Such a Lucky Girl

by Wendy Heard

Genres: YA Horror

Synopsis

Perfect for fans of Rory Power and Tiffany D. Jackson, this twisty horror novel follows a magnetic young influencer who gets ensnared in a web of dark, jealousy-fueled magic.

Three years ago, Bella dumped her best friend Kerry to follow her dreams of becoming an influencer. It worked; she is Such a Lucky Girl, famous for her epic manifesting glow-up and dedicated to helping other girls be "lucky," too. She's living the dream—success, sponsorships, and fame. She burned her old life to the ground and never looked back. 
 
Leaving Kerry behind. Alone. Angry. 
 
When Kerry picks up a vintage self-help book on shadow work, she's fascinated by the suggested rituals. Get back at those who have wronged her? Yes, please. She has one person in mind, and that girl is smiling at her millions of followers, having forgotten Kerry long ago. But there's something attached to the book, something dark and ancient, and Kerry and Bella may not be ready for what is about to be unleashed.

Release date: June 16, 2026

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 384

Sample

It starts just like it always does: Slowly, I realize I’m not asleep. I’ve been drowsing, drifting on a melatonin haze, and I was so close.

Another half hour passes where I lie in grumpy, sweaty denial, anger rising inside me like high tide. It doesn’t make sense. I did everything the internet says to cure insomnia: I didn’t look at screens for an hour before bed; I took melatonin; I didn’t eat a heavy dinner. For god’s sake, I’m seventeen years old. There’s no reason.

And now I’m fully awake.

The internet says you aren’t supposed to lie in bed trying to sleep. You’re supposed to do something else, then lie down again when you feel sleepy.

What if you never feel sleepy? Or at least not until science class the following day when you pass out and drool on your desk? Hypothetically.

I turn on my bedside lamp and check the time. 2:12. I’m going to be exhausted tomorrow. Silently, I curse my brain for not cooperating with our society’s need to put everyone on the same sleep schedule.

I pull on a sweatshirt and tiptoe out of my room, grateful we have (old, smelly) carpet. In the dark kitchen, I fumble in the cabinet for Sleepytime tea and a mug, microwaving it without slamming the door, putting tiny amounts of pressure on the handle until it clicks softly. I can hear my stepdad whine-ranting in my head. “You know we have to work. Your brother needs his sleep.” I don’t think he’s particularly concerned about Connor; it’s just that Connor is an incoherent, thirteen-year-old moron and everyone in the house cherishes every moment he’s unconscious.

Back in my room, I slump into bed and get my phone off its charger, abandoning my blue light abstinence. I open Instagram, and of course, Bella comes up first. Her handle is @imsuchaluckygirl.

“Why, universe?” I groan, sipping my tea. I swear she gets blonder every time I open this godforsaken app.

“Comets are often symbols of change,” she chirps. “They can break the status quo and cause disruptions… and revelations.” She smiles, flashing perfect white teeth. “We’re reaching peak visibility for Comet Kimura, which can be seen from February through June. I’m going to be talking about different manifesting methods you can use to even greater effect while the comet is passing through, and we’ll explore some exciting techniques you can try for the upcoming lunar eclipse. Let’s start with the three-six-nine approach.”

I pause the video, my eyes tracing the lines of her face. She’s changed since we were friends. I joke about her getting blonder, but her hair hasn’t actually been lightened; it just looks… glossier, like it’s spun from metallic thread. Her eyes look brighter, her skin smooth and supple.

She built her platform one manifesting video at a time, always describing herself as “such a lucky girl,” talking about how fortunate she is to have learned to manifest, about changing her life and turning herself into a whole new person, blah blah blah.

I exit the video and switch to my burner account (yes, I made an account for stalking Bella, shut up). I go to her Reels and click on her top pinned video. It has 4.9 million views and is titled “My Manifestation Glow-Up,” the words in script on the cover image. She’s wide-eyed with apparent excitement, having just successfully manifested a car. “I can’t believe it worked,” she says, jingling her keys at the camera. “If you had seen me a couple of years ago, you’d never have thought I could do this.” She flashes to some pictures of her from freshman year. In one of them, she’s smiling with her arm around me, but I’m cut out of the frame.

Bitch.

I mean, yeah, she had shorter hair, and she definitely dressed less femme back then. But her glow-up is greater than the sum of its parts. She really seems like a different person.

I scroll through the comments, looking for fellow haters, and smile at Manifest me hooking up with your mom. Another says, You need to manifest yourself an ass. Yours is so flat, it’s like your legs just stop. Okay, that’s mean. I create a comment, double-checking that I’m using my burner account. I don’t talk to her anymore, and I doubt she even reads all her comments, but it’s somehow… satisfying?… to drop these uncensored one-liners. You’re white, skinny, and pretty. The world gives you whatever you want. That’s not manifesting, that’s capitalism, baby.

Secretly, I do everything she says. Because, look—I despise her, don’t get me wrong. Despise. She dropped me the second she entered glow-up season, and she’s never looked back. But also? I wouldn’t mind some of that energy flowing in my direction. I need a car. It’s a miracle whenever my mom lets me drive her crappy sedan.

So, I take notes, and I try to visualize myself as pretty and shiny, just like Bella. Because as much as I hate her, I hate myself more.

Brianna opens her eyes groggily, not sure what woke her up. It’s the middle of the night, right? She fumbles for her phone on the nightstand and checks the time.

2:12.

From the wall that separates her room and her sister’s comes the sound of talking, a familiar bright, competent tone. That’s what woke me up, she realizes with frustration.

She shoves off the duvet and stumbles out of bed, tired enough to lose her balance as she steps over the piles of clothes that litter her floor. She tiptoes into the darkened hallway and listens at her sister’s door. The voice is louder here. Brianna feels her eyebrows draw into a scowl, and she pushes the door open.

The room is strategically lit by a ring light pointing at her sister’s face, a side lamp, and the nightstand lamp, a premeditated combo of gold and blue light her sister swears make her hair and skin look glowier. And there she is, sitting at her usual spot in front of her curated wall of plants and books and crystals. She’s wearing a full face of makeup and a going-out outfit, and she looks so alert, Brianna wonders if this is a dream.

“What. The. Freak,” Brianna says, her voice hoarse.

Bella groans and pokes at her phone, wobbling the tripod. “Dammit, Bri, I was almost done. Now I have to re-record.”

“It’s two in the morning.”

“I’ll sleep with my makeup on and get a few hours in,” Bella says, like this is totally normal.

“I can’t sleep when you’re recording. Your social media voice is so freaking loud.”

“It is not,” Bella protests, touching up her lip gloss. “Now get out. I have to finish.”

“Ughhhhh.” Brianna lets herself out. When the door closes, she waits in the darkened hallway until she hears Bella’s voice.

“Let’s talk about problems with the three-six-nine manifestation method,” Bella begins, because, as she’s told Brianna a million times: “You always start a video with conflict.”

Across the hallway, the door opens, and their mom pokes her head out. She’s lathered up in skin cream, her strawberry blond hair in a silk wrap. “What’re you doing up?” she whispers.

“Bella is recording,” Brianna complains, too tired to care about being a rat.

Her mom looks bewildered by Brianna’s annoyance. “She’s being productive. Getting it done. Being a boss girl.”

“She should be sleeping,” Brianna retorts. They’re keeping their voices low so they don’t mess up Bella’s recording.

“I’ll lend you some earplugs,” her mom says, beckoning Brianna into her room. “Let her finish. She’s always done by four.”

“This isn’t normal,” Brianna protests.

Brianna’s alarm goes off at seven, the same time as Bella’s. She can hear Bella’s gentle-nature wake-up sounds through the wall as she silences her own factory-setting alarm. She groans into her pillow. It took her an hour to fall back asleep, annoyance at both her sister and mom hammering at her skull. She drags herself out of bed and into a pair of jeans and a hoodie. Bella is hogging their bathroom, so Brianna packs her backpack and heads to the kitchen.

Her mom is chugging coffee and scrolling through her phone, wearing pink Victoria’s Secret pajamas and a white silk robe. “Morning, babe,” she says, not looking up.

Brianna grunts and gets down a box of Multi Grain Cheerios. Her mom flits her eyes over and says, “So much sugar.”

“So much sugar,” Brianna mimics, fresh out of fucks to give.

“Morning,” Bella says, tossing her backpack onto the breakfast table. “Bri, bathroom’s all yours.”

“How’d the video come out?” their mom asks.

Bella pulls a protein bar out of the cabinet. It’s one of the disgusting all-natural ones. “Fine. I should really batch them on the weekends, but then it’s not as authentic. People want to see the work I’m doing as it happens, in real time.” She pours a cup of coffee from the pot and adds oat milk from the fridge. “Do we have honey?”

Their mom hands it over. Neither she nor Bella eats refined sugar. “You’re going to be tired after school, but don’t skip your workout. That’ll just make you more tired, trust me.”

“I have Associated Student Body stuff, but I’ll at least go on a jog.” Bella stirs her coffee and takes a grateful sip.

“Good.” Their mom flashes Bella a smile full of pride. Brianna scarfs Cheerios in silence, wondering if maybe she should be better about processed foods. She isn’t overweight, but maybe she will be in the future. It’s something she worries about and then feels guilty because of body positivity and fatphobia and the patriarchy. And yet—both Bella and her mom are leaner than she is from all the Pilates and jogging. Is it normal for an eighth grader to be heavier than both her older sister and her mom?

Bella turns her pretty brown eyes to Brianna. “Come on, Bri, we gotta head out. I need to get to school a little early and drop by the ASB office.”

“I’ll brush my teeth,” Brianna says, dumping her bowl in the sink and hurrying down the hall. Bella is wearing a pink plaid skirt, white shirt, and Converse, a really cute look with her long, tanned legs. Brianna’s in jeans and a sweatshirt. In the fall, Brianna will start high school, and everyone will be like, “Is that seriously Bella Wright’s sister? She’s so plain.”

I need a makeover, she realizes. Just like Bella gave herself.

But I don’t want to, a voice inside her protests.

It doesn’t matter.

My alarm goes off at seven. I shove the blankets off, silencing my phone with a series of violent jabs. I finally fell asleep at three, and my eyes feel grainy with exhaustion. I’m going to be useless today.

I’m shoving toast into my mouth while Connor crunches his way through a bowl of Lucky Charms when I check social media again. There’s Bella, her #MondayManifesting video posted at six a.m. sharp. “Let’s talk about problems with the three-six-nine manifestation method,” she begins.

“The problem with the method,” Connor singsongs, imitating her annoyingly chipper voice, and I can’t help but smile. Sometimes he’s funny. I mean, he’s a horrible little douchebag. But occasionally he cracks a good joke. It doesn’t redeem him.

I listen to Bella’s instructions about breathing and centering as I finish breakfast and brush my teeth. Before I go to school, I dig my journal out from under my mattress (a cliché hiding spot, I know) and do what Bella says: I breathe deeply and try to clear my mind, not summoning images of what I want until I’m fully present in the moment. “Mom says you have to hurry up,” Connor yells from the hallway.

My concentration is shattered, and I throw a pillow at the closed door. “Go away!”

He scratches his nails on the door, something he did as a kid when pretending to be a velociraptor. It’s locked, of course, but that doesn’t stop him from trying. “What are you doing in there?”

“I’m texting your friends a photo of Captain Underpants.” As a kid, he went through a cape-and-underwear phase and I’ll never let him forget I have pictures.

He explodes into fury, trying to bash through the door. I hear Mom come out of her room screaming, and there’s a battle in the hallway. At last, he’s quiet, and Mom knocks. “Kerry, we gotta go. I’m gonna be late.”

I shove my journal under the mattress and grab my backpack. Connor is waiting by the front door. “You better not send those pictures,” he says.

“Like I have your disgusting friends’ phone numbers.” He can’t stay this clueless forever. How will he survive?

Relieved that today isn’t the day he’ll have to enter a government protection program to save him from certain death at his middle school, Connor lurches outside, Mom shoving him ahead of her.

Bella’s manifestation thing better work. I need a car.

I remember I’m going to see her in first period, and I feel a groan working itself up from my very soul. I have no makeup on, and I look like absolute crap. Oh, well. No one sees me at school, anyway.

Somehow, I make it to school on time. I’m seated in first period and clicking around on my Chromebook when Bella shows up in a pink skirt, Converse, and a tight white shirt that shows off her Pilates figure. She looks like something out of a magazine, and it’s not even eight thirty. “Hi,” she says over and over again to the people who greet her as they enter the classroom. I think of this as her Queen of England persona: She has an obligation to divide her attention evenly among the populace. I slump deeper into my desk/chair combo, my hair falling forward to cover my face.

She sits straight up, getting out the notebook and pencils she buys at a Japanese stationery store in Santa Monica. She visits her dad in LA sometimes—it’s only an hour and a half south—and she likes to shoot videos of herself in upscale LA settings. I happen to know from our four-year-long friendship that she hates visiting her dad. He’s remarried to a woman who wishes she and her sister didn’t exist. But maybe that’s changed, too.

At lunch, I’m tucked into my usual corner of campus—over by the east gate they padlocked because a sex offender once snuck in that way—with Quinn. We’re leaning back against the wall, trying to take a nap. The March sun is sort of warm, and we’re dreaming of summer, the beach, anything beyond this moment. Ventura’s weather is almost always cool and mild, but sometimes, the salty air can feel dank, the foggy ocean humidity creeping up your sleeves until all you want is to drive east into the desert and let the sun broil off that sticky cold.

“I could actually sleep,” Quinn says, eyes closed. Their cheek-length black hair is cut shaggy, and they’re wearing one of their baggy jeans and T-shirts outfits. We are not a particularly fashionable duo. I like to think I pull off a sort of dark academia, nineties grunge girl vibe, but I probably just look like a forgettable brunette in a flannel. We aren’t best friends; we never hang out on weekends, but we’ve gradually grown used to each other’s company at school, and they’re the closest friend I have.

“Hey,” a male voice says. We open our eyes and see Oliver standing above us. My heart flip-flops in my chest. He’s not looking at me, though; his brown eyes are on Quinn. He asks, “You do the Spanish homework? I completely forgot about it.”

“Yeah. Come sit, you can copy.”

Oliver flops down on Quinn’s other side, his wavy dark hair making little shapes around his cheeks. I wonder what I should say to him. Something clever, something to get his attention—

I catch Quinn watching me, a little smile tucked into the corner of their mouth. I feel my cheeks heat up, and I turn my attention to my phone.

Oliver is… well… he’s a friend. He’s someone I’ve known since last year when we had Algebra II together. A series of biographical details don’t do him justice. He’s smart, yes, and he plays soccer, and he’s always forgetting to do his Spanish homework despite being mostly bilingual. He’s funny and kind and not douchey and doesn’t seem bothered by anything, ever. He’s . . .

Well, he’s the real reason I’ve been trying Bella’s manifestation bullshit. Yeah, I want a car, and yeah, I’d love a glow-up. But if I’m being honest (cringe), I’ve been hoping to get his attention. Pathetic.

After school, I take the bus back to my neighborhood, which is a few miles inland, off Telegraph Road. The cloud bank has burned off, and the sky is a bright, clean blue. The air smells vaguely of fertilizer from the fields south of town, and cars whoosh by me as I turn my steps onto a side street.

Ruby Barnes is eighty-five years old and lives alone in an apartment a couple of blocks from me. When I knock, it takes her a minute to answer. She’s wearing a short-sleeved sweater and stretchy slacks, both in pink, and her white hair is wispy around her face. “How was school?” she asks, letting me in.

“Good, thanks.” I look around the apartment. It’s not too bad today. A little cluttered; she has more stuff than God. But the kitchen is only sort of trashed, and the living room just needs to be picked up and dusted.

I follow Ruby into the kitchen, where she makes us coffee. This is our routine, three times a week: First we chat, then she naps while I clean. At six, I leave, forty bucks richer. At this rate, I’ll be able to buy a car in 2064.

“How are your friends?” Ruby asks as I sip the coffee I’m so grateful for, I could kiss her. We’re at the dining table. A lazy Susan in the center is covered in ceramic figurines, little shepherdesses and kittens.

“They’re fine. I think we’re all ready for the school year to be over.”

She gazes into the middle distance, which means nostalgia is incoming. Sure enough, she says, “Seventeen. What a time. Do kids your age go dancing?”

I die, imagining it. “Absolutely not.”

“Bowling?”

“Too expensive.” I get up and pour another cup of coffee from the pot.

“Billiards? Movies? Bonfires on the beach?”

“Expensive. Expensive. Illegal. But some people make bonfires once in a while, usually the rich kids who don’t mind getting a ticket.”

She goes into one of her favorite rants about how kids these days have nothing to do with their time, which is why they’re getting depressed sitting around on their devices instead of “Living Life.” She has a lot to say about Living Life. I don’t mind. It’s not like I disagree with her.

Ruby totters off for her nap, unaffected by the caffeine, and I start dusting. One entire wall of her living room is covered in floor-to-ceiling shelves that house both books and keepsakes. I’m always fascinated by the library she’s amassed. There must be a thousand books ranging from Nora Roberts to Dean Koontz to Jane Eyre to self-help books from the sixties. I’ve categorized them for her, but she loves to undo my work on my days off. Today, some of the self-help books are scattered around. As I reorganize, I find You Be You by a pervy-looking bearded white man named, impossibly, Guru Jimmy Campbell Krishna. I stare at this cover for a long moment, shake my head, and find a spot for it next to a series of books about trauma. Someday, I’m going to make Ruby tell me her life story in chronological order.

I come across an old black-spined book titled As Within and wonder if this was written by another yoga fraud. The cover is simplicity itself: all black, the title in loopy, delicate script. I flip it open, and I find the author information to be brief: Amanda Haggarty was her name. She was a doctor of psychology and lived in Santa Barbara. I find the publication date. 1962. The early hippie days. Paging forward, I read the dedication:

This book is for everyone who deeply feels their shadow selves. May you fully embrace all you truly are.

“Shadow selves” is kind of a cool phrase. I’m curious. I toss it on the table beside my purse to peruse later. Ruby is fine with me borrowing books whenever I want.

Back to dusting. Why does this woman have so many cursed porcelain figurines? How have they even survived all the earthquakes she’s lived through? Maybe she replaces them when they break. The thought makes me inexplicably sad.

Oliver is fighting with a paper on the First World War. It’s 4:45 p.m. at the Starbucks near campus, so of course the place is full of kids from school. He notices Bella enter and get in line, her backpack slung over one slim shoulder, golden hair brushed neatly down her back.

At the table beside his, a group of girls are looking at Bella too, their expressions catty. He recognizes them but doesn’t know them well. They do the school play, choir, that whole scene. He can’t help overhearing them; he’s not wearing headphones, and they’re talking pretty loudly.

One girl is telling the group about something she and Bella are working on in ASB. She calls Bella “Miss Perfect,” rolling her eyes as she details her own superiority and the injustice of Bella’s popularity. “I don’t see what the big deal is,” she complains, running a hand through her red hair. “She’s not that special. And like, all this manifesting stuff is complete bullshit.”

“Total bullshit,” a petite blonde with glasses agrees. “She’s so fucking fake.”

“Fake,” chimes in the third girl, a pretty brunette. “She has no actual personality. She’s, like, an influencer robot.”

Bella makes it to the front of the line. Oliver shakes his head and returns to his work. Girls can be mean. He has a sister; he gets the inside scoop, so he shouldn’t be surprised.

The next time he looks up, Bella has her drink and is stopping beside their table. “I love your jeans,” she tells the brunette. “Did you get them at Urban?”

The girl looks like Bella has bestowed eternal life upon her. “Um, no, actually. Target. I think they’re Levi’s.”

“No way! I love them!” Bella smiles warmly. “You guys doing homework? I’m totally buried.”

“Yeah,” the blonde says, looking at Bella with suspicion.

“Well, good luck.” Bella waves and walks away, heading for the exit. The girls watch her go.

“I saw her flirting with Ben,” the brunette says when she’s out of earshot.

“Skye’s boyfriend?” the blonde gasps.

“Bitch,” the brunette says, returning to her work. Oliver wonders if the Ben thing could be true and sort of doubts it.

His grandma has always told his sister not to make a spectacle of herself lest she attract the evil eye. Seeing how everyone reacts to Bella, he gets it. It’s that ugly part of human nature that impels people to devour news articles about Kardashian divorces and celebrity plastic surgeries gone wrong, to click on articles about famous people looking bad in bathing suits. Humans as a species have a hunger to hurt each other, and when one rises too high, there are always hordes waiting to shoot her down.

Oliver has never been told not to rise too high, though. Only his sister. This is the first time he’s ever wondered why.

It’s estimated that up to 40 percent of the world’s population has cultural traditions surrounding the evil eye. Protective amulets have been found dating back at least five thousand years. But who is giving the evil eye? The answer is: the shadow self.

Let’s look at an example. A young mother brings her baby to a religious service, and the baby is crowded with admirers. What a beautiful child! But the baby’s grandmother catches a few women looking at her grandchild with something like hunger, malice, or envy. Quickly, she places a talisman around the baby’s neck and moves the baby into a private place. She is attempting to ward off the evil eye.

The women looking at the baby didn’t intend to harbor dark wishes upon the innocent child. If you asked them, they’d deny such a horrible thing. But one of the women lost a child of her own last year, and she doesn’t understand why this mother deserves to be so blessed. The other has never found a partner, and she longed for a baby of her own for so many moons that she eventually grew jealous of all the mothers around her. The last has children, but they’ve grown up and become estranged. None of these women understand that their shadow selves wish that baby ill.

The bus driver calls a stop, and I look up from the book. I’m majorly sucked into As Within; I started reading it while waiting for the bus and haven’t stopped. It’s interesting, this idea of a shadow self.

I pull up Bella’s latest video, pause it, and study her face. Do I give her the evil eye? After a minute, I return to the book.

Each of us has an individual shadow, and our society—the collection of past, present, and future humans—has a communal shadow as well. “The shadow is the negative side of the ego… it is our inner devil, the personification of evil,” says Carl Jung.

I flip back to the beginning. Before the first chapter, there’s a different quote from the same guy: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”—Carl Jung

I quickly google Carl Jung and discover that he seems to have invented the idea of a shadow self and a collective unconscious. I read about him on Wikipedia for a minute and then get back to the book.

If you find yourself giving someone the evil eye—and you’ll know you’re doing it because when you look at them, you feel jealousy and something dark and spiteful rising up inside you—the best thing you can do is to embrace your own shadow. Become intimate with your darkest self. S. . .