“Louis Pasteur, the French biologist, microbiologist—all-around genius—once said that ‘Chance favors the prepared mind.’ I kept thinking about this last night, and I realized that he’s saying if we cover all our bases—plan for the worst and the best—then chance will be on our side. And I think most people, to some extent, already do some variation of that in their day-to-day lives. But with you, you’ve had so many bad things happen that you’ve stopped preparing for the best, and you’re assuming the worst, so subconsciously, you’re only preparing for the worst, so the negative outcomes continue, and thus you seem to have hit a bad luck streak. Are you following?”
“Hardly.”
“Okay, well, that’s unfortunate, but let’s go to my second piece of evidence, attributed to Ugo Betti who said—”
“We’re trying to lift a curse and fix my life with advice from Ugly Betty?”
“Do you want my help or not?”
I pretended to zip my lips and throw away the key.
“Alright, Betti said, ‘We cannot bear to regard ourselves simply as playthings of blind chance.’ We can’t just sit around and let chance do whatever it wants with us. So that, combined with what Pasteur said, led me to the revelation that we just need to prepare you for both outcomes, so you stop only preparing for the worst and recognizing the bad.” Her blue eyes focus on me, her chest expanding with a slow breath like my response holds a weight—a value.
“So, in a nutshell, you’re saying that I’ve had so much bad luck that it’s the only thing I see, and per Frenchy, ‘prepare for,’ and to start seeing the good again, I have to prepare for everything?
“Essentially.”
“But how do I prepare for everything? Am I supposed to question if a chair is going to break or not before I sit down?”
“Well, technically, your brain’s wired to do a lot of that for you without much conscious thought. You’re already looking at things and situations to see if they appear safe, but right now, I’m thinking larger scale. We need to tip the odds to be in your favor.”
“How?”
“Well, we’ll devise a list of things for you to do where we set you up for a successful outcome.”
Humor makes my lips twitch. “Really?”
Olivia nods. “This is serious, stop laughing.” She points a finger at me. “Today, I’m going to prove it.” She reaches into her back pocket and produces two tickets that she presents to me.
I stare at the small image printed on them with the words ‘Portland Trailblazers’ written in red and black lettering. My gaze jumps to her. “You got tickets to tonight’s game?”
She nods, her shoulders bobbing like this is no big deal.
“They’re playing the Utah Jazz. This game is definitely sold out.”
“What I hear you saying is, this is really good luck.”
I tip my head back, a nearly silent laugh leaving a quiet echo in my ears. “If you’re pulling my leg and these are fake to try and test me, I’m going to cry. Don’t do this to me, Liv.”
“Olivia,” she corrects.
I grin. “Are they real?”
She hands them to me. “It’s nearly a three hour drive each way.”
I turn them over, examining the small text covering much of the back, and the perforated lines that make them appear authentic. “Like that matters. This game is huge. How’d you land these?”
She shakes her head, a thin smile that makes her appear almost shy spreads across her face. “Go to the game. Have fun. Eat a forty-dollar hot dog, and if a ball hits you, consider it good luck because you’ll get to take it home.”
“You can’t wear a Texas sweatshirt to a Blazers game,” I tell her.
Her eyes do a slow dance over my face before she shakes her head. “I wasn’t going. You can take a friend.”
“Well, change your plans. And your sweatshirt.”
“I don’t—”
I shake my head before she can finish. “Nope. You’re going. You probably had to sell your soul to land these tickets. There’s no way you can’t go.”
“I don’t know anything about the teams,” she admits.
“No time to learn like the present.” I glance at the tickets again, catching the time stamp. “We’ve got to get going. Tip-off is in three and a half hours. This really is going to test your luck theory.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. Go.”
Hesitance flashes across her features by way of a slightly pinched brow and her lips pulling into a line, but rather than object again, she heads toward her room where I hear a door