My Life is Based on Lottery Winnings

My parents used lottery tickets to decide our allowances because they wanted to train and educate my younger sister, Elena Carter, and me. Every week before we returned to school, we would be given five lottery tickets. Whatever amount we scratched would be our weekly allowance. Elena was always lucky. She would always win at least a hundred dollars, and she would spend the money on good meals, dresses, and even buying her roommates coffee. The most I had won was 15 dollars, and most of the day, all I got was a few dollars. At the height of my bad luck, all five lottery tickets would end up being losing tickets. I had to rely on the two dollars I managed to save last week. When I asked my parents to give me a regular allowance of 20 dollars per week, my mother rejected my request, looking upset. "The same rule applies to both of you. Why are you blaming us when you purely have bad luck?" Once, I was starving so badly that I opened the cupboard where they kept the lottery tickets while they were not home. There were two stacks of lottery tickets. One stack had my name, and the other had Elena's. For some reason, I picked a ticket from Elena's stack and quietly scratched it in my room. I won 30 dollars, and I excitedly ran to the convenience store to get my cash, but when the owner saw my lottery ticket, he laughed. "Stop kidding around, young lady. This is a customized ticket. You can't exchange any cash for this." At that moment, my heart was filled with despair. Chapter 1 I stood in front of the counter for a long time without moving. When the convenience store owner saw the upset look on my face, he flipped the lottery ticket over and pointed at the number behind it. "Real lottery tickets have the tickets' information behind them and aren't made of flimsy material like this. "This ticket looks pretty authentic. It was probably custom-made by someone online. Were your classmates playing a trick on you?" I stared at the images on the scratched card and felt my hands go cold. It was not my classmates who did this. The ticket was dug out from a cupboard at home. The cupboard was always locked, and the key was kept with a ring of other keys that belonged to my mother. This morning, my parents took my younger sister out to get a new phone, and my mother left the key near the entrance. It was the first time I had opened the cupboard, and inside were two stacks of lottery tickets placed tidily next to each other. The stack on the left had my name, Nina Carter, while the right stack had my sister's name, Elena Carter. My mother would take five tickets from each stack every week, and we would scratch them in front of her. After that, she would give us our allowance based on how much money we won from the tickets. For the past two years, I had always thought that I was unlucky, and it turned out that was not true. "Can I indicate how much I won on the ticket if I customize them?" The owner nodded. "Sure, you can. Some weddings or company events would customize them for lucky draws. You can print as many as you like." He returned the ticket to me. "This is a customized ticket. You should go to the person who gave it to you." I clenched the ticket and left the convenience store. The summer sun shone down on me, but my teeth were chattering from the chill I felt from discovering the truth. That was when my phone buzzed. Elena had shared a picture in the family group chat. The picture showed her holding up her new pink phone, smiling happily. [Thanks Mom and Dad for my early birthday present!] My father gave her a thumbs-up emoji, while my mother texted me right away. [Where are you, Nina? Come home right now to scratch your lottery ticket and get your allowance. We need to take both of you back to school this afternoon.] I looked down at the fake ticket in my hand, and I finally had an answer for all the questions I had for situations I never understood. I had always wondered how Elena had never scratched a losing ticket, how she was always lucky enough to win a hundred dollars the next week whenever she happened to need money. It always made me wonder why my mother would refuse to give me my allowance in advance, even when I was starving and went crying to her, telling her that I could not make it through the week without food. No luck was ever involved. Every winning amount had been carefully curated by them in advance. Chapter 2 When I got home, Elena was sitting on the couch, playing with her new phone. She waved me over to her happily when she saw me. "Nina, help me transfer my pictures to the new phone." However, I ignored her and headed straight to the dinner table. Ten lottery tickets were already spread out on the table, and my mother pushed five tickets toward me. "Hurry up and scratch them. Your father and I need to take a nap later. Don't waste our time." I did not take the tickets, which made my father frown. "What are you still standing there for?" That was when I placed the lottery ticket I took from the cupboard onto the table. When the ticket floated gently down, my mother's expression changed. "Who said you could go through my cupboard?" She did not ask why I had the lottery ticket or where I had gone. Her first reaction was to get mad at me for opening her cupboard, and that killed the last hope inside of me. "That ticket is fake," I heard my voice trembling. "Every ticket you gave us was customized, isn't it?" Elena stopped playing with her phone, and my father's face fell. "How can you be so indignant when you stole from your own home, Nina?" "I'm asking if the lottery tickets are fake." My mother slammed the table. "So what if they are?" She admitted it so quickly that the speech I had prepared for them got stuck in my throat. My mother picked up the ticket from the table and looked at me coldly. "This was a family game we designed, and both of you got real money at the end of the game. Nothing we did was a lie to you." "Why does Elena get more than a hundred dollars every time while I only get a few dollars? "It's because your situation is different from Elena's," my mother insisted matter-of-factly. "Elena is lively and needs to socialize with her classmates. That requires money. All you do is read and sleep. What would you need so much money for?" I clenched my fists. "I need to eat too." "Isn't a few dollars enough?" "A meal at school costs at least two dollars. How am I supposed to last with a few dollars a week when I have five days of school per week?" My mother interrupted me impatiently, "You can fill up with free water in school, and I believe that the leftover food in the canteen will definitely be discounted. Children living in poverty can't even enjoy a meal. Why are you acting so spoilt when you have money?" My chest felt stuffy as I looked at her. She knew. She knew that several dollars a week was not enough to last me, and she knew that I could only survive on leftover food and water, but she did not care. All my father did was slam five lottery tickets in front of me. "That's enough! We're not going to talk about this anymore. Scratch your lottery tickets and go back to school." I looked at the five tickets that had been pre-arranged for me. I picked up the first one and won nothing. The second ticket was the same. The third and fourth tickets won a dollar and two dollars respectively, while the last one won nothing. My mother glanced at my tickets. "Three dollars in total. Use the money wisely and don't waste it on unnecessary things." As for my sister, she won a hundred dollars because her birthday was this week. Chapter 3 When I got back to school, I put my three dollars away. Chelsea Sanders, who sat next to me in class, glanced over. "Is that all you have for today?" I put the money away and shook my head. "That's for the week." "How is three dollars supposed to last a week at school?" "I still have food left in my dorm room," I lied. All I had left in the cupboard of my dormitory was half a packet of stale cookies. That night, Elena bought dinner for her roommates. She shared a picture of the feast they enjoyed that night on her social media account. The entire table was filled with food, and in the middle of it was a birthday cake. Her caption read: [This has been a lucky week. Thank you for shining a light on me, Goddess of Luck.] Comments from envious classmates flooded her post. Someone asked how she was lucky enough to strike the lottery so many times. She replied: [Maybe it's because I'm a good person.] I stared at her picture and post for a long time before turning off my phone. The next afternoon, I bought two granola bars from the vending machine. I was planning to have one for lunch and another for dinner. When I passed by the building where Elena was having classes, she was throwing an unfinished cup of frappuccino into the bin. "It's too sweet for me. I don't want it anymore." The girls around her laughed and lamented what a waste it was, but Elena waved them off without a care. "It's fine. I'll have money next week when I scratch my lottery tickets." I lowered my head as I walked past them. "Nina!" Elena came running up to me and pushed a paper bag into my hands. "I almost forgot to give this to you." I opened it up and saw half a cake that she could not finish. The cream had melted and was sticking to the side of the box. "It's a waste if I throw it away when I can't finish it. You can finish it for me." She went back to her friends after that, leaving me behind. I only had a glass of water that morning, and my empty stomach was hurting from hunger, but I suddenly lost all my appetite. In the end, I left the cake on a bench outside the building. The third class that afternoon was physical education. When I was on my second round on the track, I started seeing double, and the teacher's whistle sounded like it was coming from far away. I wanted to stop, but my legs gave out, and when I stepped to the side of the track, I fell hard to the ground. When I woke up, I was in the nurse's office. Chelsea was sitting by my bed with a warm cup of glucose water. "The nurse said you have low blood sugar and you're also slightly malnourished." She placed a straw by my lips. "Did you skip breakfast again this morning?" I did not answer her. The school principal called my parents about what happened. When my mother picked up the call, the first thing she asked was, "Do we need to pay any medical bills?" My mother's question took the nurse by surprise. "It's only five dollars for the checkup and glucose water." She was relieved. "We'll use an advance from her allowance next week." I heard everything on the phone while lying in bed. The nurse took a look at me and frowned. "Mrs. Carter, your child's health will be compromised if she's constantly starving. High school is tough, and she has to be properly nourished to keep up." "Don't listen to her playing victim." My mother laughed. "She has the same allowance as her younger sister, yet her sister is perfectly healthy. Nina is picky with food and doesn't know how to manage her finances." I spoke up suddenly. "No, we don't have the same allowance." There was silence on the other end of the phone, and I tried my best to sit up in bed. "Elena's allowance this week is a hundred dollars, but I only have three dollars." The nurse and Chelsea looked at me at the same time. My mother's tone turned cold. "Do you really need to blab our household affairs all over the school, Nina? Nurse, please let her rest a little. It's okay for young people to starve occasionally. They shouldn't be too spoilt." She hung up after that, and the nurse's office turned so silent that only the sound of a spinning fan could be heard. Chelsea turned red with anger. "How is that the same? A hundred dollars and three dollars is such a huge difference!" The nurse did not take any money from me in the end, and she even gave me cookies. I held them carefully in my hands and said in a small voice, "How much are the cookies? I'll pay you back when I have money." She sighed. "You don't need to pay me anything. I'm giving them to you." I lowered my head to sip on my glucose water. It was sweet, and I could not help tearing up. Chapter 4 When we returned home on Friday, my mother was cooking in the kitchen. Elena's new phone was on the dining table, looking pretty with a pink case and dazzling accessories on it. When my father saw me, he pointed at the couch. "Sit down. We need to have a chat." However, I did not listen to him. My mother walked out of the kitchen, looking upset. "What ridiculous story did you tell the school? Your class teacher called to ask if I was starving you at home." "All I did was tell the truth." "What truth? Are you saying we didn't give you any weekly allowance?" "How is three dollars an allowance?" My father raised his voice, "There are ways to live with excess money, and there are ways to live with less money. We're training you how to deal with emergency situations." "If that's what you're trying to do, why doesn't Elena need to deal with emergency situations?" The question choked my father, and my mother slammed the plates on the table. "Your sister has not been in good health since she was young, and she has a sensitive soul. She would be sad if she thought she wasn't lucky enough to get money from the lottery tickets. "You're tougher than she is. It isn't that bad for you to suffer a little more hardship than she does." I laughed. "So, you know as well how hard it is to live without enough money. You just can't bear for her to be sad." My mother's cheeks were twitching. "Stop playing word games with us. Your teacher gave me a lecture over the phone, and you should apologize to me for that." "I'm not apologizing." "Nina!" My father slammed his hand on the armrest. My shoulders shuddered, but I did not lower my head as I did before. The two stacks of fake lottery tickets in the cupboard had destroyed my last hope for this family. "You told me that the rules were fair, and I believed you for two years. "Every time I got a losing lottery ticket, I blamed myself for being unlucky. I didn't dare to buy stationery or go out with friends. When I was dizzy from hunger, I thought it was my fault for not planning my finances well." I looked at my mother. "You could have just told me that you didn't want to give me any allowance. Why would you make me think that everything I suffered was my own fault?" My mother looked away. "All you want is more money, right? She reached into her pocket and gave me 20 dollars. "Take it. I don't want you running to your teacher and playing the victim again." However, I did not accept the money. "I don't want to be compensated only for this week. I want to have a stable allowance every week that is enough to feed me." "You can't." My mother replied without hesitation. "This is how our family educates our children, and we won't change the way we discipline you just because you made a fuss. You won't go hungry when you're capable enough to work for your own money." Her words gave me an idea. She was right that I was capable enough to make my own money. The following week, I started to help my classmates check their homework, charging them three dollars for one subject and 12 dollars for five subjects. I had excellent handwriting, and my explanation was clear and concise. It was not long before students from other classes came for my help. After I was done with my studies at night, I would help younger students with their essays. It cost five dollars per essay. A week passed, and I had earned 40 dollars. I stared at the money for a long time because it was the first time I no longer had to rely on the lottery tickets from my parents, and I could enjoy a complete meal in school. I went to the canteen and ordered a simple burger for three dollars. When the hot burger was served, my palms started to sweat. It smelled so good, and I savored it slowly, not leaving a crumb behind. Chelsea was sitting opposite me, and she asked with a smile. "Does it taste good?" I nodded vigorously. "It's delicious." The burger was not bought with money from the lottery tickets. I bought it with money I earned. I did not ask my family for additional money in the following month. When they gave me three dollars, I took it. When they gave me six dollars, I did not argue with them. I divided my earnings into three portions. One portion was for my meals, and another portion was for school materials. The last portion was saved in my new bank account, and only I knew the password to it. At the end of the month, I had made 350 dollars. When I returned home on Friday, my father suddenly called out to me. "I heard that you're doing business in school." My heart sank. Elena sat next to me and explained in a small voice, "I didn't tell Mom and Dad on purpose, Nina. Mom kept asking me why you were always in the school canteen, and I told her that you were making money." My mother reached out a hand. "Give me your bank card." "I earned this money myself." "You live under our roof and eat our food. You don't have any right to decide if your money belongs to you." She stared at me. "Since you're already making your own money, your lottery ticket privileges will be taken away from you next month." It was a relief to hear that, but she continued, "You'll be paying a hundred dollars in rent to us."