Graduation Gift: A Half-Used Lottery Ticket

Why was everyone trying to kill me over a lottery ticket worth 20 dollars?

Once I no longer heard any sounds outside, I got dressed and left Daisy's place. I also blocked her number.

Still in a daze, I wandered back to the apartment complex where my family stayed. My plan was to sneak in and grab my ID while my parents were out, so I could make a run for it.

But the moment I stepped into the convenience store nearby, they were there waiting for me.

Dad grabbed my hair and snarled, "You bastard! I knew you were a scheming little piece of shit! You just didn't want us to have the ticket. You ungrateful brat! Just wait till we get home!"

I turned to the convenience store owner for help, but he spat at me, saying, "You're an ungrateful brat, alright. To think you'd go this far just to hide a lottery ticket worth 20 dollars! You're banned from my store. Get the hell out!"

My family tied me up and dragged me home.

"Hand over the ticket!" Mom demanded with a sneer.

"You already searched me. If I had it, you would've found it," I insisted stubbornly.

Hector stood to the side, glaring venomously at me. "Looks like he won't give in unless we get rough with him, Mom. He thinks you're bluffing."

He handed over a kitchen knife, and Mom didn't hesitate to threaten me with it. "Are you handing it over or not?"

The knife hovered less than half an inch from my throat, but I felt strangely calm. "Mom, are you really going to kill me over a lottery ticket I'd already given to you guys? Why wouldn't I hand it over when I could get 200 thousand dollars for it?"

My rebuttal made Mom hesitate, but Dad remained convinced I'd gotten a winning ticket and hid it somewhere. "Shut up. Both your mother and your brother saw it, and there's no way they were both wrong!"

I took a deep breath. "Mom didn't find anything after practically stripping me naked. Even Daisy checked all of my pockets over and over. Where do you think I could've hidden it?"

Since I refused to budge, Dad locked me in my room. "Three days without food, and you'll be spilling everything!"

They didn't dare to actually kill me before they found the ticket.

I sat in my bedroom and racked my brain for a while before contacting the only person I believed I could trust in this world—my childhood friend, Andy Harris. I begged him to save me.

When Andy heard I'd been locked up by my own parents over a lottery ticket worth 20 dollars, he was outraged.

"Your cousin, your parents, your relatives, and even Daisy are all monsters! How could they treat you like this over a lottery ticket? You already said you didn't win anything! Or… is it because you did win 20 dollars, like your mom said, but you just didn't tell them the truth?" Andy asked.

I neither confirmed nor denied it.

Andy caught on at once. Without any hesitation, he agreed to come right over and rescue me.

Once he arrived, I pried open the window and tied my clothes together to form a rope. I climbed down from the window and got onto his scooter, and we raced into the night.

Because I trusted Andy, I didn't ask where we were going.

At some point, we reached an intersection. He said he had a stomachache and had to relieve himself. While waiting for him outside the public restroom, I abruptly spotted the roll of toilet paper in the basket attached to his scooter. He hadn't taken it with him.

I grabbed it and hurried into the restroom to give it to him—only to find that he wasn't using the restroom at all. Hiding in the corner, he was on a call, and I heard every word he said.

Finally, it all made sense to me. I now knew why they'd all gone mad over a lottery ticket worth just 20 dollars in winnings.

When Andy came back, I looked at him calmly and said, "I'm not running anymore. I'm going back."

He panicked at once. "What? You can't do that. You'll be walking straight to your doom!"

Snorting, I replied, "Then so be it."