Cha-Ching! by Ali Liebegott

moved out and she’d lived here for quite a while. But you get the picture.”
    They did get the picture. The picture was like a dream in which someone tries to convince you that the things you’re seeing really are those things that you want to see. This is the thing called “a backyard” that you want to have so you can give your dog the thing called “happiness,” and the whole time in the dream you walk around saying, “but this doesn’t seem like a backyard” and “this doesn’t seem like happiness.”
    Sammy and Theo exchanged skeptical glances.
    â€œAre you still working on the backyard, too?” Theo asked Abraham, who didn’t seem to see the backyard as a garbage dump.
    He didn’t say anything, so Theo continued, “Like, is all this garbage still going to be here?”
    â€œWell, I can ask my handyman to clean this up a bit.”
    The way he answered made Theo feel as if she was wrong for asking. Sammy’s face reflected what Theo felt: Of course she didn’t want this shit hole but they would be forced to take it because this is where people like them could afford to live. Abraham fiddled with his enormous ring of jangling keys.
    â€œWhat do you think, girl?” Theo asked. “Do you want to take it?”
    â€œWhatever you want,” Sammy said.
    Theo thought of Yonkers and Doralina and Megan’s stolen underwear and said, “Okay, we’ll take it.”
    Abraham said he only needed a check for the first month’s rent and deposit and it was a deal.
    â€œI don’t really have any money on me,” Theo said, fingering the four dollars she had left after buying the lottery tickets.
    â€œYou can pay me back,” Sammy said, pulling out her wad of fishing boat cash. She counted out $1,400 in hundred-
dollar bills and asked Abraham for a receipt, which he wrote out bent over the hood of his car.
    â€œYou can come back Friday when the work’s done and I’ll give you the keys then,” he said. They watched his gray sedan screech off.
    â€œGirl?” Sammy said.
    â€œThat fucking backyard,” Theo said.
    â€œThere are children buried back there, for sure,” Sammy said. “But we can fix it up—get a picnic table and some lawn chairs.”
    The farther they got away from the apartment the better they felt.
    â€œWe’ll make it nice,” Sammy said. “We’ll drive over the Verazzano Bridge and go to IKEA.”
    â€¢
    Theo was determined to pay Sammy back as soon as possible; she wasn’t used to letting anyone pay her way. She couldn’t believe Sammy was going to be her roommate. They only knew each other from that short time in jail, but Sammy already felt like a long-lost sibling. They were both going to start new life chapters—Sammy in massage school and Theo in real New York.
    The next day Theo went to the Kwik Stop before work to get a cup of coffee.
    â€œDid you see me on TV?” Randy asked. He was putting up Christmas decorations in the windows.
    â€œOh,” Theo said. “I forgot to watch.”
    He looked disappointed.
    â€œThe person with the winning ticket still hasn’t come forward,” Randy said.
    â€œReally?”
    Theo’s stomach dropped. She imagined the winner somewhere working as a fast-food employee, covered in fry grease, oblivious to the fact that they were a millionaire.
    â€œMaybe they lost it,” Randy said, setting down his decorations on a milk crate.
    â€œThat’s so depressing,” Theo said, pausing. And then, “Guess what? I’m moving to Brooklyn.”
    She tried to keep her voice from sounding too excited. During the three months she’d been in Yonkers she’d made a point to visit him while he was working. The backbone of their friendship was that they were both miserable in Yonkers.
    â€œReally?”
    His eyes looked disappointed. For a split second, Theo thought