Jackpot: Chapters 1–7

Truth be told, the influx of holiday cheer really has been a nice reprieve. S

Truth be told, the influx of holiday cheer really has been a nice reprieve.

He mispronounces my last name. Doesn’t rhyme with “stranger” like everyone assumes. It's actually DON-gur and I usually correct people...having Danger as a last name would be cool if it weren’t such a misnomer.

To the right of our couch, there’s a sorry excuse for a prelit Christmas tree with two measly newspaper-wrapped gift boxes underneath.

Our obsession with the Michael Jackson song has its origin in our stint at a shelter during Jaxy’s first couple years of life: there was a family with a toddler who often struggled to fall asleep, and the only thing that would help was the sound of her mom’s voice whisper-singing Baby, are you okay? the way MJ does in the song.

And now I’ve got images of the richest kid in school superimposing memories of our shelter days and smashing up against the helplessness and desperation constantly simmering beneath the surface of my chill.

...when you live as tenuously as my family does, there’s nothing worse than having even the slightest glimmer of hope dashed against the ugly boulders of life.

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!”

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.

“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.

As he runs to her, Mama looks up at me and smiles. Weakly, but it’s enough.
A moment of accord.

She breaks free and grabs her purse from the computer table, where our dinosaur of a PC monitor sits stoic and judgmental.

To top it off, the person who shoved me into this lackluster billfold truly has forgotten about me.

The indignity of it all is appalling considering my value, don’t you think?

And instead of putting it in the account my mother has access to, I cashed it. Put it in an envelope. Stuffed it in a hole in my trusty box spring, same spot I hid the money I secreted away all those months for Jax’s bike.

I’ve never held that much money before, and feeling the paper slide through my fingers keeps me distracted from other facets of my life that often plague my brain in the darkness: the fact that we’re always a few hours of pay away from not making rent; that Mama treats me more like a partner and co-parent than a kid; that my seventeen-year-old life consists entirely of school, work, and sleep; that I have no friends.

I vaguely remember her moving in who knows how many years ago, but between never seeing her around here since and the incongruous-to-her-glittering-image bumps and shouts that sometimes filter through our shared walls, I’d forgotten she lives there.

The ten-episode reality show JACKPOT! will follow the former truck driver as he adjusts to his lavish new lifestyle.

Look around at the dingy walls and mostly secondhand furniture in our closet-sized living room.

I know one of those other people—Mr. Bashir Zoughbi—wouldn’t condone me hunting down one of his customers, so he’s not likely to give me access to the security footage I’ll need to try and find out what kind of car the lady was driving.

I could try to get into the hella-high-tech, flat-screened monstrosity on Mr. Z’s desk—stuff from the cameras outside the store would have to be on there somewhere, right?

...the last time I wore that, my turd-brain chem lab partner held up the round-bottom glass chemical container we were using for our experiment, looked me over lasciviously, and said, "Forget back...baby got flask.”

His eyebrows are super thick, and he’s got acne along his chin and the ruins of an angry erupted zit in the little crevasse beside his left nostril.

The weird green eyes burn a haphazard trail as they roam all over my face, and his head drifts toward his shoulder until he looks like he’s examining a piece of abstract art from another angle or something.

It’s unnerving. Especially since he oozes wealth.

The contrast between his pristine brown wing tips (what high school senior even wears those?) and my scuffed thrift-store boots would be enough to make me literally run away were I not so desperate.

“Oh my God, will you let that go?” My face is a raging inferno of mortification.

The cologne punches me in the olfactory receptors and my head goes a little fuzzy.

“Well. You’re you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You’re like...aesthetically unique.”

“Unique.” I hate that word.
“Yeah. Different. Singular. Whatever you want to call it.”

Our beloved Rico isn’t much of a dreamer—years of forced adulthood and hindered ambition will do that to a girl—but in a fit of sleepless fervor, she scribbled me onto the legal pad where she makes the “monthly budget and bills” lists...then promptly ripped me out, crushed me up tight like I'd insulted her mama, and slammed me into the trash can.

He reeks too much of money right now and it makes me wanna barf and punch him right in the sternum where his buttons are jacked up.

It’ll be a miracle to make it through the next half hour without steam shooting out of all my facial orifices.

“Look, you ingrate, I’m working as fast as I can. Just letting you know I might not be able to crack it within your ridiculous time constraint!”

“I gotta say, though: I feel like I’ve known you for a long time. Is that weird?”
“Umm...yes.”
“Hmm. Well, you have to admit we’ve got rapport, you and me.”

Even with my subnovice level of tech savvy, I highly doubt Voldemort Virus is an actual thing.

That million-dollar Macklin smile falters.

Just as we hit another lull, the office door opens.

“You’re an upstanding young man, Mr. Macklin.”