Mayra sat on the couch and I put my head in her lap. I could feel my muscles relaxing as soon as her fingers wound around my hair.
“You need a haircut,” Mayra told me.
“That’s how all this got started,” I said, reminding her.
“Oh really?”
“I think I loved you then,” I told her.
“Because I cut your hair just right?”
“Uh huh.” I nodded and looked over at the screen to focus on a rerun of House, which Mayra just loved. I thought most of it was kind of cheesy. This episode was about a guy who had a whole lot of money, but his son was dying. He convinced himself he couldn’t have both money and happiness, so he dissolved his company, gave away the assets, and his son survived.
Cheesy.
It still served its purpose, though, because throughout the episode, I pretty much forgot about packing and moving and going to college. As soon as it was over and the news started, I knew I would have to actually get something accomplished if I didn’t want to sleep alone tonight.
The problem was, Mayra’s fingers in my hair felt really good, and I didn’t want to get up. I closed my ey
es and listened to the hum of the newscaster’s voice.
“…but authorities aren’t sure if he is a viable suspect.
“In Butler County, time is running out for the person who possesses the winning lottery ticket purchased back in February. The six-month timeframe to claim the jackpot expires tomorrow.”
“How can you buy a lottery ticket and then never check the numbers?” Mayra asked.
My stomach kind of twisted up, and the recollection of the smell of kitchen trash hit my nose. I had no idea why—the trash can in the kitchen was empty. It seemed more like a memory than a real smell, though.
“I mean, the whole idea of it is the excitement of watching the little balls pop out,” she went on. “You have to watch those and watch your ticket and get excited. That’s the beauty of the game.”
“I never thought about it like that,” I said. “The odds against winning are so astronomical, I never really gave it any kind of consideration.”
“It’s a game like anything else,” Mayra explained. “It isn’t about winning. It’s about the feeling you get when you have that ticket in your hand, and you are wondering if you might have the winning one. Right then, it’s still possible. It’s thinking about the possibility that is fun.”
“I’ve never bought one,” I said. The gnawing feeling came back to me, and a flash of an image of paper in a plastic bag along with a memory-smell of duck sauce invaded my head. “I do have one, though.”
Shit, shit, shit. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
“One what?”
“A lottery ticket.”
“You do? Why?”
“Um…when that guy hit my car, he gave me a lottery ticket and told me that we were even,” I told her. “He just didn’t want to pay for the damage. Travis looked him up, but he moved away without any forwarding address and didn’t have any insurance anyway. It wasn’t worth trying to track him down.”
“When did this happen?”
“Right before we started working on that honey bees project.”
“In February?”
“Yes.”
“And this guy was from around here?”
“Yes.”