Finding Luck

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Luck said sadly, patting my shoulder. 

The February air was cold and the trees bare. I brushed wet leaves from the damp picnic table and laid my backpack across it like a casket. I unzipped the backpack and pulled out the battered black Chromebook, covered in scratches from my dogs. I opened the computer to reveal the familiar keyboard, dusted with crumbs and missing several keys. 

Lia, Shamarr, Elisiah, and I gathered around the table as Luck raised my phone to display the animation I’d made to honor my dead computer. I’d had the Chromebook since quarantine began three years ago; then one night it just wouldn’t turn on.  

“We’re here to honor the death of Rylynn’s computer,” Luck said like a minister. 

I chimed in, “May her soul rest in peace.” 

“Pieces,” Lia muttered through a cough-laugh. 

Shamarr raised his phone and snapped a picture: Who would believe he went to a funeral for a computer? Who would think of doing that? 

Luck, that’s who. My best friend. The guy who paints his nails pink, was voted the kindest in our school, who shows up for me. I was 16 when he honored my dead computer, and we’d been friends for a year and a half. Before that, I’d never thought I’d have a friend who got me the way Luck does.  

Before Luck 

Growing up, I thought being a nomad was normal. My family was homeless for most of my childhood, and I went to nine different schools from kindergarten to 3rd grade, some in Brooklyn, some in the Bronx. 

My mom was lemonade, sweet when things went her way and very sour when they didn’t. My dad was more like a magician: He appeared when he needed money and magically disappeared before Christmas came. As a kid, I followed my older sister Tiffany everywhere she went.  

We adopted our dogs Lacey and Zoey when I began middle school. Lacey and Zoey were the light of my life, and it became my job to protect them. 

I always felt anxious traveling with my mom. No matter where we went—the store, the subway, the bus—she would find a way to get into an argument. Her anger went everywhere with her: My dogs, Tiffany, and I learned to be in our bedroom by the time she came home. 

Meanwhile, I was bullied at school, and coming home to the shelter seemed to confirm what my bullies said. I was different. Shame lay like a burden on my shoulders. 

When I was 7, my sister and I lived with my grandmother, our dad’s mother, for almost a year in Brooklyn. It was only years later I discovered we had been removed from my mother by ACS and put into kinship care.  

My mother, Tiffany, and I got an apartment just before my 12th birthday. The bullying came to a stop but then I went through 8th and 9th grade in Covid lockdown. 

“You Play Omori?” 

I desperately wanted sophomore year to be different. I couldn’t stand another year with no friends. In graphic design class I anxiously looked for a place to sit. Talking to the wrong person was how the bullying had started years earlier. 

“Open Photoshop and Google Classroom,” said the teacher, Mr. Stiles. 

I heard a chair roll toward me. I glanced at the screen next to mine and saw an Omori soundtrack video. 

“You play Omori?” said a squeaky voice. I looked up to see a boy with tan skin and a loose afro.  

“No, but I’ve seen my sister play it,” I said. 

And from there the conversation flowed, with no signs of stopping. We talked for so long that we didn’t notice the bell ring. We left the school and wandered around New York City, talking and talking. From video games our conversation traveled to art and technology. I found it strange his name was Luck, but it suited him perfectly. 

I have trouble talking to others, and most people use my quietness as a chance to ramble and vent about their life. But Luck asked me questions and gave me lots of room to respond. He seemed to care what I had to say. After an hour we found ourselves at the subway and discovered we both take the #5 train. 

As we waited for the train we gave each other our Discord bios. His said he was gender-fluid. 

“It means I fluctuate between genders,” he explained. 

I was shocked, not at the information, but because he told me so openly. If he could tell me he’s gender-fluid so easily, then maybe I could tell my school I’m nonbinary. 

Luck told me about his family. About how his mom was abusive, that he had to move in with his father, but how his father wasn’t much better. So I told him about my family. About my mom’s explosive rage, about how we were homeless. For the first time, I didn’t have to hide that part of my life. 

The train came and we took our seats. And as we traveled from Manhattan to the Bronx, our conversation traveled as the subway car rattled. That morning, I dreaded going to school. But now, I was excited to see Luck again. 

Over the next two years, our friendship deepened. We met at staircase C after school every day, and rode the train together. We celebrated “Friends-giving” together at McDonald’s that November. We made snowmen together, my first time doing that since I was little. This past year, I met his father and stepmom, and Luck’s room became a haven we two shared.  

The Fight That Changed Everything 

Meanwhile, I’ve always known deep down that I’d be forced to go toe to toe with my mother. The fight that changed my life happened in December of my junior year. I was putting the groceries away when my mom started micromanaging me. I pushed back a bit. 

Her eyebrows furrowed, “If you’d just do things the way I ask you to, there wouldn’t be a problem. Why can’t you just listen to me?”  

I repeated that I was almost done, but my mom called me an “ungrateful dumbass” as she went into her room. 

“I’m not ungrateful, or dumb,” I said quietly. 

“Suck my dick,” she shouted, slamming her door. I was used to her insults, but I resented her pulling me away from my homework to unload groceries. I headed toward my room. 

My mother and I argued more, and she called my father and told him to come over. He arrived, and then escalated the situation by physically attacking Tiffany and me. The chaos continued until my mom finally kicked my father out of the apartment. 

Luck likes how competitive I am when we debate, how creative I am when I draw, how he can tell me anything.

Tiffany and I went back to my room to start packing our stuff so we could go sleep at my grandmother’s. My whole body hurt from my father’s hands, my bedroom door was broken, and the dogs were screaming in fear from inside my closet. As Tiffany and I headed for the front door, my mom blocked us. In the scuffle that followed, Tiffany and I locked her out of the apartment, in the hallway. 

For a moment, I felt safer. But then I wondered what she would do when she got back—to me, to Tiffany, to the dogs. Not knowing what else to do, I called 911.  

The police came to our door and our parents were nowhere to be seen. The ambulance arrived and drove Tiffany and me to the hospital; two police officers rode in the cramped space with us. I watched my familiar neighborhood disappear in the small back window. 

In the hospital a doctor checked Tiffany and me for bruises and cuts and led us back to the waiting room. “Our” police officers stood to the side of the room bickering while we waited. The TV mounted on the wall blared news and advertisements while anxiety crushed me like a wave. So of course I messaged Luck. 

guess where I am

WHAT!? Where? Меса? In your room? On discord? Online?

Nope. Hint, I’m with the police 

GORL YOU GOT ARRESTED?! 

no im in the hospital, my parents tried attacking me 

I’m gonna kill your mom. Actually wait 

omg I’m at 2%

CHARGE. How tall is your mom? 

jacobs height 

 ima snatch her WEAVE 

bahahah SHE WAS WEARING A WEAVE TODAY! 

If worst comes to shove I might stay with my grandparents 

ALSO, I HAD TO LEAVE MY DOGS! MY BABIES 

awww 

also I’m not coming to school Monday  

for obvious reasons.

fair. there’s only one week left before winter break,  

just don’t come

Police officers, ACS workers, and doctors kept asking me to recount what happened over and over. I sat in the hospital, with no idea where my life would lead. I wanted to get away from it all, and Luck understood that. Talking to him made me feel at home—if everything about my life had to change, then I was glad one of the best parts could stay the same. 

We were discharged from the hospital and an ACS worker drove us to my grandmother’s (my mom’s mother). I hadn’t seen her in years, and I was relieved to see her friendly expression. She guided us inside like everything about this was normal.  

“When will they go back with their mother?” she asked the worker. 

“Never,” the man replied. Was that true? How could he know for sure? Why did he choose to say that? Did he think it was comforting? I didn’t know what to believe. 

Luck by My Side 

That was eight months ago. Tiffany and I still live with our grandmother in the Bronx, though there isn’t much room for us. My sister has her suitcases stacked in the living room ready to leave for college in a week. I haven’t seen my dogs since we left in the ambulance. I miss them a lot, and I worry about them being with my mother instead of me. 

I haven’t seen my father since I left, but I see my mother every few months. I worry sometimes that I’m turning into her; I have her brown eyes, her round face, her nose. I’m afraid my family sees her in me too. My grandmother has even mistaken me for her over the phone, because I sound just like her. Like her, I can be stubborn and dramatic. 

But Luck sees a better me—someone worth listening to. He likes how competitive I am when we debate, how creative I am when I draw, how he can tell me anything. Through all the family chaos and change, we look out for each other.  

It’s a Saturday in August, and Luck and I are ready to leave his apartment with our skateboards. We lock eyes; it’s time. 

“There’s a skate event at Ocean Hill today at 4, can Luck come?” I say to Luck’s father. 

“And where’s Ocean Hill?” his dad asks, stirring a pot of rice and curry chicken. 

“In Brooklyn.”  

“In Brooklyn?!” When you live in the Bronx, Brooklyn is a million miles away. He stops stirring; I get nervous. 

But then he turns to me, “Don’t forget to bring water, and don’t be getting lost.”  

I smile. 

“We won’t!” Luck and I head back to his bedroom. “OH MY GOD THANK YOU” he whisper-shouts while pulling on his shoes.  

His dad and stepmother tell him No a lot, but when I ask, they usually say Yes. What are friends for? 

Luck and I roll down his street to the subway. “I love hanging out with you,” he says. 

“Me too.”