Then I checked my balance. Sixteen dollars and thirty cents. Scraped together from recycling cans and bottles last week.
To the rest of the world, I was the lucky daughter who got five thousand dollars a month in allowance, lovingly raised by a generous mother.
Only I knew the truth. That five thousand wasn't money. It was a chain around my neck. Every time I pulled against it, it tore skin.
Buy a pen? File a report. Use up a refill? Log it. Even a fifty-cent replacement cartridge had to be kept after it ran dry, flattened out, and photographed for her inspection.
One second too slow, and I'd get screamed at.
One cartridge short, and next week's dinner money was gone.
I stared at the ceiling and slowly started to laugh.
My mother liked to say my face was the biggest regret of her life. Because I looked too much like my father. The man who gambled away every cent she had and skipped town with another woman.
This life of "five thousand dollars a month in spending money." When was it ever going to end?
Third period that afternoon was study hall. I had my head down, working through calculus problems.