Dumb Luck (2 page)

chapter
three

The hospital
food was much better than I expected and I ate
like a horse. I tried calling Kayla at her home
but no one was answering. I tried her cell phone
a couple of times but no luck there either. Her
battery was probably dead. I was worried that she was blaming herself for what had happened. It
was
kind of her fault. What was she thinking? She'd
never done anything like that before. We were just friends. Good friends don't kiss in trees.

I fell asleep with a dull, throbbing drum beat in my head and a feeling of pressure in my chest, but it was a good sleep and a sound one.

When I woke up the next morning, the first face I saw was hers. It was Kayla, smiling at me in the morning sunlight. Her hair was brushed and she looked somehow different. “Brando, I'm so sorry,” she said. “It was all my fault.”

No way could I be mad at her. “Forget it,” I said. “Let's just forget it.” I meant the kiss, but I didn't want to use the word.

“You all right?”

“Apparently I have one thick skull and some amazing luck.”

“I am so glad. I thought you were going to die.”

I laughed as if it was no big deal. She looked at me directly in the eyes just then and we held the look, but then she suddenly looked away and out the window. “No more climbing trees for me for a while,” I said.

“I shouldn't have taken you so high.”

“I shouldn't have lost my balance. Let's leave it at that.” But I was dying to know the rest of the story. The part where I was unconscious and lying on the ground and what happened after that. “Kayla, how did I get here?”

“An ambulance,” she said.

“I know that, but how did you get help for me way out there?”

“After you fell, I climbed down. You were breathing but not conscious. I started to lose it. I really did. I started to cry. I didn't know what to do. Then I pulled myself together and tried calling 911 on my cell phone. But I couldn't get a signal.”

“We were pretty far out of town.” I could tell she was having a hard time telling the story. She looked like she was ready to cry and I was beginning to see how hard this must have been on her.

“So I had to climb back up in the tree,” she said.

“How?” I remembered how we had to help each other to get to the lowest limb the first time.

“I don't know. I just did. When I got back up, almost to where we'd been sitting, I finally got a signal and got through. It seemed to take forever for them to get there. But the ambulance drove out across the field to us. And I came back here with you. But you never woke up the whole time. It was the worst time of my life.” She was crying now.

I touched her shoulder. “But I'm going to be okay. I'll be out of here today and I get to take some time off from school.” I smiled at her and brushed back her hair. It felt smooth and soft in my hands and it felt good. “So it has a happy ending,” I said.

But it was only the beginning.

chapter
four

Before I left the hospital that day, Dr. Yates took a picture of him and me together with the
X
-ray of my skull beside my head. It was a very funny photo and he said he would email me a copy. “Just remember how lucky you are,” were his final words.

Kayla had gone off to school and my mom drove me home and was doting on me all day. Later in the afternoon she said, “Tomorrow's your birthday. Do you want to do anything special?”

“Not really,” I said. Truth was I wasn't all that excited about turning eighteen. I didn't feel like I could possibly be that old. I was still a kid. I didn't want to grow any older. And I sure didn't want more responsibilities. I didn't really know what I wanted out of life. Finish school, I guess, and get the hell out of there. Maybe go to trade school and become an electrician. My dad said electricians make good money and you could work your own hours if you wanted to. What I really wanted to be was an airplane pilot, but everyone knew I didn't have the smarts for that. Or the luck.

Who would want to hire an airplane pilot who was not very smart, one who got left back in school and, in his spare time, fell out of trees? No way could that ever happen.

So the birthday came and went. I stayed home from school. There was a cake and eighteen candles. My mom said she couldn't believe that her baby was now a man. Oh God. And my dad had a couple too many beers—in celebration of my birthday—and gave me a lecture about how life is not easy. He said, “It never was and never will be for people like us. So you just need to suck it up and get on with it.”

The next day I still didn't go to school. I was still recovering but my head felt better. I was okay. But I was tired of hanging around my house, watching really stupid videos on the Internet, so I walked down to the corner store, a place called “Dave's Pit Stop,” and bought some chips and a bottle of Pepsi. Over the counter, I noticed the sign that said:
This Week's Super-Lotto is Worth $3 Million.

I'd never bought a lottery ticket in my life. I guess I could have, but legally you weren't supposed to be allowed to buy one until you turned eighteen.

And then I thought,
Guess who just turned eighteen?

And I remembered what Dr. Yates had said.

No way.

But I was bored. I had five dollars left in my pocket. I picked up one of those little paper slips where you pencil in the numbers you want. I asked Dave, “How do you do this?”

Dave looked
at me like I was stupid. “You never did one before?”

“No.”

“You gotta be eighteen,” he said. “They come around here checking on me sometimes. Can't sell smokes to kids. Can't sell 'em beer or lottery tickets.”

“I know,” I said. “I just had a birthday.”

He shrugged like he could care less. “Well, you take the pencil and blacken in the little boxes—pick six numbers. Any six. Who knows? You might get lucky.”

I picked my six numbers. 3, 12, 21, 29, 33, 41.

I paid Dave, who had not asked to see any
ID
after all. Dave slipped my piece of paper into a machine and handed me my first ever official lottery ticket. I stared at it. My chance to be a multimillionaire. Yeah, right.

It was a Friday. The lottery draw was the next night. I stashed the ticket in my now-empty wallet and walked home, thinking, yeah, the weekend. Two days off from school already. Two more off and I wouldn't have to be sitting in a classroom until Monday morning. Not such a bad deal.

Nothing much happened that day. Or the next. My headaches were gone. Doc Yates had e-mailed the funny photo of me and him and the
X
-ray of my head. I printed it out and put it on my wall. I got a weird e-mail from Kayla:

Brando,

I realize I kind of made a mess of our friendship. I'll never do that again.

I promise. I just want us to stay friends. Happy belated birthday.

Kayla

What's with girls anyway? Yeah, she had kind of mucked things up by kissing me but I just wanted to forget it and get on with my so-called life. So I just e-mailed back:

K,

All is well. Pretend it never happened. And next time we go climbing, remind me to bring a parachute.

B

I honestly didn't know if I'd ever climb a tree again but, hey, you have to have a little fun in life.

My Saturday night was about as dull as a Saturday night could be. Dinner with a grumpy dad, who complained about his job selling used cars to people he referred to as “losers and dimwits.” I helped my mom wash the dishes and listened to her complain about my dad and how unhappy she was with the old house we lived in. (Doesn't get much more exciting than that.) And then I holed up in my room and watched some reality shows on
TV
.

I guess I could have actually watched the lottery draw on
TV
but I had forgotten about the ticket. Instead, I watched a show about a very unhappy family that had let cameras come into their lives to show the world how unhappy they were. There was a lot of screaming and slamming doors and it made me feel like maybe I didn't have it so bad.

I almost went to bed. When I was taking off my pants, my wallet fell to the floor and the ticket fell out.

So I picked it up.

And I sat down at my desk and Googled the lottery site.

And there were the winning numbers. 3, 12, 21, 29, 33, 41.

chapter
five

I felt dizzy and light-headed. My eyes went kind of funny and my throat went dry. Was the room actually spinning or was it me? This just wasn't possible.

No way.

So I Googled another site that also had the lottery winning numbers and I stared at them again: 3, 12, 21, 29, 33, 41.

I looked at the little yellow piece of paper in my hand.

No freaking way.

I wondered if I was dreaming. My hands were sweating now. I stood up and walked in a small circle around my room and looked at my lottery ticket and the screen again.

I checked a third site and then went back to the official lottery Web site. It all checked out.

I thought about calling Kayla but everything was swimming in my head. I had to think this through. How much was it? Three million dollars. Right. In a few days, I would have three million dollars. My life would be totally different. My heart was racing now.

It was eleven o'clock at night and I was, of course, wide awake. I hid the lottery ticket at the bottom of my sock drawer and I went for a walk.

I can't even remember much about the walk. I ran into some kids drinking from a bottle of wine who said something to me—some kind of insult. But it didn't stick. I remember almost walking out into the street in front of a car. The driver hit his horn and yelled something to me about being retarded. I just smiled. I remember coming across the stump of what was once one of my favorite trees to climb in the neighborhood and I thought that, one day, I'd start replanting trees in places where they'd been cut down.

And then I was back home. My mom had heard me leave. Although my dad was asleep, my mom was still up and wanted to know where I'd been.

“Walking.”

“Everything okay?”

I guess I couldn't hold it in any longer. “Just hang on,” I said, and ran up to my room to bring the ticket back down.

I held it out. “I won,” I said.

She smiled. She didn't believe me.

I went over to her laptop and turned it on. “I really did,” I said.

She smiled some more.

The computer screen lit up. “Check it out.”

She checked it out.

“Oh, my God,” she said, her hand over her mouth.

“Oh, my God,” I repeated calmly.

And then she burst into tears.

Lo and behold, when Monday morning rolled around, I did not go to school yet again. I was in the car with my mom and dad, headed to the lottery headquarters. Nobody in my family was in a bad mood. Nobody was crying.

On the way there, I got a text message from Kayla:

BRANDO,

WHERE R U? U OK?

KAYLA

I texted back:

K,

I'M VERY OK. NEVER BETTER.

YULE NEVER BELEEVE WHAT HAPPENED!

STAY TUNED.

B

At first, the people at the lottery corporation were very, very formal. They took the ticket, scanned it with something, looked at my
ID,
checked some records, and finally a smiley-faced bald guy in a suit, named Bradley Sweet, came into the room.

“Congratulations,” he said. “We were afraid you might not
come forward so soon. Some people hang back for days,
even weeks.”

I didn't really know what he was talking about, but he just kept shaking my hand and patting my father on the back. And then they gave me one of those big-ass cardboard checks. Three million dollars made out in my name.

Pictures were taken. Reporters asked questions. At first I just kind of blathered away, saying stupid stuff that probably didn't make any sense. But then, when I got myself straightened out and tried to sound normal, I just ended up laughing so hard I couldn't stop. After that it was all a blur.

I was on the
TV
news that night. I was in the papers. There were all kinds of weird phone calls and we had to unplug the phone. I had a ton of e-mails but didn't look at any of them. I was rich and I was the king of the world.

I had the big-ass check in my room.
It was just for show. The money was already in
my bank account. Yesterday my savings account had $43.76 in
it. Today it had $3,000,043.76. I could go to my
online banking and just sit there staring at the numbers. What next?

I didn't have the foggiest clue. All I knew was that I was feeling damn good. I could wake up tomorrow morning and pretty much do whatever I felt like doing.

My room phone was unplugged and my cell phone was off, but at two in the morning, I lay sweaty and fidgety in my bed, so I called Kayla. She answered after only one ring. I told her the story.

“This is real?” she asked.

“It's real.”

“What even prompted you to buy a lottery ticket?”

“I don't know. It was my first one.”

“But why now?”

“Because I'd turned eighteen. Because I fell out of a tree.” I had almost said,
because you kissed me and I fell out of a tree
. But I didn't.

What followed was one of those incomprehensible conversations that was made up mostly of one- and two-syllable words. And as I got more excited trying to tell her about all the possible things I could do in my life, she suddenly screamed in my ear (in a good way) and said, “You are so damn lucky, Brando, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.”

And I think it was the first time anyone had said something so positive about me. Not only was I a multimillionaire but I was (corny as this sounds) a nice guy. And I liked that.

But there was no sleep for me that night.