Monday morning at school is a horror. Everyone, of course, knows about Jimmy and me and Homecoming, but I don’t care. I have the lottery ticket. I put it in twenty-three different places yesterday and none of them seemed safe enough, so I finally put it in my bra next to my left boob.
When I get home, I’m so nervous I can’t do anything but walk back and forth in front of the television, even though it’s hours before the televised drawing. Mom comes home, early for once, and suggests we go out for burgers. I say no, lie to her that I feel sick, and go to my room. Six minutes before the drawing, Shel comes in. We’ve rehearsed this very carefully. We’re both ready.
We go back into the living room. Mom is at the kitchen table, reading the paper. I turn on the television.
“Hey, Mom, Shel and I bought lottery tickets yesterday,” I say.
Mom shakes her heads. “What a waste of money,” she says.
“Somebody has to win,” Shel says, on cue. “I’ve bought them before.”
“Did you win?” Mom asks.
“No,” Shel says.
“See?” Mom says.
Shel and I sit on the couch. The ticket is in my hand. We picked four sets of numbers, because we thought it would look really suspicious if we only took ONE chance and won. So we sit, and the little lady from the lottery commission comes on, and she starts picking the numbers.
The third down is the winning set of numbers.
After the fourth correct number, I know that Etok has kept up his end of the deal, and I start to jump up and down and scream.
Mom can’t believe it. She keeps staring at the screen, then the ticket. Then she starts to scream too. Then we all run downstairs and tell Shel’s mom that her daughter just won half of 12.7 million dollars.
Shel’s mom doesn’t believe it either. She starts to cry. Then, she starts to talk to my mom, all serious.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
Mom nods. “Yes. We’ll go down tomorrow. You two girls are too young to claim the money, but Rebekah and I will go together, and we’ll split the ticket.”
It’s all just the way I told Etok I wanted it. A lot of money. No fighting. My ticket is the sole winning ticket. I wait for the thing to happen that will make me regret I ever made this wish, but there’s nothing.
Until Mom tells me that since we have all this money, we’ll be moving up to Boston so she can go to law school.
I stare at her. “Boston? But Mom, I don’t want to move. I like it here. And Shel is my best friend.”
She hugs me. “I know she is, baby, but Shel is moving too. Rebekah is taking them all back to Trinidad.”