Page 1: "Unlucky"

Chapter 1: Bewitched, Bothersome, and Badly Lucky

“You are only as strong as you choose to believe, weakness comes when you decide to limit what you’ll be.

You have every reason to be hurt, lost, and afraid, for everything life’s thrown at you has been so hard to brave. But you must find the will it takes to stand on your own feet, to trust that you can fly if you have the courage to leap.

 The power inside of yourself is the bewitches key, because with that magic you cannot be so unlucky.”

-- Mary Melinda Morose

When Kersted Morose picked the four-leaf clover off the face of the soccer pitch, she thought her luck had finally started to change. That was, of course, until the ball careened for the net, bounced off the goal post, hit her square in the face, and she watched in slow-motion horror as the whole team stampeded over her to get it.

The Black Cats still lost, as did her clover, which turned out never to have had four leaves at all.

Kersted’s mother surely could not have anticipated the backlash of naming her, and oh how easily it came, in poetic repetition. The chanting of “Curse-ed Kersted” had already started, bitter-spitted whispers filed past as her teammates fled the field.

The mocking stung worse than her face, which had certainly turned red, if not purple, from the imprinted grid of the ball.

At least she wasn’t bleeding this time.

Kersted hung her head, dragging her feet and her folded, clover-less hands towards the already emptying stands. There her mother waited, wearing her winner’s smile, which was so honestly displaced that it only added to Kersted’s shame.

“You almost could have won that time!” Winnie Morose clapped her palms together in cheer.

“I almost could have become fertilizer,” Kersted moaned.

“Then the grass would have been oh so lucky!” her mom chirped back.