Andy gave the second of his four good-luck charms—he was wearing his first—a few more tight squeezes, his anxiety swept away for the moment as he thought about Brady, now twenty-two years old, and a starting linebacker for the Black Hills State football team. Andy hadn’t participated in sports much growing up—he wasn’t what most would refer to as coordinated—and he didn’t much enjoy watching them either. But for the past three years, he’d absolutely reveled in watching Brady’s football games.

Black Hills State was a Division II football school, but they were perennially highly ranked, and Andy had watched their run through the playoffs the past winter and their narrow loss in the championship game. Andy had been decked out in Yellow Jacket gear from head to toe and cheered wildly at the bar across from the University of Chicago campus, where he was an assistant professor of anthropology.

Andy set the rabbit’s foot on the table in front of him. Next, he pulled out what would appear to the naked eye as any ordinary rock. It was nearly the same beige as the chair he was currently sitting in, no bigger than a quarter, and pockmarked with little holes.

Three years earlier, Andy had been living in Cusco, Peru, finishing up a yearlong research project for his dissertation. He had been walking around the famed Inca ruins of Machu Picchu, when he was startled by one of the many alpacas that freely roam the area, causing him to trip and fall down one of the steep rocky slopes.

After sliding some thirty feet, Andy came to rest, unable to believe he hadn’t broken his neck. In fact, all he had to show for his thirty-foot fall down the incline was a bruised elbow and some scrapes on his legs. A few onlookers couldn’t believe it when Andy climbed back up the slope and went right back to his research. It’d been one of Andy’s proudest moments when one of his fellow researchers called him “one tough cookie.”

Heading home on the bus that evening, admittedly stiff from his fall, Andy felt a small bulge in his jacket pocket. He reached in and found a tan rock that had found its way into his pocket at some point during his slide.

Andy set the rock next to the rabbit’s foot and pulled a folded piece of yellow cardstock from the box. It was a menu—Shin’s Hollywood. Andy had eaten at the small Chinese diner before landing his one and only acting job. After graduating from the University of South Dakota with an undergrad in anthropology, he’d decided to chase his dreams and moved to LA.

After eight months, he finally landed an audition: Allergy Sufferer #4 in a Nasonex commercial. He even had a line: “When my allergies are at their worst, I’m at my worst. [Sneeze! ]”