Her Lucky Charm - Cassie Cole Page 0,2

room in the casino dedicated to sports gambling. Giant TV screens covering the walls, showing every sporting event around the world. When I gazed at that day’s wager sheet, the numbers seemed to jump off the page at me. Whether it was horse racing, or hockey, or football, or even cricket matches in Pakistan, I always had a feeling for who would win.

Granted, I didn’t win one hundred percent of the time. But I won more often than not. And over time, those bets added up.

I made a great living the first year there. The second year was even better. Things were going great. I bought a condo a mile off the strip. It was for sale by owner—I just happened to be walking by right when they put the sign out in the yard. They were trying to get rid of it quickly, and I made them an offer on the spot.

Like I said: ever since I was a little girl, I had always been incredibly lucky.

Until, one day, I wasn’t.

2

Rose

I was sitting in the Sportsbook in The Wynn Casino on a Friday night, nursing a ginger ale. I liked The Wynn because it was a short walk from my condo, and because they had one of the larger Sportsbook rooms on the strip. They also had a high threshold for kicking routine winners out, unlike Bellagio or The Venetian. I had been here long enough that I was on a first-name basis with most of the tellers and pit bosses. It felt like home as much as my condo did.

Vegas casinos were filled with security cameras. They had entire teams dedicated to watching customers and identifying people who won too much. Because of that, I only hung around card games and slot machines for a few minutes at a time. Anything longer than that risked getting on the casino’s radar as someone who was consistently beating the odds. With that in mind, I spent most of my time in the Sportsbook. A slot machine could potentially be hacked or modified, and blackjack was susceptible to card-counting. But there was no way to cheat when betting on sports. It’s not like I could magically make Tom Brady throw an interception.

My night started well enough at the Sportsbook. It was the first week of January, and there were a lot of games on: basketball, hockey, and playoff football. I was ahead in most of my wagers so far. Just like any other night.

Everything was going fine until the Clippers game. Their point guard went up for a rebound and landed awkwardly, twisting his ankle.

“Shit,” I said, along with half the patrons in the crowded Sportsbook. The Clippers were favored by five points, and were on track to cover that easily. But without their point guard, the Bucks were able to wear them down and win by two.

I had a lot of parlay bets going tonight. A parlay bet was a wager combining multiple games into one bet. The Clippers game was in most of my parlay bets, so when they lost it ruined my night.

My hockey wagers were even worse. Whichever game I started watching immediately swung against me. I turned to the Dallas Stars game, and they gave up a goal. I found the TV for the Sacramento Kings, and their goalie was immediately injured.

I downed the rest of my ginger ale and opened my wagers notebook. It was technically a diary mom had given me for my fifteenth birthday, an expensive one bound with brown moleskin, but I didn’t like how girly that sounded so I called it a notebook. Besides, I preferred to fill it with numbers instead of teenage secrets.

I had been using it for years, rebinding it with new pages whenever it was full. I wrote down every single sports wager I made inside. I made a check-mark next to every winner and an X next to every loser.

There were a lot of Xs tonight.

My friend Danny slumped into the booth next to me and took a long gulp from his beer. “That Clippers game fucked me up. How about you?”

“Yep,” I said while flipping through my notebook. “They’re a different team when Alvarez isn’t running point.”

“Bad luck about his ankle.” Danny grimaced. “How was your New Year’s?”

“Spent it in here,” I said. “Watched the fireworks over Bellagio. That was nice.”

“Make any resolutions?”

I shook my head. “I’m good about making goals throughout the year. I don’t need to do it just because the calendar flipped.”

He