พันธะแค้นผูกรัก

I stood in front of the convenience store counter for a long time, completely motionless.

When the convenience store clerk saw the incredulous expression on my face, she flipped the scratch-off ticket to the back and pointed to the serial number.

"Real lottery tickets have anti-counterfeiting codes in the back. They also wouldn't use this kind of paper. But yours looks like a pretty good dupe. It was probably custom-made online. Did a classmate use it to prank you or something?"

I stared at the scratched-off amount on the ticket and felt my fingers growing cold.

It wasn't a classmate.

This lottery ticket had come from the cabinet at home that was locked all the time, and the key was always on Dad's keychain. I had only opened the cabinet for the first time when he left the keys at home while he and Mom took my younger brother, Daryl Gray, to buy a new phone.

There had been two neat stacks of lottery tickets in it, with my name, Dustin Gray, written on the left stack, and Daryl's name written on the right.

Every weekend, Dad would take five tickets from each pile and hand them to us so that we would scratch them under his eyes. He would then transfer our weekly allowance based on our winnings.

For the past two years, I'd always thought that I had terrible luck. But as it turned out, that hadn't been the case after all.

"Miss, if this is custom-made, does it mean whoever ordered it could have specified the winning amount in them?"

The clerk nodded. "Of course. People usually order them for weddings, company events, and others. They can print however much they want on them."

She then handed the ticket back to me.

"This is just a printed ticket, young man. Go find the person who gave it to you and claim it from them instead."

I gripped the ticket in my hand as I walked out of the convenience store.

It was the middle of June at the start of summer, but I felt so cold that my teeth wouldn't stop chattering.

My phone vibrated, and I saw that Daryl had sent a photo to the family group chat. He was showing off his sleek new iPhone in the photo, his eyes crinkling into a huge smile.

"Thanks for my early birthday gift, Mom and Dad!"

Mom replied with a thumbs-up sticker, and Dad sent another text message.

"Where are you, Dustin? Come home and scratch off your allowance for the next week. We still have to send you back to boarding school in the afternoon."

I looked down at the fake ticket in my hand. Suddenly, I had the answers to all of the things that I just couldn't understand in the past.

I wondered why Daryl never got any empty tickets. I wondered why he always seemed to win 250 dollars for his allowance, even as he complained about not having enough money. I also wondered why Dad still refused to give me an advance on my allowance when I cried and made a fuss that I couldn't pull through anymore because I was literally starving and having gastric issues at school.

It had nothing to do with luck after all.

Every number on the ticket had been chosen for Daryl and me in advance.