“Enthralling!” “Full of suspense, secrets and lies! “A must read new series!” - Amazon reviews
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I owe him a debt. The kind money can’t repay. He wants something else: me, for one year.
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Tell me to stop - Chapter 1
“What are you doing with that thing?” my roommate, Sydney, asks, walking by my room.
I’m sitting on my bed with my hand wrapped around my knees staring at the envelope that came in the mail a few days ago. My name and address are handwritten in careful capital script and it doesn’t have a return address.
I showed it to her when it first arrived and she made fun of me for wanting to actually deposit that ridiculous check, her words not mine.
“I was thinking that this person must’ve dropped it off in our mailbox directly because there’s not even a stamp from the post office on this thing,” I point out.
Sydney shakes her head and walks out of my sightline for a moment to change into her sweats. When I walk out into our living room, I see her boots neatly put away right next to mine in the foyer. The rain droplets skid off her coat and onto the floor where they make a little puddle, which she quickly cleans up.
I met Sydney Catalano at Wellesley College, but we didn’t get really close until our second semester of senior year. She was a double major in biology and chemistry and we met in a required anthropology class that we both put off until we couldn’t put it off anymore.
I don’t know if it’s the case with all biology majors, but Sydney is a very neat and meticulous person who always cleans up after herself, and often after me as well. Though I’m not much of a housekeeper, I take out the garbage and kill spiders to try to be a good roommate.
I pull out last night’s Vietnamese takeout from the fridge and warm it up on the stove. We each pile as much as we want onto the plates, leaving the rest on the skillet, before sitting down to eat together around the kitchen island.
“So…what are you going to do?” she asks, tying up her silky black hair in a loose bun while inhaling her food.
My eyes meander over to the envelope, lying flat in between our two plates. Sydney reaches over her food and pulls out the check.
“Olive, this is a joke, okay? This isn’t real,” she says with a full mouth.
I stare at the numbers in the square box. They are written in the same block script as my address on the envelope.
$167,699.
The amount is written out right under my name and signed with an illegible signature. There is no identifying information anywhere else on the check to give me a glimpse into who it might be from.
“But what if it is?” I ask.
“Why would someone send you a check for this amount and not say who it is or why they’re giving you this money?” she asks.
I shrug my shoulders. Of course, I don’t have an answer.
“The thing is… I looked up the total amount of my student loans today at work,” I say, taking a sip of my water.
“Okay.” Sydney nods.
I put down my fork and turn my body toward her.
“What?” She rolls her eyes. “C’mon, the suspense is killing me.”
I shake my head. “No, never mind. It doesn’t matter,” I say, getting up.
She pleads for me to go on and explain but I just take my plate to the sink and wash it. If she thinks that this whole thing is a joke then I don’t have to tell her a thing.
“Olive, I’m sorry.” Sydney puts her hand on my shoulder. “I don’t mean to not be supportive. I just don’t want you to get hurt. Or in trouble.”
I hold up the check to her face.
“You see this number?” I ask, pointing to the amount. She nods. “This is the exact amount that I owe. Down to the penny.”
The words surprise her. She exhales slowly and takes a step away from me.
“Really?” she whispers under her breath, taking the check and looking at it more closely.
I nod.
“I had to make a payment today so I looked up the amount, just for the hell of it. Just to make myself feel a little worse about everything,” I joke. “But then, the total looked familiar. I realized that I’d seen these numbers somewhere before. I just wasn’t sure where. Then when I got home, I saw the envelope on my desk and…there it was. The exact amount that I owe in student loans.”
Sydney sits back down, stunned by my revelation. I’ve had about an hour to process this but I’m no less astonished.
“The check arrived a few days ago. So, after you make this payment, you’ll owe a little less, right?”
I nod, not sure as to where she is going with this.
“Most of it is going to interest, but yeah, I guess it will be a little less. But the check arrived before this payment was officially due. So, when it came, this is the exact amount of my debt.”
We spend the evening talking about the possibilities of what I should do, which basically boil down into two camps.
One, I tear up the check and forget all about it.
Two, I deposit the money, or at least try to.
There is the very real possibility that the check is a fake or some sort of fraud, though whom it is defrauding I have no idea. Still, depositing it is definitely a risk.
“There’s something else you should consider,” Sydney says. “What happens if you deposit the check and it is real?”
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