Chapter 10 Money
Money
“You at my house already?!” says Oscar. “That means you nutted in like five seconds!”
Since my phone is dead, I told Oscar earlier today that I would come over to his place after I was done with Emma. He wasn’t expecting me until much later.
“No,” I say. “Turns out that Emma didn’t want to go through with it.”
“What?! You didn’t smash?”
I shake my head. “Not tonight.”
Oscar smirks. “What a cocktease.”
I shrug. “It is what it is.”
I hope this lie holds for a little while. Emma will probably tell Blanca about the incident tonight, and of course it’ll get back to Oscar. But right now he doesn’t need to know. I’ll deal with the fallout from the truth later.
“Sorry, man, I thought you were gonna be on top of the world. But all you got is blue balls.”
I try to shift the focus back to him. “Did you bang Blanca tonight?”
“Nah. My girl is on her period, and you know she never wants to do it on her period.” He rolls his eyes.
I start laughing. I remember one time when Oscar did have sex with Blanca when she was on her period.
They were doing it in the dark, in her bedroom, and when they were finished they turned the lights on and saw blood smeared all over the sheets and all over their bodies because they had been unknowingly rolling around in it all night.
Oscar thought it was really funny, but Blanca was embarrassed and wanted to throw up.
Oscar is really animated when he talks. “I told Blanca that I don’t care if I fuck her and it looks like a murder scene. That shit turns me on. It’s like I killed your pussy! But she won’t let me. I said we can cover your mattress in plastic wrap, and it’ll be easy to clean up.”
We both laugh.
Oscar continues, “She told me to fuck off. So here I am, just playing GTA. You wanna get some food?”
“Yeah. I’m starving. But let’s swing by my house first. I need to get more cash.”
Oscar says, “I can pay, dude.”
“No,” I say, casually.
And we’re on our way.
I tell Oscar to wait in my car, as I go get the money in my house.
Inside the closet in my bedroom, underneath a pile of dirty clothes, is a floorboard that can be removed by wedging a screwdriver against one of the edges. It wasn’t always like this. I made it this way.
When I began making a lot of money from the porn site, the funds were transferred directly into a bank account that my parents set up for me when I was in middle school. (They started me early because they wanted to teach me “the value of money.”)
But I take cash out of the ATM on a regular basis and hide it underneath the floorboard. My parents don’t pay attention to what’s going on with my bank account anymore, but I don’t want to have too much money in it, just in case they decide to snoop around.
Once I remove the floorboard, it’s like time stops. Everything stands still. Like, even my mind freezes.
Then, after a while, things resume, and my jaw drops.
This must be a dream. This must be a nightmare.
I close my eyes. I take a series of deep breaths.
When I open my eyes again, I realize it’s not a dream. And my mind is not playing tricks on me.
WHERE THE FUCK IS MY MONEY?!
I start to panic. None of my money is here. None of it! There was more than ten thousand dollars in cash in here.
My palms begin to sweat, my chest tightens up, my heart pounds.
That money was my future. And just like that, in an instant, my future is gone.
Sure, I still have money in my bank account, but most of it, most of my life savings, I kept here. “Kept”: past tense. Damn it.
All that’s left here is my notebook—one of those composition books I use for school. The notebook functions as a ledger, where I meticulously log in the cash that gets deposited here and the cash I take out.
I look at the latest total: $10,850.
How am I missing $10,850?!
Now I know the way I got that money wasn’t necessarily the most honorable way. And I know that if this is some kind of cosmic punishment then it’s probably justified. But I’m still shook to the core.
When was the money taken? I haven’t opened the floorboard in about a week, so it could’ve been days ago. It could’ve been sometime tonight.
Okay. Think, think, think.
Did thieves break in here? I run all around the house, room to room: Nash’s, my parents’, the bathrooms, the living room, the kitchen. All seems normal. The house hasn’t been ransacked.
But if random thieves did rob me, how did they know where I kept my secret stash of cash? And what else do they know? Do they know that I’m a pervert? That I record my brother without his knowledge? That I upload his videos to a porn site?
Think, think, think.
What if my parents knew about this money all along? What if they’re blowing it all in Las Vegas right now?
Think, think, think.
What if the person who took my money is my brother? Is that possible? Is that what he was texting and calling me about?
I hear knocking coming from the front door downstairs. It must be Oscar. He’s probably wondering what’s taking me so long.
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK!
I open up my laptop. All the hidden camera footage from my brother’s room gets transmitted to the cloud, on a service that’s expensive but super secure. I start reviewing the footage from today, to see if any of it might explain what happened.
There’s me, coming into Nash’s room in the morning, playing in his underwear drawer, jerking off on his bed. There’s Nash and Alessandra having sex. There’s them leaving.
I carefully examine what happens next. The timestamp is several hours later, around the same time that my brother tried to contact me today.
Oscar’s knocking turns into really loud banging.
BANG, BANG, BANG!
I ignore the door and watch and listen to the footage.
And when I finish watching everything that happened in my brother’s room, when all is said and done, I throw my hands over my mouth. I jump out of my chair and run to the restroom as quickly as I can. I throw up in the toilet.
BANG, BANG, BANG!
I shuffle away and lean back against the wall.
BANG, BANG, BANG!
I can’t predict the future, but for some reason I know from this point forward in my life, my relatively short life, things will never be the same again.
BANG, BANG, BANG!