Profit Prophecy novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Six Hundred and Twenty

Zane pawns the ring and bets $1,580 on the glowing stock, and it closes up 310 percent while a red number hangs over Gerald's billboard.

I walked out of the hospital at six in the morning with a bill I couldn't pay and a burn on my hand.

Nobody stopped me.

The woman at the desk looked at the paper in my fingers and said, "We'll mail you the statement," in the voice of someone who already knew it was going to collections.

Dex had parked his rusted Civic at the curb with the hazards on and a coffee for me.

"Tell me again," he said.

"A number over anything that makes money, for tomorrow's close."

"Over anything."

"Over a stock. A company. Maybe a person's business. I don't know yet."

"Over me?"

I looked at him.

Nothing hung over his head except the smell of onions.

"Not over you," I said. "You're not a business."

"I'm a human brand," Dex said, offended. "Okay. Say you're right. Say you're a lottery ticket that got hit by lightning. What do we do?"

"We find out if I'm right."

"With my grill money."

"With your grill money, my three-forty and the ring."

Dex turned in his seat slowly.

"You're going to sell the ring."

I took the box out of my jacket.

Somebody had picked it up off the overpass and put it in my pocket in the ambulance, with the lid scorched on one corner.

The diamond sat in the little velvet slot, small and bright.

Roxy had held it for one second before she closed my fingers around it.

I could still feel her fingers, and she'd been shaking.

I didn't understand that part, and I was too angry to think about it.

"It's three more payments on the payment plan," I said. "Her father called it a mall ring."

"It's not a mall ring."

"It doesn't matter what it is. It's mine, and I'm turning it into something that works."

The pawn shop on Butler Street opened at eight.

The clerk was a heavy man with a loupe on a string, and he looked at the ring for about four seconds.

"Six-twenty," he said.

"It's worth nineteen hundred."

"It's worth what I can sell it for, kid, and you got a payment plan on it. I can smell the payment plan."

I didn't argue.

I took the six hundred and twenty in cash and put it in my pocket with the three-forty and Dex's six-twenty.

Fifteen hundred and eighty dollars.

It felt like nothing, and it was everything I had.

We sat in the Civic outside a diner and Dex opened the trading app on his phone.

It had a green logo and a free account he'd made two years ago for a fifteen-dollar signup bonus, and a balance of zero.

His hands were shaking when he typed in the money.

"Market opens at nine-thirty," he said. "It's nine twenty-eight. Zane. If this is wrong, I've got to eat ramen for a year."

"You eat ramen now."

We watched the clock on the dash.

I looked at the little GLDX symbol on his screen, and the number over it hadn't changed.

Plus 310 percent.

At nine-thirty-one I said, "Now."

He pressed the button.

The app turned over a little spinning wheel, and then it said we owned four thousand one hundred and fifty shares of Gold Dex Mining at thirty-eight cents each.

Dex made a sound.

Then we waited.

At ten, GLDX was at thirty-nine cents.

At eleven, forty-one.

At noon the price was forty-four cents, and I started to wonder if I had imagined the lightning, the number, the whole night.

Maybe I'd hit my head on the road and dreamed a way out.

At 12:40 a man in the next booth said, "Did you see the news on Gold Dex?"

Everyone in the diner who had a phone looked down.

A small mining firm in Nevada had announced a find, a vein in an old claim, with a press release and a CEO who sounded like he was reading someone's will.

By one o'clock GLDX was at seventy-two cents.

By two, a dollar and six.

Dex had stopped chewing.

His fork hung over his plate, and he stared at me with his mouth open.

At 3:41 the stock was a dollar fifty-one, and the app told us what we were holding.

Six thousand two hundred and sixty-six dollars.

At the bell it closed at a dollar fifty-six.

Plus three hundred and ten percent.

Six thousand four hundred and seventy-four dollars.

Dex made a different sound, a sort of long, slow wheeze, and put his head on the table next to the ketchup.

"Zane," he said into the Formica. "You're a wizard."

"I'm not a wizard."

"You're a goddamn wizard."

I put my hand over my mouth.

I wasn't smiling, because I didn't know what to do with my face.

For seven hours I'd been a man no one wanted, and the market had just said yes.

When we got back into the Civic, I looked out the window at the road and saw a billboard I'd driven under a thousand times.

MADDOX MOTOR GROUP. A NAME YOU CAN TRUST.

Gerald's face was ten feet wide, smiling down at traffic.

A number hung over the sign, and I read it twice to be sure.

It was red, and it was deep.

Minus eleven percent.

And I understood that tomorrow would not be good to the man who had thrown me out.

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