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By living as if what I did while I was on the planet did have

Maybe Glynnis was born unlucky Maybe not And in the end, how much did it matter? Life would still unfold unpredictably

"You knohat, Glynnis? Lucky or unlucky, you do what you can," I said, wishing I could erase her sad expression "I wish I could tell you soot Just do what you can"

It was just a , trying to eat without ht?

Nooooo Not right Not right at all

Sean’s text said fifteen minutes to arrival

I was not ready

Clothes Makeup Hair Three things I nor on the wrong side of the road My hand slipped, sending s My clothes had sos My underwear could be worn proudly by a nunabout that? No one but ht

No one

Thinking about intis, so at odds -of-ith h school, I’d only been with Jesse We were partners in the bedroo e I’d ht to the back of the line I swabbed lip gloss on with a heavy hand and then dabbed most of it off with a tissue, determined not to look like a Real Housewife I fluffed ray blouse that suddenly seey and replaced it with a black silk tank But my pants were black, too I looked like a ninja

Five ed to squeeze into it, and added soed throughthat didn’t re almost immediately after the funeral--the shock of pain I felt whenever I glanced atelse I oas somehow tied to a memory With thirty seconds to spare, I found Mr Eckhardt’s wife’s earrings and put theot his driver’s license before me Neither of us had any hopes to own a car, so ell into college before we ever headed to the DMV An elderly neighbor told Jesse he could occasionally use her ’78 Buick if he e-stamp-sized front yard It was she who drove us to the DMV that ood tenincessantly about the inconvenience When we dropped her off afterward, she sent Jesse to fill the tank at a local gas station

We’d never gotten gas before Nerves rattling, we looked at each other with big eyes Did we pay first? How did the puross?

We asoline everywhere We cleaned the s, and they sparkled S up to our block at a craanting to be seen Then Jesse stopped the car just in front of a tight spot and parallel parked with surprising finesse

When he shut the engine off, neither of us ood friends I fiddled withwhy the silence suddenly felt so heavy when it was usually such a comfortable respite between the two of us, a shared ability to just be

"Congratulations," I said, ood driver"

"I don’t have insurance," he said, but he sounded distracted "I don’t knoto be able to drive us around It’s too risky"

"I don’t care about that You have your license if you need it That’s enough"

He renition and placed it between us on the leather seats "I wish this was our car, and we could go anywhere anted"

"We don’t need a car for that," I said "We do okay on the bus and the ‘L’"

"But it’s not ours," he insisted "I just want so to be mine"

"I could be yours," I blurted, instantlyinto the cold, open air