Winners

Part 1

Toby mumbled incoherent things in the corner of the room as his closed eyes moved around from behind his eyelids, I watched him do his odd luck ritual as the television turned on by itself as a man stepped up onto a podium in the middle of the square in the center of town and gleamed. Mom, dad, and my two baby sister scrowded onto the couch as I poked Toby trying to get him to come out of the luck praying stupor he was so deeply into. Many dirt covered faces looked up in wonder as James Magee who would announce the winner of the lott. The luckiest person in the city would win and would get the things they’d always dreamed with their family.

“Did you fill out the ticket for this week, Mommy?” Millie asked looking at the TV excitedly. I used to be just like her when I was little, praying and hoping that one day we would win and be lifted out of this poverty that was our city. But as I grew older the chances of it all was revealed to me, this city, the poorest in our sector congested with people, we would have an extremely low chance of winning. It was one in a million. I sat against the back wall watching my family stare excitedly at the TV. They didn’t seem to have their hopes destroyed by it despite mother and father’s old age and Toby three years older than myself.

“Yes, I filled out two! And your dad filled out some at work,” my mother said transfixed at the TV.

“Some men at work didn’t take the tickets for some reason and gave them all to me! Suckers!” he said slapping his knee. Missy shushed everyone as James introduced himself- as if he needed to, the most famous person in this city, more people know about him then the mayor. I wiped the coal dust off my cheek as I coughed, lifting Toby finally out of his trans. He scooted towards me and put his hand on my forehead and frowned.

“You're sick.”

“No, it’s just hot in here,” I said. It really was hot it was in dead summer and after a long day at mining and finishing classes it was no wonder I was warm.

“Mom, Andy’s sick!”

“Hush now!” she said shushing him. As if she would have really cared in the first place, we never had money to afford someone being sick the best we could do when someone was, was to make them drink more water and cut an hour from classes and work. I stared at the dingy couch and the stop of their dark heads facing the television.

“Don’t you ever find any of this really useful?”

“What?”

“Turning in tickets, using in money from the dainty salary that they do get to buy more. Heck if we saved the money we did have from buying extra tickets we could afford a new couch!” I stared at the dingy dusty thing that sat in the middle of the small living room.

“I like our couch,” he said with a shrug. “I used to think the same way you did- that this was all for nothing and that we’d never be chosen and how the odds are completely against us with everyone else in this city, even some people in this sector, that there is even rumors that the drawing was getting rigged so only the best of the poor was chosen and-“

“Are you going to get somewhere anytime soon?”

He smiled.

“When I was your age I had a friend who one and I never saw or heard him again, he was probably having the time of his life in a totally new city or even a new sector, eating every day, playing, bathing. There’s nothing wrong with having hopes and dreams, Andy.”

“Sure there isn’t,” I said blowing the lose bangs that hung in front of my face and hugging my legs.

“And the winner of this week’s Lott is…”