Free Dead Ends by Erin Jade Lange Page B

he’d checked out of the school library, but ever since we’d walked in the door, it was like he’d forgotten all about it.
    â€œI would love to take a road trip like that,” Mom gushed.
    â€œ
My
mom didn’t want to go. I had to say ‘pretty please with sugar on top.’”
    â€œWhy didn’t she want to go?”
    Billy dropped his eyes to the table and twisted a cookie in his hands. “She doesn’t care about those places.”
    â€œWell, she obviously cares about
you
, if she took you to them. You are a lucky guy, Billy.”
    â€œNot as lucky as you!” Billy exclaimed. He threw an arm up toward the wall of unclaimed tickets. “I wish I could do that. It’s like magic!”
    Leave it to Billy to not only not judge our crazy house, but also embrace it like it was the coolest place he’d seen since Ket-chum, Idaho.
    Billy turned his chair to marvel up at the lottery tickets, and Mom caught my eye behind his back.
    I love him
, she mouthed.
    I ducked my head into my algebra textbook, pretending to ignore them both.
    â€œReally, Billy, you don’t think my tickets are weird?” Mom pushed.
    â€œNo way.” Billy knelt to face my mom over the back of the chair. “I saw a show on TV about people who won the lottery and spent all the money. They couldn’t help it; the lottery made them loony tunes. And they ended up
poorer than before they won
.” Billy punctuated the sentence by throwing his arms up in the air. “Isn’t that
nuts
?”
    â€œThat
is
nuts,” Mom emphatically agreed. “Greed is dangerous.”
    â€œThis way,” Billy said, gesturing at the wall, “you’re a winner forever.”
    Mom leaned over the table, reaching a hand out to Billy. She was practically slobbering on him.
    â€œOh, Billy, you simply
have
to come over more often.”
    â€œI’m done!” I snapped my book shut a little too loudly. “Um … with my homework, I mean. Billy D., you want to show me that thing, or … ?”
    Billy looked surprised that I was still in the room. “Oh, yeah.” He slid a sidelong glance at my mom, which I took to mean the “thing” wasn’t for her eyes.
    â€œLet’s go to my room,” I said.
    â€œOkay, but …” Billy looked down at the cookies.
    Mom took the cue and pressed a pile of imitation Oreos into his hands. “Take them with you. Come back if you want more.”
    â€œWe’ll be fine, Mom,” I said, pushing Billy and his backpack out of the kitchen and down the hall.
    I locked my bedroom door behind me. “Okay, this better be good.”
    â€œIt’s awesome,” Billy said. He sat on the dirty carpet and pulled a tall, flat book from his backpack.
    â€œWhat is it?” I dropped down to the floor next to Billy and leaned in.
    â€œIt’s a
yearbook
,” he breathed.
    His breath was the sound effect to match my own deflating anticipation.
    â€œA yearbook? Seriously? I’ve been waiting an hour to see some lame yearbook?” I grabbed it from Billy’s hands. “It’s not even a new yearbook. It’s some old moldy year.” I checked the date on the front. The year I was born. “I don’t get—”
    Oh.
    There was only one person I knew who went to Mark Twain High sixteen years ago.
    â€œIs this my mom’s yearbook?”
    I opened the pages without waiting for a response. Billy knelt beside me, peeking around my shoulder.
    â€œYou said she was fifteen when you were born,” Billy explained. “And I’m really good at math”—I happened to know Billy was, in fact, in remedial math, but I didn’t interrupt—“so I figured out which yearbook she was in.”
    â€œOkay. So?”
    â€œI bet your dad’s in there, too.”
    I snapped the yearbook shut and held it away from me like it was contaminated. “Whoa. Who asked you