Good Luck Monster

Good Luck Monster

           Michael tried to tell his dads that there was a monster under his bed, they did not believe him, but he could hear it under there!

           One night, Michael was brave enough to look. His dads had tucked him in, he could hear his sister Abby snoring down the hall, and everything was quiet except for the monster under his bed. That thing was always moving, turning over like it couldn’t get comfy…

           He pulled his covers off slowly, being as quiet as he could so that the monster didn’t know what he was about to do. He pulled his knees up to his chest and used his arms to push himself forward to crawl to the end of his bed. Slowly. Quietly. Michael pretended he was a cat, light and silent, creeping to the edge of his blanket, and stopping. Holding his breath.

           Michael was scared, what if he saw the monster and it gobbled him up? Everyone was sleeping, and no one believed him. What if they thought he ran away? He did not want to think about either of his parents coming into his room in the morning, finding him gone. It made him sad to go with his scared. He took a deep breath, let it out, and jumped off his bed.

           Michael landed on the floor and turned quickly, he was pretty sure the monster could not jump out at him if he was looking right at it, and he did not want to be surprised. He got back down on his hands and knees and squinted under his bed. He was expecting a big, green, hairy monster with a big nose and big mouth, and even bigger eyes, snarling and drooling, waiting to tear him apart. That was not what he saw under his bed, though.

Looking back at him was a monster, but it didn’t scare him. It did have big eyes, but they were looking at him curiously, not hungrily. What Michael saw was a small (a little smaller than him, but he was already 11 and the second tallest in his class) bluish-purple and slightly sparkling creature. It had a head shaped almost like the gecko Mr. Meyer had as the class pet, but more round. The monster blinked, surprised that he was face to face with someone and held up a hand that looked like the mittens Michael’s dad made him wear on cold days. It was waving hello!

Michael raised his hand to wave back, and realized his mouth was hanging open. He closed it with a snap, but almost at once opened it back up again to ask, “You’re not going to eat me, are you?” getting ready to run for the door if it said yes. The creature smiled and shook its head, so Michael felt relieved. He believed it, he did not know why, but he knew it was telling him the truth and he was safe.

“What’s your name?” Michael asked.

The monster looked at him for a second and crawled out from under the bed. It stretched and sat next to Michael, in a high voice it answered, “Karmo, nice to meet you!” it stuck out it’s mitten hand to shake.

Michael took it’s hand and shook, they were friends now. “Why are you here? Why were you hiding under my bed?”

“I am your good luck monster, it’s my job to show you how to make your own luck! I’ve been waiting for you to be ready to meet me, so we could get started, it’s awfully uncomfortable under there, do you have a spare pillow?”

Michael didn’t know what this meant, but he knew good luck was a good thing, so he smiled and grabbed one of his pillows off his bed, handing it to Karmo. “How are you going to teach me to make good luck?”

“We’ll start tomorrow! For now, let’s go to sleep. I will finally be comfy under here, and we can both get some rest!”

Michael thought he was probably too excited to sleep, but he crawled back in his bed and laid with his eyes closed. He couldn’t wait to tell his family that he was right, there was a monster under his bed, and it was friendly! He was imagining their faces when he brought Karmo into the living room when he slipped into sleep without even knowing it, a smile on his face.

“Michael, wakey wakey!” His dad was leaning into his door, calling to wake him up. Michael sat up and rubbed his eyes, thinking of his strange dreams he had, the sparkly monster with a weird name and mitten hands. Weird. He got up, got dressed for school, and headed down the hall to the dining room for a bowl of cereal before school.

Abby was at the table, eating her cereal and swinging her legs. Michael’s dad put a bowl down on the table, “Grab a spoon and dig in, we have to leave a little early today, and I still have to drop the car off to your dad after I leave you at school. Anything going on after school today or are we picking you two up at the normal time?” their dad was leaning up against the counter now, eating his own cereal.

“Nope, noth-“ Michael stopped suddenly, standing on the counter behind his dad was the monster with the weird name. It wasn’t a dream. Karmo was in the kitchen.

“Michael? You ok?”

“The monster from under my bed is behind you!”

Michael’s dad laughed, turned around, and turned back to Michael smiling, “Are you all the way awake? There’s nothing behind me, bud, and your cereal is getting soggy. Eat up so we can hit the road” he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, his dad had looked right at Karmo and didn’t see him! He looked at Abby, who was looking at him with milk running down her chin, confused. She didn’t see him either.

Michael was sitting in Mr. Meyer’s class, and Karmo was sitting on the floor next to him. Michael was trying to ignore the creature, but he couldn’t. He raised his hand and asked to go to the bathroom. When Mr. Meyer said yes, he grabbed the hall pass hanging by the door and speed walked to the bathroom.

He checked under the stalls for feet, and when he was sure there wasn’t anyone else in the bathroom with them, he turned to Karmo, “What are you doing?? I thought you lived under my bed!” he whispered loudly.

“Why would you think that?” Karmo tilted that reptile-like head to the side.

“Well, because that’s where you’ve been this whole time, why are you at my school?”

“I told you, I’m here to show you how to make your own luck”

“How is following me around not saying anything, supposed to teach me anything?”

“When it’s time, I’ll show you. I promise”

Michael knew if he stayed in the bathroom any longer, he was going to be in trouble. He nodded to Karmo and walked out of the bathroom, heading back to his classroom.

They were sitting in class a little while later, doing multiplication. Michael was good at math, so he liked it. He finished the worksheet and looked around. The boy next to him was tapping his pencil on the paper, his hand was in his hair, and Michael could tell he was having a hard time with the math lesson. Well, some people just aren’t good at math, he thought.

Karmo tapped him on the shoulder.

Michael knew he couldn’t say anything to Karmo in the quiet classroom, so he just looked at the creature.

“Ask him if he wants help!” Michael shook his head no, if he wanted help, he could ask Mr. M.

“Ask him!”

Michael sighed, leaning over to the kid he whispered, ”Which one are you stuck on?”

The boy looked up at Michael, surprised, “#3, I’m not good at doing the 9s. What did you get?”

Michael started to give him the answer, but Karmo tapped him again and shook that head, “Giving the answer now won’t help him next time”.

So, instead, he showed the kid a trick with his hands to find the answer for multiplication problems where 9 and any number 10 or less were multiplied. The boy’s eyes lit up as it clicked, and he wasn’t stuck anymore, “Thank you!” the boy smiled, and Michael leaned back into his own desk, he was smiling too. He looked around, Karmo was gone.

When Michael got home, he almost ran to his room. He had to make sure Karmo had made it here, he hadn’t seen it since math! He threw his door open and looked around. No Karmo. Michael stepped into the room and closed the door, getting on his hands and knees to look under the bed.

No Karmo.

Michael sighed and stood up, turning towards the door, and stopped. He smiled, Karmo was sitting on the bed, smiling at him. “Where have you been?” Michael demanded, hands on his hips.

“Here, waiting for you!” Karmo blinked, “Did anything good happen to you after I left?”

“No, like what?”

“Think hard. Nothing even a bit lucky happened for the rest of the day?”

Michael thought. He ran through the rest of his day in his head. He snapped his fingers and smiled, pointing at Karmo, “I got the last chocolate milk at lunch today!” He didn’t even realize how lucky that was, until just now.

“Now that is lucky! That’s what I’m here to teach you! Luck doesn’t just happen out of nowhere; you have to make it.”

“But how did I make that good luck? I didn’t wait until there was only one chocolate milk left and then get my lunch. It just worked out that way.”

“When you do nice things for other people or animals, nice things happen to you. That’s how the universe works. Do you remember the nice thing you did today, that you normally wouldn’t do?”

Michael thought for a moment, tapping his chin like he had seen his dad do when he was deciding what to make for dinner. He snapped his fingers again, “The math trick!” he never would have helped that kid if Karmo hadn’t told him to, but he had felt good afterwards. He grinned, looking at Karmo.

“Exactly! I’ll be here to help you make the right choices, to put that good luck out, so that you can get good luck back in.

“So, I’ll have something lucky happen to me every day? Cool!” Michael was excited, he had heard of lucky rabbits feet and 4 leaf clovers, but he had his very own luck monster! Too bad no one else seemed to be able to see him.

“Not every day. The thing about luck is you never know if it is going to come back to you this minute, today, tomorrow, a month or even a year from now. The important thing is to just keep putting kindness into the lives of others, and it will come back to you when it is meant to.”

And so, Karmo and Michael went to school together every day. They played on the playground at recess, where Michael would help other kids to the nurse when they fell and picking the littlest kids first for kickball games. Karmo was there when Michael picked up the house without being asked, to make sure it was clean and tidy when his dads got home from work.

Lucky things kept happening to Michael, and Karmo faded into memory. One day when he was a grown up, someone asked him about where he learned to be so kind, and he tried to remember his luck monster’s name, tapping his chin with his finger.

“Karma, I think it’s called Karma.”