Page 77 of Margo's Got Money Troubles

“How have you been?” Dr. Sharp began.

“All right,” Margo said. There was no way she could or should tell Dr. Sharp about what had happened with JB, but how else to explain her good mood? “I mean, this whole process is scary, but I’m glad that Mark was even willing to do it instead of continuing to pursue full custody.”

“Mark is a good starting point. Why don’t you just tell me about Mark, how you two met, the whole narrative arc.”

And so she did. Ward had warned her not to make Mark look like a total bad guy, so she tried to be evenhanded and generous in the way she told the story, even though he was a morally bankrupt, navel-gazing little troll. Dr. Sharp asked questions, a couple of them pointed.

“And what exactly was your financial plan after the birth of the baby?”

Margo paused. Tell the truth, she thought. “I was incredibly naive about what would be involved. I didn’t know finding childcare would be so hard. I wasn’t thinking about that when I decided to keep the baby.”

“What were you thinking about?” Dr. Sharp asked.

“I mean, I think I thought I was being a good person. There’s a lot of cultural messaging about what the ‘right’ thing to do is when you find yourself with an unwanted pregnancy. And I thought if I did the right thing and was a good person, then it would all turn out okay.”

“Do you no longer think that’s true?” Dr. Sharp asked. She was staring down at her pad of yellow paper, her hand moving rapidly as she took notes.

“I think being a good person is important, but my landlord doesn’t care if I’m a good person, he just cares if I can pay. My old boss, I think she really liked me, even loved me, but what mattered in the end was whether I could work when she needed me. That’s kind of how the world works.” She hoped this was not news to Dr. Sharp. She thought again about the way the test seemed designed for Kenny, who no doubt believed that if you were virtuous, God would provide, and hoped this wasn’t the wrong answer.

“Let’s talk a little bit about your dad,” Dr. Sharp said.

“Okay,” Margo said, relieved they were moving on. “I love talking about my dad.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know,” Margo said. “I know he’s a pretty unconventional guy. I guess he wasn’t around a lot when I was younger, but this time living with him has been really good for us. He went from feeling like someone I was sort of pretending was my dad to being my real dad, if that makes sense. Like, he’s taken care of us when Bodhi and I got a stomach virus. I’ve taken care of him when his back has gone out. We’ve gotten to do a lot of that bonding and building trust that we didn’t do when I was little, and it’s been a really positive thing for me.”

She thought of Becca saying, “You think he picked you because you were special? He picked you because he knew you had fucking daddy issues.” She didn’t think she should mention this to Dr. Sharp.

“How did you feel when you found out he’d threatened Mark?”

“I mean, I felt upset that it was resulting in this custody dispute and the restraining order and all this scary stuff. But I also felt—you know, some people would say that for Mark to start the relationship with me was an abuse of power. I never felt super comfortable with that. I didn’t want to admit I’d been...” She struggled for the word, then found it. “Tricked. And I still think it was more complicated than that. The further removed from it I am, though, the more I can see how young I was and how much I didn’t know, and how much Mark, as an older man with a wife and kids, did know. And I can see now that it was not an even playing field. So for my dad to stick up for me, on some level it felt good. I would have preferred he not threaten Mark with physical harm, obviously. But I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel good to have someone on my side.”

I had been the one to suggest JB and I play Fortnite together. He was flying out in two weeks, and it felt like the days couldn’t pass fast enough. The moment he agreed, I wished I’d never asked. For one thing, I was a terrible player. For another, while lots of people spent tons of money on different skins and had dozens of options, I had bought only one. It was a blond male Christmas elf. I didn’t know what this said about me, but I doubted it was good. When he teleported into my squad, JB was a breathtakingly hot Little Red Riding Hood wearing thigh-high black boots. We had our mics on so we could talk, and I was having a hard time adjusting to the thrill of his low, raspy voice. “We don’t even have to try to win,” he said, as we entered the lobby and waited for the Battle Bus, “we can hide in the bushes.”

“Okay,” I said. We got lit up almost as soon as we dropped, and JB had to carry my unconscious body slung over his shoulder as he killed the last of them. He was honestly pretty cracked. He got me healed up, and then we scavenged through chests, collecting as many heals as we could before setting off.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Into the storm,” he said, like it was obvious.

“What are we going to do in the storm?”

“Just hang out and drink heals until we die,” he said.

I’d been caught in the storm plenty. I had never entered it on purpose before, and the sensation was a little strange. Every second you were inside lowered your health, and it made everything look purple and swirly with fog. We found a campfire and lit it, which would give us some health, though not enough to survive. I was aware of trying to speak quietly so Bodhi wouldn’t wake up in his crib. I had all the lights off in my room. There was only the purple glow of my laptop screen.

“Here.” JB tossed me a med kit and I used it, watched my health bar surge green. There was something weirdly compelling about hearing his husky male voice coming out of this cartoonishly hot female fairy-tale character.

“How long do you think we can keep living like this?” I asked, using one of the bandages in my inventory, which made my elf body kneel as he wrapped up his arm.

“I don’t know,” JB said, cutting down a nearby bush for more wood to feed the fire. “I haven’t done this before. But there’s only ten people left. We might even win.”

“From inside the storm?”

JB murmured, and I could tell he was clicking through his inventory because different weapons and objects kept appearing in Little Red’s hands. The fire was making amazing shadows on her epic honkers. “You look hot in that skin,” I said.

“So do you,” JB said.

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