8:38
Three hundredth IOUS
Chapter 1
67
From the time I was ten until I turned eighteen,
my parents made me sign two hundred and
ninety–nine IOUS.
Every single dollar I needed for school, for
–
clothes, even for freaking toothpaste – they
made me borrow it.
Said I had to pay it all back when I became an
adult.
Then, I got into a car accident. I needed
surgery, and my debit card was three grand
short.
Desperate, I went to my folks for help.
They just gave me this cold, hard look. “Riley,
you’re eighteen now,” my mom said, like she
was reading from a script. “We’re not obligated
to give you any more money. So, you want the
surgery, you’ll sign another IOU.”
I wrote down number three hundred with tears
stinging my eyes.
After the surgery, I scrolled through my
stepsister’s Instagram.
There she was, on some fancy cruise ship in the
Caribbean, celebrating her eighteenth birthday, surrounded by friends, all smiles and sunshine. Like a princess. My parents had given her a condo downtown and a shiny new Maserati. And my childhood best friend, Liam, was looking at her like she hung the moon.
She captioned the picture about how grateful she was for her amazing parents giving her the best of everything.
I just stared at the crumpled IOU in my hand, and I laughed. A hollow, bitter kind of laugh. Once I paid them back, those people, that family, I wouldn’t need them anymore.
