Jackpot Read online

  And Zan Macklin standing over it all trying to decide what to open first.

  Ugh.

  After slipping off my boots, I go over to Jax. He sits up so I can sit down, and then he lays his head in my lap. “Merry Christmas, kiddo,” I say as I run my hand through his mess of khaki-colored curls.

  He sighs, and his sadness drops down onto my shoulder so heavily, tears immediately spring to my eyes. While it’s true he has no idea I squirreled away money from my paychecks over the last six months so I could buy him the bike he wanted, knowing he’s sad because of how little we have really rips me a new one.

  I know we’re filthy rich compared to people in places with genuine poverty, as Mama likes to put it, but Jax is only nine years old. All he knows is that the other kids at his school already have lots of toys and video games and money, yet they still get lots of presents. Mama works upwards of seventy hours a week just so we can live in this bougie-ass area and “go to good schools,” but being poor in comparison with everyone around you sucks. Especially when you’re just a kid. We won’t even talk about the fact that he’s brown where most of the (rich) kids around him are white.

  The ticket in my pocket appears in my mind’s eye. The things I could do with that kind of cash…

  “You should go to bed, baby boy,” I say, trying to force some kind of cheer into my voice. “Santa should be here pretty soon. No telling what he’s gonna leave you.”

  “There is no Santa,” he huffs.

  I die a little inside. “What do you mean there’s no Santa?”

  He turns his head to look up at me. “Isn’t it obvious, Rico? If there is a Santa, he certainly doesn’t give a rat’s butt about kids like me.”

  Wow.

  “First of all, where’s your Christmas spirit, mister? And second, what the heck do you know about the word obvious?”

  His chin starts to quiver, so now I have to hold it together. Dear God.

  “I’m always good, Rico,” he says. “But he never leaves me more than one thing. So either he’s not real, or he doesn’t really care about me.”

  I can’t handle this right now.

  “Well, I know for a fact that he’s bringing a big surprise for you this year.”

  His eyes light up. Hope. Which is almost harder to take than the despair. “You do?”

  “Mm-hmm. He told me.”

  Jax’s eyebrows tug together. “Are you sure?”

  “Would I lie to you, baby boy?”

  He smiles.

  “Come on,” I say. “I’ll tuck you in.”

  We head into the bedroom, and I pull back the Ninja Turtle comforter I found at a thrift store and gave him for his most recent birthday. He climbs in. “Will you sing ‘Smooth Criminal’?” he asks.

  I grin. Our obsession with the Michael Jackson song has its origin in our stint at a shelter during Jaxy’s first couple years of life: there was a family with a toddler who often struggled to fall asleep, and the only thing that would help was the sound of her mom’s voice whisper-singing Baby, are you okay? the way MJ does in the song. I started doing the same to Jax, who was a very fussy baby.

  Good to know that even in his sadness, our bedtime traditions still reign supreme. Come to think of it, I’m glad he waited up for me.

  He curls into a ball on his side, and I pull the comforter up over his shoulder as I begin to sing, but he’s out before I get through the first chorus.

  Which is good because now I’m crying.

  It’s like no matter how hard Mama and me work or how much we do, it always feels like we’re drowning. And now I’ve got images of the richest kid in school superimposing memories of our shelter days and smashing up against the helplessness and desperation constantly simmering beneath the surface of my chill. It’s bub-bub-bubbling up, pouring out, and stinging my windburned face from walking home in the cold.

  I get up and go to the bathroom for a tissue. Feel the weight of the little slip of numbered paper in my pocket. I’ve yet to look at it because…well, I hate to admit it considering how low I try to keep my expectations, but the encounter with the cute granny planted quite the “what if?” in the rocky soil of my heart. Which ain’t good: when you live as tenuously as my family does, there’s nothing worse than having even the slightest glimmer of hope dashed against the ugly boulders of life. But after checking my watch, I head to the living room, pulling the ticket out as I go.

  Truth be told, I’m nervous about seeing which of the two I got—it’ll be a little freaky if I chose the one with my birth date on it. I drop down onto the sofa as the movie credits finish rolling, and when cheesy saxophone music comes pouring out of the TV speakers, my breath catches.

  “Mighty…Millions…Today could be your luc…ky…DAY!”

  My heart is racing. Which is so dumb. I know from looking at the machine all the time that the odds are one in over 302.5 million, which is more than the jackpot itself.

  But still.

  The first ball drops—

  29.

  17 and 46 come next, but then the final two white balls are 01 and 06.

  06. 29. 01.

  No clue what golden Mighty Ball number is called out because all the sound gets sucked from the room as I look at the ticket in my hand.

  It’s not the one with my birth date.

  None of the other numbers are on my ticket either.

  Fresh tears spring to my eyes as I feel that void from earlier open up beneath me and try to pull me under, but I clench my jaw and quickly swipe them away. Nothing has changed, and it’s fine.

  It has to be.

  No clue whether or not the other numbers match the ones on the old lady’s ticket—seems unlikely, but either way, she just won seven dollars.

  Guess depending on how you look at it, I am a lucky charm.

  Sure hope she has a merry Christmas.

  There’s a shriek like someone’s being stabbed.

  My eyelids pop wide, but I can’t move.

  The bedroom door is thrown open, slamming against that little rubber-tipped metal thingy that protrudes from the wall near the floor, and before I have a chance to react, there’s a body flying through the air and landing on top of me. “Ooof.”

  “He came, Rico, he CAAAAAAME!”

  Jax sits up on my belly and grabs me by the shoulders. “You were riiiiiiiight. Santa DOES give a flip about me!”

  So he saw the bike then.

  “THIS IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVERRRRRR!” he yells right in my face with his nine-year-old morning breath (blegh).

  I furrow my brow. “What on earth are you talking about, Jaxy?”

  “Santa came! He brought me this awesome Minecraft Lego set and the twenty-inch Raptor Freestyle BMX Deluxe bike with a welded cross brace, alloy wheels, and super-gnarly pegs! It’s exactly what I wanted, Rico!”

  “That’s awesome, little dude!”

  He jumps off me. “Just wait till Mason Bridges gets a load of this! HA!”

  Mason Bridges. Jax’s most ardent antagonizer. A kid who sees his family’s position at the top of the mountain as a license to drop rocks down on the people who live at the base. (The little jackass.)

  Of course I don’t have the heart to tell Jaxy there’s very little chance of Mason seeing his cool new bike, since there’s no way Mama would let him ride it two miles to school.

  He runs out of the room still screaming his head off.

  I sit up and stretch. Swing my legs over the edge of my twin bed. Still got my brown-skinned Barbie comforter and sheet set from when I was Jax’s age.

  Vintage, yo.

  And then I smell cinnamon. Which would mean French toast.

  Odd.

  When I step out of the bedroom, Mama is standing over the stove decked out in her Hilton housekeeping uniform. Her dark hair spills down
her back in a long braid, and her light-brown, freckled cheeks are flushed.

  And there’s French toast.

  “Wow,” I say. “You’re cooking?”

  She snorts. “Don’t sound so surprised. It’s Christmas!”

  “And yet you’re going to work on Christmas morning.” As usual, I fail to keep my “little resentments,” as she likes to call them, in check. And I instantly feel a pinch of guilt about it.

  Typical morning in the Danger household.

  “Somebody’s gotta pay some bills around here, Rico!” she replies in her sarcastic singsong voice. “We can’t all be Santa, you know.”

  This time, I bite my tongue.

  Did I know she’d be pissed about Jax’s bike? Of course. It’s three hundred dollars of financial relief she won’t be getting (and I have no doubt she knows exactly how much the thing cost).

  Speaking of Jax, he chooses that moment to rip through the kitchen screaming, “EVERYTHING IS AWWWWESOME!”

  “Nice to see the kid happy for once,” I say, even though it’s a low blow.

  She glares at me, then peeks around to make sure he’s out of earshot. “You think this is cute?”

  I shrug. “That my little brother gets to act like it’s Christmas on Christmas? Looks pretty cute to me.”

  “Mm-hmm. Well, when they cut our goddamn lights off, perhaps you can teach him how to use that bike to generate some electricity.” She shoves the spatula underneath a piece of French toast so forcefully, it pops out of the pan and plummets to the floor. “Shit!”

  I pour myself a cup of Folgers from the coffeepot—largely to piss Mama off since she hates when I drink it—and carry it over to the dining room table she pulled off a curb two years ago. “That can be one of my pieces.”

  No response. Just a gust of icy air as she sweeps out of the room, pretending I no longer exist.

  Whatever.

  After about a minute, she returns with her coat draped over her arm and an envelope in hand. “I’m pulling a double, by the way.” She slides the card across the table at me.

  Merry Christmas to her too, I guess.

  “You do know I also have to work, right?” I ask. “Two till ten—”

  “I’m aware. Can’t really miss it on that big-ass calendar you’ve got tacked to my wall.”

  This is one of her “little resentments.” The calendar. As a matter of fact, Stacia Danger resents anything that reeks of structure she didn’t create. Likely linked to her resentment of anything that makes her feel like a “bad parent.”

  Problem is, her attempt to be a “good parent” got us into this situation in the first place: living paycheck to paycheck—hers and mine—in an area that’s way out of our price range.

  “So what about Jax?” I say.

  “He’ll go upstairs. I’ve already talked to Señora Alvarez.”

  Thank God for Señora Alvarez, the delightful Salvadorian woman who lives in the apartment above ours and has been playing pinch-hit parent since we moved here. In fact, Jax spends so much time with her, he speaks a little Spanish.

  Mama turns off the stove, wipes her hands on a dish towel, and dashes out of the kitchen. “I’m gonna be late,” she says.

  “Jax, Mommy’s going to work! Come give her a kiss!” I holler.

  Now she looks like she wants to murder me and bury the evidence.

  “You can’t just leave him on Christmas without saying goodbye,” I say before rising from the table and taking the four steps necessary to grab a couple of plates from the cabinet. “Where’s the syrup?”

  She doesn’t respond, and when I look, her eyes have dropped, and her chin begins to tremble before she can stop it.

  Because there is no syrup.

  This was one of her gifts to us. French toast.

  But there’s no syrup.

  I sigh.

  Jax tries to barrel past me, but I stop him to give Mama a second to pull it together. “Jaxy, Mama made us some yummy French toast! Whattaya say we cook up some strawberries with sugar to go on top?” Because no matter what’s lacking in this place, there are always strawberries. It’s our one splurge.

  “Heck yeah!” Jax says.

  “Go tell Mommy thank you for her hard work so she can get going, okay?” I kiss his forehead.

  As he runs to her, Mama looks up at me and smiles. Weakly, but it’s enough.

  A moment of accord.

  “Thank you so, so much, Mommy!” Jax says.

  Mama laughs and quickly wipes her own tears from her face. “You’re welcome, Jaxy-Boy.” She squeezes him tight. I walk over to join the hug.

  “This is the best Christmas ever!”

  “Okay, okay,” Mama says. “I really do have to run.” She breaks free and grabs her purse from the computer table, where our dinosaur of a PC monitor sits stoic and judgmental. “Jax, you be good for Señora Alvarez, okay?” She kisses his cheek and he darts off. “Have a good afternoon at work, Rico.”

  “You too, Mama.” And I swallow my pride. “Thanks for breakfast.”

  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 hom
e 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.