2
Brynn
If life were a movie, this would be funny. It’d be one of the scenes they picked for the trailer, probably. The guy would be someone cute but harmless like Paul Rudd or Seth Rogen or something, and I’d be… I don’t know. Someone quirky and fun? My mask would drop, the music would record-scratch, and one of us would say some sort of hilarious catch phrase like “I did not see that coming!” And the whole thing would be hilarious to a movie theater full of viewers.
…This, however, is not the movies. There is no catch phrase in real life, no perfectly timed music pauses or funny pop song in the background. There’s only the horrible, cold, heart-clenching moment of clarity and shame.
I mean, it’s not every day you walk into the champagne room of a strip club to give your first ever lap dance, only to find your Principal sitting there looking like pure sex in a white dress shirt and dark jeans.
…Thank God.
My face burns, and I cringe as I stumble into the backroom that doubles as a changing room for the girls. The door slams shut behind me as I stumble over to the disgusting sofa in one corner, slumping down on it and burying my face in my hands. And it’s only then that the full weight of what’s just happened really sinks in, and the tears start to brim my eyes.
No one was supposed to know. No one was ever supposed to know what I’m doing. I cringe as I sink into the crummy sofa, tears pooling in the corners of my eyes as my gut twists. And for the millionth time since I walked into this club tonight, I try and piece together how the hell I got here. How my life turned into this.
Thanks, dad.
Some people’s parents get them a car when they turn eighteen. Okay, it might be a beater if you don’t come from the kind of money mine comes from, but a car’s a car. Some people get an investment in their future—maybe money for college, or a fund set up in their name for way later in life when they want to buy a house or something. And if nothing else, most people with parents or even a parent who loves them get a smile, or a hug, or even just a song and a birthday candle to blow out.
My parents, though? On my eighteenth birthday, four weeks ago, my parents got me a divorce and federal corruption and racketeering charges.
Happy birthday to me.
Not everyone really gets what their parents do for a living. Like, there are plenty of kids who go to Winchester with me who’s moms or dads “work in finance” or “work in politics.” But the specifics are vague. That was my dad to me. Frequently gone on business or locked in his office on a call of some kind. Not necessarily absent, but not exactly available, if that makes sense? And my stepmom? Well, my mom’s a whole story by herself.
But you tend to overlook your parents being gone on business in China or shopping excursions in Paris when your father brings home an annual income that rivals the GDP of some countries. When you don’t just have a horse stabled at the country club, you own the stable. When your first car at sixteen wasn’t a hand-me-down Toyota, but custom-painted Ferrari. When vacations mean private jets, and watches, and whole floors of luxury hotels in exotic locations.
You overlook a lot when your silence and blindness is paid for from an early age. Maybe that’s why I ignored all the warning lights and sirens. Maybe that’s why I was blindsides when my father was pulled away from the dinner table while I was home for my birthday four weeks ago, in handcuffs by Federal Agents who’d just busted our front door in.
But hindsight is twenty-twenty. And now, it all makes complete sense to me.
I always knew my dad worked in investing. He was a money manager of some kind, I guess. Except you don’t get hauled away by the FBI for managing people’s money. You get hauled away for mis-managing it.
Or stealing it.
You hear the words “Ponzi scheme” a lot, but when you hear it in the context of charges being levied at your dad, it takes on a whole new gravity. And in the span of twenty-four hours, my entire world changed.
First, Geraldine, my stepmom, bailed. And she bailed fast. She emptied as much as she could from their joint accounts, took one of my dad’s planes, and flew off to the Mediterranean to one of his yachts moored at Mykonos to start ramrodding through a divorce on the grounds of “mental distress and financial abuse.” Whatever the fuck that means.
Then, right after he posted his fifty-million-dollar bail, dad bounced, too. And to where is the great mystery that I, Geraldine’s lawyers, his own lawyers, and the United States Government would love to know the answer to.
But absent or not, dad hired some amazing lawyers who managed to bring gag orders down on the entire thing until he can be found. So, it’s not in the news. No one at school knows that my father is behind one of the largest Ponzi schemes ever, or that possibly even some of their own parents are affected.
No one knows that one of my father’s lawyers finally reached out to me to let me know that “my father and them” had agreed that the best place for me was to just stay at school until they could “resolve the misunderstanding.”
Right, “misunderstanding.” Like someone got their facts mixed up about my dad embezzling billions from the fund he ran.
So, stay at school. Keep my head down. Keep smiling and pretend everything’s fine? Well, that sucks, but it’s doable. Or, it was doable, until the other shoe dropped. Because you know what happens when you’re wanted for fraud, embezzlement, and securities crimes and you skip out on bail?”
…They freeze your accounts. All of them. And all of a sudden, you start to realize how meaningless those little plastic cards in your purse are with nothing behind them.
I got one call from one of his lawyers telling me what was happening. But his only advice was to “keep my head down” until they reached out. A week after that though, I sort of stopped hearing from them. No one answers my calls. No one returns emails. Nothing.
I know, poor little rich girl, right? But when your entire life is credit cards and shopping accounts, it can fall apart real quick, let me tell you. I wasn’t in immediate danger. I mean, I was at boarding school, which has a Michelin-chef-run dining hall. So, it’s not like I was going to have to sleep on a park bench or go hungry. But, that’s only good through the end of the semester. And after that, I’m not exactly sure how I’m supposed to pay the fifty grand for the second half of the school year at Winchester.
Oh, and if that wasn’t enough to worry about? Well, it turns out it wasn’t just rich country-club types my dad stole from. He also, in his infinite wisdom, decided to steal money from—
“Well well well! Look who we got here!”