Chapter 19 Logan #2
Jane pushes her phone into my face. “I’m not talking about chives, Logan. I’m talking about you winning the lottery.”
Beside me, Hazel drops the spoon into the bowl of shredded cheese.
My siblings look confused. Behind us in line, Mom laughs. “The lottery? Logan would never. Jane, you’re a riot today.” She claps her hands together. “Come on, get moving. We’ve got twenty nurses and doctors behind us who know how to use a scalpel and aren’t afraid to use it.”
“I’m being serious. My friend just messaged me this photo,” Jane says, following us over to the prize table. “Logan and… Hazel? You both won?” She shakes her head. “I don’t get it. Why do you both look old?”
My siblings have all heard Jane and surround us, quickly loading up their plates. Warren’s coworkers look pleased as they scoot closer to the food.
“Logan won the lottery? Wow, I’m so surprised,” Nick says sarcastically, his mouth full of potato.
Eva twirls her fork in the air. “Lucky Logan strikes again!” she says.
Jane hands me her phone. “Explain.”
“Do you think it was the reporter?” Hazel whispers to me.
We both stare at the screen and try to process what we’re seeing.
Glaring back at us is a social media post with the photo of me and Hazel at the press conference.
We look eighty years old. Sure, our names are on the giant check, but we knew that would happen.
It was a risk that my family and their friends might recognize the names if the news spread widely enough.
And up until now, it hadn’t.
“Okay, it’s a photo,” I say. “What about it?”
“Did you go through all of them?” Jane asks. “It’s a carousel.”
“Is it supposed to move? What does that mean?”
Jane makes a motion with her thumb. “Slide through the photos.”
My family huddles up behind us, trying to catch a glimpse.
The press conference photo was just the first photo of many.
The second photo is a snapshot of security camera footage.
There I am in black and white at the counter with Hazel on the day we met, when I bought her bandages and candy. When I bought the lottery ticket.
It’s old us and young us. I’m still not seeing the connection. The silicone masks weren’t even close to our likeness.
Hazel reaches over and swipes across the screen to the third photo. It’s a zoomed in image of my arm and the stuff on the counter with a timestamp in the corner.
“Logan. Your bracelet,” she says, pointing to the screen.
My stomach plummets like it’s an elevator and my body is a drop tower.
My hand shakes a little as I slide to the next picture. Hazel and I are back in our disguises, but the photo is zoomed in on my arm.
And what’s poking out from underneath my sleeve? My red bracelet.
The last image is of a man standing in front of a bodega with his arms spread wide. He’s grinning like he’s just won the lottery.
“Why does that guy look so familiar?” Hazel asks.
I tap the name above the photo, and it takes me to a page with a lot more pictures in a grid.
Interior shots of a bodega, new items on sale, and, more recently, a promo of the growing Powerball number.
Then I recognize something that brings me back to how all the dots are connected: an Indiana Jones shirt.
It’s the social media page of the bodega clerk.
I skim the caption: Thanks, Logan and Hazel, for stopping by the shop.
He goes on to say more celebratory-toned words about how the Powerball ticket was sold at his bodega, along with a list of store hours.
Hazel grips my arm and shakes it. “Plane. The plane!”
Right there, on the bodega clerk’s shirt, is the vintage airplane bursting through the clouds.
“This guy really knows how to tell a story,” Nick says. “That was a journey.”
Someone’s finger pulls down on the screen, and the page refreshes. “His follower count jumped by a hundred in the time it took us to look through those photos,” Bruce says.
“It doesn’t seem malicious,” Warren says, who joined the huddle at some point. “The guy’s excited. You know how much business this will bring? They might even have lines out the door. He has a lucky store now.”
Lucky. I wish that word never existed.
“How did he even find out?” Hazel asks.
“Doesn’t the bodega get money when they sell the winning ticket? When the payout hit, he probably wanted to find out who it came from,” Jane guesses.
Warren nods slowly. “If that’s his shop, that would make a huge difference for him.”
Roy gives us a thumbs-up. “Good for you guys for shopping local.”
I already know how this will land with Hazel. “This is an invasion of privacy,” I say, handing Jane her phone.
Jane takes one look at my face and then does what we all do when things get hard. “Why are you upset?” she asks. “You won the lottery! I mean, it’s a lot of money, but it’s not as much as what you would’ve gotten from Dad—”
“Jane, stop,” I say, not wanting to hear the rest of that sentence.
“Your faces are blurry in that footage,” Eva says, probably trying to be helpful.
It’s like we fall into roles when we’re all back together, saying the words from a script in the name of comfort. I find myself trying to spin this into something that will hurt a little bit less.
“This is really bad,” Hazel says, forcefully mushing her toppings into her potato.
“Your names were already out there,” Jane says flippantly, swiping back to the first photo. “Like, literally. Logan Wells. Hazel Yen. Why’d you even bother with disguises?”
“None of you knew until now,” Hazel says. She’s still distractedly mushing, her potato and toppings now a thick paste. “Obviously, we didn’t want to be outed if we were in disguises. Now our real faces are attached to this.”
“I don’t think anyone’s gonna care too much about this,” Mom chimes in.
Hazel abandons her plate on the table, breaking free from the group and moving to the bench on the edge of the deck.
I make a move to follow her, but Jane cuts in front of me. “I don’t get it, Logan,” she says, not even trying to disguise her irritation. “You won’t accept your inheritance, but you’ll take lottery money? If your luck ran out and you needed help, you could’ve come to us.”
I glare at her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that you almost risked our inheritances because you didn’t want yours,” Jane nearly shouts. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen her get this worked up. “We can’t all be as lucky as you, Logan. Our lives don’t just fall into place like yours does.”
Jane’s gone a step too far, and she knows it. Eva knows it. Mom knows it.
“When you see me, all you can think of is luck,” I shoot back. “You assume everything’s so easy, like it’s just happening to me, but maybe you need to take a better look.”
“Okay, everyone take a deep breath,” Mom says, trying to diffuse the situation. “Everything happens for a reason. Just think of what you can learn from this.”
“Yeah, like don’t ever rob a bank,” Joe says as he crushes his second whoopie pie. Tina nudges him in the side.
Mom holds up her hands like she has the answers. “If we can just stay positive, this will get better. Freaking out isn’t going to do anything. Let’s just—”
“Actually, Mom, this really sucks,” I snap.
Everyone goes quiet.
I have the floor. I might as well take it. “Hazel and I are allowed to feel mad about this. Freaking out might not fix this, but happy thoughts sure as shit won’t either,” I say. I’m frustrated, and I sound it. I haven’t taken this tone with Mom in decades.
If Mom’s stunned by my outburst, she doesn’t show it. “Stop worrying. This is hardly news. It’ll blow over in a few days. You’ll get through this,” she says evenly.
She’s not hearing me. No one is.
That’s not true. Not no one. Hazel hears me.
And the worst part about all of this is what Hazel must be going through. She’s got her legs tucked up into her chest, her chin resting on her knees. She’s staring out at the sparkling bay. In a place that feels so free and open and wide, she’s made herself small.
The happiness that lit up Hazel’s face earlier is long gone. I’d do anything to put it back there.
I walk over to her and reach for her hand. “Shirley MacLaine,” I say.
She looks up at me, a little dazed, but doesn’t hesitate to place her colder-than-usual hand in mine.
And then we get the hell out of there.