Two hundred and four million dollars! Callie couldn’t believe it. The screams were coming out of her mouth, the creaky laminate wood floor shook under her feet as she and her sisters bounced up and down, and she kept telling herself they had just won two hundred and four million dollars, but it still didn’t feel real.
Nothing felt real.
In fact, even though she was smiling and celebrating, she actually felt kind of numb.
“We never have to work again!” Lexi yelled a few inches away from Callie’s face. Her sister began running around the small dim living room with her hands in the air.
“We can buy new houses!” Tears streamed down Hanna’s face. “And take vacations!”
Callie had never given any real thought to what she would do if she won since the odds were astronomically low. And yet, here they were… winners.
But as her sisters spouted off all the things they were going to do with their newfound fortune, Callie realized she had absolutely no idea what to do with hers. What happens now?
Lexi grabbed her by the wrists and started dancing with Callie, bringing her back to reality. “We’re riiiiiiiiich!” Lexi yelled, kissing her sister on the cheek.
She loved seeing her sisters so happy. If there was ever a cause for a celebration, this was it. Callie ran to her kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Korbel champagne out of the back of the fridge. It had been in there taking up space for five months since New Year’s Eve. She had bought it at the grocery store to take to a party that night, but had gotten a stomach bug. This seemed like a much better occasion for the bottle, anyway.
“Woooo!” the girls screamed as Callie popped the cork. They each took a swig straight from the green bottle.
“This is the best day of my life!” Hanna shouted after taking a second sip. The foam spilled over her hand.
The news was now on in the background—the anchors were chatting with the meteorologist about scattered showers due to hit town the following day.
Lexi hushed her sisters. “So, stupid question, but what are we supposed to do with the ticket?” She was giggling and holding up the slip of paper.
Hanna started giggling, too.
“I actually have no idea,” Callie said, suddenly serious. The journalist in her sprang into action. The obvious answer was they had to turn it in somewhere—but where? It seemed almost comical for them to walk into a gas station with a ticket for two hundred and four million dollars. Would they get one of those giant checks? She always saw pictures of people posing with them during the television drawings.
She grabbed her phone off the coffee table, hands shaking, and typed into Google, “What to do when you win lottery.” The search words felt like a joke, like something she’d enter while having a debate with her friends at happy hour over what the proper protocol was for lottery winners.
The first article to appear was from a national news site that had published the story a couple of years ago when the jackpot was over a billion dollars. “Here’s What to Do If You Win the Lottery” the headline read in bold black letters on the page.
Callie skimmed the first paragraph quickly, and then her eyes jumped to the numbered bullets. The first action-item was something they could do right now.
“Okay, it looks like we need to sign the back of the ticket,” she said out loud, raising her voice over the squeals of her sisters.
Hanna grabbed a black ink pen off of Callie’s desk and signed the back of the ticket with her shaky hand. Lexi and Callie followed—their hands also trembling.
Once all three squiggly signatures were there, Callie read the second bullet in the article. “We’re also supposed to take a selfie with it,” she relayed to the girls, gripping the phone tightly in her hand.
“Yes! To put on Instagram!” Lexi said, nodding her head eagerly. “I can’t wait for everyone to see this!” She did a little twirl.
“No, you crazy girl!” Callie said. She had to shut this idea down quickly. “That’s actually one of the worst things we could do. We don’t want everyone to know before we even turn it in.” Sometimes she was shocked at how levelheaded she was compared to her sisters. Plus, the article said they should keep the news as private as possible since people tended to come out of the woodwork to ask winners for handouts.
The last thing she wanted was to get money requests from high school classmates or second cousins. She put her hands on Lexi’s shoulders. “Let’s be quiet about it right now—no social media, y’all,” Callie said with authority.
“Okay, fine,” Lexi said, grabbing the phone out of Callie’s hand and turning on the camera. “I won’t put it on the Internet.”
“So, why are we taking a picture with it then?” Hanna asked, pulling the rubber band out of her messy ponytail and shaking her hair out.
“The article said in case someone steals the ticket.” Callie ran her fingers through her own hair. It was greasy and knotty from three days of not washing it. “Then there’s proof it’s yours because your phone dates the photo.”
“Okay, y’all ready?” Lexi asked, holding the phone in front of her.
Callie held the ticket tightly in her right hand and turned the winning numbers toward the camera. Looking into the screen, she could see the wide smiles on her sisters’ faces as they all leaned their heads in close. They had taken a lot of selfies before in their lives, but this one, she knew, was going to be legendary.
“Say, ‘We just won the lotteryyyy’!” Lexi screamed.
The sisters yelled the words back as the photo clicked about fifteen times. Lexi always took multiple pictures. “You have to have options,” she’d say.
The muscles in Callie’s face were starting to hurt from all the smiling.
“Okay, I have to call Seth!” Lexi said, running over to her bag to pull out her glitter-cased phone. “He’s going to lose it!” She scurried into Callie’s bedroom to make the call, leaving the door open.
“I have to call Tom!” Hanna grabbed her phone off the coffee table and walked into the kitchen as she dialed the number.
Callie tucked the ticket into her wallet and plopped down onto the sofa, sinking into the groove that had formed after one too many years of sitting in the same spot every night. The news was still playing on the television, and she could hear bits and pieces of her sisters’ phone conversations coming from separate parts of the apartment.
“It’s crazy, right?” Callie could hear Lexi in the other room. “Two hundred and four freaking million dollars… I just… I just can’t believe it!” She spoke so fast into the phone, Callie wondered if Seth could even get a word in. “We’re going to have the best wedding this town has ever seen! And a house! And you can get a new truck.… Hell, you can get five new trucks!” Lexi finally paused for a second. “No, I’m not pranking you.”
Callie laughed. She couldn’t even imagine what was going through Seth’s head at this moment. She glanced at the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a breakfast bar. Her sister was hurriedly pacing the small area back and forth, trailing her hand over the Formica counter. Hanna kept saying into the phone, “Yes!” over and over again as her smile stretched from ear to ear.
“It’s about sixty-eight million each before taxes,” Hanna said, scratching her head. She paused and then did a quick twirl. “Babe, we’re set for life.”
As she continued listening to her sisters, Callie tried to think about what she should do with her winnings. She didn’t fantasize about new cars and houses. None of that mattered to her.
Callie stared at the cracked phone in her hands. She felt like she should be calling someone to tell them the news. She had friends, but no one important enough to be the first she told about this. One of her sisters laughed in the background. Her mind flashed to Garrett, but she quickly shoved that thought away. What happened at the happy hour was still fresh in her mind. She needed to move on. But as she sat there feeling pathetic on the sofa all alone, she couldn’t think of anyone special to call.
Actually… that wasn’t true. She opened her contacts and hit the first name to pop up in her favorites list. The phone rang twice.
“Mom,” she said quickly into the phone. “I’ve got some crazy news.”