve than stop buying those things? If you’re really that addicted, at least go find some guy to buy you dinner or something. Whatever. Rooming with someone like you is just my bad luck.”
She looked down at the slice of cake in her hand, took one last bite, then tossed the rest into the trash and walked back out.
I was starving so badly my head buzzed. I had no energy left to wonder whether she’d meant it as charity or humiliation. The second she left, I lunged forward like an animal, snatched the half-eaten cake out of the trash, and stuffed it into my mouth.
As I ate, hot tears dropped one by one, mixing into the crumbs.
I was humiliated beyond words.
I couldn’t even blame her for thinking what she did.
She didn’t know that before school started, my mother had printed out flyers with my picture on them and handed them to every small business near campus, telling them not to hire me for part-time work. She had cut off every path I had.
“Isn’t she lucky?” my mother had said. “Then let luck feed her.”
I had explained it countless times.
I didn’t get my awards through luck.
Every honor I’d earned, I had fought for little by little, one step at a time.
But my mother never believed me. In her eyes, everything I had ever achieved could be erased by two light, careless words.
Good luck.
The last bite of cake settled in my stomach, and the dizziness eased just a little. I turned back toward that final scratch-off ticket. At last, I made up my mind and started scraping away the silver coating with trembling fingers.
As each layer peeled back, my heart sank lower.