Lucky DeWitt | d3

Unky Chuck likes to tell me I was born Lucky (har har har) because mum chose me out of all the other little babies in the... I dunno, place where babies are kept in the hospital and that's why she named me as such. Unky Chucks says if she hadn't bugged the system then my lucky little ass would have ended up in a meat grinder.

I told Shunky Shucks- and they said, "don't call me that," -that there's no way they would have put me in a meat grinder and I know for a fact they're just trying to get me to behave.

Kinda worked, I can't eat spaghetti sauce anymore 'cause the meat chunks make me think of where I could have ended up and mum says that Unky Chuck is full of poo and they're lying to me because I'm all hers.

But Gramps doesn't call me 'Baby Genius, nah you wouldn't get it, it's from a movie and don't ask me what a movie is' for nothing. When you grow up in a family of hackers you learn how to do a lot of stuff you aren't supposed to know how to do. I found the backdoor mum made in the hospital's mainframe when I was like, eight, it was that easy. She left her mark on it though, the way she always does. Little coded white dove with a bloody flag in its mouth.

Anyway, my parents died in a bombing at the end of the war and I was slotted for some secret military thing before my mum slunk onto the scene, easy as, and asked for her baby boy to take home.

That's me, I'm baby.

And they just handed me right on over, best hack in the whole world, or at least that's what Grams said when I revealed my master hack that had revealed mum's ancient hack at Sunday dinner.

Got very grounded for that one, but then it got redacted because mum couldn't decide if she was mad at me for going behind her back or proud of me for such a clean hack into her hack. Hackception, that's what Gramps calls it.

I don't know, it gets kind of confusing and I like hacking and all but right now I'm learning magic tricks.

Yeah, I found this book in the back of Aunt Shel's closet called, Sleight of Hand: A Practical Manual of Legerdemain for Amateurs & Others by this guy called Edwin. Now I can't stop asking people, is this your card? I got sent to my room on Monday because Dad was trying to have a serious conversation with me, meanwhile I'm pulling coins out from behind his ear.

But what's a guy to do when you turn twelve and suddenly the only thing your family cares about is preparing you for death?

I've got other stuff going on, like auditions for the school talent show are in a couple of weeks here and I still haven't mastered a perfect coin flip over my knuckles.

I'm busy, you know?

And I don't want to hear the way my mum and chuck whisper at each other in the dining room when I'm supposed to be asleep in my bed.

If they call my name at the reaping, then mum can just hack me right out probably. Or maybe I'll just finally figure out the disappearing trick.

Poof, gone, a cloud of smoke and I'm already running half-way across the district in my light up shoes.

They'll have to take that stupid boobhead Milo from B class instead, kid wears velcro on his shoes because he tried to choke Mr. Remidios out with his shoelaces for failing him on a test.

Like dude, it isn't that deep, you can just do an extra credit assignment, you know?

Whatever.

I hear my mom's muffled frantic whispers wafting through the house and I'm laying there in the press of the late summer heat and I'm thinking, maybe you should have just let the military have me back then.

If you were just going to mourn me before I'm even gone, maybe that would have been better?

And then yoink, I'd pull like a whole dollar out from behind her ear and slam it through the lid of a jar before she could even think.

Ask me how I did that! I'd say, and I'd shake it around in there clink clank clunk because I'm being a little shit.

But she'd be so amazed by my real life hack that she'd finally start laughing again.

We could just be so normal.