Burn: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

where she fit in this world.
    But this was no longer her world, and the sickening realizationwas enough to make her bend over the toilet once more, her stomach heaving. The only way she could keep things the same was to never claim the winnings, and, yeah, like
that was
going to happen. She wasn’t stupid. Nervous and nauseated, maybe, but not stupid.
    She would be saying good-bye to almost everything from this life. She thought of all her friends, both casual and close, and of them all she thought only Michelle would stick. She and Michelle had been friends practically from the day they’d met, back in high school. She’d spent as much time at Michelle’s house, probably more, than she’d spent at her own home—wherever that had happened to be, with Jerry dragging her from place to place and always leaving behind a couple of months of unpaid rent. The way he figured it, he paid rent for only two or three months out of the year, and the rest of the time he got to live in a place for free because it usually took the landlord a couple of months to kick them out. In Jerry’s world, only fools paid rent every month.
    Jerry was going to be a problem. It wasn’t a question of
if he’d
cause trouble, but
how much
.
    Jenner had no illusions about her dad. She hadn’t seen him in months, didn’t even know if he was still in the Chicago area, but as sure as the sun rose in the east he’d turn up as soon as he heard about the lottery, and do whatever he could to get his hands on as much of the money as possible. Therefore, she had to take steps to protect the money before she claimed it.
    She’d read about people setting up plans and stuff that sheltered the money, sometimes waiting weeks before going public that they’d won. That’s what she would do. She’d keep working at Harvest until she actually got the money, but as soon as possible—today—she’d find someone whose job it was to know what to do with this kind of cash.
    By three a.m., she was exhausted, both physically and mentally. She stripped down and climbed into bed, then set her alarm for eight just in case she was able to doze off. She had too much to do to risk oversleeping. Around dawn, she fell into a fitful sleep, wakingoften to check the clock, and finally getting up before the alarm went off. After taking a shower, she nuked a cup of instant coffee and sipped it while she blow-dried her hair and put on makeup.
    At eight thirty, she was watching the clock as she flipped through the phone book’s advertising pages. There was nothing under “money handlers,” which was frustrating, because how the hell else would it be listed? Maybe there was something under “banks.” What she learned was that there were a lot of banks in the Chicago area, and most of them advertised themselves as “full service” banks. What was that? Maybe they pumped gas for your car and checked the oil. Banks cashed checks, right? What else was there? Unfortunately, the ads didn’t say what those services were, so she was still in the dark.
    She slammed the phone book shut and angrily paced the kitchen. She hated feeling ignorant, hated that she couldn’t look up what she wanted in the yellow pages, because she didn’t know how things were listed. But she’d never had a bank account, mostly because she never had much money and a bank account seemed stupid. She paid her bills either in cash, or by money order. That wasn’t the wrong way to do things, was it? Lots of people handled their bills that way—most of the people she knew, in fact.
    Already she was running into that wall she’d sensed—the wall between the life she knew and the life all that money would automatically bring with it. Other people had managed, and she would, too. She could figure things out.
    Opening the phone book again, she looked up one of those full-service banks, checked that the clock had ticked past nine, and dialed the number. When a woman answered in a modulated, professionally friendly