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.