Jackpot

by Nic Stone

  I hear him take a deep breath.

  “Seriously, can we please just go?”

  “Rico?”

  “What, Zan?”

  “Ask the question.”

  “What question?”

  “The one you most want the answer to.”

  In an instant, about a jillion and one start swirling in my head: WhyAreYouHere?DoYouREALLYLikeMe?WhyAreYouHelpingMe?AreYouTryingToGetTheTicketForYourself?WhyDoYouLookAtMeTheWayYouDo?You’veSureBeenTreatingMeLikeAGirlfriend.IsAnyOfThatReal?IsItReallyPossibleThatAGuyLikeYOUIsReallyIntoMe?WhatDoIEvenHaveToOfferYou?WereYouSeriousAboutUsMovingInTogether?What’sWithTheFidgetSpinners?AreYouUsingMe?WhatDoYouWantFromMe?WhatDoYouWantForYOU?

  What comes out: “Zan, what am I to you?”

  Rico.

  That was his answer: “You’re Rico.”

  “But what does that mean, Zan?” I ask on the phone later that night. Didn’t have the courage to while we were in the car.

  “I don’t know how to explain it.”

  “Try.”

  Heavy sigh then. “I’ve never met anybody like you, Danger,” he says. “You make me question everything.”

  Huh? “I make you question everything?”

  “Yeah. It’s like my whole life I’ve been in this hallway lined with doors, but the only one I’ve been told I can open is directly in front of me. And I never really questioned that. It was just easier not to. Path of least resistance. And I guess, just like in real life, when you stare at one thing long enough, everything around it fades away—after a while, it seemed like there were no other options.

  “But hanging out with you makes me feel…called to task, I guess. You seem to really see me, so I literally can’t just go with the flow anymore. There’s always this What would Rico think? in the back of my head now. You work hard, and you do so much for your family. Meanwhile, I’m just like…sitting here, whining because I can’t do what I want?”

  No idea what to say to that. Or how to feel about it. Like cool, he’s seeing his privilege or whatever, but the fact that I was some kind of catalyst is…uncomfortable for some reason. Part of me wants to bring up the whole girlfriend/fake pregnancy thing again just to change the subject.

  “It’s like I have to take action,” he continues. “Actually think about what I’m doing…and why.”

  “Do you really wanna work for your dad?”

  A pause, then: “No. I don’t.”

  “So why don’t you just not, Zan? You do have other options. Scholarship offers and all that? Don’t take this the wrong way, but the average person wouldn’t—couldn’t—just pretend those don’t exist.”

  “There you go again,” he says with a chuckle.

  “It’s a valid point!”

  “I know, I know.” Another sigh. “The truth? I signed a contract with my dad when I made varsity as a sophomore: I could play to my heart’s content provided that when the senior season ended, I’d forget about football and get serious about the company. Violating said contract equals forfeiting any and all financial support from my parents for the rest of my life.”

  “Whoa. That’s…intense.”

  “Tell me about it. The wildest part is I honestly don’t love football enough to play in college. Hell, if I were more into it, I probably would have taken one of the scholarships.”

  “So what do you want to do? Like, in life.”

  “I don’t really know. And I’ve avoided thinking about it because—well, the company. I’d probably have to try a bunch of stuff before I figured it out. And I’d be lying if I said not knowing doesn’t scare the shit out of me.”

  I don’t say “Welcome to the real world, pal!” Though, man oh man, do I want to. “So whatcha gonna do?”

  “I knew you would ask that.”

  “So?”

  But he doesn’t get a chance to answer because I hear Mama come in. “Actually, hold that thought. I gotta run.”

  “Yeah, yeah, fine.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Cool.”

  I hang up just as Mama pokes her head in the door. “Jaxy has a fever?”

  “Huh?”

  Her eyes drop to the phone—with my hand still on it—and narrow. “You’re surely not back here on the phone while your brother’s curled up on the couch alone with a fever….”

  All the air leaves the room. “A fever?”

  “Yes. A fever. When’s the last time you checked on him?”

  “Umm…”

  And then her face morphs. From concern to puzzlement to rage. And I expect her to detonate—totally brace for it—but then every part of her seems to sag with disappointment. “Oh, Rico.” She looks like she might cry. Which is so much worse than anger.

  She leaves the room without another word, and the weight of my miserable life drops on me with the force of a collapsing house.

  There’s a hole in my sock. I’m stretched out on a children’s comforter on a twin bed. The blinds over the window are broken, and there’s a crack in the drywall above Jax’s bed. Which is in the same room as mine.

  I’ve been on this “quest” for months, and none of these things have changed.

  They probably never will.

  “Rico, I need help!” Mama shouts.

  And just like that, the final walls come crashing down.

  * * *

  —

  Within a couple of hours, I’m sitting in the ER in front of a pretty, brown-skinned triage nurse with a sleeping Jax curled up in my lap. Mama stayed in the waiting room.

  “How long has he been asleep?” the nurse asks.

  The question startles me. How long has he been asleep? “I’m…I’m not sure. I haven’t been keeping track.”

  “Okay,” she says. “I’m going to wake him up now, all right?”

  I nod.

  She rubs her knuckles over the center of Jax’s chest a bit too hard for my liking, and he whimpers. “Jax, sweetheart?” she says. “I need you to wake up for me, okay?”

  He groans and snuggles deeper into me.

  She does the knuckle thing again, and he literally growls, but his eyes do open. “Attaboy,” she says while pulling out the corded thermometer wand and sticking it inside the attached box to get a cover on it.

  “Who are you?” Jax says.

  “I’m Nurse Bolar, honey. We’re gonna get you feeling better. I need you to open your mouth and lift your tongue for me.”

  Jax does as he’s told and the nurse gets his temperature—it was 105° before we left the house; no clue what it is now.

  As soon as she pulls the thing out of his mouth, his head drops back against my shoulder and he’s asleep again.

  “How long has he been lethargic like this?” She slips a kid-sized blood pressure cuff on his arm and clamps a little gray thing on his index finger.

  “Few hours?” I say. “He fell asleep heavy in the car on the way over here.”

  “And what’s the complaint besides the fever?”

  “Well, he was with a babysitter until I got home at seven-thirty, and when I first saw him, he said he had a bit of a headache and his neck was sore. But I didn’t check for a fever then.”

  “Hmm.” She presses a button on the machine Jax is now attached to, and the cuff tightens on his arm. “Have you noticed any rashes?”

  “No…”

  “He been sick recently?”

  “He had strep a month ago….”

  “Received treatment?”

  I nod. “Amoxicillin.”

  “He on any medication now?”

  “No.”

  “Allergic to any?”

  “Not that I know of…”

  “You or your mother been sick at all?”

  This is starting to feel like an interr
ogation. “No.”

  “And he hasn’t had any issues since the strep?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Okay.” She reads the monitor and scribbles a bunch of stuff down on a chart.

  I decide to tell the rest. “He’d been sick a few times before the strep.”

  The nurse looks up at me.

  “He wasn’t seen by a doctor the other times, but the pediatrician who came to see him for the strep did say something about the possibility of needing his tonsils out.”

  She pulls the cuff and finger clamper thingy off. “And what were the sympto—”

  Jax starts convulsing in my arms. His eyes roll back in his head, drool spills out of his mouth onto my collarbone, and my lap is suddenly very warm and very wet.

  I’m frozen.

  “I need help up here NOW!” the triage nurse says, leaping to her feet. And then Jax is swept away from me in a whirlwind of different-colored scrubs.

  * * *

  —

  They move Jax to a room in the PICU. He and Mama are out cold, but I couldn’t sleep if my life depended on it. All the doctors and nurses have left, but all I see when I close my eyes is the massive needle the doctor stuck in Jaxy’s back to draw out some spinal fluid.

  They think he has bacterial meningitis.

  Mama and I were told we got here right on time, but there’s a part of me that can’t shake the guilt of not acting sooner. When he told me about his headache and sore neck, I chalked it up to a combo of staying up too late and sleeping on the couch in an awkward position. I probably would’ve investigated his complaints more thoroughly if I hadn’t been in such a rush to call Zan.

  If I’d been focused on the right things, I would’ve been a better sister.

  It all seems so trivial looking back. Macklin and I talked for over an hour about choices, but all I can think about now, looking at the bags and tubes and monitors attached to my baby brother, is how much this is gonna cost and how we have no money to pay for it.

  It brings all the fears I keep buried up to the surface:

  Fear of being judged.

  Pitied.

  People finding out how little I have, and looking down on me, or making fun of me behind my back.

  And even that’s frivolous when held up against the scariest thing of all: something bad happening to Mama or Jax, and me not being able to do anything about it.

  Having no choices.

  Listening to the beep of the heart monitor and watching Mama twitch in her sleep, there are a couple of things I know for sure right now:

  1. I’m not telling anyone about Jax. His sickness will require fourteen days of IV antibiotics, and after that, they’ll remove his tonsils. Which means he’ll be here at least three and a half weeks. Next week is spring break—Jess is going on a cruise with Ness’s family, and Zan will be at some work conference with his dad—so no problems there. But I’ll have to find a way to keep it under wraps this week and once everyone returns.

  The other thing I know? This situation could sink us. Mama already called out of both jobs today, and unless I skip school tomorrow to sleep (which there’s no way she’ll let me do), I’m going to have to call out as well. That’s two hundred and ten dollars gone from the budget. And there will obviously be more days like this one in the coming weeks. One of the doctors mentioned some program that’ll supposedly help with the medical costs—if we get in—but still: if we don’t work, we can’t pay the regular bills.

  Which would lead to—

  No. I can’t go there right now. Time to focus.

  I reach into my back pocket and pull out the semi-crumpled and slightly smeared yellow square of paper.

  I gotta find Ethel Streeter and that ticket.

  It’s another five (excruciating) days before I manage to get all my ducks in a row: Zan got on the Macklin Enterprises private jet this morning under the impression that when he gets back to town a week from now, we’ll visit the address we got from Mr. Dover; Mama is at the hospital with Jax under the impression that I’m headed to work a “bonus shift” I lied to her about; and I am in Mama’s truck currently headed to 754 East Rockland Place in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

  And I didn’t call first.

  I feel pretty terrible about all of it. The tonic-clonic seizure (with urination) Jax had in my lap has played in my mind on a loop from the moment I wake up in the mornings until I collapse into bed at night. In the shower, on the bus, while restocking Coke products, during the brief encounters I had with Zan this past week, I thought about that seizure and how close I got to losing my brother.

  I feel terrible for lying to Zan about why I was working all week and didn’t “have the free time” to make the trip to Ethel’s before he left town.

  But that guilt is countered by mental images of the liquid antibiotics dripping from bags into Jax’s veins.

  It’s countered by the new lines on Mama’s face as she misses more and more work.

  The accumulating bills, regular AND hospital—and who knows how much the latter will be.

  The lack of insurance to cover any of it.

  Needless to say, my head is all over the place during the drive. I’ve been going over the possibilities just as often as I think about all the other stuff. What I’m hoping is that Ethel will remember me, and when I mention the ticket, she’ll instantly remember where she put it. She’ll retrieve it, we’ll check the numbers and see that it’s the winner, and she’ll be so happy, she’ll offer me some kind of reward for working so hard to find her.

  If she doesn’t offer a reward, I’ll flat-out pull her aside and tell her about my situation. I’ll ask if maybe she can lend me some money I can put toward keeping us afloat and paying some of Jax’s medical bills, and I’ll spend however long it takes doing whatever she wants to work it off (indentured servitude, essentially). While in theory, it could take years to earn back the kind of money I’m thinking, I figure she’s old and will die before that point (no offense). Hopefully, I’ll be such a good friend to her by then, she’ll leave whatever remains to me in her will like you sometimes hear about old people doing on the news. (Or is it in movies? Whatever, doesn’t matter.)

  These are the only two possible outcomes in my mind, and I’m clinging to them like my life—our life: mine and Mama’s and Jax’s—depends on it.

  Because it does.

  Any alternative—

  I can’t think about alternatives. Alternatives lead to despair. Despair leads to the very dark place that’s been sneaking up on me in the middle of the night. It’s that time when I’m dangling somewhere between asleep and awake, and the lack of a body in Jax’s bed presses down on me so hard, I feel like I’m suffocating. I can’t go to Mama because she’s either at the hospital or working a night shift. And even if she weren’t, every time she looks at me, her eyes are all sad. Like she’s still disappointed I didn’t check Jaxy’s temperature sooner.

  Probably could go to Jess, but she might go to Zan.

  And I can’t go to Zan even in a secondary way (even though we’ve talked, even briefly, every night he’s been away). He cannot know about any of this.

  So there are no alternatives.

  I look at the empty passenger seat beside me and sigh. Remember all the times I’ve occupied that spot in the Jeep. One half of an investigative team.

  And now here I am alone.

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish Zan were here.

  Looking back, it was nice not having to be the driver.

  * * *

  —

  And then I’m pulling into the left driveway of a duplex.

  I’m so focused on the contrast between the blue shutters and the rust-colored bricks, the noise of me instinctively yanking up the parking brake sounds like machine-gun fire. And I jump.

  Gotta pull it toge
ther.

  I get out. Shut the car door.

  One foot in front of the other.

  I’m on the walkway now. It’s lined with brightly colored flowers just like I imagine an older woman’s house would be.

  Up the three stairs, and at the door.

  I want to throw up.

  There’s the doorbell.

  I can’t get my arm to lift.

  Okay. This is what I came here for. I can do this.

  I take a huge breath and push the bell.

  Like nine days pass in the span of a few seconds.

  Dead bolt clicks.

  Knob turns….

  And the door swings open to reveal a short, dark-brown-skinned man with a little Afro and hair shooting out of his ears.

  I think my heart actually stops.

  He draws back, then shakes his head like there’s something loose inside it and blinks a few times. “You look like my niece.” He pushes his glasses up on his nose and clasps his hands over his plaid-covered paunch. “Whatcha sellin’?” he says.

  “Oh. Umm…” I look at his face. He seems younger than Ethel. Couldn’t be her husband…At least I don’t think.

  “Now don’t get all shy on me,” he says. “I’ll support ya if ya pitch it right. Go on now.”

  “Oh, um. I’m not selling anything, sir.”

  “Okay then…”

  “I’m actually looking for an Ethel Streeter?”

  When his eyes drop, I know it’s all over.

  * * *

  —

  While Zander and I were searching high and low, Ethel Streeter was dying of stage five chronic kidney disease. Her son Bartholomew was completely emotionless as he told me how his mother hid the disease from him until it was too late, and then wouldn’t accept the kidney he offered her. They merged their assets just a couple weeks before she passed, and he’s currently in the process of getting her name off all the deeds. Most of her stuff—which previously filled the house Zan and I tried to visit in Druid Hills—is sitting in a Public Storage unit awaiting the estate sale he has planned for “after the legal stuff is in order.”