Leo shakes his head, still looking awed. “Has he started telling people yet?”
“I don’t know,” I say, glancing behind me down the crowded hallway, which is filled with voices and laughter, slamming lockers and loud conversations about the weekend. “It doesn’t seem like it. But I’m pretty excited to see everyone’s faces when he does. Can you imagine?”
“I doubt you’ll have to wait long,” Leo says. “He’s never been much for keeping things bottled up.”
The color rises in my cheeks as I think about how Teddy still hasn’t mentioned our kiss the other morning. I’m starting to wonder if he’s forgotten about it entirely, whether such a thing is even possible. More than anything, I wish I knew if it meant something to him, the way it did to me. So far it’s been impossible to tell.
On the back of Leo’s locker door, there’s a black-and-white photo of him and Max from last summer, their heads bent close in laughter. I nod at it.
“Have you told Max about the big win yet?”
“I was waiting till it’s official,” Leo says, stooping to unzip his backpack, “which I guess it is now.”
“But it’s Max. I just figured you would’ve—”
“I know, but I didn’t want to jinx anything.”
“Teddy already won,” I say, giving him a funny look. “You’re way too superstitious.”
“I’m not,” he insists, but when I tilt my head at him, he shrugs. “I mean, it’s not like I’m afraid of black cats and broken mirrors and the number thirteen—” He stops short when he realizes what he’s said. “Sorry, I didn’t—”
“It’s fine,” I say. “I probably shouldn’t be teasing you about this when I’ve got my own weird superstition, right?”
He gives me a sympathetic smile. “I’d say yours is pretty justified.”
I turn back to my locker, staring at the small Stanford pennant that hangs inside the door: a reminder of my mother, who bought it for me just after she’d been accepted to a graduate program there—a program she never got to attend because she died on the thirteenth day of July.
The bell rings and around us our classmates begin to scatter.
“Maybe it’s not such bad luck anymore,” Leo says, looking hopeful. “Not since it was one of the winning numbers.”
I manage a smile as I shut my locker. “Maybe,” I say, but I’m not so sure.
It isn’t until sixth period that I start hearing the rumors about Teddy, which means he must be back by now. Just before the bell rings, Jack Karch taps me on the shoulder. “Were you really the one who bought the ticket?”
Before I can answer, Kate McMahon swivels around in her seat. “Is it true he’s dropping out of school?”
“What?” I ask, my voice so loud that our English teacher, Mrs. Alcott, glances over with a frown as she walks into the room.
“I heard he’s gonna sail around the world for a year,” Kate says, more quietly now. “On a forty-foot yacht.”
“Captain McAvoy,” says Jack, laughing. “Now there’s a scary thought.”
Beside me, Ian Karczewski leans in. “I heard it’s just a big prank. That all he really won was twenty bucks on a scratch-off.”
They all turn to look at me, waiting for answers, hoping for gossip, and I’m relieved when Mrs. Alcott begins the class by reading the first few lines of a poem.
When the period is over I’m quick to gather my books, and as soon as I step out the door I can already feel it. There’s a strange energy in the hallway, an undercurrent of excitement as the news winds its way from one person to another.
“Hey, Alice,” says Mr. Tavani, my math teacher, as I hurry past him. “I hear you’ve got a knack for picking numbers. Must be all those calc quizzes, huh?”
I give him an awkward wave, anxious to find Teddy, but when I arrive at his locker the only one there is Leo. He’s staring at a cluster of posters and balloons taped to the drab green door with a baffled expression. It’s not unusual for decorations to appear there on game days, so it takes me a second to notice these are different.
“Whoa,” I say, gawking at a sign that readsWe love you, Teddy!Below that, another one saysYou’ve always been a winner to us!“How’d they do this so fast?”
Leo shakes his head in amazement. “They’re like elves.”
“Grammatically incorrect elves,” I say, pointing at a sign that saysCongratulations Moneybags!“They forgot the comma.”
