Tell Me to Stop

by Charlotte Byrd

  I stare at the amount on the check: one hundred sixty-seven thousand six hundred ninety-nine dollars.

  What would paying off this amount mean to my life going forward? Besides having an extra twelve hundred dollars a month as spending money, it would also mean freedom.

  My job isn’t particularly interesting or challenging and I’d love to try myself in a data analyst position at a start-up or one of the new innovative companies that are popping up around town.

  But those companies pay considerably less without providing any healthcare benefits. They do offer stock options, but those stock options are a risk. Not all companies end up being successful in the end. Taking one of those positions is not a risk I could afford to take…before this check arrived.

  When I catch my thoughts drifting away from me, I force myself to focus.

  Olive, stop it, I say silently to myself. You can’t let yourself think about all of that since you don’t even know if the check is real.

  “There’s another possibility,” I say to Sydney as she flips on the TV for some mindless distraction. “This whole thing could just be someone’s idea of a joke.”

  “What do you mean?” she says, sitting up.

  “Maybe someone is just fucking with me, Like those YouTube videos where someone sets up their friend with a fake winning lottery ticket. The friend gets really excited and then they tell them that it was just a big joke.”

  “Shit,” Sydney says under her breath.

  “Yeah…you wouldn’t do that to me, would you?” I ask.

  “Of course not!”

  “Well, I have no idea who would.”

  “Someone at your office?”

  My mind runs over all of the possibilities. We all work in cubicles with very little interaction throughout the day. We’re not friends. I hardly know their names. I have no idea why one of them would do this to me.

  “I’m going to deposit it,” I say, picking up my phone.

  “Now?” she gasps.

  I open the mobile banking app, taking a picture of the check. I hold my breath and wait for the scan to go through.

  A pop-up appears.

  “What happened?” Sydney asks, looking over my shoulder.

  “The mobile check deposit limit is twenty-five hundred dollars,” I read the words on the screen. “I guess I’ll have to go into the actual bank.”

  3

  When I go to the bank…

  I hardly sleep a wink that night, tossing and turning until it is dawn. The local branch on the way to my office doesn’t open until nine and I have to be at work at 8:30. I walk past their front door, knowing that I have to wait until 10:30 for my break. I’m not an hourly employee so I don’t have an official break but that’s usually when Marie, my direct superior, goes to the Starbucks across the street for her morning latte. It’s a good time to run a short errand.

  “Want me to get you anything?” she asks as we ride down the elevator together.

  “No, thanks,” I say. My mouth runs dry and I cough in the middle of the phrase.

  I bury my face in my phone as soon as we get outside, pretending to be very busy with something very important. But what I’m really doing is waiting for her to disappear around the corner so I can head toward the bank in the other direction.

  I could’ve easily told her where I’m heading. Depositing money is a normal errand that people run. What is not normal is depositing almost one hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars in the form of a check from a total stranger.

  When I walk up to the teller, my body is visibly shaking. She even comments on it but thinks it has something to do with the cold spell that just blew in from Canada.

  “This has been quite a long winter, huh?” the teller asks.

  She’s dressed in a black business suit and her hair is pulled out of her face. There’s a little hole in her nose where a piercing once lived. As she takes my identification, she moves her neck and I spot the tentacles of a large tattoo. It’s hard to know what it is exactly, but she quickly adjusts her collar when she catches me staring.

  “I’m sorry…it just looks like a pretty awesome tattoo,” I say. Her face immediately lights up with a smile.

  “It’s an octopus wrapped around a large rose bush,” she says under her breath. “So what can I do for you?”

  My heart sinks.

  Okay.

  Here it is.

  The moment of truth.

  I pull out the envelope from my purse and take out the check. I glance at it one last time, bidding it farewell.

  Is it illegal to deposit a fake check if you don’t know if it’s a fake check? A big knot forms in the back of my throat. Perhaps this is something I should’ve researched before I showed up here. What if it is illegal?

  “Ma’am?” the teller asks, reaching her hand through the small opening and grabbing the check. When she pulls on it, I have no choice but to let it go.

  I search her face for any sign of wrongdoing. Shouldn’t she be impressed by the sum? Shocked even? She has access to my account and this amount is definitely not my normal deposit. But her face remains flat and completely without affect.

  “Excuse me, I’ll be right back,” she says and walks away quickly.

  Oh my God.

  This is it.

  She’s calling the police.

  I should run.

  Turn around and go now!

  Now!

  No, I can’t.

  I gave her my driver’s license and my bank card. What would be the point of running now? They have my address, they’ll just come and arrest me there.

  The teller comes back with the manager, who has a big smile plastered on his face.

  He asks me if I will be taking out any money today and I say no.

  At least, I think that’s what I say.

  I can barely hear myself think over the pounding of blood in between my ears.

  “Thank you very much for your business, Olivia Kernes. Your deposit should be in your account in a few days,” the manager says. “Can I help you with anything else?”

  His words barely register, but I do manage to shake my head and walk away.

  When I get outside, a gust of cold wind collides into me and clears my head. What the hell just happened? They took the deposit. It passed whatever preliminary checks they have.

  Of course, that does not mean that I am in the clear. The funds are not released yet and they will not clear and show up in my account for a few days.

  So, they can still discover that the check is fake and then…what?

  Will they come and arrest me? If they don’t arrest me then they’ll definitely have a chat with me.

  But I’ll just tell them the truth. They’ll have to believe me. Right?

  My mind bounces from one thought to another without even a slight pause.

  The rest of the day goes by in a blur. When I tell Sydney what I did, she wants to meet up on our lunch break, twenty minutes from each of our jobs, but I don’t have the energy. The weight of what I have just done suddenly feels like there are two heavy anchors wrapped around my feet, pulling me down into the abyss.

  I want to run back to the bank, apologize, and make amends, but these same anchors are preventing me from doing anything but sitting in my cubicle and waiting for the hours to pass.

  The next two days go by just as slowly. I’m thankful that I got a lead last week on the new assessment project. Maybe this way no one will notice that during these three days, I barely manage to write twenty questions a day. It’s hard to do diligent work when you’re staring at a dead end for your career, and probably your life.

  When I get home that evening, I am mildly shocked that the police aren’t there waiting for me. Instead, it is Sydney who greets me with a bottle of Pinot Grigio.

  “Okay, don’t be mad,” she says with a big smile on her face. I furrow my eyebrows and brace myself for the worst.

  “You remember how you needed me to log into your bank account a few months
ago for that thing?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “Well, I still had your information saved on my laptop.”

  “Get to the point.”

  “The check cleared. You are one hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars richer!”

  4

  When I’m surprised…

  I stare at Sydney unable to believe my ears. I ask her to repeat what she just said and again I don’t believe her. Finally, she pulls out her laptop and shows me my account. I’ve never seen numbers go up that high before. At least, not numbers that represent money.

  I let out a piercing squeal and she joins me immediately. We jump up and down as if we are tween girls at our first concert.

  “So, what now?” Sydney asks after we calm down to catch our breaths.

  “I don’t really know.” I shrug. “I guess, I’ll pay off my loans.”

  “Just like that?”

  “What else should I do? I mean, this is what the money is intended for, right?”

  She nods.

  “Do you think I should just do it now?” I ask. “I mean, why wait? I got the money, why not just pay it all off?”

  Sydney’s eyes get big. I crack my knuckles and look down at my shoes. My feet start to move on their own as I pace around the room back and forth. The euphoria that I felt only moments ago settles somewhere in the pit of my stomach, morphing into a knot.

  “Well, you did want to pay them off. You could wait a week or two or you could do it now.”

  I nod. Or I could do something else altogether.

  What if I were to take some of it, just a few thousand, and go on a trip somewhere? I haven’t been on a proper vacation since spring break of my senior year and that was two years ago. Yes, there have been a few occasional weekend trips to the Jersey shore but with this money I could go somewhere exotic. Paris. Turks and Caicos. Maybe even Hawaii?!

  And what’s a few thousand dollars from almost one hundred and sixty-eight thousand? I could pay back it all back within a few months and be in the free and clear for life.

  “What? What’s that look mean?” Sydney asks as a small smile forms at the corner of my lips.

  When I tell her what I’m thinking, she gives me a knowing nod.

  “I’d love to go on a trip with you,” she adds. “I really missed you the last time we all went to the Bahamas.”

  My shoulders slope down. I’m still not entirely over that. Even though I am not particularly close with Sydney’s group of friends from school, she did invite me to an amazing trip that they all took a few months ago. Her job doesn’t pay much more than mine does, but she’s from a rich family and that means that she doesn’t have to save and pinch every penny like I do. None of her friends have to either.

  While she does pay rent out of her salary, her family pays for all of those other nice perks that her life has to offer: a lease on the BMW and first class airfare and lodging to exotic locations. She offered to pay for me to go with them, but I was too ashamed to accept.

  Or maybe I was just too proud.

  In any case, the trip was split six ways and my part would’ve cost me six months of rent.

  Given that I have a car payment for my Toyota Prius and the student loan payments in addition to rent and utilities, there was no way I could afford anything like that.

  “You totally deserve to go on an amazing trip, but maybe it’s not the wisest decision,” she points out.

  I nod, with a deep sigh.

  “What you should really do is start some sort of business.”

  I give her a blank stare.

  “Okay, hear me out. I mean, I know that you want to do your master’s degree in math and everything, and that’s nice, but it’s not going to make you money in the long term. You’ll always have to work for someone, instead of building up something of your own.”

  “Is that what you would do?” I ask.

  She shrugs. “Yeah, it’s something I've been thinking about. I enjoy my work at the lab, but now that I’ve been there for a bit, it’s getting to be monotonous. Every day is the same. Plus, I don’t see myself ever making any real money.”

  “And by real money, you mean what exactly?” I ask.

  “Fifty, seventy, one hundred grand… a month.”

  I smile.

  Sydney’s concept of wealth varies a lot from my own, but I guess that’s understandable since she does come from significantly more money than I do.

  “Can you seriously tell me that you will be happy doing this job twenty years from now?” she asks.

  “I can seriously tell you that I am not happy doing this job now,” I say. “But businesses take money to start. And I don’t have any.”

  “Well, you sort of do,” Sydney says.

  “But I don’t even know what business I should start.” I say. “Besides, they require work, too. And the money isn’t guaranteed.”

  “Yeah, that’s true,” she says. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do—”

  “Yeah, you kind of are,” I point out, smiling.

  “Okay, yes, maybe I am. Or maybe I’m just trying to live a little vicariously through you.”

  “That would be a first.” I start to laugh.

  Sydney’s expression gets serious and she looks away from me twirling a strand of her hair.

  “I guess I’m just imagining what I would do with that kind of cash,” she says, staring out into space.

  “What would you do?” I ask.

  5

  When I do it…

  Sydney has an answer for me without missing a beat.

  “What would I do?” she asks. “I’d like to start a lifestyle brand. Cute clothes, accessories, bags. Everything organic, cotton, or bamboo. Eco-friendly. Something that looks good on all sizes and women could wear it at all times. Clothes to live in, you know?”

  Sydney has always been somewhat of a fashion icon around campus. But recently, her personal style has really evolved to casual wear.

  It might have something to do with the fact that she doesn’t have to wear a suit to work or it might have something to do with her discovery of dressy leggings that feel like yoga pants. She has a number of pairs from different companies, all of which she has spent days trying to improve upon.

  “If that’s something you are really interested in, why not?” I ask.

  “I’ve actually done quite a bit of research on it and it shouldn’t cost me very much to start it. I’m thinking of investing about thirty-thousand dollars into the whole thing. Spending about six on developing the products and the rest on warehouse fees and shipping, website design, that kind of thing.”

  “That’s awesome,” I say. “But you can’t have any of my money.”

  I say it in a joking manner, but I mean every bit of it.

  “I don’t need your money,” she says with a laugh.

  I know that that’s one hundred percent true.

  Her parents give her a modest (her word, not mine) allowance every month, so all she’ll have to do is limit some of her expenses for a bit and she’ll have her start-up money.

  While she talks, I make a decision.

  “Okay, I’m going to do it,” I say, taking a deep breath.

  Sydney focuses her attention on me and waits with anticipation. I grab my laptop and pull out one of the bar stools around our kitchen island.

  My fingers immediately turn to ice and I can barely feel the tips hitting the keys. Once I log into the main account, I stare at the amount at the bottom.

  I pull the cursor over the Pay Now button.

  Once I click that, the site takes me to the page where I have to put in the amount I want to pay. The amount due is nine hundred ninety-seven dollars and forty-nine cents but the total amount on this site is twenty-three thousand five hundred eighty-nine dollars.

  “I’m going to do it,” I say and type in the full amount.

  Once I press send, I’m taken to the confirmation page.

  Thank you for paying twenty-three thousand fi
ve hundred eighty-nine dollars.

  Just like that, I’m almost twenty-four thousand dollars poorer.

  My soul is almost twenty-four thousand dollars lighter.

  “I thought you owed a lot more than that,” Sydney says.

  “I do, that’s just one of the loan servicing companies that owns my loans,” I explain, clicking over to the next one. “By the way, last year some company bought my loans from another company but didn’t even bother to contact me or tell me because, according to them, it’s my responsibility to somehow know this information. I didn’t find out until after a collection agency called me.”

  “Shit,” Sydney says under her breath.

  “Yeah, this whole thing is shit,” I concur.

  The second company gets a payment of seventy-six thousand two hundred seventy-six dollars.

  “One more.” I click over to the last account.

  “This is so exciting,” Sydney says, smiling. “I’m sure they’ll be happy to get all these loans paid.”

  “I think they’ll be disappointed that I won’t be paying them six percent interest for thirty years. Can you imagine how much they’ll lose over the lifetime of the loan?”

  I pause before making the last payment.

  I stare at the big Pay Now button and imagine the trip that I could take with just a small percentage of this money instead.

  Or maybe I could just put some of it into savings, for a rainy day?

  These would all be amazing things to do with the extra money, but there’s one thing that I probably should do instead: help my mother with her medical bills.

  She’s had back pain for a number of years and the surgery seemed to have made things worse. She has to pay over twelve hundred dollars a month just to maintain her medical insurance and there’s still a big copay for her monthly medications and doctor visits. In addition, she owes about thirty-thousand for her portion of the surgery expenses.