Windfall

  “I don’t know. I didn’t pack it up or anything. It was just there last night, so I took it out. But I’m pretty sure it’s the only one since the party.”

  He puts his hands on his hips. “Is this all just a trick to get me to jump in there?”

  “What?” I let out a laugh. “No!”

  “Were those really even the numbers?”

  “Just get in there,” I tell him, pointing at the dumpster, and he gives me a salute, then hoists himself up again. Only this time he throws one leg over the side, then the other, and with a groan, he rolls into the bin and out of sight.

  For a second it’s quiet. I walk over to the edge, rising onto my toes again. But it’s too tall, and all I can see is the stained blue metal. This close it smells like rotten fruit and damp coffee grounds and something sour, and I wrinkle my nose. “Teddy?”

  There’s a faint rustling but no answer. I crane my neck, trying to get a better look, wondering if he could’ve hurt himself when he tumbled over. I’m about to call out to him again when an arm appears, and before I can react a snowball is cracked over the top of my head like an egg, clumps of ice falling from my hat into the collar of my coat.

  “Gross,” I say, shuddering and laughing as I wipe at my face. “Garbage snow.”

  “Only the best for you,” Teddy says cheerfully, then disappears again.

  “Hey,” I say a few minutes later, rubbing my hands together as I wait for more bags. “Remember that time we got busted trying to steal lottery tickets?”

  “They were just scratch-offs,” he says, his voice muffled from inside the dumpster. “And you’re the one who got us kicked out of the store. You have no poker face whatsoever.”

  “C’mon,” I say. “I was nervous. It was my first heist.”

  “First and last. You were never very good at playing it cool. Even as a twelve-year-old.”

  “Especially as a twelve-year-old.”

  He tosses another bag out, and as I poke through it I think about that ill-conceived expedition. It was just after Teddy’s dad left, after he’d lost all their savings and more, and Teddy had become obsessed with money. What would you do if you had a million dollars? he’d ask us constantly, casually, as if it was nothing more than a trivia question, an idle thought; as if he wasn’t thinking about what that kind of money could mean, with his dad’s debts still hanging over them and his mom working long hours at the hospital and him coming home to an empty apartment after school.

  Even then it always broke my heart a little.

  “So,” I say, kicking at the snow. “What would you do if you had a million dollars?”

  Teddy’s head pops up and over the rim of the metal container. He squints down at me, looking uneasy. “I can’t think about that yet. Not until we find the ticket.”

  “I remember what you always used to say….”

  “What?” he says, but there’s a catch in his voice and it’s clear he already knows the answer.

  “You wanted to get your old apartment back,” I say. “For your mom.”

  He smiles almost involuntarily, remembering the solemn vow he made to us, and for a second he looks like he’s twelve years old again, dreaming about untold riches.

  “That,” he says, “and a pinball machine.”

  “I’m pretty sure there was talk of a pool table too.”

  “At least it was better than Leo’s idea. He just wanted a puppy.”

  “A boxer,” I remind him. “Because he thought boxing was cool. Oh, and a thousand colored pencils.”

  Teddy laughs at the memory. “Doesn’t exactly add up to a million dollars.”

  “Leo has always been a man of simple tastes.”

  He leans an elbow on the edge of the dumpster, gazing down at me. “And you—you’d never tell us what you wanted.”

  He’s right. I never played along the way the boys did, losing themselves to their daydreams. The things I want most in the world can’t be bought with money.

  Except, maybe, for one thing. Standing there in the snow, I think about the photograph I keep on my dresser, a picture of my parents in Kenya, where they met in the Peace Corps. In it, the two of them are gazing at each other as the sun sets behind them, the savanna bathed in golden colors, a lone giraffe silhouetted in the distance.

  That, I think, would be my wish. To travel there myself.

  But all these years later I still can’t bring myself to say it out loud.

  “I always knew anyway,” Teddy says, and I look up at him, surprised.

  “You did?”

  He nods. “It’s the only logical thing. If you had a million dollars and you could buy anything in the world, I’m one hundred percent positive that you would absolutely, without a doubt choose to have your very own…ostrich.”

  It’s so completely random—so utterly ridiculous—that I begin to laugh. “What?”

  “An ostrich,” he says, like this should be obvious, like I’m the one talking nonsense. “You know. The giant bird.”

  “Why in the world would you think I’d want an ostrich?”

  “Because that’s how well I know you,” he says, deadpan. “I’m probably the only person on the planet who realizes you wouldn’t be happy unless you owned an enormous flightless bird.”

  I shake my head, but I’m still laughing. “You’re so weird.”

  “That’s why you love me,” he jokes, which sobers me right up again. My smile falls, and my face gets hot, and I have to concentrate to keep from bringing a hand to my lips, to the place where he kissed me less than an hour ago.

  But Teddy doesn’t notice. He just grins, clearly pleased with himself, then disappears back into the piles of trash.

  After that we work in silence for a while—him throwing the bags out one at a time and me searching each one for something that might have come from the McAvoys’ apartment—until finally I see it.

  “Teddy!” I call, and there’s a quick bang, then his head appears. I look down at an envelope with the name Katherine McAvoy on it, which had been buried beneath a mess of red plastic cups from last night’s party. “I think this might be it.”

  “The ticket?” he asks, a little breathless as he vaults back out of the bin, sliding gracelessly down the side and slipping on the snow as he lands.

  “No, just the bag,” I say, handing him the envelope. “Should we take it inside?”

  He looks torn and I understand. Part of me wants to rip it open right now, to dump it all out and begin the frantic search in spite of the cold and the damp and the wind. But there’s another part of me that understands what might be about to happen—that our whole world could very well be cracked wide open—and I’m not sure I’m quite ready for that yet.

  Teddy is breathing into his hands and stamping his feet, waiting for me to tell him what comes next. I meet his eyes from beneath my woolen hat, and when he looks back at me I feel suddenly numb.

  “Inside,” I say, and so we go.

  We sit across from each other on the kitchen floor. Our cheeks are still pink from being outside and our fingers are still stiff with cold, but we’ve shed our boots and coats and now face each other solemnly, the garbage bag between us: a strange and unlikely arbiter of our fate.

  Teddy nods at me. “You look.”

  “You stink more,” I point out, nudging the bag in his direction.

  He rips open the top, then stands up. “Okay,” he says, dumping the contents onto the floor just as I scramble to my feet, narrowly avoiding the landslide. “Here we go.”

  We stare at the pile of dirty napkins and empty bags of chips and soggy slices of pizza, which go skidding onto the recently spotless floor. Teddy is the first to dig in, squatting like a kid playing at the beach as he sifts through the papers. I kick aside a tangle of stained napkins and poke at the pile with my toe.

  In the living room the TV is still on, and I can hear the tinny laughter of a sitcom. Outside, the voices of a few kids rise up through the steam-covered windows as they tussle in t
he snow. But I’m suddenly aware of how quiet it is in the kitchen: just me and Teddy and the hum of the refrigerator, which is still steadfastly guarding my note to him.

  Looking again at the pile of trash, I’m struck by the urge to reach out and grab his hand, to stop him before he can find that little slip of paper that will change everything.

  Because how many times can one life be split into a before and an after?

  It was just a joke, I want to tell him. None of this was supposed to happen.

  But I can’t bring myself to squash his excitement. It wouldn’t just be money to Teddy; it would be safety and security, possibility and promise. With one little ticket, his life could become completely unrecognizable.

  All because of me.

  No matter what he said last night, I know that in some ways Teddy understands me better than Leo ever could. Leo has two loving parents and a house with enough beds for an extra kid. They take vacations and go to nice dinners and buy new clothes without thinking about what they might have to give up because of it. They’re kind and generous, my aunt and uncle, and I’m unbelievably grateful to have landed there.

  But it makes Leo different from me. He’s one of the lucky ones. He still lives in a world where the ground beneath his feet is solid.

  Teddy and I, on the other hand, have grown up in quicksand. And though we’re there for different reasons, and though we rarely talk about it, something about that simple fact has always bound us together.

  So now I watch him search for his ticket to the other side with a terrible, mounting dread, which comes from the darkest, most selfish corners of my heart. But I can’t help it. Already it feels like a kind of loss.

  Because just now he looks like he’s about to turn into someone else entirely.

  He looks like someone whose ship is about to come in.

  He looks like the luckiest person in the world.

  Suddenly he goes very still, everything about him frozen for a few beats, before looking up at me. I don’t have to ask. The moment our eyes meet, I know.

  For a long time neither of us says anything. Then he picks up the ticket—carefully, gingerly, as if it might break—and sits back, staring at it with wide, disbelieving eyes.

  I clear my throat once, then again, but I can think of nothing to say. It’s too big, what’s happening, too staggering. I can’t seem to find the words to fit.

  Teddy lowers the ticket, looking at me in shock.

  And then—without warning—he begins to laugh. It’s quiet at first, but then his shoulders start to shake, and as it rises in volume I feel myself start to give in to it too. Because it’s hilarious all of a sudden, this crazy, improbable, ridiculous stroke of luck that’s been set down smack in the middle of our utterly ordinary lives. And because the two of us are crouched here on the floor, panning for gold in a river of trash.

  And, most of all, because we’ve found it.

  Teddy is tipped over on his side now, clutching his stomach with one hand and the ticket in the other, and I lean back against the cabinets, breathless and giddy, the sound of our laughter filling the tiny space, echoing off the walls and cupboards, making everything warmer and brighter.

  When he sits up again there are tears in his eyes, and he wipes at them as he takes a few gulping breaths. I shake my head, still grinning, but my smile fades as I see him pause, staring down at the ticket resting in his flattened palm.

  “So,” he says, looking up at me, his face suddenly solemn. “What now?”

  The lottery websites are all very clear about what to do first. Without exception, each and every one of them suggests calling a lawyer.

  Instead we decide to call Leo.

  “Hey,” Teddy says into the phone, looking like he’s trying very hard not to laugh, the news bubbling up inside him, threatening to boil over at any moment. I’m sitting beside him on one of the barstools at the kitchen counter, so close that our knees are touching, which makes it hard to concentrate on anything else. At least for me. Teddy is clearly too distracted to notice. He winks at me as he presses the phone closer to his ear. “Yeah, so…you have to get back here, okay? We need your help with something.”

  There’s a long pause, which is no doubt Leo grumbling that he’s only just gotten home.

  “Something happened,” Teddy says finally, then shakes his head. “No, nothing like that. It’s just—no, it’s something good. I swear. Yeah, she’s here. She’s fine. No, listen. Can you please just—”

  He lowers the phone, setting it on the counter between us, then punches the speaker button so that Leo’s voice crackles out into the kitchen.

  “…and do you have any idea how cold it is?” he’s saying. “It’s like the Arctic out there. And the roads are a mess. Plus, I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do, and I can’t do any of it until I find my old glasses.”

  “Dude,” Teddy says, leaning forward. He has an odd smile on his face, one that I’ve never seen before: it’s strangely serene and kind of punch-drunk at the same time. His eyes are on the cookie jar that’s sitting on the counter between us. It’s ceramic and blue and shaped like a very portly hippo, and to get inside you have to decapitate the poor creature. I reach out and pull it over to me; then, for what feels like the thousandth time in the past few minutes, I peek inside.

  The ticket is there at the bottom, alongside a few dark crumbs from the Oreos we had to dump out (and then, of course, eat) to make room for it. All the articles online instructed the winner to sign the back of the ticket. So after checking and double-checking the numbers, Teddy scrawled his name there, then dropped it inside. Afterward I placed the lid on firmly, keeping my hand pressed against the hippo’s head as if I’d just bottled a genie or some other kind of strange and unknown magic. Which in a way I suppose I had.

  “Just trust me,” Teddy is saying to Leo, who has gone silent on the other end of the phone. “You want to come over.”

  “Can’t you just tell me now?” Leo asks wearily. “It’s gonna take me forever to get back there.”

  “Leo,” I say, leaning forward. “Just come, okay?”

  He hesitates, and I know then that he will. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and Teddy flashes me a grateful smile.

  “Okay,” Leo finally says with a sigh. “Then I guess I’ll just…I’ll be there as soon as I can. But you owe me.”

  Teddy laughs. “I’ll give you a million dollars.”

  “How about brunch?” Leo suggests. “I’m starving.”

  “We’ll meet you at the Lantern,” Teddy says, then hangs up and turns to me. “Will you babysit while I get dressed?”

  It takes me a second to understand that he’s talking about the cookie jar.

  “Sure,” I say, thinking it’s a bit early for him to start acting paranoid about his newfound fortune. But when he returns a few minutes later in jeans and a striped sweater, his hair damp where he combed it flat, it turns out I’m reluctant to let the jar out of my sight too.

  “Changing of the guard,” I joke as I stand up, sliding it back in his direction.

  I realize the likelihood of anything happening to it during the six minutes it takes to brush my teeth and change back into yesterday’s clothes is very small. But still, that ticket is essentially a hundred-and-forty-million-dollar bill, and that seems like an awful lot of pressure to put on such a little piece of paper, especially since Teddy has a tendency to lose things. So when I walk back out to find him scrolling through his phone with one hand, the other resting on the hippo’s head, I’m a tiny bit relieved.

  “It says we’re supposed to call a tax guy too,” he says without looking up. “And a financial adviser.”

  “Who says that?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugs. “The Internet.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to call your mom?”

  He raises his eyes to meet mine. “I sort of do, but I think I need a minute to process all this first. Plus, I’d rather do it in person. Can you imagine the look
on her face when I tell her?”

  I smile, thinking of Teddy’s expression when he held up the ticket not so long ago. “I can, actually.”

  “She’ll be home in a couple hours anyway. Let’s just go meet Leo and figure out what the hell we should be doing next.” He stands, looking dazed, then grabs the cookie jar and tucks it under his arm. “You ready?”

  I stare at him. “You’re not bringing that to the diner.”

  “The ticket?”

  “No, the cookie jar.”

  Teddy studies it as if he isn’t quite sure how it came to be resting in the crook of his elbow. “Well, what else should we do with it?”

  “I don’t know, but I think that looks a little suspicious.”

  He tilts his head at me. “You think someone’s gonna see me with a cookie jar and assume there’s a winning lottery ticket in there?”

  “I don’t think it’s entirely out of the question,” I say, trying to keep a straight face.

  He lifts the lid and reaches inside for the ticket, which he holds carefully between two fingers. It seems impossibly flimsy and extraordinarily fragile. “So what do you propose we do with it, then?”

  “Your wallet?”

  “I don’t know. The Velcro is kind of worn out, and—”

  “I think the bigger problem,” I say, laughing, “is that your wallet has Velcro at all.”

  “Not the point.”

  “Okay,” I say, eyeing the ticket. “Maybe we should leave it here.”

  “Well, what if there’s a break-in?”

  “What are the odds that after living here for six years, the very first break-in happens this morning?”

  Teddy gives me a look. “What were the odds of us winning the lottery?”

  “Good point,” I say, walking over to the drawer beneath the microwave and pulling out a plastic sandwich bag. I take the ticket from him and slip it carefully inside. “Here. This’ll keep it safe from the snow.”

  “We can’t just carry it like that,” he says, alarmed. “Everyone can see it.”

  “I’ll keep it in my bag.”

  He looks warily at the black canvas messenger bag that’s sitting on the coffee table. “Is there, like, a pocket or something?”