Bad Luck

• Samara Catton, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2015

I opened my Chinese fortune cookie and read: Your life is in danger. Say nothing to anyone. You must leave the city immediately and never return. Repeat: say nothing....

Leave the city and go where? I am just a kid! The message was handwritten in a child-like style. Who could have sent this? Why? I can feel the blood draining from my face and my breathing become shallow…

A waiter keeps coming past our table with a big, bright smirk on his face like the cat that caught the canary. Mum was sitting across the table eyeing me off wondering why I was acting so strange. She had noticed my sudden change of behaviour.

“Joey what’s wrong?” she questioned.

I mumbled my answer, “Nothing, I’m fine”.

Mum’s intuition told her that something was wrong, but she chose to remain silent. Quietly, I pondered as to how this little ‘note’ entered my fortune cookie, and as to who could have possibly written it. I was relieved when mum suggested we go home.

Sitting at home that evening, I tried to keep telling myself that it was just a practical joke otherwise I would continue to worry. Even this attempt at positive thinking wasn’t working for me. I sat pretending to watch TV but deep down inside I was shaking so much that I began to feel feverish.

A little voice was telling me to turn on the local news as if I was waiting for something to happen. Would there be something about the Golden Luck Restaurant? Mum grabbed my hand, and then squeezed it for a second.
She said, “Listen Joey I know something happened at the Golden Luck today; you weren’t yourself what happened?”

I wanted to tell her but the fortune instructed me not to tell anyone…

But mum insisted. She wouldn’t let me go to bed until I opened up. I took a deep breath:

“Okay mum, at the Golden Luck earlier today I got a dodgy note in my fortune cookie saying that my life was in danger if I did not leave the city immediately and I was to tell no one. Mum’s brow furrowed with concern. She asked me to show it to her and she noticed that it was handwritten.

“The culprit must have written it just before handing them out to us –the handwriting is terrible.”

She reassured me that everything would be okay and to go to sleep. I suddenly felt such relief. I slept.

As the bright morning sun streamed into my bedroom, mum’s smiling face appeared above me. She explained that she rang the restaurant last night after I went to bed and demanded an explanation about the fortune cookies. It appeared that the smirking waiter thought it would be funny if he terrorised the younger customers by writing scary messages as part of an April Fools’ Day joke. In the end the joke was on him. He lost his job.