How to Disown Your Parents with a Scratch Ticket

§01

The scratch of the coin against the card was the only sound in the suffocating silence of my beat-up sedan.

One line. Two lines. A match.

My breath hitched.

Beneath the shimmering silver dust, a symbol appeared: a platinum trophy.

My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the faded upholstery.

I scratched off the prize box below it.

A one. Then a zero. Then another, and another, until the number stretched across the small rectangle like an impossible dream.

4000-100000,000,000.

A strangled laugh escaped my lips, half-sob, half-hymn.

Ten million dollars.

The world outside my foggy car window—the dreary, strip-mall parking lot in Crestwood Falls—melted away.

This little piece of cardboard, this “Platinum Jubilee” ticket I’d bought with the last three dollars in my pocket, wasn’t just money.

It was a key. A weapon. A second chance.

My fingers, shaking, folded the ticket carefully, tucking it deep into the worn leather of my wallet.

Then, the cold dread hit, sharp and sudden as a shard of glass.

The smell of antiseptic filled my nostrils.

The sterile white walls of the psychiatric ward pressed in on me.

*“It’s for your own good, Avery,”* my mother’s voice, thick with false concern.

*“Your daughter is a danger to herself,”* a doctor’s detached monotone.

*“Just sign the papers, and we can get her the help she needs.”*

The memory was a ghost, and it was choking the life out of me.

I gripped the steering wheel, my knuckles white.

Not this time.

This time, things would be different.

This time, I was ready.

§02

The front door of our cramped little house creaked open, and the smell of stale coffee and my mother’s anxiety hit me.

Brenda was pacing in the living room, her eyes glued to the TV where a gaudy, sequined woman—her favorite TV psychic—was shouting about cosmic alignments.

“The universe is preparing a windfall for all you Tauruses out there!” the psychic bellowed. “I can feel it in my crystals!”

“Did you hear that, Gary?” Brenda called out, not even looking at me. “A windfall!”

My father, Gary, grunted from his armchair, the local newspaper hiding his face. “That’s what she said last week, Bren.”

He lowered the paper, his eyes landing on me. There was no warmth, just tired expectation. “Anything?”

The lie came easily. I let my shoulders slump, pulling a crumpled, losing lottery ticket from my pocket—a decoy I’d bought yesterday. “No luck, Dad. Sorry.”

Brenda finally turned, her face a mask of profound disappointment. “I just knew it. I told you to pick the numbers the psychic suggested.”

She jabbed a finger at my forehead, a habit I’d hated since childhood. “Always so headstrong. Never listen.”

My older sister, Hazel, emerged from the hallway, her face etched with concern. She shot me a look, a silent question. *Are you okay?*

I gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of my head.

Before she could say anything, my mother’s phone rang, its cheerful jingle a jarring counterpoint to the room’s tension.

She answered it, her voice instantly shifting into a syrupy-sweet tone. “Hello? Oh, hi, David!”

David. My maternal uncle.

Right on schedule.

“How’s Christopher doing?” she cooed. “Getting married? Oh, that’s wonderful! A house? Of course, in this market…”

There was a pause. I could almost hear my uncle’s oily voice on the other end, laying the groundwork.

“Money?” Brenda’s voice dropped, feigning sympathy. “Oh, David, of course we’ll help. We’re family. How much? Twenty thousand?”

Hazel’s eyes widened in disbelief. Our family didn’t have twenty hundred, let alone twenty thousand.

But my mother, high on the psychic’s promises and the thrill of playing the generous benefactor, was already making promises we couldn’t keep.

“Don’t you worry about a thing,” she said, beaming. “We’ll figure it out. Your sister’s got you.”

She hung up, her chest puffed with pride.

“Brenda, are you insane?” Gary finally said, the newspaper trembling in his hands. “Where are we going to get twenty thousand dollars?”

My mother waved a dismissive hand. “Avery and Hazel will get it.”

She turned to us, her smile unwavering. “Your cousin is getting married. It’s a big deal. You two can take out a loan or something. It’s for family.”

In my first life, this was the moment the world broke.

This was when I, delirious with joy, had announced my ten-million-dollar win.

This was the spark that had burned my world to the ground.

This time, I looked at my sister, my only ally in this house of strangers.

Her face was pale with a mixture of anger and despair.

I knew, in that instant, that she remembered it too.

§03

Later that night, I found Hazel in her room, staring out at the manicured lawns of our cookie-cutter suburban street.

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