Chapter Eight
The diner still pays me off the books, the way they did before I was old enough to legally work. That means I get to keep one hundred percent of my measly tips, the handful of coins tired factory workers leave beside their empty coffee cups.
Supposedly I’m saving for college, but both Daddy and I know that the few hundred dollars in my account will never cover actual tuition. Stochastic calculus is just a pipe dream, stored on a shelf alongside leaving west Tanglewood and finding out I’m secretly a lost princess.
Six hundred dollars seems to be the tipping point. That’s how much I can save before Daddy gambles again and needs help paying the debt. A fifty-dollar note from the bar owner. A few hundred dollars deep. Not thousands of dollars.
I guess I should be flattered th
