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

She throws her arms around me in a sloppy hug.

I so want to believe this is a safe space. That Mom’s hug is more than a drunken whim. I want to sink into it and tell her about the ticket so worrying about Holden wouldn’t even be an issue.

But I can’t. I don’t. That’s not how we are, no matter how much I want it to be like that.

“Did you hear somebody broke into Wanda’s last night?” Doris asks me. She holds up her phone. “I just saw it on the news. Don’t think they took anything though, so the police are dropping the case.

“Really?” I ask in a weak voice. “Wonder what happened.”

Mom shakes her head as she lets go of me. “I’m sure it has to do with that winning ticket. The winner still hasn’t come forward! What’s wrong with them? I wish I had the ticket. I’d buy Storage Solutions.”

Doris laughs and raises her bottle at Mom. “I’d give it to you and then take off on a motorcycle to see Alaska.”

“Can you even imagine all the stuff I could rescue?” Mom adds. “We’d have warehouses full!”

She and Doris start talking excitedly about everything they could buy with the lotto money. It’s exactly what I’d thought would happen and precisely why Mom cannot help me with the ticket.

“Okay, I’ll leave you to the daydreaming,” I say. “Good night.”

“Wait! Jane,” Mom says. “Let me show you what Doris brought over.” She pulls a box out from between their lawn chairs. The top of a miniature fake Christmas tree and some tinsel poke out of it.

“Mom, I’m not interested in a box of other people’s Christmas stuff. I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day.”

“Suit yourself,” Mom says. “We have a whole truckload of these boxes, so maybe you can go through some with me tomorrow.”

“Can’t wait,” I mutter.

Mom beams at me, oblivious to sarcasm.

I walk away from Mom and Doris, not listening to their exclamations of delight as they get drunker and rifle through the boxes. Trudging up to my room, I check my phone. Maybe the whole thing with Holden was a mistake. Maybe he’s not actually blackmailing me. But no. The texts are still the same. He’s still an asshole. My heart still aches.

I know something’s wrong the moment I unlock my bedroom door. The window is wide open, and a cool breeze blows the curtains around. But that’s not what stops me in my tracks. My room—my sanctuary, my clean, tidy space—is now a wreck.

No. No, no, no.

It’s been completely ransacked, like something out of a movie. Papers swirl off the top of my desk. My laundry bin is tipped over, and the dresser and closet are emptied. My clothes lie in piles. But that’s not what makes bile rise in my throat. My books. Oh no. No. All my books have been pulled off the shelves and are now heaped onto my bed.

Where is it?

Desperate, my heart racing, I dig through the pile of books. All my favorite works of fiction—The Disasters, Descendant of the Crane, The Flight Girls, The Nightingale, The Poet X, The Night Circus, Blood, Water, Paint, The Art of Losing, and hundreds of others—have been trashed, their pages torn out carelessly. Underneath them are my science books—all the biology textbooks I found at a yard sale and, guttingly, in the marine biology overview from Mrs. Davis, the inscription she put in it (To Jane, who will go far and explore so much of the great blue world …) has been ripped away.

I shove all the books off the bed and then go through them one at a time, having to read some titles through torn-off covers. Sea Change isn’t anywhere. Not in the pile of books. Not in the clothes on the floor. Meaning I have no idea where the lotto ticket is.

I move from the bedroom to my bathroom.

For fuck’s sake, whoever broke into my room even went through the drawers in my bathroom and all my personal stuff. Makeup fills the sink, and my toothbrush is on the floor.

So. Gross.

Stuck to the bathroom mirror is a small blue square of paper. The handwriting is unmistakably Holden’s. Of course the paper is blue. For my nickname.

Jane—I will get this money. One way or another. You have twelve more hours.

I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I can’t believe he broke into my room. I can’t believe he tore through my books. I can’t believe he thinks this would somehow convince me to give him the ticket.

Was he just too impatient? Did he actually think he’d be able to steal the ticket?

I knew this much money makes people do unexpected things, but Holden has now fully descended into a totally different person.

And I can’t even go to the police or tell my mom about any of this because then I’d have to explain what Holden was looking for.

I slump to the bathroom floor as hot tears rise in my eyes. It’s then, as I try to fit in the space on the floor between the tub and the toilet, that I realize I’m still wearing my backpack.

And that I put Sea Change in there earlier, before I went biking down the trail.

Making a triumphant noise, I shrug my backpack off my shoulders and take out the book. The lotto ticket is still in there, tucked in between the pages.

HA!

Take that, Holden, you piece of shit.

As I hold the ticket, I know beyond a doubt that this money will bring me trouble for the rest of my life. If it turned Holden so completely, what other sorts of violence or madness will it inspire? I don’t even want to imagine any longer. I’m just done.

The smell of smoke from Mom’s bonfire floats through my open window, and I know what I need to do.

There’s no more agonizing over whether I should ask Mom or ask Holden.

Fuck all that.

I’ll just burn the ticket, and that