Luuk Schokker

The gelato place used to be a cute little bakery, but the baker has dementia now, and they’ve smashed the store to pieces. Powdery dust still clings to the windowsills. Loose wires poke out of bits of exposed wall that haven’t been painted over properly. We can’t see much through the mucky windows, but there’s no escaping the neon sign that spells out Antonio Gelato in an aggressive sports bar font. It’s supposed to open next week – I reckon that’s why my sister and I are here tonight. She hasn’t actually told me, just ordered me to come along.

(The guy’s name isn’t even Antonio. I heard they insisted on an Italian name, and because André translates to Andrea, he thought people would say a girl ran his business. They could have gone for a city, Milano, Venezia, whatever, but I suppose neither André nor his father – also called André – ever considered you can name your company after anything other than yourself.)

“It’s not technically breaking in if there’s no lock on the door,” my sister says. I can feel her buzzing with the wrong kind of energy, like a carton of milk way past its expiry date.

“Not sure that’s true.”

“Shut up, little witch baby.” (She calls me that twenty times a day.)

“You’ve never even had a boyfriend,” she adds, though I’m not sure what that has to do with anything. I want to say I don’t think I ever want one. I want to say that, one time, I overheard André talking about her to his friends, and it made me feel as if a cast of tiny crabs clawed at my intestines. Instead, I shrug. 

“Thing is,” she says, blowing a perfect watermelon gum bubble, “if you let those freak cards of yours predict everything, they’re going to control your life. I want to make my own luck.” 

I don’t say that today’s third card was a reversed Seven of Pentacles, which means something like a lack of long-term goals. Short-lived rewards. I just shrug again, fondling – concealing – the stack of cards in my back pocket.

I stand with my back pressed to the gelato place so I can shout out a warning if anyone walks by, which means I don’t have to watch as my sister yanks the neon sign off the wall and crudely snips off a wire with these bright-red pliers we nicked from our mum’s toolbox. She runs off with the sign under her arm, turns a corner before I can even begin to keep up. 

Imagine her surprise when, later that evening, one of her friends calls. They still do this, actual phone calls, whenever something major happens.

“Oh my God,” she says. “Joshua says the gelato place is on fire.”

I’m under the table, cross-legged, laying out tomorrow’s deck. 

“I just really liked that thing you said about making your own luck,” I mutter.

Luuk’s prompts were: Building Remodel, a Thief, a Comeuppance

He said of the challenge: “The combination of building remodel, thief and comeuppance immediately sparked an image of two young sisters, standing in a street, looking at a storefront that isn’t what it used to be. I took it from there and ended up with this story, which, to my surprise, turned out to be mostly about sibling love.”

Luuk Schokker is a writer from the Netherlands. His work was previously featured on Catapult, as well as various outlets (Papieren Helden, Hard/hoofd, De Optimist) in his home country. His essay on Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ competed in the 2024 edition of the March Xness tournament. On Twitter @luukschokker – Website luukschokker.nl

Read more from Luuk:

Catapult Magazine – ‘To the Roof’
The March Xness Essay Tournament – ‘Hear me When I say Hey’