Chapter 5
5
I wake from a deep sleep, my eyes blinking open to almost-darkness. It takes me a few seconds to get my bearings.
I live in Soho now. In the loft I bought for Josh. And for me.
A deep sense of relief settles.
It’s so nice here and I don’t need to panic because our mother’s sick and Josh is acting out again and Aunt Sarah is leaving for California.
When you grow up with a sense of fear that’s almost paralyzing some days, it takes a while for your subconscious mind to shift.
We’re okay now.
I had a sold out show at a new, tiny but perfect little venue in the East Village last night called Starstruck and I didn’t get home until after midnight.
I reach to check my phone. It’s 9:51 a.m. I must have been really tired.
Closing my eyes again, I start the little gratitude practice I started doing soon after we moved into this apartment. Because I am grateful. I also read a book that says thoughts have an actual frequency. You’re creating cosmic waves with your thoughts. You attract or deflect things by thinking about them either positively or negatively. According to the book, you’re creating your own reality with whatever thoughts you spend the most time thinking.
I found this wildly intriguing. What if it’s true?
So I figured it couldn’t hurt to spend a few minutes a day being grateful for the things I already have and also for the things I want to achieve, sort of preemptively. Maybe if I’m grateful enough, I’ll attract good things and all my dreams will come true.
Sure.
But I push the little kernel of cynicism out of my head. It’s useless to me.
I concentrate instead on five things I’m grateful for. I do this every morning before I get out of bed.
The strange thing is: it works. I end up talking myself into a frame of mind and it begins to act like a self-fulfilling prophecy after a while, which feels almost magical. So I’ve kept it up.
So I start with the obvious. These things sometimes take on their own momentum.
I’m grateful we live in this awesome, fabulous apartment. Josh and I finally have our own rooms—that was way overdue—and there’s a balcony. I love being able to grow my own plants. And I love that we’re not living in a dingy basement apartment with our dying mother and our aunt who helped us but never really fully enjoyed having us live with her. I can’t blame her. We were a mess and it was hard. And then having her sister get sick and Josh was a handful sometimes—okay, most of the time—it can’t have been easy. I’m glad she’s happy in California now, even if we hardly ever hear from her. I guess she had enough of us and was glad to move on.
I hear the front door slam and a banging noise. Josh must be home.
Oh my gosh, I’m so fucking grateful Josh got into Columbia. I mean, holy hell! That’s huge. Mom, you’d be so proud. I know you can see him. I know you’d love the person he’s becoming. Even if he’s still a surly seventeen-year-old most days, you can see the good man in him starting to peel back its layers. I love that he’s on track to achieve everything he’s capable of.
More banging. The fridge door slams.
I’m grateful I get to play my music for people who appreciate it. The show last night was one of the best I’ve ever played. I’m grateful that it was sold out and that I made money from doing what I love.
What else?
I’m grateful that people came up to me after the show and told me how much they enjoyed it. Seven different guys asked me for my number. Even if I didn’t give it to any of them, I guess it’s nice to get noticed in that way. Not that any of them really stood out as someone I wanted to talk to again. And of course I’d never bring a guy back here when Josh was here. I mean, how awkward would that be? Plus he’s six-feet or something now and sort of protective of me, so the thought of something going wrong or them not getting along makes me cringe. But it would be nice to meet someone…someday. I’ve been too busy lately but I hope it’ll happen. Once Josh starts college, I’ll have more time and a little more space.
How many is that? Four. I need one more.
I guess I’m grateful—no, I am grateful—I went out to Connecticut last weekend. Even if the whole thing sucks and was a total disaster. I’m glad I got a final answer from him. His no-show spoke volumes and I’m grateful it’s now over. No more wondering. We can have some closure now and move on. I’m grateful he at least donated his DNA (ew) and stuck around long enough to give me Josh. Goodbye, Dad. And good riddance. Have a nice life.
I take a deep, restorative breath. Then I open my eyes and climb out of bed, doing a few quick yoga stretches on the mat in my room by the windows. I can see my plants out there and I am grateful. This shit works.
Then I put on a short silk kimono over the bralette and boy shorts I slept in, tying it. I grab my phone and head out to the kitchen.
Josh is sitting at the table, scrolling on his phone and drinking directly out of the orange juice carton again.
“Morning, Josh. You can finish that because no one else will be drinking out of it.”
“Hey, Ive.” He’s in a good mood. “How’d last night go?”
“Really well. That venue is amazing. It’s small but has great acoustics. And it’s a cool atmosphere.”
“Awesome.”
I study him for a few seconds, trying to get a read on why he’s in such a good mood this morning. Usually he’d grunt at me or give me some kind of non-answer.
Then I notice he’s wearing a new hoodie. A nice one. And there’s a bag sitting on the chair with the end of a white box sticking out of it.
With an Apple logo on it.
“Josh?”
“Yeah?” He takes a bite of the bagel he’s eating.
“You got a new laptop?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s…great. How?”
“Well, I walked into the store and I bought it.”
“With what money?”
He’s still chewing.
I pay for Josh’s expenses and give him money to spend, and he earns money from the café and from a minor YouTube channel, which has been useful for getting late night burgers with friends. But neither would give him enough to splurge on a new MacBook Pro on a whim.
“I do work, you know,” he tells me.
“In a minimum wage job for a few hours a week. Try again.” I fold my arms across my chest. “How’d you afford it?”
“I’ve been saving.”
“Keep bullshitting me and I’ll go into full ballistic mode.” I don’t do it often, but he knows I’ll pull out the big guns if I have to. Which involves turning off the Wi-Fi and hiding the modem. I know he doesn’t have enough data on his plan to hotspot all the things he has going on online. It’s all I have. He’s much bigger than me now. Not that there’s ever been anything physical about my so-called authority, but now that he outweighs me by almost two to one, he’s a lot less likely to toe the line just because I tell him to.
“I just took what was ours.”
I blink at him as this information absorbs. “What?” I stare at him, but he glares right back, eyes flashing like he’s getting ready for a fight. “What do you mean?”
He shrugs. “Nothing a thousand other people couldn’t do with that sort of information.”
“What information?” No. Surely not. “Wait. Please tell me you didn’t...”
I noticed after Josh gave my phone back to me that he’d deleted the photos of the bank statements from my camera. I was almost relieved when I saw that. It made me think he wanted us both to move on from it and forget it ever happened. I hadn’t really given the whole thing a second thought since. But he obviously sent himself the pictures and then has gone full criminal mastermind all over our dad’s unsuspecting fortune.
“Holy shit, Josh. You didn’t. Please say you didn’t.”
“He’s never given us a dime, Ivy, and he never will. I just took what he owes us.”
I shake my head a little, hoping I’m not hearing him correctly. “Josh. Are you serious right now? What did you do?”
He looks me in the eye. “I transferred it into a different Bahamas account.”
“What?”
“I didn’t take all of it. I left him a mil. I figured that was fair.”
I can’t quite compute what he’s telling me. “Please tell me you’re joking. Please tell me you didn’t just steal ten million dollars from someone else’s bank account.”
“He can afford to share.”
“Josh,” I whisper. My hand covers my mouth.
“I just took what he owed us for fifteen years of neglect, with interest. It just about adds up.”
“You stole ten million dollars?”
“I redirected ten million dollars.”
“Are you crazy? Do you want to go to jail instead of Columbia?”
“How do you think I’m affording Columbia, Ivy?”
“I’m paying for Columbia! I told you that! You can’t just steal ten million dollars and not get caught for that! What’s wrong with you?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve covered my tracks. No one will be able to trace it.”
“Josh. Jesus. Of course they’ll be able to trace it! You have to give it back. Now. Immediately.”
“No.”
I stare at him, dumbfounded and irate. “Yes!”
“I’m not giving it back, Ivy. He owes us. He owes me.”
“Josh, you’ll go to jail if they find out, don’t you get that? Jail!”
He’s infuriatingly unrepentant. “As I said, I was very thorough. And discrete.”
“Josh, be reasonable! You have to put it back right this second. Please. I promise you, we can afford Columbia. You know that. I make enough money. We’ll be fine. We don’t need his money.”
He’s quiet for a few long seconds, contemplating me gently. “You know I love you, right, Ive?”
This shocks me a little. I say the words to him all the time. Sometimes he says them back, offhandedly, if he’s in the right mood. But I’m not sure he’s ever said them first, just out of the blue like that. “I love you too, Josh.”
“And I appreciate the hell out of everything you’ve done for me. I know how hard it’s been. I know how hard you work. And I’m going to pay you back one day. But for now, I think it’s okay if we quietly allow our father to help us, when it’s so little to him. It’s not his only offshore account. He has two others. I did some research. And it looks like his money-making schemes aren’t always a hundred percent legal. So it’s safe to say he’s not going to be destitute. He’ll also think twice about getting the authorities involved. He might not even notice.”
“Josh, of course he’ll notice! It’s ten million dollars!”
“I don’t want you to pay when he can pay. It’s too much for you to do that. You’ve done enough already.”
Josh knows that Columbia, by the time he graduates, will have cost us close to half a million dollars—if he lives on campus, which he still hasn’t decided, but I’d like him to do that if he wants to. Josh also knows that, when I did my research about how much he might be able to get in financial aid, the answer is zero. Because I’m his legal guardian and I make enough to keep the option of assistance out of reach.
I have money, but it’s not regenerating at the rate it was when I first burst onto the TikTok scene. I know I could ramp up my platform if I toured more. Social media loves travel, exotic locations, keeping it fresh and exciting.
I haven’t traveled because I’m here, taking care of my brother. I do local gigs and record new music but my plate is very full and it’s sometimes hard to keep up the staged illusion of fun and perfection when my life isn’t always those things.
I don’t regret spending all my money on buying us a beautiful home where we can feel safe, or for sending Josh to a private high school his last two years to help his chances of getting into a good college, but it’s all added up.
“Ivy, you’ve literally paid for everything for years. It shouldn’t be up to you to do all that for me. Not when he can.”
“Josh. Come on. I get how angry you are. I do. But it doesn’t mean you can steal from him. It’s not worth risking everything and it’s definitely not worth going to jail for. You have to put it back before this spirals into something uncontrollable. You have to do the right thing. Please.”
“I am doing the right thing.”
He seems so calm, so unfazed, it’s freaking me out. “You must be able to put it back though, right? If you do it quickly enough, he might not even notice it was gone. If it’s an account he doesn’t check every day, then he might not have contacted the bank.” Or the police.
“I’ll take care of it, Ive.”
Most parents don’t have to deal with this kind of shit, right? Underage drinking, smoking weed, cheating on a test…I can handle all that. What I can’t handle is my brother throwing his entire life away. And I definitely can’t handle him getting locked up.
Josh stands up to his full height, which seems taller every time I look at him. He grabs his stuffed-full duffel bag from under the table. I hadn’t seen it there.
“It’s Spring Break, Ive,” he informs me. “Cameron’s dad has a condo in Fort Lauderdale. We’re flying out this afternoon for the weekend and I have to go now.”
“Fort Lauderdale?” I still feel stunned. “That’s in Florida.”
He grins down at me. “You nailed it, Einstein. Maybe you should be the one going to Columbia.”
“You’re not going to Florida.” I’m about to ask him how he can afford the plane ticket, but of course I already know. “Not until we’ve solved this problem.”
“The problem has already been solved. And guess how old I’m turning on Sunday, Ive? Eighteen. Which means you can’t stop me from doing any damn thing I want.”
“It also means you’ll be tried as a fully-fledged adult,” I can’t help pointing out.
“Never going to happen.” He blinks at me and goddamn it, I want to cry.
“Please, Josh. Please put it back. Promise me you’ll put it back. I’ll pay for the plane ticket. I’ll put some money in your account for Fort Lauderdale. I’ll pay for the laptop.”
He leans down to kiss my cheek, saying nothing. “Later, Ive.”
“Okay? Josh?”
“I said it before and I’ll say it again. I’ll do the right thing.”
“Do it now. Get the screen up and show me.”
“I’m afraid I’ll miss my flight if I do that now.” He’s infuriatingly blasé about this. He seems…happy.
“I want to see the restored statement of the bank account by the time you get back.”
“Sure thing, Ive.”
“You will?”
“If that’s what you want, I will show you the restored bank statement by the time I get back.”
“Okay. Good. Good. Thank you.”
He grabs what looks like a shiny new phone and shoves it into the pocket of his baggy new jeans. He heads for the door. “Have a good weekend, Ive. See you on Monday night. I think I get in at around three.”
“Make sure you—” He slams the door and I feel the vibration in the pit of my stomach.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.