I take his hands, ready to support him any way I can.“What’s happened?Is it Jess?”
He shakes his head and swallows.“Have you been listening to the news?”
Horrible images start rushing through my head.His grandmother, hit by a car.A worldwide financial crash.His parents are secretly Russian assets and have to return?—
“Some people were running a Ponzi scheme and left the country with a lot of money.”
Why would we care about… But then it clicks.His parents have the kind of money that gets stolen in Ponzi schemes.“Your parents lost money?”
He nods.“All of it.”
Whoa.It blew me away when I found out how rich his parents are because Justin and Jess live so normally with their grandmother.Though it’s obvious in the way they don’t worry about money running out that they’re in a different place than my family is.“What are they going to do?”
He explains about losing their properties, and Jess and Justin’s college funds.Then he talks about his parents moving into his grandmother’s place, and the fallout starts to hit me Things are going to change.
“So what are you going to do?”
He bends over, pulling out of my hands, looking at the ground.I’m not going to like this, whatever it is, and I’m starting to feel nauseated.
“I need to help.”
“How?”He’s eighteen.What can he do?
He draws in a long breath.“If I go to New York, I can probably play on the farm team.”
My ears—they’re not ringing, but it’s like waves of sound are passing by.I might fall down if I wasn’t already sitting.Justin going to New York?That’s my nightmare!
More words make their way through the weird bubble around me.“Just for a year, at most.They’ll catch the Denbrowskis and we’ll get our money back and I can come home and it’ll be like we planned.Just a delay.”
It takes long moments to piece together what they mean.A year.He’s saying he’s only going for a year.For a moment, I’m hopeful.I trust our love.A year will be hard, but we can do it.
“Mia?”Justin has reached for my hands again and he’s leaning down, staring at my face.Who knows what it looks like.
“A year?Just a year?”
He nods, but my brain is back online, the regular sounds around us returning to normal.Justin, as sweet as he is, has always lived in a bubble.Bad things don’t happen to his family.They don’t get sick, don’t struggle to pay bills, don’t have things go wrong.Just look at him and hockey—fairy tale on ice, with him getting drafted in the first round.They’ve never had to face hard times, till now.
But I’m a realist.I have to be.
“What if they don’t catch them?What if they’ve already spent the money?”
Justin jerks back, and again we’re no longer in physical contact.“Why would you think that?”
“Are you saying it can’t happen?”
He gets up and starts pacing.“Itcan’t.That’s just not right.”
His obliviousness hurts.What about what’s happened to my mom, some days hardly able to move with arthritis?That’s not right either.Is it just the Johnsons who get everything perfect?“But what if it does?”
What if he goes to New York, and his family depends on him, and then…it just keeps on?Justin plays hockey in New York for what, the next twenty years?And I’m here, stuck for the next four with no chance to visit him, or go to his games, while he’s surrounded by money and beautiful women with no ties to keep them away from him?
He stops, jaw set.“Then we’ll figure something out.”
We should do that.Immediately.“How about we think of something else for now?Your parents have their travel agency.Did they lose that?”
“It doesn’t bring in much money.”
Because it’s more of a hobby for them.“Maybe it can, if they work hard.”