She nods. Smiles.
As the front door closes, I get the strawberries out and start cutting them up. Little sugar, little water…who needs crappy fake maple syrup anyway?
“Jax, breakfast!” I shout once I’ve scrambled some eggs and gotten everything on the plate.
He comes out of the bedroom with a red Lego robot in one hand and a green one in the other. “Christmas botssssss!” he says, thrusting them into my face.
I chuckle.
“You know, since Mama’s gone, we could eat in front of the television,” I tell him. “Care to get a little Grinchy?”
“Yeaaaaah!” He shoots his little fist into the air. “Fuck the ruuuuuuules!”
Oh my God. “JAX!”
“Oops…You weren’t supposed to hear that.”
I just shake my head and smack him upside his. “Come on, you little toilet mouth.”
As he gets settled into the couch, I turn on the television and tune it to Channel 3. Reach for the power button on the Mesozoic-era DVD player (remote’s been lost for about three years now), but then:
In breaking news, some folks are having a very merry Christmas as two winning Mighty Millions jackpot tickets were sold last night. One was purchased in Wyoming, but the other came from a machine right here in Metro Atlanta! The owner of the Gas ’n’ Go convenience store on Spalding Drive in Norcross will receive a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bonus from the lottery commission for selling a winning jackpot ticket—
My mouth goes dry.
* * *
—
It’s been five days, and no one in Georgia has come forward with the winning ticket. I know because all I’ve been doing while I’m not at work is gathering information on state lottery rules.
Rule number one: tickets expire after 180 days. That’s June twenty-third, exactly six days before my eighteenth birthday.
Rule number two: winnings are subject to 25 percent in federal taxes and 6 percent in state taxes.
Rule number three: big winners in the state of Georgia cannot collect winnings anonymously.
In conclusion: someone eighteen or over who visited my workplace on Christmas Eve is holding on to a slip of paper worth one hundred and six million US buckaroos (before taxes).
I’m at the register when Mr. Zoughbi steps out of his office to come restock cigarettes, but I wait until the store is completely empty before I pop the question. “Mr. Z, do you remember how many Mighty Millions tickets you sold on Christmas Eve?”
“Oh gracious no, child,” he says. “So many sold, I couldn’t possibly know.”
“I sold…three. One to a middle-aged white guy and two to an elderly black lady. Don’t you think someone would’ve come forward by now? The trucker guy in Wyoming took home a forty-seven-point-two million lump sum after taxes.”
“Ah, you never know! Perhaps our winner is consulting with financial experts and creating a plan. Many winners tumble into financial ruin due to lack of Preparation.” He wags a finger at me.
All about the Preparation, that Mr. Z.
“Few weeks perhaps, there will be news,” he continues.
I sigh. What he’s saying makes perfect sense, of course….
I just can’t shake the feeling my fairy godgranny has that ticket.
I know for a fact she matched at least three of the numbers. If the winner definitely came from our store and was definitely purchased on Christmas Eve according to the reports…
What if she forgot she bought it? (CRS was her phrase, not mine.) What if—God forbid—she lost it?
“Truth be told, what is it to us?” Mr. Z continues. “The lottery commission already delivered our bonus.” He tries to wink, but it just looks like he has a twitch. “There’s a portion for you in your next paycheck.”
Whoa. “You don’t have to do that, Mr. Zoughbi….” Curse this knee-jerk pseudo-selflessness!
“Oh, but I do!” he says. “Bonus for me means bonus for my number one employee!”
My face heats. “Oh.”
“I am very thankful for you, child,” he goes on. “You will see how much very soon.”
He shoves the last carton of cigarettes into the overhead case and dusts his hands off. “Whoever our ticket holder is, we wish them the best, yes? I wouldn’t complain about some of those dollars winding up in our register….” He nudges me with his elbow. “But as a claim that large must be directly handled at the lottery office, I doubt we will ever see the winner again.”
And back into the office he goes.
He’s right. I know he’s right. Whoever bought that ticket really has no reason to come back to this store (unless they need gas and/or artificially colored and flavored slushies).
But that won’t stop me from wondering if I had the opportunity to pocket a big winner—thereby instantly changing everything—and I chose.
The wrong.
Ticket.
Forgive the interruption, dear reader, but I’ll have you know this is going to be an adventure for me, too. It’s not easy being an inanimate object worth enough American dollars to feed a family of six in Chad for over forty thousand years. (Or 4,077 families of six for a decade each. How my value is distributed is of no concern to me.)
(That is no exaggeration.)
Right now, that dastardly George Washington has his ugly green face smashed against mine, and there’s a month-old Chick-fil-A receipt pressed against my behind without my consent. To top it off, the person who shoved me into this lackluster billfold truly has forgotten about me.
The indignity of it all is appalling considering my value, don’t you think?
Five thousand dollars. That was the number on the check inside the Happy New Year! card Mr. Z handed me alongside my regular paycheck.
And instead of putting it in the account my mother has access to, I cashed it. Put it in an envelope. Stuffed it in a hole in my trusty box spring, same spot I hid the money I secreted away all those months for Jax’s bike.
Every night after he falls asleep, I close whatever book I’m reading, pull the envelope out, and count the hundred-dollar bills. I’ve never held that much money before, and feeling the paper slide through my fingers keeps me distracted from other facets of my life that often plague my brain in the darkness: the fact that we’re always a few hours of pay away from not making rent; that Mama treats me more like a partner and co-parent than a kid; that my seventeen-year-old life consists entirely of school, work, and sleep; that I have no friends.