Chapter Three
Opportunity Knocks

If I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all.

I'd say it started when I was born and my parents decided to name me Grover Harrison Underwood. Glenn always argued that he had it worse, especially after Mean Girls came out.

I had six older siblings. Greta, the eldest, was thirty, on her second marriage, and had six kids. I guess you could say having a huge family was kind of a tradition.

Another unfortunate thing about my parents: they were goat farmers. Yes, goats. Apparently everyone had been goat farmers when Shallow Lake was first founded, or so my parents told me. What they left out was while everyone had either given up on farming or at least moved on to something respectable (cows, pigs, sheep…), my great grandparents stayed with tradition. Now it was the Underwood legacy or something, and one day I was going to have to be a goat farmer.

Yeah, story of my life.

I played the oboe – just another reason I was mocked endlessly. You see, in 7th grade I had the choice of band or art. I had no artistic talent whatsoever, so I chose what seemed the lesser of two evils. I wanted to play something cool, like trumpet. My parents had other ideas.

We didn't have a lot of money. Being the youngest, I was used to getting hand-me-downs. Still, I expected to at least be entitled to my own instrument. Dad just rolled his eyes. He'd spent more than a few thousand dollars on an oboe that Gladys had only played for three years. If I wanted to be in band, I was predestined for the double reed section.

Oboe really wasn't that bad of an instrument. It just had a terrible record for sounding ducky; I blame Peter and the Wolf. Anyway, I was pretty good. I even had a solo in our next concert.

That was why I'd stayed late after school – to work with the band instructor on it. I was surprised Mr. Sol had the time to help me; positions had been cut last year and he was now the school's sole art, band, and choir instructor.

After I finished the last few bars, I looked to Mr. Sol for approval. "You know," he stroked his chin thoughtfully. "You have a really good ear for pitch."

"Umm…thanks?" I bleated nervously.

"How about going out for jazz choir? We need another tenor." When I didn't answer right away, he started his sales pitch. I got the feeling he'd given it to more than a few kids. "We practice three times a week before school, and I know you guys are supposed to be all jazzy and shit, but you can pretty much sing whatever."

I still didn't answer. First off, I'd never even tried to sing. And secondly, jazz choir, just like playing oboe, was synonymous for social suicide.

Mr. Sol seemed to know what was on my mind. "Hey, this year some really talented people went out. Carrie Frieder, Josh Hendrickson, Silena Beuregaurd…" Apparently by talented, he meant popular.

That changed things. My mind instantly came up with this fantasy. I'd be lead tenor. All the popular kids would realize how great I really was, and I'd be able to make it through the rest of high school without being a complete loser. Wait, I was getting ahead of myself.

"Umm…I'll think about it, okay?"

"Sure. Next practice is Monday, 7:00."

Has anyone ever managed to make you feel like the stupidest person in the planet with just one word? Yeah, I didn't think it was possible either. But then again, in all of the twelve schools I'd been to, I'd never met anyone like Annabeth Chase.

We'd been put in groups to discuss the book we were reading for English: To Kill a Mockingbird. Apparently there was an immense amount of foreshadowing in the first 20 pages. All I saw was a bratty little girl who was obsessed with a creepy hermit.

Annabeth just kept looking at me with her creepy gray eyes, like she was waiting for me to say something. So I did. "Well, I think the book can only get better after someone gets stabbed with scissors."

She gave me the look of death. "No."

I wanted to ask her what her problem was. All I'd done was say one sentence. And seriously, this was school. Who really cared about racism in the 1930s and a guy named Abacus?

Every other group was just chatting away, but not us. Annabeth seemed perfectly fine to just sit there and ignore me. Well, I had a short attention span. "If you're so smart, what do you think's gonna happen?"

She rolled her eyes. "A white girl forces herself on a black man; her father catches them and says the aforementioned black man raped his daughter. Atticus is appointed to defend him, but the guy still ends up dying. Then the father-"

"How can you make all this up?" I asked, stunned.

"I read it when I was six," she informed me. "And since then, I've read it five more times. It's one of the best books of the 20th century."

I bet she even edited Wikipedia in her free time.

Was it too late to go back to boarding school?

I didn't usually make out with girls on my couch after school, but when a cute senior more or less threw herself at me, I wasn't about to say no.

"You wanna buy some cookies?" the girl at the door said. She was wearing her Girl Scout uniform, and let's just say it was more than a few sizes too small. She smacked her lips. "Oh. Luke. You live here."

Like she hadn't known.

"Depends. Can I try some first?"

She shrugged and batted her eyelashes. "That's kind of against the rules."

"I'm not telling if you don't."

She raised an eyebrow. "Fine. You gonna let me in?"

I opened the door wider. "You know I wasn't talking about cookies, right?"

She looked at me just long enough to roll her eyes. "You think I'm that stupid?"

I figured she was worth my time. And that's how I ended up making out with a cute senior on my couch, whose name I didn't know or care to learn. My mom would have flipped. Good thing she was working late.

"You're more fun than I expected," she whispered in my ear. "Do this a lot?"

I wished she would just shut up. "All the time."

"Sure." She stretched the word out into at least four syllables. "You know, you've always seemed like kind of a loner since-"

The doorbell rang. Shit. Mom was home early.

"Back door," I hissed. She nodded, her eyes wide as she straightened her vest.

A very tiny part of me was thankful the doorbell had rang, I guess. I knew where the conversation had been headed, and things would not have ended very nicely.

But when I opened the door, it was just an average UPS guy. "Package for you," he said, handing over a medium-sized box.

"Thanks." Now was the time that he was supposed to leave, but this guy just kept looking at me. "What?" I finally asked.

"You have a hickey on your neck."

"Do not."

"Oh yeah? Then what is it?"

"Mosquito bite."

"World's largest mosquito." A grin spread across his face. It made him look way too familiar, but I couldn't place where I'd seen him before.

"Don't you have other stuff to deliver?"

"I suppose I do." And just like that, he walked down our sidewalk, got into his car, and drove off.

I dropped the box by the door, ignoring the large fragile sticker on it. It was for Mom anyway. I had more important things to worry about.

Like how to get rid of a hickey.