Lucky by Rachel Vail

down beside Allison and saw they were bending their heads over an old baby monitor that was crackling with static. I listened, too, but could barely make out the voices under all the annoying static rumble. I wanted to ask what they’d heard so far, and also how they had managed to put the other end of the monitor wherever it was Mom and Daddy and the stranger were, not to mention where they even found those old things in the first place, but I knew better than to say another word.
    “How it all shakes out,” I heard somebody say, a man,so either Daddy or if the stranger was a man, him. Quinn and Allison made eye contact with each other but not with me. I cannot stand being left out. It’s so incredibly unfair of them. I’m not a baby, no matter how they act sometimes. Hello, who was in your room yesterday helping you choose the print bikini?
    “What?” I whispered. I wanted it to sound fierce and not whiny. I didn’t completely succeed. Allison glared at me. I clamped my jaw tight to keep from saying more or worse, and rubbed my freezing arms.
    We heard a door shutting and some loud footsteps, which meant probably they were in the foyer, because the floor there is marble and it echoes.
    Quinn switched off the monitor. “We don’t know, exactly.”
    “What DO you know?” I demanded.
    “Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Allison whispered through her clenched teeth. She tightened her grip on her tennis racquet and lifted it slightly off the floor. If Quinn hadn’t been there she might’ve smashed me with it.
    We heard footsteps again, closer this time but less loud. They must have been heading toward us, maybe to the back door, which is the one adult guests are usually shown to, near the bottom of the back stairs.
    “Let’s go,” Quinn said, shoving the monitor into the cabinet of the dresser.
    Quinn and I followed Allison down the hall, out of theguest wing—Quinn closed the door to it quietly behind me—through the upstairs den to the upstairs landing, and down the hallway to our rooms. We passed mine on the right and Quinn’s on the left to go to Allison’s, just beyond Quinn’s, before Mom and Daddy’s. Quinn closed Allison’s door behind us. I climbed up onto Allison’s high brass bed and grabbed one of her million pillows to squish, reminding myself that the more I shut up, the more I would hear from my sisters about what they knew.
    They kept looking at each other like they weren’t sure they could trust me. I swear I was stopping myself from having a total tantrum only by using all of my willpower—and maybe also mangling the little pillow helped.
    Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and I blurted out, “Is somebody going to tell me what’s going on or do I have to go down there and ask them ?”
    Allison threw her racquet onto her sofa. “I told you she’d react like this, didn’t I?”
    “Allison, chill,” Quinn said. She sat down on Allison’s bed across from me and leaned against the footboard. I guess it was uncomfortable because she held out her arms for a pillow. I yanked one of the huge ones from the back and tossed it to her. There was practically steam shooting off the top of Allison’s head; she hates when people mess up her bed. But I could tell she was trying to be cool, not let Quinn think I could control my temper better than she could. Which I totally can. Allison grabbed her racquetagain and paced between her bed and her sofa.
    Quinn sighed. “The thing is, we don’t really know anything,” she whispered.
    “Tell me what you think.”
    “You can’t say anything to Mom or Daddy,” Quinn warned.
    “Obviously,” I said, leaning forward.
    “We’re totally serious, Phoebe,” Allison growled at me. “No hinting, no asking, nothing.”
    “Would you give me a break for one single second?”
    “Okay,” Quinn said. She was mashing a small white silk pillow between her hands. Quinn, who is always in control, who is so cool and calm my father calls her Zen sometimes,