Every Apology Has A Price Chapter 2

"You ungrateful, greedy stray," Mother hissed, her chest heaving. "If I had known fifteen years in the gutter would turn you into something this vile, I would have left you there."

I looked down at the bills scattered over the floor mats—fives, tens, dirty singles—and my heart skipped a sickening beat.

I dropped to my knees in the cramped footwell, reaching blindly into the shadows beneath the driver's seat.

One bill.

Two bills.

Elaine watched me crawl on my hands and knees like an animal hunting crumbs, and her face twisted into something ugly. She leaned back, seized me by the scruff of my jacket, and yanked hard.

"Stop the car," she barked to the driver.

She kicked her door open and dragged me bodily out into the freezing night air.

"You love money that much?" she snarled, ripping the crumpled bills I had just gathered right out of my clenched fingers. "Then stay out here and pick it up."

Before I could grab them back, she tore the bills into shreds.

Fives, tens, twenties—ripped in half, then into quarters, then tossed into the biting wind like filthy gray confetti.

"From this moment on, you won't get a single penny from this family," Elaine said, stepping back into the warmth of the cabin. "When you learn to shed that sickening gutter-rat instinct, maybe then you can walk through our front door."

The heavy door slammed shut. The sedan peeled away from the curb, its red taillights bleeding into the misty gloom of the suburban avenue.

I stood there in the dark.

The night wind cut through my thin windbreaker like ice water, but my mind was entirely clear. I dropped to my knees on the damp asphalt, crawling along the curb, collecting every torn scrap of paper I could find under the streetlights.

"If the serial numbers match," I whispered to the empty air, my fingers numb, "the bank has to exchange them."

It took me the entire night.

Sitting on the floor of my sterile, oversized bedroom in the west wing of their mansion, using a roll of cheap Scotch tape I’d swiped from the study desk, I pieced the torn bills back together. Corner by corner. Grid by grid.

When I brought the taped-up bills to a local branch the next afternoon, the teller behind the bulletproof glass stared at me with open pity and disgust for a full minute before processing the exchange.

I didn't give a damn.

When she slid two crisp hundred-dollar bills and three clean fives across the counter, the hollow ache behind my ribs finally settled. My heart beat normally again.

Money wasn’t greed. Money was the only barrier between your ribs and the cold dirt.

That was the single absolute truth I had learned in the fifteen years before the family found me.

On Monday, at the private preparatory academy they had enrolled me in, I didn't go to the dining hall for lunch.

Elaine had called the administration that morning to freeze my campus dining account. She called it a "necessary disciplinary measure" for slandering my brother.

During the noon break, I walked behind the gymnasium, straight toward the campus recycling and waste station.

The elite students tossed their half-drunk bottled juices, imported sodas, and spring water into the sorting bins by the hundreds. I pulled a pair of heavy work gloves from my back pocket, grabbed an industrial black trash bag I’d taken from the janitor’s closet, and went to work.

Crush the base. Twist the neck. Flatten it out.

The plastic here was premium grade—thick, clean. At the recycling depot three blocks past the highway, they went for ten cents a pound, higher for pristine PET.

I had half a bag filled when a dry laugh sounded behind me.

"Jesus, tell me my eyes are playing tricks on me."

I didn't stop. I brought my boot down on an aluminum can with a clean "crunch".

Ian was standing ten feet away, flanked by three boys in varsity blazers. He held a linen handkerchief over his nose, an expression of dramatic pity plastered across his face.

"Jude, what are you doing?" Ian called out gently. "If you need lunch money, you just have to ask me. I’ll loan it to you."

One of the boys beside him snorted. "Don't waste your breath, Ian. You’re too soft on him. You pull a gutter rat out of the swamp, he’s still gonna eat trash. Kid’s got an heir’s last name and the soul of a hobo."

I tied a tight knot in the neck of the heavy bag, rose to my feet, and slapped the dust off my thighs.

"Step aside," I said evenly. "You're standing on my bottle."

Ian looked down at the empty glass bottle beneath the sole of his designer loafer. Instead of moving, he ground his heel down, crushing it flat into the dirt.

"Jude, stop humiliating the family like this. People are looking."

Before the sentence finished, Elaine’s voice cut through the courtyard air.

"Jude. What is this?"

I lifted the black contractor bag, slinging it slightly over one shoulder. "Bottles. To sell."

Elaine stared at the filthy plastic bag in my hand, then at the smirk on the faces of the boys behind Ian. The color drained from her cheeks, replaced by a dark, mottled rage.

"Throw it away."

I tucked the bag behind my back. "There are eighty containers in here. That’s eight dollars."

Elaine let out a laugh that sounded almost unhinged. "Eight dollars? You’re dragging our name through the gutter for eight fucking dollars?"

She lunged forward. With a sharp, practiced jerk, she snatched the plastic bag from my grip and hurled it straight into the giant green dumpster behind us, right into the soupy residue of cafeteria slop.

"There," she breathed, dusting off her hands, her eyes burning into mine. "Are you satisfied now?"

I looked at the bag sitting in the gray grease of the bin.

A sharp, sour cramp twisted in my stomach.

Not from the smell. From hunger.

I hadn't eaten dinner last night. I hadn't eaten breakfast this morning. Those eight dollars were supposed to buy four loaves of day-old sandwich bread from the discount bakery near the bus depot.

I looked up, locking my eyes onto Elaine’s face.

"You owe me eight dollars."

Elaine blinked, entirely stunned. "What did you say?"

I held out an open palm, soot smeared across my lifeline.

"You threw away my inventory. Pay me eight dollars."