The Winner

You can do a lot with $10,000,000, I thought as I waited in line at Sid’s Corner Store. The options are probably limitless. I guess there are some people that have way more than that to toss around, but I’m not one of them. Maybe with ten million dollars I could buy an apartment that isn’t the size of a postage stamp.

See, this is why the lottery is so successful. Even though your chances of winning are about one in five billion, everyone thinks, But maybe this time I’ll get lucky. Then they start thinking about how much money they could possibly win and what they could do with it, like me. So they buy a ticket. Pretty much all of them lose. But the lottery is like smoking cigarettes. Once you’ve bought one, you’re hooked and can’t stop. Both eat up all the money in your wallet, too.

“LUCKY STARS SCRATCHCARDS SOLD HERE!” screamed the banner hanging behind the counter. “Buy one today and YOU could be the lucky winner of $10,000,000! For only 50¢ you could be a MILLIONAIRE in just instants!” Bold yellow print and grinning stars stared back at me.

“That all?” asked the employee behind the counter as he rang up my groceries.

Yes, yes, yes! That’s all! I thought. Just pay and leave! You don’t want to become a lottery junkie! I was thinking this, but somehow, “No, can I have two of those?” slipped out of my mouth as I pointed at the Lucky Stars advertisement.

“Sure thing,” he replied and put two scratch cards in my paper bag along with the Sierra Mist, paper towels, and package of M&M’s I’d bought. I paid and left the store, hitting myself for giving in to the temptation of the lottery again. One of these days I am going to go broke. I don’t have money to waste on the lottery!
Back in my sad excuse for an apartment, I searched for something halfway decent to wear to my best friend Meg’s surprise birthday party. Settling for a floral printed halter top, I slipped the two lotto tickets into the back pocket of my jeans, grabbed my present for her, and left.

We wanted to do something special for Meg, since she was turning 20. We, perhaps ignorantly, decided on a surprise party. She wasn’t surprised, of course, but at least she tried to hide it. Besides, I think I was the only one who noticed that her small leap in the air and wide eyes had clearly been rehearsed in a mirror for hours on end. Everyone enjoyed the party, though, and Meg absolutely adored her presents.

After the festivities had wound down considerably and the remaining guests were sitting at the dining room table conversing idly, I flopped down on the couch where Meg was opening a few last presents with not quite so much gusto as she’d had previously. I took the two scratch cards out of my pocket and handed her one.

“Here’s a little extra,” I said. “Now YOU could be the lucky winner of $10,000,000!” She thanked me and we sat on the couch. I dug up two quarters with which to scratch our cards.

The object was to scratch off three stars in a row going horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. The other spaces had unhappy-looking moons and comets on them. I lost immediately, but Meg scratched off a star, which was relatively uncommon.

Then she unveiled another star. By then a small group of after-party lingerers had gathered around to watch. They were all cheering her on, but only halfheartedly because you just don’t win the lottery, if you know what I mean. But for some reason, I had a horrible feeling in my stomach, like when you’re on a rickety old Ferris wheel and it comes to an abrupt stop at the very top.

The following moment seemed to be the longest of my entire life. Although I had no idea why, I realized that I was subconsciously praying for the next space reveal some downtrodden comet- or anything but another star. She scratched the coating off very slowly, but we could all see the tip of a shiny, sparkling, five-pointed gold thing peeking out. I felt ready to throw up. Everyone jumped up, screaming things at the top of their lungs like, “Oh my God Meg!” and “$10 million!” and “You won the lottery!!!” as if she didn’t already know. I slowly got to my feet, and I faked a smile. “Good job,” I said, but she didn’t hear me. I didn’t really mean it, anyway. You don’t have to be intelligent or nice or hardworking to win the lottery…just lucky. So she hadn’t done a “good job” of anything.

Then something pulled the knot in my stomach even tighter. I’d bought that ticket. It was mine. I was the one who’d won the lottery, not her! That ticket was a gift. If I’d only handed her the other card, I’d be the one getting all the praise, attention, and money and she’d have a worthless piece of cardboard. She wasn’t even saying anything to me! Like, for example, “Wow, you gave me a ticket worth $10 million. But it was your card so you should take the money,” She was just wallowing in all the kudos she was getting when I’m the one who bought her that ticket!

I felt a burning rage and couldn’t stay in the room anymore with everyone yelling and surrounding Meg. I muttered some lame excuse that no one heard anyway (that I can’t even remember), quickly grabbed my coat and fled. I’m not kidding; I ran all the way home like my life depended on it. I burst into my room and had a good long cry. It was one of those kinds where you don’t even really know what you’re crying about but just can’t stop yourself. After I finished sobbing, I dried my eyes and collected my thoughts. I considered being happy for Meg—after all, she was my best friend—but couldn’t bring myself to it. But reflecting a little bit, I could see why. Meg was always prettier, smarter, and more social. She could do almost anything better than I could, and anything I could do better than she could was trivial and never taken seriously. That had been my lottery ticket, and it just simply wasn’t fair that she stole that from me, too. Describing my best friend as a thief of something is a little harsh, I thought, but I guess didn’t have a great friendship. I mean, we were always in competition.

The next few weeks were torture. Everywhere I looked there was Meg. She was interviewed on the news and there was a picture of her grinning and holding an oversized check in the newspaper. She got all sorts of encouragement and congratulations, which she lapped right up. Sid’s Corner Store put a massive full-color poster of her outside the store and about two dozen smaller, black and white versions inside. It showed Meg, smiling and laughing as hundred dollar bills rained down on her. I didn’t step inside Sid’s for months and did all my grocery shopping at the A&P from then on.

The town got very riled up about Meg’s winning. And I can’t deny that I was totally and 100 percent bursting at the seams with jealously. She was like a disease practically. Everyone in our town had Meg-fever and it completely went to their heads. Suddenly no one seemed to have a life of his/her own- everyone became obsessed with trying to suck up to Meg. They called her, shopped with her, hung out with her on weekends, and sent her flowers for no particular reason. (I viewed all this from a safe distance and heard some through the grapevine, the grapevine being the town gossip Renee Blithe.) I almost never saw Meg. I would only catch fleeting glimpses of her before the hoard of people which surrounded her at all times closed in on her tighter like bloodsucking leeches. But I did notice that every time I managed to view her, she was strutting along with her chest puffed out and head held high, sporting some sort of mink or designer piece.

Eventually though, the Meg craze died down. The posters were taken off the walls, and by some small miracle the press found other things to discuss. And the number of people in Meg’s posse declined one by one until once again Meg traveled solo.

It was on one particular day, about two years subsequent to her winning the lottery that I passed Meg outside the bookstore. I was in a fantastically good mood, because I’d just gotten a raise from my boss at ‘Fab!’, the fashion magazine I’d recently begun work for. I said a polite hello to her, as I’d grown accustomed to doing; not a friendly, warm greeting you might use on a best friend. It was just a stiff, strictly-to-be-nice hello. But I noticed a change in her. Meg seemed…different. Her once-sparkling eyes were dark and sunken in, her face slightly droopy. What used to be rosy cheeks were now pale, and her thin lips were drawn into a grimace. Even though we hadn’t spoken for so long, something inside me needed desperately to reach out to her. She needed me. Best friends can tell when the other’s in trouble.

“Meg!” I called after her. She was walking quickly and had passed me silently. She turned around and drew back when she saw me. “Hello stranger!” I said in a completely friendly voice. “You want to, um, go for a cup of coffee or something? My treat!” I said. Meg’s expression was a mixture of pain and confusion and nostalgia.

“I’d like that,” she said, staring at her shoes and a small smile flickered across her face.

Over lattes, I managed to understand what had happened. Her money had not been managed very wisely. She’d gotten caught up in all the attention, and long-lost friends and family members had all suddenly come back to get a slice of her winnings. The cash she hadn’t given away was wasted on trivial things, and soon she didn’t have any left and was even in debt. She cried a little bit as she told me this, and even admitted that winning the lottery was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. All her false friends made her feel unwanted and her emerging money problems were alarming and foreign to her. I found myself sympathizing and trying to help her and offer as much advice as I could. She was really depressed and I hated to see her like that, distant as we’d been.

Meg and I didn’t really stay close friends, even though our four and a half hour talk at the café that day seemed to promise a rebirth of our sisterhood. We hadn’t had too much in common in the first place, I guess, or much holding our friendship together. But as I walked away from both the café and my friend, I puzzled over something very strange. Meg had won the lottery. She’d won a great deal of money, a lot of attention, and more friends than you’d ever know what to do with. But in the end, she was more miserable than she’d been in the first place. Was it worth it? I knew I’d never buy a lottery ticket again. And reflecting on my life, I was happy. I had a good job, a promising boyfriend, and an apartment that can barely fit a sofa. It’s still a roof over my head! Maybe winning the lottery isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe instantly having a ton of money is more of a curse than a blessing. And maybe, just maybe, I’d been wrong in thinking that Meg was the winner.