Filthy Rich 1 by Scarlett Skyes

The flickering light in the
ramshackle old fridge sporadically illuminated the lettuce and
corn, and I had to make my choice quickly. The rust-bucket had
already lost the ability to freeze food, if I held the door open
too long and overworked it there was every possibility that it
could stop working entirely, and then we’d be down to whatever
wouldn’t spoil too fast in the cupboards. If our luck was really in
it might catch on fire too and burn the apartment block down.
    I decided corn would go better
with rice and snatched it out, slamming the door shut. Voila! The
two ingredients for the meal I would be cooking were now selected.
My stomach rumbled when I thought of the kinds of things that my
classmates had for lunches at school, but I had to make do with
what I had.
    The budget had always been
pretty tight, for as long as I could remember, but it had gotten
even worse a few years back when my Mom was in a car accident and
had ended up needing to pay damages to the other party. The whole
ordeal, legal expenses and everything, were far beyond what she
could afford, so the court had ordered her wages be garnished until
everything was repaid. This put even more pressures on our already
frugal way of life.
    I didn’t hold it against her
though, how could I? She was the only family I’d ever known, it was
her and I against the world. I already saw in her eyes how sad she
was, how guilty she felt about not being able to provide everything
that my peers seemed to take for granted, why would I ever rub salt
in that wound?
    I remembered one time when my
pen stopped working when I was doing my homework, I had to finish
the rest of it with a nub of a pencil that I had to sharpen with a
kitchen knife. My teacher had phoned my Mom at work and tried to
inform her of the ‘poor standard’ of my work. Judging by the
pale-faced apology the teacher gave me the next day, I thought my
Mom might have threatened to disembowel him or something. I knew
she’d kill or be killed for me, I’d do the same for her. You could
say we were close.
    The bland meal was still cooking
in the pot when my Mom burst through the door with a look on her
face I’d seldom seen, she was smiling and had a kind of dreamy
faraway look in her eye. She dropped her tote bag on the ground and
slumped into the rickety couch, kicking her feet in the air like an
excited schoolgirl.
    “Uh… good day in reception,
Mom?”
    “Yeah, the SUPERBOWL of working
reception,” she replied.
    “Whaddya mean?”
    “Guess who Attison Technologies
Ltd’s newest customer is.”
    “Abraham Lincoln?”
    “Better.”
    “Lady Gaga?”
    “Who? I don’t know who that is,
but it’s better.”
    “I give up.”
    “Cal Willis.”
    “No way!”
    “True Story!”
    “Did you meet him?”
    “ Yeah! He
walked right in the front door like any other person, if other
people had bodyguards, that is. Told me who he was there to see and
talked with me while our CEO rushed downstairs like a chicken with
its head cut off. I literally mean he rushed down stairs, the
elevator was going too slow or something, so he ran down like Mr.
Willis had his family held captive.”
    “Hahaha! He doesn’t strike me as
the fittest person, what kind of state was he in by the time he got
to the ground floor?”
    “Not a pretty one. Bald head
shiny with sweat and all red in the face. Cal and I talked for the
few minutes while he was waiting, can you believe it? He flashed me
this smile, I think he was flirting with me! He said I was doing a
great job. Get this, he saw the picture of you I keep on my desk
and said that beauty must run in my family!”
    “Wow! What happened then?”
    “Well… then he had his meeting
and left,”
    “Oh. Well, that’s a bit
anti-climactic, isn’t it?”
    “I’d probably have had a heart
attack with anything more, Nova. My God, you wouldn’t believe the
presence this guy has, it’s like everybody was terrified of
displeasing him. I don’t doubt that he got exactly