Free The Lottery by Beth Goobie

own. It wasn’t a formula for bosom buddies. Every now and then, Sal caught her mother giving her quick confused glances as if unsure from which orifice her daughter had originally emerged. Other than this, they were supersonic jets, occasionally crossing each other’s tailwinds.
    “Did you finish studying for your math quiz?” Picking up her briefcase, her mother turned toward the door.
    Math quiz? Faking composure, Sal frantically scanned her brain for data regarding her first-period math class, but The Wall Live must have blown it somewhere past Pluto. Then she remembered.
    “That was Tuesday, Mom.” A perfect circle of bran muffins sat awaiting her and Dusty on a plate — everything her mother did was so geometric. Snagging the biggest one, Sal stuffed half of it into her mouth. She loved the way raisins exploded softly onto her tongue. “Don’t give me a heart attack.”
    “Just asking. Don’t you take a heart attack.” Her mother retreated into her customary wounded stance and the air sagged the way it usually did between them, weary and bruised. “It’s a mother’s job to ask these things, y’know.”
    “Hey, why not quit and apply for employment insurance?” Sal spoke without thinking, the joke an exuberant flash passing through her brain.
    “Parents don’t get insurance,” snapped her mother, jamming on her sunglasses. “No matter what happens,they’re stuck with it.”
    The screen door slammed behind her, and Ms. Hanson’s heels descended the outside steps in sharp precise clicks. Open-mouthed, Sal stood in the empty room, staring at the door. Suddenly, the kitchen shifted into a dark swerve around her. There was the familiar ooze of her brain into memory, and she could feel the tight line of the seat belt once again trapping her against the seat. Then someone began screaming as the car left the road and jolted in and out of the ditch, headlights fixed on a large aspen, the dead-ahead brilliant trunk.
    “Mom!” She had to get back, back to the place her mind had been before ... before what? A dark dizziness lifted, and Sal found herself swaying in the sunlit kitchen, the screen door still quivering in its frame. She remembered ... something about Mom being angry, leaving the house angry. Terror ascended on huge wings. Not angry — her mother couldn’t leave angry. It was a really bad idea to get into a car feeling angry.
    Bursting through the screen door, Sal stumbled on the steps and had to grab the railing for balance. “Mom!” Her ankle gave off a sharp twinge but she ignored it, running alongside the car, hanging onto the doorhandle as her mother backed down the driveway.
    “What?” Unrolling the window halfway, Ms. Hanson glared balefully over her sunglasses.
    “I think I passed,” Sal panted, scooping words off the surface — this word, that word, any word that might change the expression on her mother’s face.
    “Passed what?”
    “My math test!”
    “Oh.” The tired intricate lines on her mother’s facesoftened. So many, Sal thought. Why hadn’t she noticed them before? “That’s good, honey.”
    “And Mom ...”
    “Yes?”
    “Drive careful, okay?”
    Her mother’s eyes reddened. She blinked rapidly, then looked away. “You have a good day, sweetie,” she said huskily. “Take care of yourself, too.”
    “I will, Mom, I promise.” Catastrophe averted, Sal stood in the middle of the street, waving her mother to the corner and out of sight. When she turned back to the house, the sudden dark swerve in the kitchen had been forgotten and the memory tucked back in its place, safely underground with the darkness and the dead where it belonged.
    She was late for band practice as usual, everyone else seated, their fingers skimming casually through various warm-up scales. As she came through the door, her eyes darted instinctively to the back row of risers where the brass section ruled. Directly at their midpoint sat Willis Cass, trumpet raised to his lips, ascending