Page 7 of Good Luck, Babe!
“I want to doThe Adventureverse.”
“No,” she says sarcastically, drawing the word out. “Really? I thought you were just dragging me out here to ask if I liked your speech.”
“Did you?” I ask, trying for playful and probably coming off nervous.
She raises her eyebrows and gives me a look that reminds me I came here to grovel.
“I don’t—” I fight the urge to cringe at myself. “The prize is two million this season.”
“I saw.”
She saw? She read the email? I guess that shouldn’t be surprising because I also read the email, but it gives me hope. Maybe the gap I have to bridge is smaller than I thought. “I need the money.”
Unimpressed, she says, “Okay.”
“My—my dad is…sick.”
Though she still doesn’t look at me, her brow furrows. “Like, sick how?”
“Like, I missed prom because we were in the hospital,” I admit, feeling gross about how badly I want her to make the connection that I was in the ER on a night when her biggest concern was whether or not she would win prom queen. She didn’t, by the way. She lost to Kalie McMichaels.
“Did he get hurt at work?” she asks the trellis above us.
“No. His liver is failing. He might need a transplant.”Might.Like there’s a possibility he doesn’t. Even though the organ donation list has been the only thing occupying my thoughts for months.
“Oh my God.” The surprise gets her. She turns in my direction, mouth open on a gasp. For a brief moment, I see through the overlay of this reality again. Her mouth is open, but this time she’s laughing at something I’ve said. She offers me a guava candy from her pocket as she sways to the music drifting out of the house.
Here and now, though, her gaze ricochets right back off me, sending her looking over her left shoulder at the trumpet-shaped flowers that climb the trellis. “What happened?” she asks.
It’s an impossible question, one that nobody can answer despite months of specialist visits. Hours of watching my dad swearup and down to new doctors that he doesn’t use IV drugs or drink excessively. Knowing they think he’s lying. Knowing, in their minds, that means he deserves it.
“They call it ‘acute liver failure of unknown origin.’ Apparently, it just happens sometimes.”
“Oh.”
Oh.Is that all my dad deserves? Is that all I deserve? It’s just one more gut punch in the endless boxing match that is my life, but I remind myself that I came here to beg Yumi, not to befriend her. I don’t need her comfort or her empathy. What I need is for her to agree to doThe Adventureverse.
I don’t know if saying her name will help or hurt here, but it feels right. “Yumi, he’s hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and he hasn’t even had the transplant. And…and I’m not asking for your half. Obviously, that’s yours, and you can use it for school debt or rent or whatever. I know this is crazy. I know you don’t want to do it. It’s just that when I saw that email and realized…” I trail off with a shrug.
She sucks in her cheeks. “You’re right. I don’t want to do it.”
“I know.” I scratch at a chip in the bench’s surface and admit, “Me neither.”
After a beat of silence, she exhales loudly, asking, “He’s really that sick?”
“He really is,” I confirm.
Yumi pulls her phone out of her pocket and taps at the screen a few times before placing it in the space between us, unlocked and open to the casting email. “Okay.” She shakes her head. “Saywe do this, then what? We just go back to this, right? Like, you don’t think we’re suddenly going to become besties, do you?”
The way she looks at me—like she’s a celebrity and I’m a parasocial fan pleading with her to read my diary and braid my hair—makes my nose scrunch in distaste. “If it’ll get my dad a million dollars, we don’t even have to talk in the hotel after the cameras go off. No strings. We go on the show, we win, you can forget I exist.” I barely stop myself from bitterly addingagainonto the end of that sentence.
After a beat, her eyes shift to me. “And I can still say no? If we call right now, leave a voicemail, and then I change my mind before she calls us back tomorrow, I can dip?”
I want to say no, but how can I? “Of course.”
Her gaze scans me from head to toe. “I’m only agreeing to this for Papa Breland.”
“I know.”
