He’d told himself that he’d find a solution regarding the ticket by morning (he’d Sleep on it, haha), but at five-thirty all he could think about was Scantrons, bubbles, and Dixon Orioles. With the test-taking strategies he learned buzzing about in his head, he didn’t even stop once to think about the lottery ticket he left under the mattress. His head still muzzy from sleep, he got up and slowly began to get dressed. He casually looked over at the clock on his nightstand, froze for a second, the winced as his mother’s voice shrilled out.
“Hurry up in there! You’re gonna be late, and if you are you’re gonna have to walk!”
“All right, mom, sheesh,” he mumbled through sleep-numbed lips. Even so, he began to go a bit faster.
As he trudged around the room getting his books and papers into his backpack, he began to tick off the things he still had to do.
Backpack, check, books, check, pencils, check, paper, check...what am I missing?
He looked in the mirror as he thought, and then slapped his forehead.
Pants!
He quickly slipped them on and zipped the fly, then looked around the room one last time, just to check to make sure he didn’t forget anything. He scoured his brain even as he scoured the room, his eyes peering into every nook and cranny, then stopped on his bed. A vague memory stirred for a second in the deepest recesses of his mind, a memory he knew was important but couldn’t quite place...
“Shit, I forgot to make my bed.”
With a loud roar the old station wagon’s motor started.
Geoffry quickly grabbed a few corners of his sheets and folded them under the mattress, knowing that the mattress was to be replaced later that day. What he didn’t know was that if he’d gone a little further, things might have looked up a little for him. But he didn’t, and he completely ignored his better instincts and rushed downstairs into the garage where his mom was waiting with a scowl on her face.
The finals went better than Geoffry expected. The cute girl he’d be surreptitiously admiring the entire year had smiled at him. He’d even managed to make a new acquaintance, someone who, if he couldn’t call a friend, at least he could call him something other than bad names.
All in all, his day at school was quite productive.
That is, until he got the call.
“Geoffry, I’m going to be working some extra hours today.”
A frown appeared on his face, and he shook his head. Her voice was slurred- she had gone back to drinking, and would be out possibly all night.
“Mom, is something wrong? You sound drunk.”
“We’ll have to talk about it when I get back.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
Silence on the other end.
“Mom?”
“Let’s just say you tested your luck too far today, buddy.”
A click as she hung up.
“Fucking great,” he muttered as he combed his hair back with his hands.
The rest of the day seemed to roll by unbearably slow, despite the fact that there were only two more periods left in the day. Every minute seemed like an hour as he wondered why his mom resorted to drinking her problems away again. As he sat in fifth, and sixth, period, he thought over her words.
“You tested your luck too far today, buddy.”
Luck.
Then it clicked, and he groaned as he realized his mistake.
I left the lottery ticket under the bed, and today was the day she was going to get the new mattress for me. Why didn’t I think of that earlier?
Then, as if on cue, the bell rang.
It was time.
The day felt like a dream as Geoffry stepped out of the bus; just sunny enough to warm you up, but windy enough to make you realize summer didn’t last forever. Bugs hummed their dreary tune in the scraggly grass of the park he got dropped off at. Birds screamed musically at each other.
All in all, he couldn’t help but feel it was a terrible day for a final confrontation.
Because, he reasoned, that was what it was. A deep, gut instinct told him that only one of them, ticket or him(or was it mother and him?) would come out of it alive.
Time seemed to slow as he trudged to his house, dread filling his every step. He already had a good idea of what he would find inside, and he knew it wasn’t going to be pretty; if his mother already sounded soused on the phone, and she continued drinking, he couldn’t even imagine how she’d be once he got home two hours later.
He jaywalked the street leading to his neighborhood, stucco houses looming above like some kind of tribal deathwatch.
He stopped and considered the simile.
Deathwatch...
Deeming it appropriate, he continued on into the network of cul-de-sacs with renewed dread.
The first thing Geoffry noticed when he walked inside was the sheer amount of bottles littering the ground.
"Texas Driver," he read.
I hate alcohol, a nastier habit there never was.
The second thing he noticed was the stench.
Can't really blame her-drinking rotting fruit and God-knows-what-else.
The third thing he noticed was the utter desolation left all over the house.
She only did that because she gets moody when she drinks...can't really blame her.
And the fourth thing he noticed was that the lottery ticket was downstairs. Right below the picture frame, the cracked old picture of a cracked old life that no longer existed.
But that's not the ticket, Jeff, old boy, this is.
Slowly, hatefully, he approached the ticket and the picture. A terrible smile creased his features.
"Time to cash you in. Oh, yes, time to cash you in, you little bastard, time to get rid of you once and for all." he laughed, long and hard, not even caring that his voice carried off the walls and echoed back, not caring if it was mildly insane, not even caring that, for a brief moment, his father and his detestable greed had shone through.
He ended the laugh as abruptly as it started, and grinned at the picture.
"Go ahead and try it. Go on, I DARE YOU. Kinda hard to do anything when your buddy here," and here he waved the ticket, "is getting sold. Oh, yes, me and Mom are going to live quite the life after this, one without pictures or tickets or stupid bottles. Try and stop us, I DARE YOU."
He laughed again, this time shorter, as he swept his hand across the wall and knocked the picture frame to the ground. He stared at it, expecting for something to happen, and laughed when all that happened was that a teensy spiderweb of a crack appeared near, but not on, his neck.
"That's what I thought," he muttered under his breath as he stomped out the door and slammed the door behind him.
The house was quiet after he left, but it was a different kind of quiet. the atmosphere felt electric, alive. The air felt heavy, ready to crush the universe with potentially fulfilled expectations.
The climax was coming, nearing, then arrived.
The picture frame tinkled, and the crack near a certain little boy's neck grew till it almost touched, almost but not quite. The questing crack knew its limits. Its time would come, just not yet.
Not yet.
But it would come, sooner that expected.
