“What if we don’t win?”
“Of course we’ll win. You got the bottle.” Lula leaned over Chopper and came out with his wallet. She took a twenty and stuffed the wallet back into Chopper’s jacket pocket. “We’re just borrowing,” she told Chopper. “We’ll be right back.”
“There’s no we,” I said. “I want no part of this.”
“There you go with the scruples again. You gotta learn a real scruple from a worthless scruple.”
“We don’t steal from people we capture.”
“Borrow,” Lula said. “We’re borrowing. And it’s for a good cause. That always makes a difference.”
I had my arms crossed over my chest, holding firm.
“You’re gonna have to get out of the car and come with me,” Lula said. “You’re the one with the lucky bottle. And besides, I’m not getting back behind the wheel until we do this. And I’m gonna hold my breath, too.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” I said, unsnapping my seat belt. I got out of the car, slammed the door, and stomped into the store.
“We want lottery tickets,” Lula said to the clerk. “Here’s our borrowed twenty, which is okay because we got a lucky bottle. And we haven’t got time for the Powerball. We’re gonna take those five-dollar scratch things.”
Lula took her tickets and stepped back and started scratching. Nothing on the first ticket. Nothing on the second ticket. Nothing on the third ticket.
“This is it,” Lula said. “I can feel it. This here’s the lucky ticket.” She scratched the ticket and shrieked. “I won! I won! I knew I’d win. What did I tell you?”
I looked over her shoulder. “How much did you win?”
“Ten dollars.”
“I don’t want to rain on your parade, but you spent twenty to win ten.”
“Yeah, but I won. We need more money, now that we’re on a roll. This is just the beginning.”
“We haven’t got more money.”
“Chopper has money. His wallet was full of money. We just need to borrow more.”
“No!”
“Yeah, but how are we going to pay him back if we don’t borrow more?”
“I’ll mail it to him,” I said.
Lula handed her lottery ticket in and got her ten dollars.
“Hold on,” Lula said. “I need a cookie. I got a cookie craving.” Lula went to the cookie aisle and came back with a bunch of bags and boxes.
“That’s twelve-fifty,” the clerk said.
Lula looked at me.
I blew out a sigh, dug into my purse, and came up with two dollars and change.
“Now we can celebrate our winnings,” Lula said.
We took our cookies and went back to the Firebird.
“What the heck?” Lula said.
No Chopper.