If You're Lucky Read Free

certainly couldn’t accommodate everyone. They filled the nearby campground, building a big fire to congregate around at night and share stories about Lucky. It was a beautiful sight from afar, the fire and all of Lucky’s friends milling about. They strung a massive old oak tree with fairy lights and decorated it like a Christmas tree, with memorabilia for ornaments. Photos, ski gloves, socks, jewelry, hacky sacks, flippers, surfboard leashes, CDs, sunglasses, and wine bottles hung in the branches. The big tree drooped under the weight of all the stuff.
    Sonia and I drove up there in her mom’s car and walked through the campground. “The sister and the girlfriend,” I heard them whispering as the crowd parted. Sonia knew some of them from when she went to Australia over Christmas break. They offered us beers and shots and pot. I said no thanks but Sonia accepted everything. She seemed to prefer to stay completely wasted, which made her seem uncharacteristically fragile. She was always quiet but decisive and confident. She could almost keep up with Lucky on a surfboard or a ski slope or the side of a cliff. It took Lucky about ten minutes to fall for her when they met two and a half years ago. Sonia and her mom, a radiologist who works in Santa Rosa, rented a small blue house just below us on the hill above town. Lucky was home that summer, working for my dad, and Sonia was home from college. It only took a week before Lucky was following her around like a puppy. Even with all the girls Lucky met out in the world, he’d fallen madly in love with the one whose bedroom window he could see from his own. They were perfect together.
    Later that night, we sat in the idling car outside my house. Sonia definitely shouldn’t have been driving, but I don’t even have a license. I made stupid small talk.
    â€œSo, I guess we’ll see you at the party tomorrow.” I sighed.
    â€œOh, yeah. Wow, I feel crappy. I should really go to bed. I’m afraid I won’t be able to sleep. Where’s the party, again?”
    â€œThe Heron.” I’d already told her that a few times. Where else would it be?
    â€œRight, of course. I knew that.” She turned and looked at me. A tear rolled down her cheek. “How much does this suck, George?”
    â€œTons.”
    She swiped at her cheek and nodded.
    I got out of the car and went inside. My mom was busy in the kitchen making a pan of lasagna for the party. Though she still slept in Lucky’s bed at night, she was venturing out now, a bit more each day.
    â€œHi, baby.” She smiled wistfully at me. I went and stood next to her. She kissed the top of my head. “How was it?”
    â€œWeird. Good. So many people.”
    She nodded and went back to her meat sauce. Our finely balanced family routine had been toppled. My mom usually spent the days in her studio, a big, bright room with floor-to-ceiling windows behind the house that my dad built for her. She’s an artist. She’s kind of famous for her hand-built wood-fired pots. Her world is in her studio. She has an electric kettle out there for endless cups of tea and a stereo that she listens to classical music and jazz on. She has an electric kiln for small loads of work and a big gas one for bigger pieces. Out back there’s a kiln for wood firings in a sand pit. Before this happened, we didn’t see my mom in the house till dinnertime, and then she was only too happy to talk to another human about their day. Now the studio stood dark and we kept bumping into each other, acting as constant reminders of our collective pain. I hoped that my mom would feel like working again soon. It was hard to see her like this, thin and pale and hunched over, wearing Lucky’s clothes, her long, beautiful hair matted and dull instead of swept up into a tidy bun like she usually wore it, with a paintbrush or a pencil poked through it. My dad remained powerless to help. He and I