Lucky T (3 page)

Suddenly Carrie was overcome with a warm and fuzzy feeling that started in her chest and radiated out through her entire body. This T-shirt was magical. This T-shirt had changed her life. And she was never taking it off again.

"So why didn't you ever tell me this story before? Anytime I ever asked you why the shirt was lucky, you just said, 'Because,'" Piper said.

"I don't know. I was afraid you might think I was an idiot," Carrie explained.

"Ugh, I would never think that," Piper replied. "But I still don't understand why you believe the shirt is lucky. So you had one good day."

"No, there's more to it than that," Carrie said assuredly, dropping the letter back in the box and replacing the rubber bands. "Amazing things happen to me when I wear it. Like the day last spring when you told me that your brother's best friend from camp, Jason Miller--the guy you'd been saying was perfect for me since the sixth grade--was transferring to our school."

"Pure coincidence," Piper remarked.

"I wore it the day Jason asked me out," Carrie retorted.

"Every girl in school was jealous," Piper remembered.

"I had it on during my PSATs and got a 1450 combined."

"Yeah, that's kind of odd. You're not that smart," Piper said sarcastically.

"Oh, that's nice," Carrie joked.

Suddenly Piper's face got serious. "Carrie, I'm just concerned that you might be holding on to this idea for the wrong reason."

"What reason is that?" Carrie asked as she discarded unwanted clothes into a pile on the closet floor. "It's not going to make your dad come home."

Carrie stopped dead in her tracks. "Excuse me?" Piper sensed the tension in Carrie's voice, so she tried to be a little gentler. "I know that you miss him and that you only get to see him two or three times a year. But he's been working out of New York for years now. I don't think wearing the shirt is going to make him move back to San Fran."

Carrie stood in silence for a moment as she picked up a chunky gray sweater of her dad's that would never come back in style. True, she was mad at him when he first moved out. In fact, for years after that, she was really angry that he never seemed to make much of an effort to spend time with her at all .

While Carrie tried to let go of the bitter feelings little by little, in Carrie's mind the luck of the T knew no boundaries. It had the power to do anything, and since all those good things started to happen the instant she put it on, maybe a part of her had hoped that one day, it would make her lucky enough to bring her family back together. Carrie wasn't ready to give up that hope. Not now. Not ever.

"Piper, I don't know why you're so worried about this. So I think this T-shirt is lucky. Big deal! What's it to you?" Carrie's tone of voice had an edge to it that Piper wasn't used to at all .

"Lunch is on the table!" Carrie's mom shouted from downstairs.

"Coming!" Carrie yelled. She stomped out of the closet, put a pile of clothes near her door, and then turned to look at Piper.

"You're right, Carrie. It shouldn't bother me at all ," Piper said sullenly. "I'm sorry I even said anything about it."

Carrie sighed. She realized that snapping at Piper wasn't going to help anything. Besides, Piper was just looking out for her. Carrie walked over to Piper and put her arm around her friend's shoulders. "Listen, it doesn't matter. Everything is fine. Better than fine, actually. I'm going to have a wonderful date with Jason tonight. You're going to have a fun time at your brother's party."

"We'll see. I don't have the advantage of owning a lucky T-shirt, though," Piper teased.

"Wish I could spare mine," Carrie said with a wink. "Nah, even if I could, I wouldn't give it to you."

"Care, that's so mean!" Piper pinched Carrie's upper arm.

"I'm only teasing."

"Girls, let's go!" Carrie's mom shouted again. The distinct smel of cooked cucumbers wafted throughout the house.

"If we're summoned again, she'll make us eat sprouts and flaxseed oil," Carrie said woefully.

Then she took Piper by the hand and they scampered down the stairs. When they got to the kitchen, they saw Carrie's mother pouring a vat of cucumber soup down the trash compactor.

"What happened?" Carrie asked.

"I think the tofu was bad. It started smelling very odd," her mother replied. "And Celia called. She's having some crisis with her meditation class and wants me to come over and help her recenter. You're going to have to grab lunch with Piper."

Carrie pressed her lips together to avoid breaking into a grin. Piper was doing everything she could to stop herself from unleashing a full -blown hyena laugh.

"Try not to be too smug, ladies," her mother joked. Then she kissed them on the forehead, grabbed her purse, and headed for the door. "I'll see you both later, and have fun tonight!"

"Good luck finding Celia's center," Piper called out.

They both looked down at the sparkling green star on Carrie's chest and grinned. Another checkmark was added to the lucky T's win column.

"Mickey-D's, here we come!" Carrie said, knowing that as long as she had the shirt, life was pretty much near perfect.

Late that afternoon Carrie walked out of her bathroom after wel over an hour of primping. She was wearing her favorite, snug, hip-slung jeans and a lacy white bra. Her hair was perfectly fluffed and her skin was glowing beneath a thin layer of tinted moisturizer. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror above her huge oak dresser as she opened the second drawer. Her big brown eyes were full of anticipation, her flawless skin (save for a few nose freckles) flushed from the heat of the hair dryer. She looked out her window and saw that a few ominous- looking clouds were rolling in off the bay, but no matter. A little rain couldn't bring her down. Tonight was going to be romantic and wonderful--she could feel it.

She was just about to put on a bit of the perfume that Jason liked when out of her peripheral vision she saw that her lucky T was not hanging off the doorknob where she had last left it. She spun around and looked again. That was weird. She could have sworn she put it there when she went to take a shower.

Carrie quickly scanned her room to make sure that she hadn't set it on the bed or accidentally thrown it in the hamper. She dug through the two piles of dirty shirts and found nothing. Confused, she rifled through all the drawers in her dresser, knowing that she never put it away, but she had to check just to make sure. As she suspected, the lucky T wasn't there.

Frantically Carrie opened her closet door, glancing at the uncluttered floor. No sign of a glittery green star anywhere. Pulse pounding now, Carrie returned to the dresser and pulled everything out of every drawer, dumping it all in mounds on the carpet. She hit her knees and sorted through sweaters, sweatshirts, polos, and pj's, but it wasn't there.

Okay, don't panic. It's not like you lost it, she told herself. There was no way she would ever do a thing like that. Not with her lucky T. She had just done a load of laundry earlier. Perhaps she tossed it in with the other clothes and spaced about it. Yeah. That was it.

Carrie raced out of her room down the stairs to the second floor, where her mom's room was, and down the second set of stairs to the first floor. She blew by her mom, who was, as ever, hunched over a cookbook in the kitchen, and slid in socked feet into the laundry room.

"Carrie?" her mom said, sounding concerned.

"Yeah?" Carrie said.

There were three tall laundry bins in the small room: one for whites, one for delicates, and one for darks. Carrie picked up the delicates bin and dumped it over on the floor, then closed her eyes and said a little prayer before digging through it. The T-shirt wasn't there.

"Everything okay?" her mother called.

Carrie's heart was somewhere in the vicinity of her kidneys. She turned and dumped out the contents of the second and third hampers, knowing she wasn't going to find it. Knowing she hadn't put it in the laundry but hoping for some kind of miracle, some kind of rift in the space-time continuum. Anything that could alter reality.

"Yeah!" Carrie replied, her voice strained. She picked through the clothes on the floor. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Biting her lip, Carrie slowly stood. She took a deep breath, trying hard not to panic, and turned toward the kitchen. Her mother wore a flowered skirt, a purple T-shirt, her ever-present beads, and an overly stained apron that read Quiche the Cook across the front. Her hair was pulled back in a loose bun and her eyebrows knit together over her nose as she looked at Carrie.

"Mom?" Carrie said flatly, crossing her fingers at her side. "Have you seen my T-shirt?"

Her mother blinked. "Sorry, sweetie," she said. "You're going to have to be more specific."

Carrie stepped into the kitchen and up to the opposite side of the counter from her mother. She placed her hands flat on the surface to ground herself. There was a good chance she might freak out and bounce from wall to wall to ceiling to wall as if she were a cartoon character gone mad.

"You know, the red one with the star?" she said. "The one I've had forever? Have you seen it?"

"Oh, yeah," her mother said, tapping a wooden spoon against the counter as she returned her attention to the cookbook. "Wasn't that in the pile of clothes you left me for Celia? She rode back with me to pick up our items. You were in the shower so I went into your room, saw the stuff on the floor, and gave it to her."

Carrie had lived through a few earthquakes in her life, but nothing compared to this one. The floor tilted beneath her. The entire house came crashing down around her. She clutched the countertop for dear life as a sinkhole the size of Texas opened up beneath her feet, threatening to swal ow the entire city.

Her T-shirt. Her lucky T-shirt. It was . . . gone?

"You . . . did . . . what?" she croaked.

Her mother, astutely sensing something was awry, looked up again. Her whole face creased when she saw the pained expression on her daughter's face.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Mom, that shirt was not in my giveaway pile. It couldn't have been. I would never, ever, ever give that shirt away."

"I'm sorry, Carrie," her mother said. "But I remember it being right on top."

Carrie's throat closed up, making it impossible to swal ow or breathe. Suddenly it all seemed to make sense. The lucky T must have slid off the doorknob and fallen right onto that huge pile of clothes she had left for Celia.

Oh God, she thought. I'm going to vomit.

Carrie experienced tunnel vision for the first time ever. She could see one thing and one thing only--the telephone. She walked across the room and grabbed it off the wall. Maybe Celia hadn't given the T-shirt away yet. Maybe there was still time.

As she frantically dialed Celia's number, her mother accidentally bumped into the kitchen table and knocked over the saltshaker with her elbow, spilling its contents everywhere. Carrie almost fainted. Just what she needed right now--bad luck.

"Mom! Salt!" she cried.

Her mother, who was quite used to Carrie's superstition obsession, automatically grabbed a pinch and tossed it over her shoulder. Her motherly instinct clearly kicked in and told her that this was the only way to prevent some kind of psychotic break in her daughter.

Carrie listened carefully to the phone. Busy signal!

"Who doesn't have call waiting!?" Carrie cried, pressing the off button. She hit talk again and looked steadily at her mother. "What's her cell ?"

"She doesn't have a cell ," her mom replied.

"Ah! She's living in the Dark Ages," Carrie said. "Why are you even friends with this freak? I mean, does she even want friends? Because it's not like they can get in touch with her."

"Okay, since you're upset, I'm going to forgive the fact that you just called my oldest and dearest friend a freak," her mother said. "Now, let's just calm down."

"I can't calm down, Mom! You gave away my favorite shirt without even asking me!" Carrie shouted.

Something inside her snapped. As she slammed the phone on its cradle, hot tears sprang to her eyes. This was not happening. It couldn't be gone. It just couldn't be. Al of the good things she had hoped and dreamed about, especially one in particular, might never come true now.

"Carrie, let's just take a step back here and look at this from another perspective," her mother said in her best soothing tone. "Come on, now. It's just a shirt."

"It's not," Carrie said, turning to face her. "It's really important to me, Mom. You have to take me over there."

Deep down, Carrie wanted to go into the whole story about how the shirt was lucky and her life would fall apart if she didn't have it in her possession within the next sixty seconds. She also wanted to say why she was so sentimental about it, that her dad had sent it to her and wearing it made her feel closer to him in a way that no one would really ever be able to understand. But Carrie knew that talking about her father always put her mother in a foul mood. While she seemed to be better these days, Carrie's mom was still dealing with her emotions surrounding the divorce. Carrie hated having to always walk on eggshel s around her mom, though, especially now, when she needed her to comprehend how desperate the situation was. Yet Carrie couldn't find it in her heart to offer any more of an explanation.

"But Carrie, I don't understand why--"

"Please, Mom," Carrie said, holding her breath. "I can't lose that T-shirt."

Carrie slammed the door to her mom's Escape Hybrid and sprinted up the walk to Celia's house. The door frame was surrounded by wind chimes of all shapes, sizes, and materials that tinkled and bonged as Carrie blew by. She rang the bell , then bounced up and down on the ball s of her feet as she waited. She was one huge ball of nervous energy. Anyone coming in between her and her lucky T, beware!

Please. Please . . . please . . . please, Carrie thought, clenching her hands into fists. Fingers on both hands were crossed now. Please just don't let it be too late.

The door swung open and there Celia stood, her short gray hair sticking out straight from both sides of her head. Her floor-length dress looked as if it was made out of a hundred different scarves of all patterns and colors. A pair of beaded earrings hung so low they grazed her shoulders and strained her earlobes. Celia smiled broadly to find Carrie on her front step and her mother bringing up the rear.