Dark Intentions - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,18

on the other side of the booth.

"I really wish that there were something I could do," Allison says, "but, really, I have no idea. You know that I don't really come from a wealthy family, and, I mean, I don't know how wealthy you have to be to have that kind of money laying around."

"Yeah, I agree," I say, lifting my head up and taking a bite of my food.

As we sit there, I chew loudly, and that's all I hear inside my head. I wish that the headache would go away and the pounding would disappear, but it doesn't.

It just gets louder.

The walls start to feel like they're closing in on me. I take a few deep breaths, exhaling extra slowly in order to calm myself down. The anxiety is building, starting to feel like a panic attack.

I'm never good enough, nothing's ever going to work out, and my mom is just going to show up there and get turned away from the one thing that she's ever asked the of world.

No, that's not going to happen. Not after I lost Michael. Too much bad stuff has already happened. Now I'm going to stand up for what's right, no matter what I have to do.

We talk the rest of lunch. We talk about her job and her boyfriend and nothing in particular, and she pays the bill and wishes me good luck.

She tells me not to worry and that something will work out, but we both know that's not true. I'm not sure how anything could work out without me putting actual effort into it, but effort into what exactly?

12

Jacqueline

I'm completely at a loss. If I get a job, the salary won't be anywhere near enough. I mean, who the hell is going to pay me $75,000 up front?

My thoughts meander to other options. There was of course the famous show, Breaking Bad, where the guy was diagnosed with lung cancer and couldn't pay for the treatment or to support his family, so he started making and selling methamphetamines.

That would be good, except I'm not very good at chemistry and I have no idea how to even begin to do something like that.

But still, my thoughts continue to wander. My father was a gambler. He played blackjack and poker and he made us lose numerous apartments and cars, but there were other times when he won.

I remember how fun it was being with him when we celebrated. The most he ever won was $50,000 in one night. It was the most money I’d ever seen. When he came home, he was beaming from ear to ear, and it felt like Christmas morning.

He bought my mom a big diamond ring, and he got Michael some sort of Star Wars battleship and a big dollhouse for me.

Would this wok for me?

Could I take the little bit of money that I do have and bring it to the casino and try to win my mom's life?

I bite the inside of my cheek as I consider that option. My mom hates gambling. She always has. She blames it for the demise of their relationship and for my father's disappearance.

She always thought it was better to have one steady job than to live a life on the edge like he did for all of those years, never knowing when you're going to be up and when you're going to be down.

But the thing is that my father wasn't cut out for full-time work. He craved more. He needed the excitement of the nightlife. I was never like that when it came to gambling.

He taught me a little bit and we would play in secret with Michael when Mom was at work. We weren't supposed to tell her that he was teaching us to play because he knew she would never approve of that.

Michael was a lot like our dad.

He loved gambling for gambling’s sake. He would get so excited when he had a good hand, but for me, I never really cared.

It was all logistics.

Could I win?

What are the chances and the likelihood? And if I didn't think that the risk was good, was falling in my favor, then I wouldn't play the hand.

I haven't played in years. Mom made me promise that it's something that I would never take up no matter how desperate I was for money, but what about now?

How do I save her life?

How do I come up with this money without gambling, without doing something elicit?

No, the solution is