Lucky Girl by Jamie Pacton (novels for beginners txt) 📕

are under my pillow—or if she’s been in my room—I’m moving out tomorrow.

Fumbling in the dark, I flick on my phone’s light and reach under my pillow. Oh. Right. Not Mom’s stuff, but my notebook with the lotto-winner stories and my list of problems.

As tired as I am, I can’t help but read the list again and skim the stories on the top page. Talk about stuff to give me bad dreams.

THE BIG BOOK OF LOT TO WINNER FAILS

Paraphrased from news sources and collected for posterity by Jane Belleweather

UNLUCKY LOTTO WINNER NUMBER TWO:

Jeffrey Dampier is another example of someone who won the lotto and lost everything. His prize for winning the Illinois Lottery was $20 million, and he shared it with his family.

But, as these things go, somebody got greedy. A few years after he won the jackpot, Dampier’s sister-in-law and her boyfriend kidnapped him and shot him in the back of the head. The couple is now in prison for life, and Dampier is just another example of what a windfall with so many zeroes after it can do to people.

Note to self: This is example number two of a lotto winner being murdered by family or loved ones for the sake of the prize. A disturbing trend, to say the least.

UNLUCKY LOTTO WINNER NUMBER THREE:

Example number three isn’t quite so grim, but what a mess. Evelyn Adams from New Jersey somehow won the lottery in both 1985 ($3.9 million) and 1986 ($1.4 million). As one does, she gave away some of the money to friends and then the rest of it went to feed her gambling habit. By 2000, she was broke and living in a trailer park.

Note to self: This quote from Evelyn gives me chills: “Winning the lottery isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Everybody wanted my money. Everybody had their hand out.”

UGHHHHHHHH.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MY ALARM GOES OFF ON FRIDAY MORNING AT SIX, AND I WANT TO fling my phone into the sun. But I shut it off and get up. First a shower, then homework, and then I’ll somehow drag myself through the day.

I take Sea Change off the shelf and check it again. The ticket is still there, wedged at the beginning of “Beyond Flotsam and Jetsam,” the chapter about the devastating effect of plastics on the ocean. I hold it in my hand for a moment. It’s still unsigned. But I can’t sign it now because that’s acknowledging that I bought it as a minor. Which means no one would get the prize.

As I hold the ticket, I wonder: Is it a ticket to freedom and the independent life I want, or something that will leave me chained to a lifetime of people bugging me about money? Is it even possible to actually cash it? Can I find someone over eighteen who will cash it for me and give me the money—well, I guess they’d probably want to share it—or is there some way I can make it seem like I actually was eighteen when I bought it?

I still don’t know. All I’m certain of is that for now, the best bet is to leave the ticket unsigned and in my room. I put it back, determined to do more research later today, and head into the shower.

Mom’s still snoring in her room when I creep out of mine. It’s hardly fair that the adult in the house gets to sleep in and doesn’t have to report for duty in the real world until ten. Because I love her underneath it all, I leave her a cup of coffee covered with a saucer. Because I’m still mad at her for dragging me along on BJD night, I don’t leave a note.

One reason I’m up so early—besides needing to scrub last night’s Big Junk Dump adventure off my skin and get my homework done in the school library—is for the quiet space of a walk to school. It’s more than two miles, but I can’t face the bus and I don’t want to ask Bran to pick me up. And extricating my bike from the stuff Mom piled on it last night would just make more noise.

Better to walk alone down a country road as morning breaks and pray no semis come barreling around a corner and flatten me.

The sky lightens in the east, a peach-soft glow, like a zillion grandmas just turned on pastel-shaded reading lamps. On either side of me, tall rows of corn rise. This late in October, the cornstalks are brown and rattle like skeleton fingers in the morning breeze. A flock of Canadian geese fly across the horizon, soaring in a V formation and filling the air with honks.

It’s beautiful. Truly. I tilt my head back, taking in the morning air. It smells like earth, the changing seasons, and a hint of winter. It smells like home.

But—as an overpowering whiff of cow manure and something most foul from the enormous chicken farms a few miles away hits me—my fond feelings wane. I’m confident I could get used to a new home either on or near the ocean. Like, immediately.

Before I can think much more about that, a car whips around the corner. Its music is blaring and its headlights are on. It’s still too dark to see who’s behind the wheel, and they probably don’t see me, but I’m taking no chances. I jump off the side of the road, landing in a shallow ditch. My heart pounds.

I’ve read news stories about situations like this. Girls get picked up in the early hours of the morning by strangers and are never seen again. At least not until their bodies are found outside of Vegas or something.

The car roars past me, and I’m clambering out of the ditch when it stops and then backs up.

Shit.

There’s literally no one else on this road with me. I pull out my phone, taking a picture of the car and the license plate.

Blue Honda Civic, WI