and 06.
06. 29. 01.
No clue what golden Mighty Ball number is called out because all the sound gets sucked from the room as I look at the ticket in my hand.
It’s not the one with my birth date.
None of the other numbers are on my ticket either.
Fresh tears spring to my eyes as I feel that void from earlier open up beneath me and try to pull me under, but I clench my jaw and quickly swipe them away. Nothing has changed, and it’s fine.
It has to be.
No clue whether or not the other numbers match the ones on the old lady’s ticket—seems unlikely, but either way, she just won seven dollars.
Guess depending on how you look at it, I am a lucky charm.
Sure hope she has a merry Christmas.
There’s a shriek like someone’s being stabbed.
My eyelids pop wide, but I can’t move.
The bedroom door is thrown open, slamming against that little rubber-tipped metal thingy that protrudes from the wall near the floor, and before I have a chance to react, there’s a body flying through the air and landing on top of me. “Ooof.”
“He came, Rico, he CAAAAAAME!”
Jax sits up on my belly and grabs me by the shoulders. “You were riiiiiiiight. Santa DOES give a flip about me!”
So he saw the bike then.
“THIS IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVERRRRRR!” he yells right in my face with his nine-year-old morning breath (blegh).
I furrow my brow. “What on earth are you talking about, Jaxy?”
“Santa came! He brought me this awesome Minecraft Lego set and the twenty-inch Raptor Freestyle BMX Deluxe bike with a welded cross brace, alloy wheels, and super-gnarly pegs! It’s exactly what I wanted, Rico!”
“That’s awesome, little dude!”
He jumps off me. “Just wait till Mason Bridges gets a load of this! HA!”
Mason Bridges. Jax’s most ardent antagonizer. A kid who sees his family’s position at the top of the mountain as a license to drop rocks down on the people who live at the base. (The little jackass.)
Of course I don’t have the heart to tell Jaxy there’s very little chance of Mason seeing his cool new bike, since there’s no way Mama would let him ride it two miles to school.
He runs out of the room still screaming his head off.
I sit up and stretch. Swing my legs over the edge of my twin bed. Still got my brown-skinned Barbie comforter and sheet set from when I was Jax’s age.
Vintage, yo.
And then I smell cinnamon. Which would mean French toast.
Odd.
When I step out of the bedroom, Mama is standing over the stove decked out in her Hilton housekeeping uniform. Her dark hair spills down her back in a long braid, and her light-brown, freckled cheeks are flushed.
And there’s French toast.
“Wow,” I say. “You’re cooking?”
She snorts. “Don’t sound so surprised. It’s Christmas!”
“And yet you’re going to work on Christmas morning.” As usual, I fail to keep my “little resentments,” as she likes to call them, in check. And I instantly feel a pinch of guilt about it.
Typical morning in the Danger household.
“Somebody’s gotta pay some bills around here, Rico!” she replies in her sarcastic singsong voice. “We can’t all be Santa, you know.”
This time, I bite my tongue.
Did I know she’d be pissed about Jax’s bike? Of course. It’s three hundred dollars of financial relief she won’t be getting (and I have no doubt she knows exactly how much the thing cost).
Speaking of Jax, he chooses that moment to rip through the kitchen screaming, “EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!”
“Nice to see the kid happy for once,” I say, even though it’s a low blow.
She glares at me, then peeks around to make sure he’s out of earshot. “You think this is cute?”
I shrug. “That my little brother gets to act like it’s Christmas on Christmas? Looks pretty cute to me.”
“Mm-hmm. Well, when they cut our goddamn lights off, perhaps you can teach him how to use that bike to generate some electricity.” She shoves the spatula underneath a piece of French toast so forcefully, it pops out of the pan and plummets to the floor. “Shit!”
I pour myself a cup of Folgers from the coffeepot—largely to piss Mama off since she hates when I drink it—and carry it over to the dining room table she pulled off a curb two years ago. “That can be one of my pieces.”
No response. Just a gust of icy air as she sweeps out of the room, pretending I no longer exist.
Whatever.
After about a minute, she returns with her coat draped over