by Jamie Pacton
“Are you ready for today’s meeting?” Mrs. Davis asks as she starts gathering things from the back cabinets and hands me a stack of papers. “I’ve pulled some material that might help the newer members.”
For a moment, I blank on what she’s talking about. Then I remember: Right, we’re supposed to be talking about water quality in the Great Lakes region and what we can do to help. I volunteered to discuss some of my own research on the oceans, as prep for our trip to Lake Michigan next month.
“Of course,” I say, taking the papers. They’re yellowish and held together with rusty staples. “I’m totally prepared. These should help.”
“That’s my girl,” says Mrs. Davis fondly. She pats me on the back. “And don’t forget our aquarium-store field trip tomorrow.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I say. (I’d totally forgotten it, but right, we’re taking a bunch of third graders to an aquarium store in Madison tomorrow. Got it.)
“You’re doing a great job as the club president, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for you. You have so much potential.”
It’s as close as Mrs. Davis gets to giving me a hug, and it buoys me immensely. Before I can thank her or even reply, she walks back toward her office. I try to gather my thoughts, desperately wondering what I’m going to say about the water quality of the Great Lakes, when all I can think about are fifty-eight million reasons to flee from the Ecology Club meeting before anyone else—especially Holden—gets there.
LAKESBORO COMMUNITY FACEBOOK GROUP THURSDAY, 4:53 P.M.
J. WILKINS: Hey, folks! I’m looking for a contractor who will replace the toilets in our house. Raccoons somehow found their way in … [20 more comments]
AMY PEMBERLY: OMG OMG! Did you all hear? The winning lotto ticket was sold in our town last night! Somebody is gonna be riiiichhh! [Kim Kardashian gif]
MARY FULTON: No way! I hadn’t heard this! Wonder if it’s somebody in town, or someone passing through?
AMY PEMBERLY: Probably somebody passing through, off the highway. But can you imagine if it was somebody in town?
LISA HAWKINS: Maybe that’s how we’ll get our town swimming pool. LOL.
MARY FULTON: No need for a swimming pool. We have a lake! Are you too good to swim in the lake?
LISA HAWKINS: Sheesh. Chill out. We’re not rehashing the “swim in the lake already, pools are for snobs” argument again on here. We’re discussing the $58 million winner.
AMY PEMBERLY: Why would someone keep the money a secret? If it were me, I’d be shouting it from the rafters.
MARY FULTON: Maybe they don’t know yet? It just was announced this morning.
LISA HAWKINS: Ha! You’re telling me you wouldn’t check the numbers first thing? That’s what I always do. [50 more comments]
MARY FULTON: Not to change subjects too much, but this cow wandered into my yard this morning. Anybody know who it belongs to? Seems friendly enough … [picture of enormous dairy cow happily eating grass by a swing set]
AMY PEMBERLY: How does one lose a cow? Only in Lakesboro, lol.
MARY FULTON: This is nothing! Did I tell you about the bear that came through my yard a few weeks ago?
J. WILKINS: That’s our cow! Thank you! We’ll be right over.
CHAPTER FOUR
I HEAD STRAIGHT HOME AFTER ECOLOGY CLUB. I’M EXHAUSTED AND incredibly grateful I don’t have to work tonight. Work means talking to people, trying to keep my secret from Bran, and worrying a lot. Tonight, I need my room and my bed so I can try to calm my racing thoughts, which are screaming at me: You won the lotto, you won the lotto, you won the lotto.
Quiet, brain.
I walked home this afternoon—skipping the bus and a ride from Bran—so I could escape the chatter about the lotto winner. But it’s mostly impossible. I even popped onto the town’s Facebook group, which I never do, to see what people were saying about the winner. Confirmed: Everyone is talking about this lotto ticket and the mysterious winner.
With every step, I hear the ongoing swell of voices that filled the school today: “I wonder who it is?”
“Here’s what I’d do …”
“Can you imagine—$58 million?”
These comments circle in my head like a swarm of mosquitoes, each one stinging me slightly. I push all the thoughts and voices down as soon as I reach my house.
Ahhh, home sweet trash heap.
Mom and I live on the far side of town, where the neighborhoods trickle off and fields of corn and soybeans spread out like picnic blankets. Out here, the houses are at least a half mile apart, and red barns with painted quilt squares on them dot the landscape. My house was once part of my grandparents’ eighty-acre farm, but Grandma sold most of the land when Grandpa died (which is how she could afford a condo in Madison). Now we only have the original farmhouse and a small yard neighbored by cornstalks on one side and barbed wire and cows on the other. Which is fine with me. I’m glad we don’t have close neighbors to yell at us about the yard.
With a long sigh, I step through the garden gate of my house. Part of the fence—which might have been made of white pickets once but now looks more like a mouthful of dirty broken teeth—falls off as I gently close the gate. The entirety of my front yard is filled with children’s play equipment. There’s a busted metal swing set, which Mom got out of the trash recently. A twisty yellow slide leans against it, not attached to anything. Scattered over the rest of the dead grass and weed-filled flowerbeds are dozens of plastic toys, playhouses, toddler swings, and every other sort of outdoor play item in between. It looks like a daycare threw up out here, except everything is decidedly hazardous and unsafe for kids. Mom started collecting this stuff from garage sales at the beginning of the summer.
“Mom, this is junk,” I’d said then, hoping to forestall a new obsession. “There’s nothing personal or sentimental about it.”
“Nonsense, Fortuna Jane,” she replied, bustling past me with an armload of broken plastic dump trucks. “Children loved these things once. That means they’re personal, and we should rescue them from being forgotten in a landfill somewhere.”
The space under the umbrella of “things loved by a child once” is nearly infinite, but the space in our house is limited. Simply put, we don’t have room for much more junk. But Mom wasn’t concerned about that.
“But you don’t even know who they belonged to!” I had protested.
“It doesn’t matter. My job is to keep things from being forgotten. Your job is to help me.” She put the toy trucks down near a water table that was filled with rotting leaves. Sighing, I helped her unload the rest of the stuff she’d managed to “rescue.”
At least she hasn’t brought the outdoor play stuff into the house yet.
I step over two sandboxes shaped like turtles piled on the front porch and shove my key into the front door.
Our old farmhouse has been in the family for three generations, and Mom was raised here. She moved away for college, met my dad, and they headed to Nashville for her to try to be a country singer.
But then five years ago, when I was twelve, my firefighter dad got caught in a huge blaze and didn’t come home.
Mom was never the same. She sold her guitar, moved back into Grandma’s house with me, and started buying things that reminded her of my dad. At first it was a few things—a sweater like he used to wear. Or a book that had been his favorite.
But one day, she came home from a consignment store with a mug that had a photo on it.
“LOOK AT THIS!” she’d said, storming into the kitchen where I was working my way through some math homework with Grandma’s help.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, not looking up.
She had plunked the mug down on the table in front of us.
“LOOK,” she demanded.
I glanced up to see a picture of a redheaded kid in a soccer uniform staring back at me. #1 SOCCER STAR! was written across the top of the mug.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“I have
no idea,” said Mom quickly. “But that doesn’t matter. How could someone throw this away? Imagine if you were that kid and you found out the mug with your picture on it had been given away like it was trash!”
Grandma and I shared a long look.
But we didn’t say anything when Mom left the mug on a shelf in the living room.
“She’s still grieving your father,” said Grandma, so quietly that only I could hear her. “She’ll get over this phase soon.”
She didn’t. Not even a little bit.
I push open the front door and flick on the light, knowing what awaits me inside: eyes. Thousands of them, staring at me from the mugs, T-shirts, and photos that fill our house. You know how they say the eyes on some paintings follow you? Well, multiply that feeling by a thousand and throw in a bunch of cheesy messages, and you’ll have an approximate idea of how it feels to walk through my living room.
World’s Best Dad!
#1 Grandma!
Baby’s First Christmas!
The personalized items all shout at me from the bookshelves that line the walls and the piles Mom has made on the floor. I can no longer see the carpet, but there’s a path among all the mounds of stuff. Perched on one pile is a half-eaten bowl of cereal—Mom must’ve had breakfast in here before she left for work. I gather it up and hurry into the kitchen, expertly navigating through the living room like a slalom skier.
The kitchen isn’t much better than the living room, but thank God Mom doesn’t hoard food. In fact, even when we have enough grocery money, she usually forgets to buy it, so that means I keep the fridge stocked with what I can, when I can. But every available inch of counter space is covered in more garage-sale and thrift-store finds. Most of this stuff isn’t even personalized—Mom bought it because she thought we needed it or someone told her a story about it. Even if it’s a pile of Big Gulp cups or a rusty can opener, she’ll ask the person selling it if there’s a story behind it. And if they don’t tell her a story, she’ll make up one about it.
She swears there’s an organization to everything, but it’s beyond me. All I can do is keep my own space clean and not mess with her stuff. Because she always knows when I do. If I were to throw away one of the four dish-drying racks piled on top of the stove, she’d know. Same with every other plastic cup, dented spoon, and piece of junk in the cabinets.
After stepping around a pair of high chairs that have appeared in the kitchen since I left for school this morning (apparently the nightmare-daycare mess is starting to enter the house), I rinse the cereal bowl and load it into the dishwasher, along with the other breakfast dishes I put in there earlier. Mom stopped cleaning years ago, and if I didn’t pick up stuff, we’d have animals living among the piles of things. Well, we probably do, but not any that I can see.
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 pe
rcent 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 talking millions) in the Florida Lottery. Abraham was a nice guy. He shared his money with lots of people, but then he met Dee Dee Moore. By all accounts, Dee Dee was bad news from the start. She tricked Abraham into dating her, took control of his home, and bought herself a bunch of expensive stuff. Then, maybe she got tired of Abraham or maybe she wanted the money all to herself, but the short story is that Dee Dee killed Abraham and buried him under some concrete patio slabs in the backyard.
Talk about the death of romance!
But, wild as this tragic tale is, Abraham Shakespeare’s story is not all that rare when it comes to lotto winners. In fact—
My phone rings, interrupting my Googling. It’s Bran. The only person I know under seventy who still calls rather than texts. I almost don’t pick up, but I can’t let it go to voicemail. Because he’ll keep calling.
“Hello?” My tone comes out more guarded than I expect.
“Jane.” Bran’s voice is intense. “Where are you? Are you sleeping? Are you okay? Why do you sound funny?”
“I’m fine. Just got home. Getting ready to start my homework.”
“Don’t do that. I know you’re off tonight, but can you come to the farm? We’re super slammed. Mom says she’ll pay you for tonight’s shift in cash.”
“I don’t know … I’m really—”
“Please. We need you, and it’ll get you out of BJD day.”
Right, I had almost forgotten about Big Junk Dump day.
“Excellent point …”
“Also, if you come to work, maybe we can find some time to talk about this lotto stuff. Have you seen my website or my social media? It’s exploding with questions. Suddenly, I’ve become the expert on all things lotto.”
The thought of him knowing so much about the lotto makes my insides squirm. But all I say is, “That’s because you’re the guy with the news in Lakesboro.”