“Matthew?” Mayra sat up straighter and moved to one side of the couch, making me have to sit up, too.
“What?”
“What did you do with that ticket?”
“I threw it away,” I told her.
“Threw it away?”
“Yes.” I nodded, and then my ears heated up as I looked away. I had never told Mayra why I had her dump out the trash with me in the garage and hadn’t really thought about it since then anyway.
“What are you so nervous about?” Mayra demanded.
I sighed. I could see in her expression that this wasn’t a topic she was going to let drop. I would have better luck trying to convince her we didn’t need to pack anything.
“That day…um…that day I called you in the morning and asked you to come over, and we were in the garage…do you remember that?”
“You wanted me to dump the trash all over the place with you,” she said dryly. “I almost bailed on you then, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Go on,” Mayra prompted.
“I was looking for that ticket,” I told her. “I threw it in the trash, and it was trash day, and I heard people at school talking about how no one had brought in the winning ticket yet.”
Mayra’s eyes got wide, and her mouth dropped open. For a moment, she just stared at me while I rubbed at my thumbnails over and over again. It occurred to me that I had intentionally not allowed myself to think about the ticket in the kitchen drawer or the implications of having a winning ticket in my possession. There were too many unknowns. Too many possibilities. Too many considerations for my mind to be comfortable with the possibility of such a major, life-altering event.
I would never have considered the lottery ticket game Mayra had described as fun.
I couldn’t bring myself to think about it, so I started to shut down again.
Mayra sat on the couch looking at me while I fiddled with my hands and pretended nothing was happening. It was the only way I was going to get through this.
“Is it?” she finally whispered.
Of course, she wasn’t going to let me just ignore it.
“Is what what?” I asked. Maybe if I pretended not to know what she was talking about, I would get off the hook. I wondered if I got the remote off the side table and started flipping channels if I would get lucky enough to find that True Blood vampire guy she likes so much. Then she’d stop thinking about it.
No such luck.
“Is it the winning ticket?” Mayra snatched the remote before I could get a good hold of it.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I never checked.”
“You had me dig through piles of trash for a lottery ticket that you never checked?”
“Um…yeah, I guess so.”
“Why didn’t you check it?”
“I forgot about it,” I admitted. “It’s in that little drawer in the kitchen, which is full of stuff I don’t know where else to put. It’s disorganized and I don’t like looking in there, but Mom always kept that kind of stuff in there, so I never straightened it.”
Mayra sat up and grabbed my hand.
“Matthew, it could be the winning ticket!”
“The odds are—”