Billionaire Brother Gave Me an Empty Card Now I'm Dumpster-Diving Thanks for the Love novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Bins

The bank says her account holds six dollars and thirty cents and the black card belongs to the family office; that night Dustin finds her at the bakery bins, feeds her, and recognizes her name as Caleb's sister.

The campus branch of the bank opened at nine, and I was standing at the glass door at 8:50 with the quilt in my backpack.

A banker in a green cardigan unlocked it and asked how she could help.

"I need to know what's on my card," I said. "The black one. My brother gave it to me."

She typed my name and my student ID.

Her face changed.

"Ms. Kessling, your checking account has six dollars and thirty cents in it."

"I know that. I mean the black card."

"That card isn't tied to your account." She turned the screen a little away from me. "It's a secondary card on an account held by the Kessling Family Office."

"Can you tell me what's been charged to it?"

"I'm sorry. Only the primary holder can see that."

"Who's the primary holder?"

She hesitated, and the hesitation was my answer.

"I can't discuss it," she said. "If you want a statement, the family office will have to request one for you."

The family office was run by my brother.

I thanked her and walked out into the wind.

I went to class, because class was the one thing nobody could take from me.

I took notes in my coat and stayed awake through the whole lecture on interest rates.

At the break, two girls in the row ahead of me looked at their phones and then at me.

One of them whispered, "Eighty million."

I kept my eyes on the board.

By evening I hadn't eaten in a day and a half.

The bakery on Larch Street threw out its unsold bread at ten o'clock, in two blue bins behind the back door.

I had been going there for two weeks.

I pulled my hood up and waited by the fence until the lights went off inside.

Then I lifted the lid of the first bin and found a bag of day-old bagels, still in their plastic.

Two sesame, one plain.

I sat down on the curb and ate half a bagel in four bites.

"Those aren't good with the lid on," a man said behind me. "They sweat."

I jumped up so fast that I dropped the bag.

He was standing at the end of the alley, next to a white van with its side door open and a string of yellow lights hanging inside.

He was tall, in a canvas work jacket, and he had a ladle in one hand.

"I'm not stealing," I said. It was a stupid thing to say.

"It's the bins, it's not stealing. It's the bakery's trash." He held the ladle at his side. "I run the soup van. We park here Tuesdays through Saturdays, because this is where the people come."

Behind him I could see a steel pot, a stack of paper bowls and a hand-lettered sign that read: HALSEY NIGHT TABLE. NO QUESTIONS. NO LINE.

"I'm fine," I said.

"Sure." He ladled soup into a bowl, set it on the bumper, and stepped back to the other side of the van. "That's for whoever wants it. It's potato leek. It's been a long day for the leek."

I stood there with my pride and my empty stomach.

My stomach won.

I took the bowl and sat on the bumper, and it was the best thing I had eaten since I came to the city.

He didn't watch me.

He wiped down the counter and took a call and filled three more bowls for three more students who showed up out of the dark.

When I finished I stood to rinse the bowl in the bucket by the wheel.

"You don't have to do that," he said.

"I'm doing it."

"Then use the second bucket. The first one is for the pots."

I used the second bucket.

He looked at my face for the first time, and then, because I was holding the bowl, at the hand it was in.

My student ID had slipped out of my coat pocket and onto the wet ground when I jumped.

He picked it up and turned it over under the yellow lights.

He read it.

I watched him put the name together with the campus paper, and the video that every student on the hill had on their phone.

"Kessling," he said.

I held out my hand for the card.

He gave it to me.

"I'm Dustin Ashgrove, by the way," he said. "Caleb's sister." "Caleb Kessling's sister is eating out of the bakery bin."

"Please don't tell him."

I had said it before I knew I was going to.

He stood very still, with the ladle in his hand and his green eyes on my face.

"Caleb's my friend," he said. "I've known him ten years."

"I know."

"That's why I'm asking you something, and I want the real answer." His voice was quiet. "Does he know?"

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