There’s a sound. It wakes me.

  “Hey, buddy!”

  I open my eyes. There’s a bus. The driver is leaning towards his open doors.

  “You getting on?” asks the driver. He’s smiling at me like he knows what’s going on.

  Probably thinks I’m drunk. I’m at one of those covered bus stop thingies. No memory of how I got here. I was so tired after my apartment building. My guess is I just plopped down the first place I could. I don’t think I’ve ever been as exhausted in my life. Even now I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open. I know I’m not drunk because I don’t drink. There’s a history of alcoholism in my family, and I’m not tempted to try to dodge that particular bullet.

  “Buddy?” says the driver again and I realize I haven’t answered him.

  I shake my head and wave my hand. “Nope, sorry. Just got tired. Sat down and nodded off.”

  The guy grins and shakes his head. He closes the doors and the bus whines and grumbles away.

  I check my watch. It’s dead. No way to charge it. I go to reach for my phone and remember that it’s gone. Along with the bar and Nick and a prospective date.

  It’s still dark. I try to remember if the bus service runs all night in this town, but I have no idea. My guess would be no, but that’s all it would be, a guess. At any rate, I don’t know if that was the last run on a late night or the first one of the early morning. It feels like the latter, but I don’t trust it.

  No idea. I’m saying that a lot lately.

  Dammit, I need a bed and rest.

  I check my wallet knowing there’s only twenty dollars in cash in there I keep for emergencies. I use my bank card for everything else.

  Right. Will it work?

  Gotta be an ATM around here somewhere. I can check without embarrassing myself at the front counter. If it works, I'll get some money out and rent a hotel room.

  I’m about four blocks from home. I don’t know why I’m not in the back of a squad car right now. They’ve got to be looking for me, right?

  There should be a bank on the next block. I try not to use it since it’s not mine and the fees do add up, don’t they? But it’s close, so I do sometimes anyway. Only they don’t have a machine for pedestrians, so I feel a little weird walking through the drive-thru lane to put my card in the machine and type in my code.

  I’m not even surprised when the thing eats it. It doesn’t even say anything. There’s no alarm or warning. It just goes back to its home screen like nothing ever happened.

  Great.

  Huh. This time there wasn’t any sign of the darkness in my vision growing. Just like there wasn’t in front of my apartment door before I opened it. So, sometimes I get a clue when good or bad things happen or they’re about to, and sometimes I don’t?

  It feels like there should be more to it than that. I'm missing something. Probably a lot of things.

  A couple of times now it felt like I, I don't know, moved things the way I wanted them to go. When I was falling down the stairwell, I… Pushed. Yeah, like I said before, it’s not much like pushing anything physical. There’s nothing physical to it at all, but that’s how I think about it. I shoved, and the light flared, and I got saved when the chains caught me.

  Those chains, by the way, are gone now. They were dragging on the ground behind me as I ran. I remember that. I vaguely remember getting annoyed by the sound and tossing them in a garbage can.

  And now I’m standing here at the ATM like an idiot. If I don’t keep moving, I think I’ll just slump to the ground and curl up to sleep.

  I need a place to sleep, but it’s not like I can get that for twenty bucks. I can’t call anybody because I don’t have my phone. Besides, I don’t know anybody’s number, anyway. That’s all in my phone. I guess I could go in to work and see who’s there. I’m friendly with most of the people there and the newspaper has someone on staff all night, just in case, but I’ve only been there a few months and I’m not thrilled to impose on anybody there. Most of my money still comes from the freelance stuff I do, and the gig economy doesn’t encourage close friendships. Maybe there's a shelter or something, but where?

  No, if I want to sleep, the best way to do that is to turn twenty dollars into, well, more than that. The stairwell, the chaos of the house with the car crash, kidnappers, and everything. The weird things going on with my vision. I should be dead or in jail. The only reason I’m not is I got lucky.

  Well, after I got crazily unlucky, true, but when I Pushed things went right. Mostly.

  Okay then, what I should do now is test this, right? See if I’ve had some kind of psychotic break, or… I don’t know what. There’s not anything going on here at the bus stop, but I need money and there’s a convenience store two blocks over.

  That might do.

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  There’s a clock over the clerk’s head telling me it’s a little after five in the morning. I figure I must’ve passed out for a few hours back at the bus stop then. It didn't seem to do much to rest me.

  I’ve never bought a scratch-off lottery ticket in my life. Nick loves the things and often tries to get me to play. They’re behind the guy. He’s a little taller than I am and skinnier. His hair is long and needs a good wash, and he looks as tired as I am.

  I ask him for one of the ten-dollar scratch-offs and he shows me a row of them behind him on the counter.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Concentrating for a moment, I try to remember how it felt when I Pushed before as I consider each of the colorful rolls of tickets. I really need this to work.

  There’s a flash of light, but it’s different. There’s an afterimage, almost like a photo negative, maybe? I blink, knowing even as I do so that none of this has anything to do with my eyes.

  I point. “The green one there, please,” I tell the guy.

  He tears it off and rings it up. I pay him.

  I pat my pockets, looking for a coin. You’re supposed to use a coin, right? I don’t find one.

  I check the pockets of my coat.

  The guy clears his throat. He’s holding out the ticket, fake smile in place.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “You fucked up your coat,” says the guy. That's putting it mildly. There are great big holes around the hips where the chains got torn out and there's a split in the middle.

  “Yeah. One of those nights.”

  I pull out a tiny square of paper. It’s part of a movie ticket. The Return of the King. How long was this coat in the lost and found? Hey, this coat was abandoned years ago. I feel better about taking it.

  “You can use your keys,” says the clerk.

  “Sorry?”

  “Your keys?” He pantomimes scratching off the ticket. I don’t get the sense that he’s trying to be rude. He’s personable enough in how he's saying stuff, I guess. I figure we’re both just tired.

  Moving down the counter out of the way, even though there’s no one else in the store right now, I take up my obsolete apartment key and, after reading through the directions a few times, start scraping away the silvery gray crap.

  There’s a thrill when I realize I’ve won!

  Holy shit! I can win the lottery whenever I want?

  “What? Did you win?” asks the clerk.

  “Yeah!” I say. I show him the card. “Does it say what I think it does?”

  He leans over and squints. “Dude,” he says. “That’s twenty thousand dollars!”

  I look again, double-check the directions, and, yep, twenty thousand dollars!

  The clerk bends down while I’m double and triple-checking the ticket. Maybe he’s got a gizmo to verify it or something? I ignore him. Twenty thousand dollars.

  “Hand it over.”

  I look up and the clerk has a shotgun leveled at me.

  “What?” I say. This was not how I thought this would go. I feel so very exhausted.

  “I’m sorry, man, but I need that money more’n you.” He racks a shell into the chamber. A sound I’ve only ever heard in video games. His eyes are wide and staring. “Hand it over.”

  “Why do you have a shotgun?”

  “Convenience stores get robbed a lot,” says the guy.

  “Is this going to work out for you?” I ask. I can’t help it.

  “Probably work out better if there were no complaining witnesses and I’m the hero that stopped a robbery. Look, I need that money, man. I’ve been trying to figure it out all day, and here you are with all that. Gimme. My house—.”

  "Aren't there cameras?"

  "I'll delete the files. What do you care? You'll be dead." The clerk shrugs. "Armed robbery." He hefts the shotgun. "Self-defense. It kinda is. Your life or mine, dude."

  “I’m not even armed!”

  “I’ve got another gun in my car, man. I’ll drop it on you. You look kinda rough. The cops’ll buy it. Boom. Case closed.”

  I doubt it’ll work out that way for him, but it doesn’t seem like it’s the time to say so. I wonder why I’m not more scared.

  “Look,” I say. “Make you a deal. I’m pretty sure that I can win again.” I nod toward the wall of scratch-offs. “Let me try. I’ll even pay for another ten-dollar one, right? I bet I can do it. You can have whichever one wins the most, okay? I just really need to get some sleep.”

  The guy snorts, then he surprises me by thinking it over. “You know? I can’t think of a single reason not to,” he says. He keeps the gun on me as he rings up another sale.

  I point to the black and gold ones and Push.

  “Do it right here,” says the clerk.

  I oblige, taking my time to read the directions carefully once more. Better if I don’t screw things up now. When I’m done, I show him.

  He takes it and his eyes go big. “Ten thousand? Again? I’ve never seen anybody win twice like that and I’ve worked here ten years!”

  “So, you keep the twenty and I’ll take the ten,” I say. “Um, do you do that here? Cash 'em?”

  The clerk’s eyes have glazed over and he replies in a distant voice. “No, man. There’s an app run by the state.”

  Shit. I need a phone. I look around, but there’s no display near the register for any cheap cells. When I turn to the guy to ask, the barrel of the shotgun is an inch from my eye.

  “I’ll be taking that one too,” says the clerk.

  “We had a deal.”

  “Deal. No deal. I’m the guy with the gun,” says the clerk. He shrugs one shoulder, so the shotgun doesn't move.

  “Good movie,” I say.

  “What?”

  I knock the gun up with my hand.

  It goes off with a horrific bang.

  I duck and run for the door, and I hear another shell racked into the shotgun. I Push. To my surprise, I stumble and nearly fall.

  The bottom half of the glass door explodes into tiny squares right in front of me. The way it's fallen onto the sidewalk makes it look like a galaxy. If I hadn’t stumbled….

  I dive through and roll off the curb into the parking lot. I get to my feet and hurl myself toward the corner of the building. If he’s coming after me, he’ll either have to hurtle the counter or come around it. Either way, he’ll have another shell jacked in by now.

  The window to my left gets blown out with a crash and I’m pelted with glass. Nothing worse hits me and I’m past the rest of the windows and to the corner of the store, nice solid brick between me and Billy the Clerk.

  There’s a thin strip of woods here between the store’s lot and the strip mall next door. I bound my way through it, branches and weeds whipping at me, stinging my hands and face, pulling at my legs and coat.

  I’ve got the ten-thousand-dollar winning ticket in my hand, though. With no way to cash it.

  I keep moving even as I slow down a bit. I’m a block away from the store and I keep looking behind me to see if he’s followed.

  He hasn’t and my guess is he’s making up a story for his boss and the police. I’ll be hearing sirens again any moment now.

  Jesus Christ. All I want is some sleep. I’ve got ten thousand dollars, but no way to use it, and I’ll be lucky if I’m not in a jail cell within the next ten minutes.

  Luck.

  Is that what this is?

  Out here on the street by the strip mall, the light and dark patches and swirls in my vision calm and seem to balance. In the restaurant’s bar, there was more dark while the eating area was more light. So, there's that. And I’m sure that with the car crash, the fall down the stairwell, and the convenience store, the light won over the dark each time, but what is it I'm 'seeing?'

  If not luck, maybe probability?

  I’m well past the strip mall now. It’s probably best if I avoid any direct routes to the convenience store, so I take the right at the next intersection into a residential neighborhood. I hear sirens now and if I see the lights getting close, I should be able to get into some bushes or something. The best thing for me to do now, I think, is walk like I belong here. Wave at anybody driving by. That kind of thing.

  The adrenaline, again, is leaving my system, and again, I’m having trouble putting one foot in front of another.

  Up ahead, I hear a door close. I see a man in a suit hurry down his driveway five houses away, like he's late to work or something. He gets in his car, starts it up, and backs it up. When he’s completed the turn and is about to head off, the car stalls.

  I see him have a bit of a tantrum, pounding on the wheel and shaking his head before he gets out and slams his car door closed. He’s got his phone to his ear. Whoever he’s trying to call doesn’t answer, and he stabs fingers on the screen, texting someone.

  He looks up and sees me when I’m still one house away.

  I wave and smile.

  He rolls his eyes. “I’m having a morning,” he tells me.

  I can relate. “Car won’t start?” I say.

  “Know anything about them?”

  “Nope, sorry.”

  “Uber it is then.”

  I nod. “Your wife can’t take you?”

  “I live alone.”

  “Want me to help you move it out of the way?” I ask. I mean, why not? This guy isn’t quite having the day I’m having, but still, I can help.

  The guy smiles and says, “Yeah, would you?”

  He opens the driver’s side door and steers while I put my shoulder into the sedan from behind. For once, nothing explodes, no guns pulled, no bodies pop out of the trunk. The swirls leave me the hell alone.

  We move the man’s car so it’s parked along the curb and he thanks me.

  We’re still shaking hands when his ride shows up. He waves and leaves.

  I try the rear door. It’s unlocked, so I slide in, cover myself with the coat, turn over, and I’m asleep in moments.