Page 28 of Trailer Park Billionaire

Shit.

One month.

I imagine my face looks about as pained as my grandpa’s face did the last time I saw him.

One month.

That’s plenty of time.

In one month, I could be halfway around the globe.

There’s no way they’d find me in… Laos.

How long would I be able to stay there on a tourist visa?

Probably not long enough.

How difficult is it to take on a different identity?

I don’t look particularly like someone from Laos.

It’s not like I have anyone here I’d leave behind.

Well, except for the kids.

Tomorrow is Friday. They’ll be expecting me.

Fuck!

I sit up straight against the door, listening carefully for any noise outside. When no one seems to return, I mentally gothrough the things I need to do: clean up the lasagna, sort myself out, put a band-aid on the cut, take some painkillers, go to sleep. And the next morning, I’ll continue to follow my routine, because that’s what keeps me safe and sane. Obviously, not from assault, but hopefully from prison.

So, instead of worrying about what will happen in a month if I can’t come up with the money, I do all of those things. The lasagna goes in the trash, the blood comes right off under the shower, and the cut is a lot smaller than I had feared, considering the amount of blood that came out of it. The cut on my hand is also doing a lot better already.

The next morning, I wake up two minutes before my alarm can go off. My headache isn’t as bad as it was yesterday, but my eye is dark purple, with lighter shades of red and blue thrown in. It’s very sensitive to the touch. Luckily, I’m a trained professional when it comes to making old and bruised things look new and shiny again. It takes a lot more makeup than I usually wear, but thirty minutes later, I look like I am going to a fancy gala instead of coming from a violent boxing brawl. The band-aid is easily covered by my hair. Before leaving, I check for my keys, wallet, and phone. Once I am sure I have everything I need, I stand before the locked door, listening closely to make sure no one is outside.

I take a deep breath.

Of course, no one is outside.

They won’t be back for another month.

Why would they?

Carefully, I open the door and stand to the side in case someone kicks it in or flings it open. When nothing happens, I take another deep breath and close the door again.

Fuck.

I walk back into my kitchen, grab a knife and put it in my purse.

Routines can only keep you so safe.

Then, refusing to give it another thought, I rush outside and straight to the bus.

Nothing happens to me, as expected. I am the first one in the museum, as usual. I make sure I don’t run into Pat or anyone else on the way in, and once I make it to my lab, I lock it twice.

Then I try to get to work, which today is made considerably harder, not by a headache, but by a rather annoying ache somewhere deep inside me. My belly is twisted into knots, wondering why all of this is happening. Why my grandpa had to fall back in with not only the wrong crowd but apparently violent gangsters. It doesn’t make sense. He’d been out of jail for years, and there was no reason for him to come out of retirement…

My thoughts don’t even make it to the part where I worry about how to come up with 100k in a month before that near constant bellyache I’ve been nursing is eventually accompanied by one in my head just as ‘Ooops, I Arted!’, the art class for children that I run, comes around.