“I tried it twice.”
“Can you try it a third?”
She reruns the card, but the machine beeps and declines the card again.
“Do you have another form of payment?”
I rummage through my bag, find a crumpled ten-dollar bill, and hand it to her. She hands me my coffee, along with my change, and gives me a sad smile.
The kind of smile that makes me feel pathetic that I can’t even afford a coffee from the campus library.
Something must be wrong with my account. Aside from paying bills and getting groceries or ordering food, I rarely use the money.
When my grandparents died, they left money to use for school, but it’s in a monitored account to make sure I can’t blow through it. Money is transferred at the beginning of each semester so I can take care of school expenses, but I’ve been saving up money sincemiddle school. I got a bank account just to keep track of all my money.
And I had over thirty thousand dollars.
So, there’s no way that my card is declining.
I sit my coffee down, grab my laptop from my bag, and log into my bank account. My heart sinks into my chest.
Zero. Zero dollars in both my checking account and my savings.
“What the fuck?” The words come out almost in a laugh because I know I didn’t burn through my whole life savings.
And then I see it.
All the nightly withdrawals. The money transfers. I don’t know how, but she figured out my password and PIN and took everything from me.
My own mom.
eight
Avalon
She stole from me. My own mother.
And to make matters worse, I can’t even defend her. It’s not like I was stupid and left money where she could easily find it. She had tosearchfor it. She tore apart my room to find it.
And now I’m fucked.
I don’t even know how I’ll keep us from getting evicted.
And the only thing I can do to get it back is call the cops.
But that means turning her in and losing the only family I have left.
So, instead, I’m wandering around the neighborhoods by campus, trying to figure out what to do next.
The house was empty when I got home, which wasn’t surprising, but I guess part of me hoped she’d be there to tell me she made a mistake. To say that what she did was wrong.
But she wasn’t there. Just empty beer bottles, a shit ton of condom wrappers, and coke residue spread across the coffee table.
I originally went to a bar down the street from my house, one of my usual places, hoping I’d get lucky.
Unfortunately, tonight, the bar was empty. I tried a bar on campus, which was also empty, and now here I am. Walking around adark neighborhood in heels, hoping the world tells me what to do next.
“I guess they totally dominated tonight.” The voice comes from behind me, and it doesn’t take long for two girls to pass me. “Declan almost didn’t play, though, which would’ve been a complete letdown.”