Bits and Pieces (My Book of Short Stories)

A Lucky Break *story idea, open to public*

A girl named Regan Myers lives in a world where superstition is real. Black cats and broken mirrors count to lower your luck and ladybugs and horseshoes bring it up. All kinds of charms work from all parts of the world. So anything from dreamcatchers to alligator teeth to crickets will heighten your luck and make you more likely to have good fortune. However, things like breaking mirrors, crossing paths with a black cat, or even more obscure things like wishing someone happy birthday early, drinking water that reflect the moonlight, and even flipping over a cooked fish can bring misfortune and grief upon a family. Regan was unfortunate enough to break a mirror when she was 8, and she was thus cursed with 7 years of bad luck. A mirror's bad luck is long-lasting but mild. Nothing life-threatening, just annoying inconveniences like being splashed by a car passing through a roadside puddle or accidentally spilling coffee on an important essay. She usually has her lucky rabbit's foot with her to hold off the mirror's effects and make her life a little easier. But one day she accidentally leaves it at home. And the mirror doesn't waste its chance to strike back. 

- She makes her own lunch and accidentally puts like half of a container of super hot pepper flakes instead of just normal pepper/instead of just one little dash when the cap falls off.

- She gets almost no breakfast because her brothers ate it all.

- She tries to eat an apple from the fruit bowl but her brothers replaced the actual fruit with fake fruit and she almost breaks a tooth because it's made of STONE AND FOAM. No food for her. 

- She realizes that she left her rabbit's foot when she's about halfway to school and she can't go back and get it because she's already late. 

- The brake on her bike.. breaks. And she almost runs over a mom with her kid. Oops.

- Her locker won't open no matter what she does and she has to ask a teacher to help. I MEAN IT'S USUALLY KINDA TEMPERAMENTAL BUT COME ON-

- Group projects, yayyy... The teacher splits them up so she can't do it with her friends and she ends up having to do the project with one of the stereotypical "rebel" girls with half-shaved, crazy-dyed hair who gives her death glares and speaks in tumblr quotes about how she's a wolf and they're all sheep, blah blah blah. And she doesn't help with the work AT ALL. 

~ Prologue/Book description? ~

Regan Myers was never a particularly lucky person. Which wouldn't have been a big deal, normally. In this world everyone would just dismiss her misfortune as coincidence, or just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. All the time. But this world is a little different from hers. Mainly due to the fact that luck is not just a fabrication of peoples' imaginations. Luck, charms and omens, are all real. Black cats and broken mirrors really do bring bad things upon a person. Even the most down-to-earth, scientific minds had accepted that luck truly did effect people. 

Our unfortunate protagonist had sadly been cursed as a child, when she accidentally slammed head-first into a mirror while playing tag with her brothers. Fortunately she was unhurt and the glass fell to the floor without cutting her. But she was left with the terrible 7-year curse that broken mirrors are infamous for. She was 8 years old when the curse was placed upon her. And it hadn't let up since. From then on, bad things always seemed to happen to her and her alone. Nothing life-threatening or dangerous. Just inconveniences. Small inconveniences that somehow managed to throw off her whole day. Sometimes she felt as if the spirit of the mirror, or whatever had given her this curse, was hanging above her head like a rain cloud, cackling maniacally at her as she tried to save a piece of homework now drenched in orange juice, or shrieked in anger as the family's dog, Miso, vomited up stolen hot-dogs all over her bed. Ugh.

Fortunately she had found a way to deal with this. Although you can never truly be prepared for the moment bad luck strikes, she had figured out a way to balance out the curse with an equally powerful good luck charm. A lucky rabbit's foot that was clipped onto her backpack was her constant luck-equalizer. It minimized the broken mirror's effects as long as she kept it by her side. It worked perfectly for a long time and did its job diluting the curse.

However, you can only expect a certain degree of diligence from a 13 year old girl. And a little rabbit's foot is so easy to lose...