This is #47 in my One-Shot Shorts series, a collection of short stories each based on a prompt from a homemade set of dice or cards.

Jillaine Fox stared down at the chocolate milkshake she now wore all over her shirt, fighting the tears that threatened to spill. She was not going to cry in front of Amber Gorse.

More like Amber Gorgeous, people always said, and it was true. Amber was the most beautiful girl in school, while Jillaine was…not. People called her “foxy Jillaine,” but in a way that made her feel small and wish she was invisible.

She wished it again now.

“Sorry Jillian,” Amber said, with a shrug of one golden shoulder, her mouth more smirk than smile. Jillaine knew without a doubt that she was purposely getting her name wrong. They’d been in school together since kindergarten, for fuck’s sake. “Bad luck.”

It was the story of Jillaine’s life. Once upon a time, she and Amber had been best friends, inseparable. They’d both been exuberant little girls who loved to run and dance and draw and sing, who took up space unapologetically, too focused on the joy of being alive to worry what it looked like to anyone else. Their birthdays were within a week of each other, so joint parties were a must. They shared everything.

Until they didn’t.

Jillaine wasn’t sure, but she thought things had started to change the summer before sixth grade. Amber’s family had planned a trip that put them out of state during the week both girls’ birthdays would fall, so there was no joint party that year. No party at all, since Jillaine hadn’t wanted to party without her other half.

They’d exchanged gifts, though. The day before school started, Amber came to Jillaine’s house with a small box. Jillaine opened it and gasped to see half of a heart necklace on a delicate chain, the curved edge decorated with curlicues and tiny leaves that stood out bright against the dark in the crevasses between the designs. Amber grinned and pointed to the other half, already around her neck.

“Shouldn’t it say best friends?” Jillaine asked, undoing the clasp and fastening her chain around her neck.

“Please,” Amber said with a little laugh. “I didn’t get this at a drugstore or something. They’re antiques.” As soon as she said so it was obvious. The metal was heavy with age, dark with tarnish where a polishing cloth couldn’t reach.

“It’s beautiful,” Jillaine said. “Thank you.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon deciding what outfits they’d wear on the first day, and how they’d do their hair. Jillaine brushed out the shining fall of her thick, dark hair while Amber fluffed up her finer strands and picked, frowning, at a few pimples that had popped up on her chin.

And that was the last time they’d spent together.

Sixth grade meant different classes instead of just staying in the same room all day, and Jillaine and Amber had mostly been separated. They passed sometimes in the hallway, and Jillaine would tap her necklace. Amber would smile, but then her new friends would sweep her away to somewhere else, leaving Jillaine alone.

Jillaine had never made a ton of friends—why bother, when she had Amber?—but now she found herself more and more alone. Amber had joined all kinds of clubs and never seemed to have time for Jillaine, not even on weekends.

Before they knew it, another year had passed with nothing to mark it but Amber’s growing popularity and Jillaine’s slow but steady fading into the shadows.

There was no birthday party in the summer before seventh grade. Only a parade of days that marched toward what felt like doom as Jillaine found, one after another, things that just kept going wrong.

Her once-shining hair had gone dull and frizzy no matter how many serums she layered. Her skin had developed an oily sheen, and acne erupted in a permanent, angry spatter across her cheeks and forehead no matter how many creams and medicines she threw at it.

It’s normal, her parents said. It’s puberty. Your body is changing.

But why couldn’t it have changed like Amber’s?

Amber’s fine hair seemed to have doubled in volume. By the beginning of high school, it looked like she’d walked straight out of a shampoo commercial, and Jillaine had overheard her telling another girl that she had no idea how she’d gotten so lucky, she hadn’t even washed her hair in like a week. Amber’s skin had gone from pocked to flawless. Everything she wore looked fabulous, effortless, while Jillaine found herself squeezing awkwardly into clothes that fit but still, somehow, didn’t look right.

Jillaine felt like she’d turned into a monster, while Amber had turned into a princess.

Any effort she’d wanted to make at finding friends disappeared under a thick layer of embarrassment and despair. Her parents brought her to a therapist who gave her exercises to work on her self esteem. But it wasn’t her self-esteem, didn’t they see? Nothing looked right, nothing felt right, nothing was right. It wasn’t just that she felt bad; things were bad. Things had been bad, ever since…

Ever since that night before sixth grade. What had happened? Amber had gone on vacation, then missed their birthday. She’s given Jillaine half of a necklace, and then basically bowed out of her life. What had that even been about? Who gives someone a “best friends” necklace and then all but disappears on them the next day?

But no, Jillaine remembered, that wasn’t right, was it? She dug through her jewelry box, removing the top tray and picking through the snarled chains at the bottom until she found the silver half-heart buried under a bunch of plastic beads. She rubbed off some black tarnish with her thumb and turned the piece over in her hands. It very specifically did not say “best friends.” She had just assumed.

“Where did Amber go?” she asked her mom the next morning. “The summer before sixth grade, when they went on vacation. Do you remember?”

“Carver’s Point, I think?”

“Can we go?”

Her mom looked at her over a bowl of cookie batter. “Why all of a sudden? That was years ago.”

“I dunno,” Jillaine said with a shrug. “I remember she said it was fun but I couldn’t remember where she went. I thought…” Jillaine consciously pulled up the corners of her mouth, trying to remember the feel of a smile. “I thought some fun might be nice.”

Her mother gave her a longer look, then let go of the wooden spoon and came around the kitchen island to wrap Jillaine in her arms.

“Of course, sweetie,” she said. “I’m so glad to see you wanting to get out. We’ll go this weekend, just you and me. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jillaine said.

That weekend, she and her mom made the three-hour drive to Carver’s Point and rented a room in a little bed and breakfast, so close to the water that Jillaine could smell the salt wafting in their window. They went down to the front desk to look for maps to plan their weekend. Jillaine pretended to be up for anything, but she was looking for one thing in particular.

“Are there any antique stores?” she asked the woman behind the front desk.

“Of course!” the woman said, pulling out a red sharpie to circle no fewer than six locations on a glossy folded map.

Jillaine’s mother beamed. “Want to see how many we can hit before dinner?” she asked. Jillaine nodded.

They didn’t find what she was looking for on the first night. Jillaine’s melancholy kept her up half the night, the sound of pouring rain on the roof a perfect accompaniment to her foul mood. Of course it would rain like this on a beach weekend. Her mother was fine with it, of course—if the beach was out of the question, they had no choice but to visit the other three antique shops.

 Jillaine spotted the last one right before lunch time, a hole in the wall nestled beside a psychic shop just as tiny. The small window display between the two doors held a mix of mismatched old chairs and hand-written signs that said things like “fortunes forecast” and “lucky charms.”

Standing inside the door, shaking the rain from her borrowed umbrella, Jillaine could see that despite the two stores were in fact the same store. One woman moved between them, humming softly to herself as she dusted furniture and fluttered vintage postcards in their baskets. She could have been anywhere from forty to seventy-five, but her wide smile took ten years off whatever her age actually was.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Is it okay if I get my fortune told?” Jillaine asked her mom. After a long, uncertain look, her mother nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be over here, poking.”

“Okay,” Jillaine said, then turned to the shopkeeper. “Fortunes forecast?” she asked.

“Follow me.” The woman led her to the other side of the store, through a makeshift curtain made of several layers of black glitter tulle. She sat down on the other side of a small, round table and pulled out a deck of tarot cards.

“I don’t actually need that,” Jillaine said. “I just need you to tell me about this.” She reached into her pocket and put the half-heart necklace down on the table between them.

The woman snatched it up, and Jillaine suddenly got the sense that she was old, very old, her hands clawlike as they held the metal close to her face.

“Where did you get this?” she demanded.

“From a girl I thought was my best friend,” Jillaine told her. “Five years ago.”

The woman eyed her with suspicious, narrow eyes. “What did she look like, this girl?”

“Back then?” Jillaine asked. “A little shorter than me, with frizzy blonde hair and sort of a mousy face with pimples on her chin and bad posture.”

“Back then,” the woman repeated. “And now?” Jillaine told her. The old woman stood up and moved past Jillaine and toward the curtained door, nodding to herself.

Jillaine felt a wash of hopelessness take her like undertow. This was pointless. The necklace was a just a stupid necklace, even if it was stolen, and maybe it was just puberty and depression turning her life into an endless ruin.

“I’m sorry,” she said, grabbing the old woman’s sleeve. “It’s just…everything changed after she came back from her vacation here and gave me this necklace. I thought…I don’t know. I thought maybe something happened.”

The old woman put a hand on Jillaine’s shoulder.

“Something most definitely did,” she said. She exited the room, then came back moments later with a large book in her hands. “Five years ago, a mousy little girl stole that necklace set from my shop. She came here looking for a lucky charm.” She dropped the book on the table, raising a puff of dust.

“Lucky?” Jillaine asked. “I’ve had nothing but bad luck since she gave it to me.”

“Of course you have!” the woman said. “You got the unlucky side.”

Jillaine gaped at her as the past five years started to make sense.

“So…”

“As long as that necklace is in two people’s possession, one half will draw away luck and deliver it to the bearer of the other half.” The woman reached across the table, gesturing for Jillaine to hold her hand. “Yes,” she said, stroking the cracked, dry skin on Jillaine’s knuckles. “Five years. She’s certainly done a number on you.”

“Can I just throw this half away, then?” Jillaine asked, hope spiraling up from her stomach, lightening her heart.

“It’s not that easy,” the old woman said. “She gave it to you, it’s intended for you. It doesn’t matter how far away you throw it. It’ll always be yours, until one or both of you dies, or the sides are reunited.”

“So there’s nothing I can do?” Jillaine asked, her voice thick with self-pitying despair. “This is it, for the rest of my life? We’re not friends anymore, she hadn’t spoken to me in years. It’s not like I can just go to her house and steal the other half.”

“Don’t worry, dear,” the woman said. “You won’t need to.” She cracked the book open, then licked one thumb and slid the pages over each other with the rattling whisper of old paper.

“Then what?” Jillaine asked.

The old woman kept thumbing through the book, then stopped with an “aha!” She plucked up the necklace from the table and closed her eyes, waving a hand and muttering over the thing. Then she handed it back to Jillaine.

“Put it on,” she said.

“But…”

“Put it on.”

Jillaine put it on. As soon as the metal hit her chest, she felt…she didn’t know how to describe it. Elation. Possibility. She felt like she could do anything, that any single thing she turned her hand or mind to would go her way.

“What happened?” she asked, breathless, her eyes wide with wonder.

“With both halves out of my hands,” the old woman said, “I couldn’t do a damn thing. But just one piece is enough to reverse the flow.”

“Reverse the flow?” Jillaine asked. “You mean…”

“That little girl will pay for stealing from me,” she said. She stood up and beckoned for Jillaine to follow her, then rummaged around in the cabinet under the counter’s glass case until she came up with a dusty black bag.

“You’ve got five years of payback coming to you,” the old woman said in a low whisper, to keep the words from reaching Jillaine’s mother on the other side of the shop. “After that, it’s up to you. Putting both halves back into this bag will neutralize the magic. But,” she added, with a sigh, “you’d have to get that girl to give her half to you, which means she’d probably have to own up to what she did. So I guess it’s entirely up to her,” she said, her mouth cracking in a wide, wicked grin. “Isn’t it?”

Jillaine found herself returning a matching grin. Her clothes already felt like they were fitting better, and her hair, when she tucked it behind her ear, seemed to have some of its old shine back.

“I guess it is,” she said. “Mom?” she called. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes,” her mother said, then pointed out the window. “Oh, look! We’ll be able to get in some beach time after all.”

Outside, the clouds had scudded away so fast that only the wet sidewalks gave any indication that it had been raining at all. Jillaine’s mother’s phone rang, and she pulled it out of her pocket.

“Hello?” she asked, then listened. “Oh, yes! We’ll be right there, thanks for the reminder!” She hung up, then smiled at Jillaine. “Apparently the bed and breakfast is doing a free catered lunch on the beach today, and they didn’t want us to miss it. Are you ready to go?” She glanced at the woman behind the counter, who smiled a kindly smile, then looked at Jillaine. “Did you get a good fortune?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Jillaine said, waving to the old woman as she and her mom swept out the door and into the sunshine. “I’d say so.”

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