I love to tell a story. I’ve always been that way. My mom told me that I inherited it from my Grandpa Jackson, who was a country singer. Not a famous one. No one in my family has ever had more than two cents to rub together. No, he was a back-porch country singer, a man who labored by day and indulged in his love of music and creativity by night. He wrote songs filled with unfulfilled dreams, lost love, and sadness, which I’d listen to without really understanding.
As a kid, I’d carry around a little notebook and pen and jot down once-upon-a-time tales about my favorite toys or animals I’d run into around our trailer park. I was always outdoors without shoes, dusty skin and hardened soles, clothes that had seen better days, and my mind in the stars.
We didn’t have much but Grandpa used to take me to the library and check out as many books as I was allowed each week. I’d devour them, hoping that one day I could write myself into a better story, one that didn’t involve staying by myself in a rusty single-wide while my mom left to get drunk. One that didn’t involve me having to make my own breakfast and drag my own ass to school while she slept off the night before, with or without a douchebag sharing her bed.
I guess that I was cursed in some ways, and blessed in others. Is that the way it works? The universe gives with one hand and takes with the other. My gifts were there in my resilience and my intelligence, and despite having no one to help me, I managed to finish high school and secure a scholarship for my college education.
Anyway, back to the story that I intended to tell you. How I ended up at Eastern as a rich princess rather than a ratty trailer-park reject.
Just one scratch.
One lucky chance, one unbelievable moment when fate tipped my face to the sky and kissed me with all the glory that I’d been missing my whole life.
On my eighteenth birthday, I decided to buy myself my favorite candy bar and a disgustingly good lemon and lime slushy as a treat. My mom had forgotten what day it was, which was not surprising. I used my own money to create some birthday fun, and there on the counter was the display of lottery scratchers. It was the first day I was old enough to play, and the ticket nearest me was a Birthday Surprise ticket with a chance to win a million dollars.
It seemed like it was meant to be.
The store owner pulled the reel of tickets and tore mine from the others in the pack. It was five bucks for a chance to change my life. It sounds stupid, but I felt a little high with the excitement.
The store had a table area at the end of the counter for patrons who wanted to sit and enjoy a beverage. I took a seat, and a coin from my purse, then set to reveal what was underneath the crumbly coating. I took my time to reveal all the losing symbols until I found one that matched. I had won five dollars.
I shook my head and took a long brain-freezing sip of my slushy.
“You win anything?” the guy next to me asked, tossing what I assumed to be a losing ticket onto the pile in front of him.
“Five bucks,” I said.
“You should trade that in for another go,” he said.
“Which one should I buy?” He seemed to know more about it than me, although not in the lucky sense if the pile of losers was anything to go by
“The one you get a feeling about,” he said. “It’s all there in your gut. You should trust your gut.” Words of wisdom from a guy who looked like he’d spent his life making bad decisions.
At the counter, I looked over the display again. There was a ticket in the top right corner called Lucky for Life. There was such an irony in that title when related to my own situation that I decided it was the one for me.
I trusted my gut, and that was when it happened.
My luck changed.
$100,000 a year for life.
I went home with a half-drunk slushy, a soft candy bar in my pocket, and my ticket out of trailersville, USA.
Quite a story, huh?
The funny thing is that I’ve never told a single soul. Well, only the lottery employee and the man at the bank. Then I walked out of my life with a scholarship to Eastern and enough money heading my way to never worry about a thing again.
When I received news that my mom had passed away in my second semester, I used my lottery win to bury her with a dignity that she didn’t have in life. I brushed myself off and was back at college in a week. Even my best friend Maisie didn’t know where I had gone.
So, it’s the end of the day, and I’m leaving my last lecture. There’s a frat party tonight that I’m supposed to be going to, so I have limited time to get home and get ready. I’m rushing, so I don’t notice the man moving to step in front of me until it’s too late and I’m barreling into his chest.
“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head as other students leaving the lecture stream around us.
He puts his hands up. “No, my fault. I just…I was trying to get your attention.”
He’s older than the students here: a teacher maybe, or a parent. There is something familiar about him that I can’t quite put my finger on. Blue eyes that remind me of the color of my own.
“Well, you got it.” I tip my head to the side regarding him carefully. “Do I know you?”
He shakes his head, and his expression seems regretful. Strange. “My name is Steve.”
“Well, Steve. What can I do for you?”
He opens his mouth as though he’s going to answer, then closes it again. He takes a step back, looks at the ceiling, and inhales. When he finally pulls himself together, he looks me dead in the eye.
“I’m your father.”
Now that’s the beginning of a really great story…to tell a shrink.
“I don’t have a father,” I say, starting to walk. This guy is crazy, and I don’t have time for any of it.
“Your mom is Heather Singleton.”
I stop in my tracks, my heart thudding against my rib cage in one huge pulsating beat. My mind is scrambled, the truth of his words and their possible implications sliding like tar down my throat and into my belly.
“Was Heather Singleton,” I say.
He takes a step closer to me. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“That she passed.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I’m not sure that your sympathy is appropriate.”
Steve slides his hands into his pockets, seemingly chastened. “I know this is a messed-up situation. I’ve spent the last nineteen years convincing myself that it was better that you didn’t know me. What kind of man would you think I was to leave you behind?”
“A douchebag,” I say. “A lowlife who just wanted to get his rocks off and didn’t care about the consequences.”
“Exactly,” he says.
I have to say that I respect him for taking the criticism. He doesn’t for a moment try and sugarcoat or excuse the past.
“But you decided today was the day?” I say. The side of his mouth quirks in the same way mine does when I’m amused. His eyes sparkle in the same way mine do when I’m excited. His hair is raven black with a curl, just like mine.
“Today has to be the day,” he says with a shrug. “We’ve waited long enough.”
