The large
flower themed calendar hung on the wall by the kitchen. The days had been
crossed out with a red marker to a Saturday afternoon. In the Meubwel house,
Saturday meant two things: Cam’s hang out day
and Candice’s lottery day.
The glass
front door sprung open, letting a huge gust of cold air into the spacious front
entrance. The long peachy curtains covering all six windows jumped and blew the
opposite direction. The door shut and the lock clicked. A woman with long
bouncy brown hair came skipping onto the marble floor. Her high heels clicked
noisily as she moved.
“Oh yeah! Yes! Yes! Yes!” she shouted with a
huge permanent smile on her face while jumping up and down. She stopped for a
second and narrowed her eyes at a figure at the door all the way across the
room. Her voice echoed as she called, “Cherry! Cherry!”
Cherry groaned
and pushed the hair out of her eyes and walked to the woman. “Candice, take off
your shoes before you start jumping with glee. You don’t know how long it took
for me to finished mopping the front entrance. The dirt was practically
imprinted to the ground!”
“Oops, must
have been a hard job for you all by yourself, Cherry dear. It’s too bad
Saturday has to been clean up day.”
The woman
kicked off her heels and put them on the conveyor belt that with a touch of a
button, the shoes were gobbled up by the slot on the wall. On the other side of
the wall was a room shelved with shoes. Each shelf had a label with a name on
it, and the conveyor belt knew to put the shoes on the Candice shelf.
“Yes, totally
unfair that Cam never cleaned anything since
the day she was born,” Cherry groaned again and rolled her eyes. She walked
along the wall with the windows and sat down on the antique wooden bench.
“Aw, you don’t
know that. She is older than you. Maybe you’ve never seen it.”
“Yeah, sure,
says the woman who has been yelling at her herself for weeks,” Cherry said
sarcastically. “Besides, she’s sixteen! What’s she going to be cleaning at the
age of one?”
Candice sighed
and took the bag off her shoulder and swung it on one of the hooks along the
wall. She slipped around the flower vases and sat next to Cherry. “Okay,
whatever. Forget the fact that you’ve been cleaning the house all your life and
just hear me.”
“I heard your
voice before you came into the house. It seems like lottery day went well for
you.” Cherry spoke with a little raise.
“It did!”
Candice shrilled. “You won’t believe this! You won’t believe it! Get this: I
won the lottery! First time ever!”
“Oh yeah,”
Cherry nodded. “I kinda guessed that was what had happened since you were
screaming in the front yard a moment ago. So what did you get?”
Candice jumped
to her feet and patted down her black skirt. She fixed the black framed glasses
on her nose and took a deep breath. Then she leaned forward, gripped tightly to
Cherry’s shoulders, and pulled her to her feet. “I won the lottery!” She
screamed while swaying Cherry’s body back and forth. “I won it! I won it! Yay!
Thirty million dollars for me! For us! Thirty million!” She repeated with her
high pitched voice.
Cherry coughed
when Candice let go. “Thirty million? Where is the money?” Her head sprang up
and she looked around the room with an eager expression.
Candice
blinked and laughed a little. She brushed the dark bangs out of her eyes and
looked up at the ceiling meters above. The pointed glass ceiling let the
afternoon sunlight enter the room.
“Well, they
said the thirty million dollars weren’t going to come yet and if they didn’t
give the winner something at the time, they’d look ridiculous. The money would
come sometime later. So instead, just for now, they gave me free tickets! Free
tickets to Sherpson town for the whole family—for two months!”
To Be Continued...
