Page 15 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

It was Kat the Larger and Kat the Smaller.

“We wanted to let you know we found our own place,” Kat the Larger said.

“Bodhi is sleeping,” Margo whispered, gesturing with her hand to bring the volume down. Kat the Larger had a big, wonderfully loud voice. It was one of the things Margo had initially liked about her.

“Oh, sorry,” Kat the Larger whispered, still somehow mysteriously loud. “We found a new place. So we’ll be moving out in a week or so. Just wanted to give you a heads-up so you could find new roomies.”

It took Margo a couple of seconds to understand what Kat was saying. Margo and Suzie were the only ones technically on the lease. They had sublet two of the bedrooms to the Kats, but nothing was in writing.

“No thirty-day notice? I mean, are you kidding me right now?” Margo’s whisper was getting shrill.

“Well, we already paid rent for the month, so you have, like, twenty-five days or something,” Kat the Smaller said.

Margo didn’t know what to say. The intense sensation of unfairness also made the situation feel like it couldn’t really be happening. Shouldn’t there be someone in charge of how many bad things could happen at once?

“We’re gonna get a guinea pig!” Kat the Smaller whispered, clasping her little hands under her chin with excitement.

“That’s neat,” Margo whispered back. “Really would have been nice if you’d given more notice.”

“Well, we didn’t know,” Kat the Smaller said. “I’m sorry!”

“Good luck with the baby and all that,” Kat the Larger said, raising her eyebrows to indicate how badly Margo would be needing that luck, and it made her beanie lift slightly. It was too small for her head, the beanie, and now that it had been dislodged from its stable position, it was incrementally peeling off Kat’s head. Margo just stood there watching it happen, and Kat the Larger had to have felt it happening, but she did not pull the beanie down.

“We’ll invite you to the housewarming party!” Kat the Smaller said.

“Okay!” Margo said, and closed her door. Then she went over to her bed and lay facedown next to the sleeping Bodhi. She did not cry. She just pressed her face into the comforter, really smooshed it down. Rent was $3,995, which they had split four ways, so they’d now be about $2,000 short a month. She did not truly believe that Suzie would split the missing rent with her, not because Suzie wasn’t nice, but because Suzie worked at the dean’s office at school as a work study for, like, eleven dollars an hour and spent all her money on elf ears and wizard cloaks and stuff. Suzie’s mom was even more hard up than Shyanne. Suzie had once sold plasma so she could buy contact lenses that made her look like a cat.

“Fuuuuuuuuck,” Margo said into her duvet. She wondered when she would need to stop swearing around the baby. Surely not for a while yet.

Filing for unemployment took Margo the better part of two days. She had to get her birth certificate and Social Security card from Shyanne, but at the end of it, she was officially on welfare. When she got to that last screen, her heart stopped. Congratulations! The state would give her $1,236 a month. Digital confetti rained down on the screen.

Margo stared at it. How did anyone think someone in California could live on that amount? She would have $200 after rent, and that was assuming she found new roommates immediately.

She picked up her phone, set it down, then immediately picked it back up and called Jinx. It rang and rang. She normally would never have left a voicemail about something like this. His other kids and wife knew about her, but they didn’t like Jinx talking to her, and she knew his wife, Cheri, was constantly snooping on his phone. She didn’t have it in her to wait, though, and she figured he was probably in Japan, a Cheri-free zone.

“Dad, this is Margo. I’m in a really bad spot. I got fired from my job, and my roommates are suddenly ditching out, and I’m on the hook for three grand a month in rent. I filed for unemployment, but they’ll only give me twelve hundred a month. I need help. Like, it kills me to say that, because I did this to myself, and everyone told me. But I’m scared. So if you could please call me back as soon as possible, I would—I’m just freaked out. So, yeah. Okay. Sorry this wasn’t more cheerful. Love you.”

She felt sure he would call her back. She had never asked him for anything before this. She’d never asked for him to come to her graduation, she’d never asked for an iPhone, she had not even asked or expected that he come out for Bodhi’s birth. She’d been saving a whole life’s worth of chips, and now she was trying to cash them in. And she knew that he loved her. She knew he would call.

Later that week, as I was eating a microwave pizza amid the towers of the two Kats’ moving boxes, which for some reason they’d decided belonged in the dining alcove, I scalded nearly all the skin off the roof of my mouth. As I was peeling off the white flap of numb skin, my mom called.

“Kenny wants to meet you.”

It took me a second to respond. “I’ve already met Kenny.”

“In passing!” she cried.

“All right! So?”

“He wants to take you out to dinner and really get to know you.”

That sounded creepy. “Would you be there?”

“Yes, I think so. I mean, I didn’t ask. Gosh, I wonder!”

“Is this a formal interview process?”

I thought I heard Bodhi in the other room, pulled the phone from my ear, and listened to the air, but there was nothing. I took another bite of pizza. My mom was still talking when I put the phone to my ear again.

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