The rest of the day is a blur. In a haze, I go through the motions, but my mind is on the card in my purse. The purse I didn’t put back in my locker, but rather keep on my shoulder and across my body. Can’t say I didn’t learn anything from Leo. I fight the urge to pull the ticket out and look at it again.

As soon as five o’clock hits, I go through the closing of my register, fill in the blanks on my Daily Transactions record with the amount of cash received, clip together the checks and credit card slips as well as the new contracts and the canceled service orders.

I want to go and turn in the ticket, but I have no idea how a win like this goes. Do I go to where I bought the ticket? I can’t imagine Joe would be fishing out five-thousand dollars from the till and hand it to me. Besides, I wouldn’t want that much cash on me. I have some research to do.

“Crystal,” Austin calls to me in the parking lot, pulling up in his work van and pulling me from my first-world problem.

Austin’s a technician at the company and also lives in Harton. He’s nice, but I don’t let him get too close. And he’s better than the half-dozen guys I’ve dated over the past few years. After Leo and how that all worked out, I will never give my heart over to another man. But Austin is… okay. He’s always been honest, and he’s easy on the eyes. When I need a ride because the weather is bad, Austin gives me a lift since my only mode of transportation is my bike. I never even went for a driver’s license. We don’t have a car that I could even drive, so it doesn’t really matter.

“Wanna go to dinner?” he asks, which is Austin’s polite way of asking if I want to hook up. At least he always bought me dinner before we got it on. But I’m not interested in dinner. Or a hookup.

“Thanks, Austin, but not tonight.”

“You okay?”

“Me?” I ask nervously. “I’m great. Why?”

“Nothing. You just look… happier than an, ‘I’m so excited it’s Friday’ kind of way.”

The lottery ticket in my purse is suddenly heavy, and I wonder if it’s glowing. A winning lottery ticket. A ‘win-five-friggin’-thousand-dollars-a-week-for-life’ ticket.

As casually as I can muster, I simply shrug.

“Well, if you change your mind, give me a call. I may just stay in and watch baseball. But I’d much rather take you out.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Slipping my leg over the seat, I mount my bike and head home with one hand on the handlebars and one hand on the strap of my purse.

The whole ride home I look at the cars and think about buying one. Of course, I’d have to get my driver’s license first. With $5,000 a week for life, I could do that! No more bike chains falling off the chain wheel. No more grease stains on the inside of my left pant leg.

Turning into the trailer park, I coast my bike up to the side of our white box, and for some reason, it looks grungier, more run-down, and more unkempt than usual. Ours isn’t the worst one but a far cry from many that are tidy and neat. I imagine hiring a crew to clean it and plant flowers like the Schwarzkopfs’ nicely-maintained home three lots down.

I dash inside our house calling out for my mom. The silence, along with a quick survey of the dilapidated front room with its ratty, light blue velvet, second-hand sofa, beat-up dark wood coffee table, and the nasty, matted brown carpet says that my mom isn’t home. On my way to my room, I peek in hers just to make sure. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d come home to find her passed out in her bed. Her bed is unmade with the mauve, satin bedspread still lying on the floor, but she’s not in there.

That she’s not home yet is a good sign that she’s still working and didn’t call in sick. It’s already 5:37 p.m., and she’ll be home soon. Unless she’s already found a bar. It is Friday, after all. She usually comes home to ‘freshen up’ first, though.

I head to my room, and behind my closed bedroom door, I take out the blue-and-silver card and read the back. I notice the section where I am supposed to sign and print my name as well as write down my address. I grab a pen and quickly follow those instructions so that even if someone does find the ticket, it’s mine.

Once the back is filled out, I read the steps to claiming my prize. If I’d won a small amount, less than $600, I could collect the prize at any place that sells Illinois Lottery tickets. For larger prizes, it says I can mail it to the Prize Claim Center in Springfield, but that doesn’t feel safe. I wonder if I can somehow get to Springfield to handle it in person. I also wonder about protecting myself. I definitely need professional advice. However, it’s well after business hours, and it’s Friday, so I won’t be able to do anything until after the weekend. I look around my room to find a safe place for my winning ticket. I can’t leave it in my purse. More than once—more than a dozen times—I’ve found money missing, no doubt taken by my mother.

I think about under the mattress, but I’d learned once before that under the mattress isn’t the safest place. I shudder and feel sick about the Leo days and his betrayal. I check out my bookshelf and my academic knickknacks. There was the Clinton County Spelling Bee trophy I won in the eighth grade, the plaque I earned from when I was in the math club and the competition we won in my junior year of high school, my certificates for honor roll—six of them—and my high school diploma.

I used to dream about going to college. I planned on going to Southern Illinois University. But it was more than an hour away from home, and my mom really couldn’t be left alone like that. I didn’t have a car to get back and forth easily. And Jude was in jail… for the first time. I had been offered a couple of scholarships, but those didn’t cover all the expenses, and the idea of a big school loan was terrifying. So, I decided to take a gap year—get my family on their feet and save some money for school. That gap year—which started with my disastrous attempt to leave home—turned into two, then three… Now I’m seven years away from graduation, and none of the scholarships are still available.

I examine my favorite books on the shelf—my prized possessions. I’ve been collecting the classics—editions I bought from the library when they would sell copies that were too tattered and worn. I have a whopping seventeen books.

A book is a great place to stash a winning lottery ticket. Mom thinks fairy tales are foolish, she’d never pick one up. I select my favorite, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I’d bought that book for six dollars. It was old, this particular copy printed in 1963. It’s not a picture-book version by any stretch. It’s the original tale.

I used to think about all the people who held that book and folded the corners of the pages. Some people underlined parts, I imagine for writing term papers. Page 103 has a stain—it’s a tan, circular ring like the bottom of a coffee cup. What kinds of secrets do these books hold? If only they could talk. But I’m glad they can’t because this one is going to hold the secret of my winning ticket.

I carefully tuck it deep into the pages of Chapter Five, the part of the book where Alice encounters the Caterpillar. Alice talks about how she doesn’t know who she is and can’t remember a poem. She eats a mushroom and grows bigger when she eats one side and grows shorter eating the other. I certainly feel like Alice right now.

Feeling a little more secure about the ticket having signed and hidden it, I turn and head to the kitchen to make dinner for my mom and me.

I make my famous tuna and peas casserole, but when my mom should be getting home from her newest job as a housekeeper in an old-age home, I get a phone call.

“Hey, Crystal-baaaby. It’s Mama. Lissen, baby. I hope I caught ya in time, and that ya didn’t start makin’ supper yet. I ran into an old friend and got to talkin’. We’re gonna get some dinner at the Italian place in town and continue catchin’ up. I mean, it’s Friday, right? Okay?”

“Um, yeah. No problem,” I reply, totally crushed. “Just tuna casserole. It’ll keep. I’ll put yours in the fridge.”

“Thanks, baby. Don’t wait up!” She squeals and giggles to someone as she hangs up the phone.

I look at the casserole with the crispy potato chip topping—perfectly browned—and feel let down. Again. I don’t know why I’m surprised. This isn’t an unusual occurrence. I guess a winning lottery ticket is enough good luck for one day. And at least she isn’t bringing home a strange man again. I hope.

I had been imagining what our future, my mom and mine, would look like. A future with $5,000 a week for life. After the payment on this trailer and community fees, the electricity, the water… we could buy a car and would even be able to afford getting a new TV, one where the corner isn’t distorted from the time my mom bumped into it when she staggered in late one night. And cable instead of relying on the sketchy antenna! We could get cable! Maybe not all the premium channels, I’d have to see how the budget works out, but the thought makes me so happy. And I would be able to go to college full-time without working at the electric company.

But now, I feel as though those dreams are foolish. The fantasy of my mom and me getting out of this hell together is gone. She won’t change. She doesn’t want to.

I try to study for my history class, but my mind keeps wandering to the winnings and how to move forward.

I run some rough calculations. I’ve been doing my own taxes for the past several years, but what are the taxes on $5,000 a week? I run a quick search on the Internet from my phone, careful not to spend a lot of time online because I don’t have a generous data package on my outdated, refurbished mobile phone with its bare-bones plan where I pay for every minute of data I use. Again, I wish that we’d had enough money in the budget to have Internet and cable in our home. Soon enough though! I tell myself with a smile.

Finding a quick answer, I exit the app and run some numbers. After taxes, I would get to keep roughly $3,500 a week. The thought has me almost dancing like a lunatic. I don’t bring home that much in a month from my job at the electric company, let alone a week.

I start to wonder what kind of attention I would get for winning this kind of money. I think about the newspaper and magazine articles I read about lottery winners after the recent Mega Millions jackpot of more than half-a-billion dollars back in January that sent everyone lottery crazy. The lines had been out the door and down the block at Joe’s Newsstand. One article I read was talking about winners from years back who are now flat broke having spent their winnings irresponsibly. Almost every winner talked about long, lost family members, friends, and even strangers looking for handouts.

I already knew I needed professional advice but what kind? An accountant? Maybe. Definitely a lawyer, I decide. One who would know what to do with money like this. The only interaction I had with legal advice was with the public defenders assigned to my brother’s cases. And I don’t really trust the goofball billboards and park benches. I need a trustworthy, upstanding lawyer. And, hey, I can now afford it. But how do I find one?

It’s almost midnight, and I’m tired of waiting for my mom to come home. I know she said not to wait up, but this is a habit I formed so I could make sure she got into bed okay, and that the front door is closed and locked. Often, she’d leave her keys in the front door. I also like to make sure that when she’s alone, she sleeps on her side with a pillow wedged behind her back in case she’s drunk enough to make herself sick, and I set a bucket next to her bed. If she comes home with a guy, many times I’ll go in and do all that after he’s left.

I put my history book and notebook in my school bag and head to bed but am unable to sleep, so I pull down another book on my shelf. It’s Little Women. Like my copy of Alice’s Adventures, these pages are all dog-eared. I often feel like Jo March, the tomboy, and working outside the home to support the family but more with the temperament of Meg. I long for sisters. I am just at the part where Meg is off to spend a couple of weeks with her friends going to parties and dances “with boys” when I hear a car door open and close outside.

I glance at my alarm clock, and the amber lights tell me that it’s 1:18 a.m. The front door opens and closes. Someone stumbles in.

I wait. Will it be one person? Or two? I don’t hear a second set of feet. That’s a good sign. She didn’t bring home her ‘friend,’ not that she always brought someone home, just a lot of the time. Then I feel guilty that I assumed she was with a guy ‘friend.’ Maybe it was a girlfriend she’d gotten together with. Maybe she wasn’t with a random guy tonight.

I hear the clank of the safety chain on the door and the jingle of keys on the table. When I hear my mom plop down in her squeaky bed, I take a breath feeling like I’m off the clock and drop off to sleep.