Chapter 1: The curse

I remember the day my luck changed. Cursed at 16. To be honest, I probably deserved it. I had been careless and feelings had been hurt.

“You’re going to regret this,” she had said, tears streaming down her face, “You’re never going to have another good day. All of your luck has run out.” Looking back, I’m surprised it wasn’t more dramatic. She didn’t wave her hands or make lightning appear. She just said the words and meant them.

I did feel something, a heavy sensation, like the atmosphere had shifted. The air was colder all of a sudden and goosebumps covered my arms.

I hadn’t upset her on purpose, not really. I felt bad, but I just shrugged off her threats as empty words.

“I’m sorry,” I said weakly, not as sincerely as I should have.

“Too late,” she said.

She walked away and I stood there like an idiot, thinking that was the end of it. As I started towards the bus, a fluorescent lightbulb fell from the ceiling and shattered right on my head. Odd timing, but I still didn’t think anything of it. I shook the glass from my hair and kept walking, ignoring the small cuts on my scalp.

Chapter 2: Day one of the rest of my life

There was a nightstand next to me where I kept a glass of water. Every night I had done this for as long as I could remember and there had never been an incident. But this night was different.

I could feel the cold water and hard glass cup hit me just as I drifted off to sleep. When I groggily rolled over to see what had happened, the glass rolled off the bed and glass shattered everywhere. It should have been easy to step over the glass to get a broom from down the hall. But that’s not what happened. My legs got tangled in the sheets and I ended up rolling in the broken glass. Is this what death by a 10,000 paper cuts felt like? I tried to salvage the situation, using the sheets to dust myself off and then throwing the glass covered sheets down the laundry chute.

I slept soundly after that for all of two hours when the smoke detector went off. I looked around. Nothing was on fire. But I did smell some sort of electrical smoke. I ran over to my video game console. Somehow, some of the water had gotten on it even though it was all the way across the room and now it was dangerously close to catching fire. I unplugged it and tried to shake the water off of it, hoping it wasn’t permanently damaged.

My phone alarm normally woke me up every day at 6:00 sharp. No exceptions. Today it didn’t go off and I groggily stumbled out of bed at 7:00. My mind lingered briefly on Madison's curse, but I quickly brushed it off. This was just a coincidence.

Since the bus had already left, I'd have to ride my bike. But when I got to the garage, I realized the front tire had a leak. After further inspection, I realized it wasn’t from a nail or anything. Instead, a perfectly positioned pine needle had gone right through the rubber. Unlikely but not impossible, I supposed. I considered just not going to school, but I had a history test and everyone knew that if you missed it, you got a harder makeup test.

So no bus. No bike. Looked like I was walking. The sky, bright blue only moments before, turned a deep gray. I was exactly halfway to the school when the downpour began. Every single car splashed me on the way there. By the time I got to school, I was covered in mud.

When I finally got to school, I had missed first hour and everyone was heading to their next class.

Madison saw me and grinned, “I see my plan worked.” She snapped a photo of my mud-lined face that would no doubt end up on some social media platform.

“Oh, no,” I said, “You do not get to take credit for this. It's just a coincidence it happened after your weird spell.”

“It's a curse, Danny. You'll realize that soon.”

By the end of the day, I wondered if she was right. Half my homework had fallen out of a hole in my backpack, I slipped and fell in a random puddle in the hallway, and in science I dropped a beaker of an acidic substance and it burned a hole in the table. I should just be lucky I wasn't in the hospital at this point. But there was still time for that.

When I got home from school, my parents noticed something was wrong.

“Did you get in a fight?” my mom asked.

“Just a bad day,” I said tiredly and headed up to my room to change.

I couldn’t wait for today to be over. I was absolutely sure that it was all just a coincidence. Even so, I didn’t keep a glass of water on my nightstand this time. I had unknowingly established rule 1 of people with unusual bad luck: no unattended liquids.

Chapter 3: Repeat

At least my alarm didn’t go off late this time. It was early. By three hours.

“Well, that’s not normal,” I muttered, fumbling to turn it off. Only when I reached for my phone, I accidentally fell off the bed. Still, that wasn’t really too out of the ordinary.

I finally turned my alarm off from the floor. I tossed and turned but could not get back to sleep.

I set three alarms because I was so worried about being late again. Two of the three went off at different times than I had set them for.

At least one went off at the right time. I groggily pulled on my clothes. As I was putting on my shirt, a button popped off. I tried another one and the same thing happened. I opted for a t-shirt instead.

At least this time I made it to the bus. And then the bus got a flat tire. Right after I got on.

Just like yesterday, I missed first hour. As I entered second hour 15 minutes late, the extra alarm on my phone finally decided to go off. I had set it to be that generic, vaguely tropical sounding wordless beat. What came out was a song for babies about ducks. I slouched down, trying to make myself invisible, fact turning red. Kids didn’t bother to hide their laughs. Even the teacher smirked. Madison was watching me, looking smug.

The rest of the day didn’t go much better. I tripped three times, thought someone was waving to me when they weren’t, and somehow, got my shoelace stuck under a manhole cover. By the time I got home, I was covered in bruises and only wearing one shoe.

“Honey,” my mom said, “Is someone bullying you at school?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” I said, but Madison’s head flashed through my head. She may have started off seeing me as the bully, but now she definitely had the upper hand.

I accidentally stepped on my phone and heard a loud crunch sound when I got to my room. It still worked but the screen was cracked.

I needed to talk to Madison.