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

Once I get the dishwasher going, I check the fridge—still empty of anything besides ketchup—and head to my room.

We used to have family portraits hanging on the walls going upstairs, but over the last few years, Mom has covered every inch of available space with other people’s photos. It’s still more strangers’ eyes, cars, waving kids, and the million other things people take pictures of watching me trudge toward my room.

Upstairs, I squeeze past the pile of children’s shoes that fills the second-floor hallway.

“Shit,” I mutter as my backpack knocks some sneakers free. They cascade in front of me, and I trip over them. I throw out a hand to catch myself, but my shoulder slams into the bedroom door in the middle of the hall. The door swings open, and I slide into a mountain of stuffed animals.

This was Grandma’s room. The one she had for sixty-five years, since she was born in this house. Now, none of Grandma’s stuff is visible anymore, buried by the thousands of stuffed animals Mom has “rescued” for the sake of the kids who once loved them.

Shoving a mangy, orange stuffed kitten and a pair of eyeless teddy bears out of the way, I scramble to my feet. Somehow this room is even more full than it was a few weeks ago. Mercifully, Mom’s not on to porcelain dolls yet, because of the expense. Just the thought of a room full of glass-eyed dolls makes me want to crawl out of my own skin.

Sighing, I kick a few more stuffed animals out of the way and pull the door shut. Once it’s closed, there’s a loud thumping as the stuffed animals resettle like shifting sands in the desert.

Grandma had the right idea moving out last year. “This place is too crowded for me,” she’d said as she kissed my cheek. “But you can come stay with me any time.”

I couldn’t really. Because her apartment is on the Capitol Square in downtown Madison—“So close to the action, at last!” she likes to say—it’s teeny tiny, and it takes half an hour to get there by car. Grandma asked me if I wanted to live with her, but I didn’t want to leave my school, my friends, or Holden. And some part of me was afraid to leave Mom alone.

It occurs to me, all in a rush, that when I cash this lotto ticket, I could buy Grandma a huge condo downtown. We could even be neighbors. I could probably buy the whole building.

And it’s that thought that sends me tumbling over the edge, like I’m riding a tsunami made of stuffed animals and children’s shoes.

A laugh rolls out of me, and once it’s out, the jagged edges of panic, shock, worry, elation, and every other emotion I’ve bottled up today flow through me.

Chasing the laugh is a sob, and I struggle for a moment to haul air into my lungs.

I could buy a building.

Ridiculous.

With an effort, I push away all thoughts of Grandma or me suddenly becoming real estate tycoons.

The first thing I need to do is get to my room. The second is hide the ticket.

Everything else can come after that.

AFTER I UNLOCK MY BEDROOM DOOR USING THE KEY I KEEP ON MY KEY chain, something in me settles, just a little bit.

I always feel like Alice coming back from Wonderland when I cross into my room. Unlike every other chaotic space in the house, my room is clean, organized, and not filled to the brim with other people’s garbage.

It’s not fancy—there’s a bed, a desk, my dresser, a closet with my clothes, and a small bathroom with a shower. But everything has a place. And everything is mine. The pictures of Bran and me on my bulletin board are tidy; there’s the painting of the ocean Grandma made for me hanging above my bed; and on the other wall, above my desk, are framed maps of Hawaii and pictures of whales that I cut out from magazines a few years ago. My bookshelf is arranged by color, and it makes a rainbow on one wall.

I walk across the room, enjoying the fact that I don’t have to dodge any piles of stuff or see any faces other than those of people I love. This is how a house should be. A place where people can live, not a place where stuff lives.

Dropping my backpack onto the floor, I flop onto my bed, exhausted by today.

But the ticket doesn’t let me rest for long. It calls to me, like a living thing, tucked between the pages of my book. Rolling onto my stomach, I reach over the bed and pull Sea Change out of my bag.

The tiny orange-and-white ticket is still tucked in its pages, and it looks like it did when I bought it. Like it did before I knew what it was worth. Then, it was about potential. Now it’s about so much else.

How could I be the one who won all this money? And what in the world am I going to do until I turn eighteen?

I mean, Mom has somehow managed to fill this house with a ton of junk—imagine what she could do with $58 million? She’d likely create a museum of precious things someone once loved, or something.

What do other lotto winners do with this much money? Or a better question: What does this much money do to them?

Shoving the ticket back into Sea Change, I pull out my phone and start researching lotto winners. I start with what Bran said at lunchtime.

“Is there a lotto winner’s curse?” I type into Google.

The results are a resounding yes.

Clicking on the first article, I learn that over 70 percent of lotto winners end up broke in seven years or less. Or they end up dead.

Take example one: The Case of Abraham Shakespeare. (WHAT A NAME!)

In 2006, Abraham Shakespeare—an ex-con and high-school dropout—won $30 million (not much less than me when we’re