The Boy You Starved for Him novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Phone in Dad's Hand

Quinn wakes behind a curtain in the ER and hears the doctor and both parents read his bank history, until each parent finds they sent the money to the same account, and it is not his.

I woke up to a white ceiling and a plastic tube under my nose.

An IV line ran into the back of my left hand.

A curtain hung around my bed, and on the other side of it people were shouting.

I knew one of the voices.

"Where is Quinn?" Dad said. "Did he actually get admitted?"

"Are you his parents?" a woman answered. She sounded like she hadn't slept in a day.

"Yes," Mom said. "Is he all right? He tends to exaggerate."

The curtain slid open a few inches.

A doctor stood in the gap with a chart held tight in one fist.

He did not look at me. He looked at them.

"Your son has severe malnutrition, anemia, and early damage to his kidneys," he said. "His blood pressure was so low the paramedic thought he was dying."

"That's impossible," Mom said. "Between his father and me, he gets fifteen hundred dollars every month."

"Then where is it?"

Mom opened her mouth and nothing came out.

A nurse walked up with a clear plastic bag and set it on the foot of my bed.

I could see what was in it from where I lay.

There was a crushed train ticket, three work badges from three different jobs, and an empty pill bottle.

My phone lay on top of the bag, the screen still lit.

It was open to my bank app.

Dad picked it up.

His thumb moved down the screen slowly, then faster. He scrolled back through the months.

It showed gas station bagels at 2 a.m., dollar-store noodles, and a pharmacy charge for the pills I had stretched to half a tablet.

The only money coming in was small. It was forty-five dollars from the diner, sixty from handing out flyers in the rain, and eighty for a night shift on the register.

Dad stopped scrolling.

His face went grey.

"Marla," he said. His voice had gone hoarse. "You never sent him anything this year?"

Mom stared at him.

"What do you mean, I never sent him anything?" she said. "I sent it. I send it the first of every month. Wasn't that you?"

"I send mine on the first," Dad said. "The same day, every month."

"Then it's his fault. He took it out and spent it. He's been lying to us."

"Marla, look at the statement."

"You look at it. I'm not the one who lied."

"Open your app," Dad said. "Just open it."

My mother dug a phone out of her coat pocket.

Her hands shook so badly it took her two tries to get past the lock screen.

I lay still behind the curtain and watched her face.

She was scrolling too. Her mouth was moving.

"Seven fifty, on the first," she said. "Seven fifty, on the first. Seven fifty to Dexter, and then seven fifty to Quinn."

"Read me the number," Dad said.

"What number?"

"The account. The one that says Quinn."

She read it out one digit at a time.

"Ending four four seven one."

Dad turned his own phone around and held it where she could see.

"Mine says four four seven one too."

Neither of them said anything.

A monitor beeped somewhere behind the curtain. A man in the next bay was coughing.

Dad looked at the phone in his other hand.

"Marla," he said. "Dexter wrote that number on the forms. He took them to both banks, because you wouldn't talk to me."

"Because you wouldn't talk to me," Mom said.

"Whatever. He took them."

She shook her head hard.

"No. Dexter showed me the confirmation. He sends me a screenshot every month."

"Of what?"

She didn't answer.

I should have said something then. I didn't have the strength to lift my head.

Dad was staring at the phone in his hand, the one that was mine.

At the top of the screen, under my name, was the number of the account that was really mine.

It ended in 9208.

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