Fraud

by J. L. Berg

  The added bonus of diverting all those eyeballs away from me didn’t hurt either.

  “Um, hi. Hello,” I said into the microphone.

  Great. Good job, Kate. Start off with um. Way to sound confident.

  “Welcome to Fremont College. My name is Katelyn O’Malley, and I am the loan processor here on campus. Depending on the time of the year, I’m either the most popular person on campus or the least.”

  My joke went over the majority of the parents’ heads, but I managed to get a few polite chuckles.

  “Okay,” I said brightly, “we’re here to go over the many type of loan programs, how to quality for each, and what steps to take over the next several months. Some of this information will be exclusive to Fremont, as we offer our own in-house loan program, but the majority of it will apply to whatever colleges you are considering.”

  That little tidbit always seemed to calm people. Over my many years here, I’d come to notice that there were several types of parents who came to an exploratory day like this. The ones who’d already made up their minds, and those who had no idea what they were doing. I tended to get the parents who were skeptical, seeing me as a dirty car salesman, ready to trap their kids into a bleak future just so that the university could make our admissions quota.

  But I wasn’t that person.

  I knew better.

  I’d seen what debt could do to a kid, and if this place was too much for someone, I would be more than happy to see them go somewhere else where their dollar could stretch even further toward a happy future.

  “I’ve handed out several pamphlets that will be useful throughout this talk. I’ll be referring to them often, so if you came in late, please raise your hand, and my lovely assistant, Amy, will make sure you get one.”

  Several parents in the back raised or waved their hands as I paused, allowing some time for Amy to reach them. Once everyone had successfully gotten everything they needed, I had no other reason to delay.

  Time to start.

  As soon as I opened my mouth to speak, the familiar sound of my ringtone filled the large space. My eyes went wide as “Work Bitch” by Britney Spears rang loud and clear from my purse.

  A look of panic shot from me to Amy as I begged her to do something.

  Our ability to converse silently had never been fully developed, and instead of leaping to my aid, she just looked at me, wondering why I was stalling, as everyone in the auditorium searched around for the Britney enthusiast.

  Shit.

  Moving swiftly, I said a quick apology under my breath, “Sorry, everyone. I guess I forgot to put my phone on silent.”

  I pulled the cell out of my purse, silencing it immediately. The lack of noise was like a vacuum, sucking all the hysteria I’d felt in that single moment out of the room in one collective breath.

  Looking down, I saw Jane’s name before it suddenly disappeared.

  Of course it was her.

  Placing the electronic device from hell on the table, I tried to collect my thoughts.

  Simply start over. Nothing to worry about. Everyone has a phone these days.

  Deep breath.

  “Okay, as I was saying, everything we’re going to go over is in the pamphlets and—”

  Buzz, buzz…

  My speech was cut off as all eyes went to my blasted phone once again, watching it vibrate across the table.

  For the love of…

  This time, words weren’t needed. Amy came to my rescue, grabbing the phone for me and allowing me to continue.

  Everything from that moment on continued without a hitch. Without any other interruptions, I was able to go over each topic, answer questions, and even make a few jokes.

  Success.

  I let out a great sigh of relief, knowing my job was done for the day, as the parents began to file out of the auditorium, eager to find their children and enjoy some free lunch provided by the college.

  Me?

  I just wanted to find a quiet spot for an hour and not have to speak to anyone, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not today anyway. With this many people on campus, I’d be lucky to get a minute in to stuff half of a sandwich in my mouth between meetings.

  “Kate!” Amy hissed as several parents filed past me, all smiling and giving their thanks.

  I turned to her as she made her way through the crowd.

  “Your phone has been going off for the last thirty minutes!”

  That sent alarms off in my head.

  I quickly grabbed the phone from her, typing in my code.

  Four messages, several texts. All from Jane.

  My heart raced as I tried not to think of all the things that could be wrong.

  Car accident, cancer…death in the family.

  The text messages were no help.

  Call me.

  Call me now!

  NOW!

  SERIOUSLY!

  Well, at least I knew she was able to use her fingers and was cognizant. That probably ruled out most injuries. I checked my voice mail messages next. The first one played.

  “Kate, it’s me. Listen, I did a thing. A bad thing, and I need you to call me. Like, now.”

  My quick paced pitter patter of my heart calmed a little. So, maybe not cancer. And she sounded way too guilty and far too put together for someone who had just lost a family member.

  I decided to skip the rest of the messages and go straight to the source. Amy—being the helpful, somewhat nosy twenty-two-year-old that she was—clung to my every move, ready to step in and help.

  “Kate!” Jane answered, relief clear in her voice.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “You’re going to kill me.”

  I huffed and resorted to pacing. The large auditorium was now empty, and my voice carried far more than it had moments early. “Can you just tell me what you did?”

  “A few weeks ago, a very large bookstore chain offered you a lot of money if they could get their hands on the first signed copies of Scandal, since you obviously haven’t done any appearances or given any copies away. Knowing you’d never agree to a public signing, I thought this would be the best way for your fans to get a precious autographed copy.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “I meant to discuss it with you when I was out there, but we got to dancing, and, well—anyway, you signed the paperwork, and—”

  “I signed the paperwork?” I said loudly, startling Amy, who’d taken to collecting the stray pamphlets that had been left all over the room.

  Those would be the parents who called me in two weeks with a dozen questions.

  I shook my head, trying to stay on topic.

  “Yes, it was in with some of the film stuff. Like I said, I meant to go over everything in detail, but—anyway, lesson for the future, don’t mix business with alcohol. And dancing.”

  “I seem to remember you were the one dancing,” I said.

  “Focus!” she yelled.

  My eyes widened, unused to hearing her so on edge.

  “Okay, okay. What’s the big deal? I’ll do it,” I said, wisely choosing my words, knowing Amy was probably hanging on my every word.

  “That isn’t the issue. I figured you would. I know you love your readers. The issue is, your publisher decided to send the books to you. All of them. One thousand copies. I’d stipulated in the paperwork that they be shipped to me, but somehow, it got all mixed up.”

  “Okay,” I said, still not understanding.

  It wasn’t like they were being delivered in clear wrapping. Or addressed to Laura Stone—Otherwise Known as Your Friendly Next-Door Neighbor Katelyn O’Malley.

  “The issue is, the publisher puts the name of the book on the side of every box. You’re about to receive something like fifty boxes of Scandal. To your home address. Today. When you’re not there to receive them, where do the packages go?”

  A lightbulb went on in my head.

  “To the front lobby,” I said, panic suddenly stirring in my veins. “
Where everyone can see them.”

  “Exactly. I need you to get home, Kate. I need you to be there to take those packages; otherwise, everyone in your building is going to be wondering why you have such an unhealthy obsession with Laura Stone.”

  “I can’t,” I said, my voice reaching a new squeaky tone. “I’m slammed all day. Back-to-back meetings, starting in”—I looked at my watch— “ten minutes!”

  “Shit. Okay. Is there anyone you can trust? Anyone. Because, as much as I’d love to, I don’t think there is any way I can make it out to Oregon in the next ten minutes. Unless teleportation has been invented without me knowing?”

  I bit my lip, indecision on my mind.

  What did I do?

  Call in sick?

  Tell my boss?

  Suddenly, Amy came into view.

  “I might have a solution. I’ll call you back.”

  I hit End on my phone and turned as Amy came forward, a stack of papers in her hand.

  “That’s the last of them. Is there anything else you need?”

  “Actually, yes. It’s a little bit of an odd request.”

  She eyed me, confusion painted across her young face. “Okay…”

  “But, first, I have to ask you. Are you willing to join my super-secret circle of trust?”

  “Oh my God.”

  “You’ve already said that, Amy,” I said as we sat in my living room, surrounded by piles and piles of boxes.

  “Oh my God.”

  “You’re eventually going to say something else, right? It’s not like a broken-record thing where you’re constantly going to be repeating the same phrase for life? Because I would feel bad. You’re a bright young woman.”

  “I just can’t believe it. You’re Laura Stone. The Laura Stone.”

  “Yep.”

  We’d been having this same sort of conversation since I let her into my secret circle of trust, which originally was supposed to be only Jane.

  But, sometimes, plans changed.

  Having a confidant here in Fremont was actually a smart move. Jane was my go-to for everything legal and technical, but when it came to certain situations like today, it would be nice, moving forward, to have someone like Amy around.

  It also felt incredibly good to talk to someone about it all.

  Or at least, try.

  So far, we hadn’t made it past this particular conversation. But I had hopes.

  “My sister and I sat around the house, devouring that book for weeks. We’d trade stories of…well, never mind.” She blushed.

  “Believe me, I’ve heard it all.”

  “I just…I can’t—you wrote that? All of that?” she said, still processing my bomb of a secret.

  I nodded.

  I could see several questions brewing in her mind, and thankfully, the pizza man chose that moment to arrive. Jumping up the second the doorbell rang, I rushed to pay for our order, averting my eyes to my dining room, which now housed enough paperbacks to fill a small store.

  Despite Amy’s shock, she’d been a great ally today, dashing over to my apartment to intercept the delivery so that none of my neighbors—or worse, the manager—would see it. When the guy had arrived, she’d smiled sweetly, saying her mom was an online business owner who sent out monthly box subscriptions full of books and had accidentally put too many zeros in the order.

  “What?” she’d said. “It’s a thing. There’s a girl in my sorority who’s obsessed with young adult books and gets one delivered every month.”

  It was the worst lie ever.

  But she’d assured me, it had passed with flying colors. Batting her eyes a few times and handing over a fake phone number hadn’t hurt either.

  “So, this guy is going to come by, looking for you?” I asked after I shut the door and plopped down on the couch with the pizza in hand.

  “Oh, no. I told him I was only visiting. In town to help my overprotective mother.”

  “You had time to relay all this information?”

  She nodded. “Have you seen how many boxes he had to cart up here? I had to think of something to talk about.”

  “True.”

  “By the way, you owe me twenty bucks. I tipped him for the ten times he came up the elevator.”

  “No problem.”

  “So, how does someone like you do this?” she asked, her hands waving in front of her as she held a piece of pepperoni pizza between two fingers.

  “Like me?” I asked, knowing what she meant but liking how the question made her squirm.

  “You know, um…quiet. Shy.”

  “You mean, someone with no life?” I elaborated.

  “I didn’t—”

  I laughed, causing her to finally join me. “It’s okay, Amy. I get it. I know I’m not the first person you’d suspect. Probably the last person, right?”

  She nodded, her mouth full of cheese. “Right after Mother Teresa. And she’s dead.”

  “I know. And, frankly, I really don’t have an answer. I just got an idea, and it kind of happened.”

  Her eyes wavered to the living room where all my paperbacks lay.

  “So, your ideas, they don’t come from experience?” she asked.

  “No,” I answered. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind.”

  She must have sensed my need for a confidant because she pressed on, “How’d your date go the other night? Mr. Dark and Handsome?”

  I smiled at her nickname for Killian.

  He really was tall, dark, and handsome, and he had a way with his hands that could melt a woman in five seconds flat.

  Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t that woman.

  Not anymore.

  “It went well, but I think we’re cooling off for a while. He’s not sure he’s permanent to the area, and I made the mistake of pulling out the relationship card too soon.”

  “He’s not a commitment guy, huh?”

  My mind was still replaying all the ways in which he’d made my breath catch. The almost predatory grip of his fingers and the tenderness of his tongue.

  “I guess not,” I replied sadly.

  “Maybe he’s coming out of a bad relationship,” she offered up.

  “Maybe. But he said it was because he’s not stable here, which is understandable. I mean, the guy’s living in a nasty motel, and he hasn’t had a single bite on a job since he arrived.”

  “He just moved here without a job? That’s weird. He doesn’t have family or friends here?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. It was all very spur-of-the-moment, seize-the-day type of stuff.”

  “That sounds more frightening than graduating.”

  I smiled. “You’re going to be fine.”

  “Says the woman who was offered a job before she was even handed her diploma.”

  “Yeah, and look at me now. Still here! At the same job, doing the same thing, day in and day out, trying to date guys who are clearly not that interested in me.”

  She gestured over to the enormous pile of books. “But you don’t have to be, Kate! Look at that! Those books—that is your ticket to another life. All you have to do is own it.”

  I stared at them. All one thousand copies.

  All I had to do was own it.

  To be Laura Stone.

  The problem?

  I wasn’t even sure I knew how to be Katelyn O’Malley yet.

  Amy had left my place sometime around midnight, chipper as a robin in springtime.

  Freaking college students.

  I, on the other hand, stumbled into bed, only to lie awake, pondering how I’d morphed into such an old fuddy-duddy in the last six years. I used to be a bright young college student like Amy.

  I’d finally fallen asleep around two in the morning, and then my alarm suddenly woke me up at the crack of dawn. That would have been a lifesaver if it weren’t a Saturday. Unable to fall back asleep, I grumbled several curse words under my breath and made my way to the kitchen to make coffee, stopping briefly to turn on the TV.

  Nothing
was better than a bowl of cereal and some reruns I had queued up in my DVR. I used to love watching Saturday morning cartoons when I was little. Nothing beat a morning where I was snuggled up with my dad while we ate Lucky Charms from the box and laughed at Wile E. Coyote trying his best to chase down that very quick and nimble bird.

  As I passed by the old dining room table, I sighed. Those days were long gone, and all I had were memories.

  The sound of the morning news filtered through the apartment as I rummaged through my cupboards. After pouring a box worth of cereal, I waited impatiently for my coffee to brew, stuffing mouthfuls of puffed rice into my mouth.

  Finally, I headed for the couch. My eyes were still barely cracked open from the lack of sleep, but I was vaguely happy over my improved situation.

  Cereal had healing powers in my opinion.

  But not today.

  Or at least, not for me.

  The moment my attention tuned in on the television, I wished it hadn’t. There was my book—the one I currently had a thousand copies of, sitting in my dining room—plastered all over the news.

  “Turning our attention this morning, we’re revisiting a topic many of our viewers have been asking about. Who is Laura Stone? As you may know, Laura Stone is the infamous pen name of The Scandal Chronicles, which has now sold over a million copies worldwide in its short time since being released. And, as fans go crazy over the book, there are just as many wondering who this Laura Stone is.”

  I gave a long sigh as the newscasters discussed the many oddities of Laura Stone, such as the fact that she didn’t have any social media pages.

  None.

  “It’s strange,” one woman said. “Who isn’t on Facebook?”

  I raised my hand, knowing it was useless.

  “Maybe it’s a man,” someone else commented, making the newscaster laugh. “You never know,” she agreed.

  “Great,” I huffed.

  Next up was a great big, burly guy, smiling wide for his fifteen seconds of fame, on the side of a street. “I think it’s a convict. You know, someone with life in prison. They’ve got nothing but time on their hands.”

  What the actual fuck?

  It went on and on, and I couldn’t look away.

  Part of me wanted to scream, Me! It’s me!