Page 48 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

“My dad is Dr. Jinx,” Margo said. It was worth a shot.

“Are you joking?” KC asked. And Margo’s heart rose in her chest because she’d guessed right.

“Who is Dr. Jinx?” Rose asked.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” KC said again.

“No, he’s Dr. Jinx. So it’s not normal dad vibes. He’s picking me up, you can meet him if you want. I was about to text him to let him know we’re done.”

“But who is he?” Rose was still lost.

“He’s from wrestling, not a wrestler, but like in that world—he’s a goddamn celebrity!” KC explained.

“He’s not a celebrity,” Margo said.

“He’s an icon! He is literally iconic,” KC said.

“Who is this person?” Rose demanded. And so they wound up watching YouTube clips of Dr. Jinx and Murder and Mayhem.

“What is your dad like?” KC asked, completely amped at the idea of meeting Dr. Jinx for real. “Like, in person?”

Margo tried to think about Jinx and what he was really like. The overwhelming feeling of being on mushrooms had mostly subsided, but her mind still felt childlike and fresh, like being in her own head was the most wonderful thing in the world. “Magic,” Margo said, surprising herself. “Like he has access to, I don’t know, a kind of vast subterranean network of power or... like, he’s like a disgraced wizard or something. But, I mean, he’s also a middle-aged man who, you know, obsessively cleans and can’t keep his dick in his pants and makes pasta from scratch. If that makes any sense.”

KC lay there, staring at the ceiling, absorbing this. “Actually,” she said, “that makes perfect sense.”

Forty-five minutes later, Jinx texted that he and Suzie and Bodhi were outside. He had brought Suzie to drive Margo’s car home for her. The meeting that then occurred between the still-high KC and Rose, in their pajamas out in the bright midafternoon light of the parking lot, and her dad, dressed in his blacks like he knew this very thing would happen, KC jumping up and down and saying lines from famous promos he’d done, Rose crouched and peering in the back window at the sleeping Bodhi, Suzie cackling at them all, magenta lipstick on her teeth—that image of them bullshitting in a parking lot would remain one of Margo’s most precious memories. KC tapping an empty Dasani water bottle on her thigh, Rose’s absurd fluffy slippers against the black tar asphalt, the warped shiny reflections of their bodies on Jinx’s car, a huge group of seagulls suddenly flying overhead. That they should all wind up in this parking lot under a completely cloudless sky about to embark on this adventure together felt so ludicrous as to be almost weightless.

That night Jinx decreed Margo was not allowed to nurse for twenty-four hours, to which Margo said, “Ya think?” But they had already gone through all the frozen milk, so Bodhi had to have formula, which did not go well, and Margo felt horribly guilty. She pumped multiple times in the night and through the next morning, throwing out everything and feeling the shame like a film on her skin. But it was a thin film, the kind of shame one might be able to scrub off in the shower.

The next day she woke before all of them and opened her laptop.

She hesitated. Part of her wanted to write a message to JB. He had recently asked her about the best sandwich she’d ever had, but she didn’t want to waste this energy. Instead, she opened her OnlyFans account, clicked edit on her account description, and deleted everything except the description of the dick ratings. She sat there for ten minutes thinking, trying to write a new intro paragraph. Then she wrote: “I am from another planet and I do not understand your world, though I like it here very much. Feed me memes and tinfoil and cute cat videos. Give me your boredom and your sadness and your anxiety: I will eat it all. I will eat the buttons off your shirt, your darkest secrets, your keys, locks of your hair, your memories. Come play with me in a world we make up together. I will only kill you a little bit and you will like it.”

Then she exited out, opened Microsoft Word, and began writing the script.

By noon she’d written storylines for her, KC, and Rose, enough TikTok ideas that they could post daily for a week. She wrote out ideas for tweets and IG posts for them all as well. When she was done, she printed out two copies on her ancient inkjet printer that trembled and moaned like little Biotch, one for Jinx and one for Suzie.

“Margo,” Jinx said as he gave her his notes at dinner, “I honestly don’t know if this is a brilliant or a terrible idea.”

“I know,” Margo said. But she did not feel afraid.

“I do know one thing: you need to tell Shyanne.”

“What— Why?” Margo was brought up short. She didn’t see why anything in the scripts would make Jinx think she needed to tell Shyanne.

“If this blows up?” Jinx said. “If you get internet famous? That would be a helluva way for a mom to find out her daughter is doing porn.”

“It’s not really porn, though,” Margo said.

Jinx just looked at her. “Promise me you’ll tell her.”

“Okay,” Margo said, though she still had no intention of telling Shyanne.

“Not only for her sake,” Jinx said, “but for you. What you’re doing, honey, it’s not shameful. It’s not something that needs to be secret. You should be proud of yourself. What you’re doing—I think it’s amazing.” He patted her on the shoulder, and Margo moaned because now she knew she was going to have to tell Shyanne. She was supposed to see her next weekend to go wedding dress shopping.

After dinner, Margo rewrote her scripts with Jinx’s and Suzie’s notes, sent them to KC and Rose with proposed shoot times, and then she lay in bed trying to imagine how on earth she would ever tell Shyanne.

Chapter Thirteen

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