Luck Lines Read online

  A NineStar Press Publication

  www.ninestarpress.com

  Luck Lines

  ISBN: 978-1-64890-466-0

  © 2022 Quinn Tollens

  Cover Art © 2022 Jaycee DeLorenzo

  Published in February, 2022 by NineStar Press, New Mexico, USA.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact NineStar Press at [email protected].

  CONTENT WARNING:

  This book contains reference to death from cancer.

  Luck Lines

  Quinn Tollens

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Luck Lines

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For Judith, who taught me to keep trying.

  WHEN HELENA WAS eleven years old, she watched her older brother burn his entire luck line.

  She’d recently come home from boarding school for the summer. Her parents were busy on a work trip, much to her disappointment, so Michael was the only person around to babysit her. One day, while Helena was lounging around the house in a puddle of self-pity, Michael asked if she wanted to go see some ponies.

  Of course, she’d said yes—she was an eleven-year-old with a dozen cowgirl posters in her dorm room. And, of course, there had been a catch—her brother was a recently graduated eighteen-year-old with his own car. He wouldn’t take Helena anywhere unless he absolutely had to.

  “This isn’t a farm, Mikey,” Helena said accusingly. A proper stable would be a cute wooden shed beside a grassy valley where the horses could frolic and graze. This place was an ugly yellow box squatting in an endless parking lot.

  “I said we were going to watch horses. I didn’t say from what distance. Don’t complain.”

  As they approached the building, the thick scent of manure grew stronger, and a racket of clapping and shouting bled out of the walls. Her brother dragged her through a crowd of sweaty adults to the ticket counter inside.

  A bored teller glanced at the pair: first Helena, with her tight braid and glitter jeans, then Michael, with his long bangs and baggy T-shirt. The man drawled, “Sorry, kids. We can’t take bets from minors.”

  “I’m eighteen. And she’s not betting.” Michael opened his wallet to reveal a wad of twenty-dollar bills. How many allowances had he saved to get that much? “Race number twenty-three, two hundred dollars to win on Gravy.”

  “Bold choice.” The teller slid Michael a form. “You understand the rules, yeah? You’re allowed to spend as much of your luck line as you want, but—”

  “You’re not liable for anything. I know, I know.” Her brother signed the paper, grabbed his ticket, and led Helena to the bleachers.

  Since it was a weekday, there were barely a hundred people in the stands, so the siblings had most of the row to themselves. Helena and Michael looked through the list of horses on his ticket. Gravy was scheduled for the next race.

  Gravy did not look like a winner. He had a brindle coat with sickly gray spots. Helena pitied the poor horse as he was trotted to the starting line.

  She was so busy worrying about the horses that she almost didn’t see her brother roll up his left sleeve. His luck line’s crimson hue contrasted sharply with his skin. It started at his wrist bone, then curled round and round the arm until it reached his elbow.

  Like Helena, Michael still had all twenty inches of line he’d received at birth. But her line coiled tightly to squeeze itself within her forearm, while his line had stretched out with him during puberty. Michael slowly traced the length of his luck line with a forefinger, never letting his skin break contact.

  Unease shivered up her neck. “Mikey, what are you doing?”

  “A dumpy horse like that needs some help if he’s going to win.”

  A gun went off. The horses galloped forward. Michael nudged his forefinger an inch up his arm. The bright-red mark faded into his skin. Gravy pushed his way to the front until he was head-to-head with a black horse named Lotus.

  “But Mom and Dad say we’re only supposed to spend our luck line for important things, like college or job interviews or—”

  “I need the money,” Michael snapped. He burned another inch of luck line to push Gravy into the lead.

  “Why?” When her brother didn’t answer, she took her cell phone out of her purse. “Tell me why or I’m calling Mom and Dad.”

  Michael winced. Helena would follow through on her threat, and they both knew it. “I…Iris is having a baby.”

  Helena gasped. Michael’s girlfriend was the one who had bought Helena her first grown-up paint set. She was quiet and bookish and had a scholarship to Dunestown University. Why would she ruin her future by getting pregnant now? Helena could understand Michael screwing up, but Iris was supposed to be the responsible one.

  A wave of cheers rolled through the stadium as a horse called Duke took the lead. The cream stallion cut in front of the competition. His tail flicked Gravy in the face.

  Michael grimaced. “How? Two inches should be more than enough to win at this trash heap of a track.”

  “Duke! Duke! Duke!” Six men stood up from their seats a couple of rows down. They held their left arms above their heads, showing off to the crowd as they burned through their luck lines in unison. Individually, their luck lines were embarrassingly short, barely three inches each. But if all six of them were pulling fate in Duke’s favor…

  “Damn it, they must be planning to split the winnings.” Michael dug his finger into his skin and pushed down the line.

  “Mikey, it’s not worth it!” Helena tried to pull his finger off the line. He elbowed her away. She watched in horror as he burned through four inches, eight inches, sixteen inches. Soon an entire lifetime of luck was gone.

  Down on the track, Duke stumbled over a rock. The poor horse tumbled onto his side, spilling the jockey off his saddle. As Duke picked himself up, Gravy raced into the lead. He curved around the track, sprinting toward the finish line.

  Michael leaned forward. “Come on, come on, come on!”

  Gravy only had twenty feet to go when Lotus barreled past him to victory.

  “No!” Michael fell to the filthy stadium floor. He took his finger off his skin to see the damage. His expression made it clear he’d burned more than he’d planned. He took his palm and rubbed his arm, as if he could somehow undo his mistake. “No, no, no…”

  An elderly couple strutted up the stairs. The husband and wife each held the corner of a ticket. They carried the paper like it was a fragile gemstone. It wasn’t unusual for elderly people to be blank-armed, but Helena suspected the couple had burned their luck lines rather recently. Someone must have bet on Lotus, after all.

  Michael sobbed by her feet. Helena felt bad for her brother, but at the same time, she had warned him. Now he’d lost two hundred dollars and his luck line with nothing to show for it.

  Helena looked down at her own arm. Her luck line was still red and untouched—she wouldn’t be able to activate it until puberty—but it felt warm, as if all the luck burning around her would catch her arm on fire. She rolled down her jacket sleeves and put as much space between herself and her brother as she could.

  AFTER A YEAR of working at KismetCorp, Helena was adjusting better than she expected. True, she wasn’t the painter she’d dreamed of being as a girl, but young Helena had placed fa
r too many expectations on her adult self. Nobody except the top 1 percent of talent made a living off art. A painter at her level could make some extra cash, but not enough to pay for a decent car or apartment.

  Instead, Helena worked as a graphic designer, which was better than being a painter, really, because people actually saw her work. KismetCorp was a medical research organization with offices on every continent. When Helena told her parents about her new job, they were so proud, so relieved to know at least one of their children would make a name for themselves. Her designs were seen all over the world.

  Helena was wildly successful for a recent art school graduate, according to any metric that mattered. And her luck line, still full as the day she was born, was proof her status was her own creation. But, as she sat in the company cafeteria with her nutritionist-approved salad and her manager-approved teammates, she felt like she was doing something wrong.

  “What do you think, Helena?”

  She looked up from her salad to realize Tanner had asked her a question. “Pardon?”

  “We’re trying to guess who the new girl slept with,” Tanner whispered. He pointed to a woman in her midtwenties seated at the next table over. Two baby-faced interns sat with her, but they were so deep in conversation she might as well have been sitting alone.

  On the surface, the “new girl” should have been unremarkable. She wore the same dress suit as every other woman in the office, with a gray pencil skirt and matching jacket. She’d tied her loose black curls in a ponytail and applied neutral lipstick.

  But a dozen odd details broke the illusion of normalcy: The lime-green nail polish. The freckles flooding her face and neck. The silver pendant molded to look like a thistle flower. The pendant rested on the woman’s blouse, hammocked between her generous breasts, and Helena wondered how the spikes didn’t poke a hole through the fabric.

  Mystery Lady glanced up. Helena turned away before she could be caught staring.

  “I think Dylan is the most logical choice,” Grace whispered, “since he’s the head of the tech department.” Juan silently nodded next to her.

  Helena shuddered at the thought of Mystery Lady getting groped by the obnoxious, buck-toothed programmer up the hall. “Dylan is a goblin in a suit. He couldn’t get with someone in her league if he had two luck lines.”

  Tanner laughed. “Okay, but look at her. There’s no way she got into KismetCorp by herself.”

  “Just because a woman looks sexy doesn’t mean she uses sex to get ahead,” she scolded. “You should look at her brains, not her breasts.”

  Instead of acting properly ashamed, Tanner flashed her an amused smile. “I wasn’t staring at her chest. I was talking about her arms.”

  Helena turned around for another look. The woman’s jacket sleeves ended at the elbows despite the building’s harsh air-conditioning. In a corporate atmosphere, it would have been unprofessional to cover up one’s luck line. But Mystery Lady’s arms were bare.

  “Oh.” Someone who had completely spent their luck by their twenties could not have a good background. That rarely happened unless someone had a mental health issue. Or a gambling problem, like a certain brother Helena knew.

  Grace adjusted her glasses, showing a respectable fifteen inches of line on her arm. “How did she even get in here? Isn’t it risky for KismetCorp to trust its software to someone with impulse problems?”

  “That’s exactly my point!” Tanner cried. “I’m a copywriter—the worst I can do is make a typo on our ads. But when the interviewer saw I only had nine inches of line left, he treated me like an ex-criminal. She’s got to have connections.”

  Helena winced. She’d had connections help her during her application. Her father was golf buddies with a man in HR, so Helena had been able to skip the résumé pileup and go straight to the interview stage. But she’d still needed a good résumé and portfolio to get hired. Her twenty inches of luck line helped her stand out as well. She’d earned her place. “There could be another reason,” she argued.

  “Yes, another reason,” a syrupy voice mused behind them. Mystery Lady faced their table, resting her chin on her fist. “For instance, maybe I’m really good at programming, and the company decided it was more important I be competent at my job than to have enough luck to cover up my mistakes.” She picked up her tray and left.

  Grace leaned back in her chair, nonplussed. “Yikes. She’s defensive.”

  “No, we deserved that,” Juan muttered guiltily.

  Helena rubbed her temples to fight off a growing headache. One year at her job and she’d already made an enemy. Well, at least now she’d have a reason for feeling so uneasy at work.

  HELENA SAW MYSTERY Lady a week later, when they both had the misfortune of attending the same presentation. KismetCorp’s researchers had journeyed from the office basement to explain the results of their latest project. The screen in the auditorium read “Measuring Senescence in Follicle DNA After Luck Line Expenditure,” which did not give her high hopes for an interesting slideshow.

  Helena sat in the front of the small auditorium. The room had four rows of foam poufs that were allegedly good for one’s posture but really served to look good for corporate brochures. She opened her notebook in her lap so she could record any infographic-worthy statistics. With her pen, she began doodling flowers in the margins.

  She could have sat with her teammates in the back, but she was miffed at them today. Her birthday was on the company calendar for all to see, but none of her teammates had noticed. No one in her family had called either. She knew birthdays became less important as one got older, but she still thought someone would pay attention to her.

  Helena didn’t notice Mystery Lady until her nose caught the smell of patchouli. She turned toward the perfume and nearly fell over when she saw who had joined her. The presentation wasn’t for another ten minutes, so Mystery Lady had dozens of empty seats to choose from, yet she’d picked the one next to Helena.

  She casually slouched on her pouf as if Helena weren’t there. Helena pretended to read the projector screen while she thought of what to do. She couldn’t retreat to the back with Grace and Juan without looking cowardly. But she couldn’t sit here for an hour and ignore the woman—that would be too awkward.

  “Cute flowers,” Mystery Lady murmured.

  Helena looked down and realized her doodles had taken on a loopy, childlike quality. She irritably clicked her pen. She understood why Mystery Lady was angry, but wasn’t it immature to come up here and make snide comments? If Helena had held a paintbrush instead of a dried-out office pen, her art would be better. She wanted to throw back a quip of her own, but this job was too important to jeopardize with petty drama.

  So, Helena swallowed her pride and turned to her neighbor. “Excuse me…” She read the name on the woman’s security badge. “Nadia. I apologize for my behavior last week. That conversation was deeply unprofessional, and it didn’t represent the marketing department’s values.”

  Thick eyelashes slowly blinked together and apart. “Why are you apologizing? You didn’t say anything wrong.”

  Helena was taken aback. What was with this sudden attitude change? “But…you were furious at the time.”

  “Not at you. In fact, I really appreciated the one line you defended me with. What was it?” She made a high-pitched impression of Helena’s voice: “Just because she’s a sexy lady…”

  Helena flushed so hard she felt like her ears were going to burn off. “I could have phrased that better.”

  A crooked smirk appeared on Nadia’s face. “You phrased it perfectly.” She shifted closer, and Helena got another hit of her perfume. “Although you should know: Dylan has a husband. So, even though I consider myself quite good at seduction”—she shifted her leg so that her bare knee brushed Helena’s—“I don’t think he would have been a willing target.”

  “Ah.” Had Helena’s imagination gone haywire, or was this woman flirting with her? She sounded flattered by Helena’s compliment,
but she could also be teasing. Helena didn’t want to assume too much and find herself in an HR minefield.

  Nadia must have noticed her anxiety, as she frowned. She shifted her leg away, proving to Helena the contact had been accidental after all. Good thing she hadn’t flirted back, then.

  The lights dimmed, and the presenter tapped the microphone. “Hello, and thank you for joining the research department this fine morning! KismetCorp has partnered with Howell’s Hair Products to examine the process of premature graying and hair loss. We have some exciting findings…”

  Apparently, the science team had recruited people to spend parts of their luck lines as they tested out various hair products. One photo showed a microscopic view of oily hair follicles. The next slide had a balding man holding a hairbrush clogged with his own shed hair. Helena fondled her own braid in nauseous sympathy. This was not how she’d imagined her birthday going this year.

  “…concluded that spending one’s luck line could not restore hair color or reverse hair loss. However, the luck lines could enhance the effectiveness of preventative products. Participants who spent at least an inch of their line could delay signs of aging…”

  The presenter spent an eternity explaining the findings, as if repeating the facts could somehow make her audience care more. When the audience was finally released, they flooded out of the door like air out of a balloon.

  Helena found Nadia by the water fountain and waited for her to finish drinking. Nadia jumped when she realized someone had been standing right behind her. Helena found herself once again apologizing for her awkwardness. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Since you’re new, I thought you should know that the company gives us free muffins after these presentations.”

  She became conscious of a significant height difference between them. Even with heels, Helena was three inches shorter than her coworker. Nadia’s sharp hazel eyes seemed to be reassessing her. Helena backtracked. “Of course, nobody could blame you if you don’t have an appetite after that slideshow.”