Ditching Him Made Me A Billionaire

The year of my most foolish, innocent love, I was sitting on the wooden bleachers by the basketball court, holding a cold drink for the boy I secretly adored.

Travis sunk a clean three-pointer, then turned and blew a cocky whistle in my direction.

My face burned hot. I was just about to stand up and hand him the bottle when a raspy, jarringly familiar voice crackled through my cheap wired earbuds.

"Don't go! I am you, ten years in the future. Tomorrow, Travis is going to get arrested for a gang assault and sent to juvenile hall!"

"Open your SAT vocab book right now. If you don't memorize two hundred words today, I will make you wish you'd never been born."

"After school tomorrow, go to the corner store with the sports book in the back. Bet on Germany beating Brazil, seven to one. It is your only ticket out of this dump."

I gasped, nearly dropping my phone. The voice, the sharp, cynical toneit was legacy-grade me.

The next second, Travis was jogging over, sweating and grinning, reaching for the bottle in my hand.

I scrambled to unscrew the cap, lifted it to my lips, and took a massive gulp.

"This is mine," I blurted, wiping my mouth. "I have to study. I'm going for top of the class. See ya."

01

The smug grin on Travis's face froze.

He swung his leg back and kicked the metal base of the hoop with a resounding "clang".

"Have you lost your damn mind, Maeve? Top of the class? Since when do you care about that?"

His roar made me flinch, my neck burning with residual heat, but my feet obeyed the voice in my ears. I turned on my heel and walked toward the school gates.

Travis caught up in three long strides, snatching my school lunch card right out of my hand.

"Fine, go be a genius. I'm taking this. Courtney said she was hot today, so I'm going to the organic market to buy her a carton of those fancy rainier cherries to cool her down."

He caught the hurt, bewildered look on my face and let out a soft sneer from his nose.

"Don't look at me like some tragic housewife. I'm not trying to be mean, but with your grades, dreaming about being number one is just pathetic."

I stood there frozen, watching him walk away toward the convenience store with my last twenty dollars of lunch money for the month.

Everything that had just happened felt too surreal. My head was spinning.

Travis and I had been neighbors for over ten years. We grew up on the same block, sharing the same bruises and the same empty stomachs.

When I was eight, he threw rocks at the stray dogs chasing me down the alley. When I was ten, he pulled me behind the stairs to hide from my dads drunken rages.

Travis was the only person in the world I thought I could trust.

But high school changed him.

As hormones kicked in, I found myself secretly reading those cheap romance paperbacks from the dollar store, daydreaming. Naturally, I started doing what the girls in the books didbringing Travis drinks, letting him take my lunch money, hoping hed be the hero who saved me, who told me he'd protect me forever.

Now, he was stealing my lunch money to buy imported fruit for a rich girl who had transferred here less than a month ago.

I bit my lip, but the voice in my ear cut through the silence again.

This time, it sounded cold, heavy with an exhausting, bone-deep weariness.

"Do you hear him? That's the boy you've spent your youth protecting."

"If you stay on this path, you won't even make it to the final exams. You'll get jumped by Travis's rivals, drop out, and end up working twelve-hour shifts at a packaging plant just to pay off debts. You'll ruin your life for him, and the second he gets out of prison, he'll leave you to become Courtney's personal bodyguard."

"Tomorrow afternoon, Courtney is going to pick a fight with some townies from the vocational school. She'll run to Travis to play her knight in shining armor. To show off for her, Travis is going to take an iron pipe and shatter a boy's spine."

"You won't be able to bear seeing him get hurt. You'll jump in to block a blow, take seven stitches to the back of your head, and miss your exams. His rivals will hound you day and night. You'll drop out, leave town, and rot."

I shuddered, a phantom chill creeping up the back of my neck.

The future me paused, her voice cracking slightly.

"If you choose him again this time... we will never escape."

A cold sweat broke out across my back. I clenched my jaw.

Ever since I could remember, my only dream was to get out of this decaying neighborhood.

I didn't hesitate anymore. I broke into a run, darting through the narrow alleys smelling of sour garbage, back to the cramped, moldy rental apartment we called home.

I pushed open the flimsy wooden door. The air inside was a suffocating mix of mildew and cheap, stale beer.

My deadbeat father hadn't been home in two weeks, probably off on another bender or hiding from bookies. My mother had packed her bags and run away with a trucker when I was six, unable to bear the endless cycle of debt collectors pounding on the door.

Through the thin walls, I could hear the neighbors shouting over a card game. The bare bulb overhead flickered, buzzing like an angry insect.

"You wanted him to be your family," the future me said, her voice gentler now, but still unyielding. "But Travis only ever saw you as a loyal dog."

"Put away your useless teenage heartbreak. Go to the bed. Pull out the metal tin under the floorboards."

I got down on my hands and knees, sliding my arm under the bed to pull out a rusted Danish butter cookie tin.

Inside was a crumpled stack of bills. Five hundred and thirty-one dollars.

My entire savings for the next two months.

"Take it. Tomorrow, you bet every single cent on Germany, seven to one."

"Now, open your AP prep book. Unit Two. Start memorizing."

The future me knew exactly what needed to be done. If that was the case, all I had to do was listen.

I cracked open the textbook, grabbed a pen, and began writing on a scrap piece of paper.

02

The next morning, I stepped out of the alley with dark circles bruised under my eyes.

Two hundred words. It had taken me until three in the morning to commit them all to memory.

As I reached the corner of the street, a middle-aged woman in a faded, greasy floral housecoat stepped out to block my path.

It was Travis's mother, Mrs. Shaw.

She was cracking sunflower seeds, spitting the shells onto the cracked asphalt, eyeing me up and down.

"Maeve, sweetheart, grab Travis a breakfast burrito from the deli on your way to school. He's growing, he needs his energy."

She stuck out her hand, expecting me to drop cash into it as I always did.

For years, she had done this. Every morning, she found some excuse to make me spend my meager allowance on her son. Shed always tell me how my useless father didn't care about me, how lucky I was to have Travis looking out for me, and how once I "joined their family," Id finally know what comfort felt like. My money was Travis's money, in her eyes.

I took a step back, dodging a flying seed shell.

"I can't, Mrs. Shaw. Travis took my lunch card yesterday. I don't have a single cent on me."

Her expression soured instantly, her eyes narrowing into hostile slits.

"No money? Go borrow some then! If you can't even handle a simple task like this, how are you going to take care of my boy later? If it weren't for my Travis keeping those street thugs off your back, you'd have been eaten alive by now!"

I didn't argue. I just walked past her toward the bus stop.

Her entire family had come to view bleeding me dry as their god-given right.

When I walked into the homeroom, I immediately noticed my desk had been messed with.

My books were scattered everywhere.

The AP Bio notebook I had spent all night organizing was currently folded in half, jammed under the leg of Travis's desk to keep it from wobbling.

Travis slung his backpack over his chair and saw me staring at the floor. He gave his desk a careless kick.

"What? Courtney said the desk was rocking, so I just grabbed some scrap paper of yours to steady it."

On the cover of my notebook was a dark ink stain from where Id fallen asleep working the night before.

I tried to swallow the sharp sting in my chest.

I knelt down, pulled the notebook out from under the desk leg with a violent yank, and threw it directly into the trash can.

Traviss face darkened instantly. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a heavy switchblade, and slammed it onto my desk with a loud "clack".

"What the hell is wrong with you today, Maeve? Who do you think you're throwing attitude at?"

"Keep this in your bag. The Dean is doing random locker sweeps for contraband at noon. You're a good student; they won't search you."

Looking at the cold silver gleam of the blade, my palms broke out in a cold sweat.

The future me was entirely correct. This knife was the catalyst for the fight this afternoon. He didn't give a damn if I got suspended or expelled for carrying it.

I took a deep breath, picked up the knife, and shoved it right back into his jacket pocket.

"No. Keep it yourself."

Travis froze.

He clearly hadn't expected mealways the quiet, obedient shadowto actually refuse him.

The whispers in the classroom died down as our classmates turned to look.

Travis's face flushed a violent red. He grabbed me by the collar of my hoodie, pulling me close as he hissed through his teeth.

"Who the fuck do you think you are to tell me no? You're a piece of trash with a junkie father. If I wasn't the one keeping you safe, nobody in this town would even look at you!"

He let go of me, kicked over the trash can containing my ruined notebook, and stormed out of the classroom.

I smoothed down the crumpled collar of my hoodie, sat down, and opened my test prep.

My pen scraped across the paper in sharp, deliberate strokes.

I felt a quiet ache in my chestnot of longing, but the sickening realization that ten years of devotion had been given to a monster.

03

I spent the morning hours completely locked in, drowning out the world with schoolwork.

When the lunch bell rang, I slipped away from the crowds and ran out of the school gates.

Three blocks down was a dingy, smoke-filled convenience store that ran an underground sports book out of a back room.

Inside, several middle-aged men in dirt-stained work shirts were shouting at a flickering TV screen.

As a teenage girl in a school hoodie, I stuck out like a sore thumb.

I nervously gripped the strap of my backpack, my palm slick against the damp roll of five hundred dollars in my pocket.

The voice in my ear was calm, commanding.

"Don't hesitate. Walk to the counter. Put the money down."

I squeezed through the crowd of men and placed the cash on the scratched glass countertop.

"I want to place a bet on the World Cup," I said, my voice shaking slightly.

"Germany versus Brazil. Exact score: seven to one."

The bookie, a balding man with a lit cigarette dangling from his lip, looked up from his ledger and burst into a loud laugh.

"You kidding me, kid?"

"This is the semifinals. Brazil is the host country. Seven to one? You think this is a varsity team playing middle schoolers?"

The men around the counter joined in, guffawing loudly.

"High school girls are hilarious. Throwing away her lunch money on a dream."

"Go buy yourself some Starbucks, sweetie. You throw five hundred bucks on those odds, you'll never see it again."

My neck burned under their mocking stares.

But the words "This is your only ticket out of this dump" echoed in my head.

I raised my chin and looked the bookie dead in the eye.

"Five hundred dollars. On the exact score. Print the ticket."

Seeing I wouldn't budge, the man shrugged and tapped the keys on his terminal.

"Suit yourself. It's your funeral. Don't come back crying to me when you lose."

The machine spat out a small, thermal-printed slip of paper.

I took it with trembling fingers, folded it neatly, and slid it into the zippered inner pocket of my hoodie, right against my chest.

Back at school that afternoon, I paused at the corner of the second-floor hallway.

In the shadow of the stairwell, two people were standing close.

Courtney was wearing a short tennis skirt, her hair styled in perfect beach waves, holding an iced Starbucks drink.

Travis was leaning against the lockers, all his usual anger gone, replaced by a desperate, eager-to-please grin.

Courtney poked him in the chest with a manicured nail, her voice dripping with sweet poison.

"That townie with the bleached hair from the vocational school was staring at me yesterday. It was so gross. Travis, I thought you said you ran things around here."

Travis immediately puffed out his chest, his eyes flashing.

"That idiot is nothing. Don't worry. During study hall, I'll corner him behind the bleachers. I'll break his legs."

Courtney giggled, covering her mouth.

"You promise? Because if you chicken out, don't bother talking to me again."

I watched them from the shadows, a wave of nausea rolling through my stomach.

The vocational kid hadn't even done anything to her. Courtney was just bored. She wanted to see two dogs tear each other apart for her amusement.

And Travis was more than happy to be her loyal hound.

I drew back into the hallway, turning toward my classroom without a second glance.

If Travis wanted to jump headfirst into hell, I wasn't going to pull him back.

04

The last period of the day was study hall.

Suddenly, a barrage of shouting and screaming erupted from the back of the campus.

Near the fence line of the back fields, a crowd had gathered. I could hear the dull, heavy clangs of metal hitting metal.

Students in my classroom rushed to the windows, pressing their faces against the glass.

"Holy shit! Travis is fighting the vocational guys!"

"Is he crazy? It's five against one! He's got an iron pipe!"

I sat at my desk, my pen pausing for a fraction of a second.

The voice in my ear came right on cue.

"To impress Courtney, he's going to shatter the leader's spine."

"The police will be here in exactly three minutes. Courtney's family driver is already waiting at the back gate to whisk her away."

I looked out the window.

Sure enough, amidst the chaos, Courtney was clutching her skirt, jogging toward the back gate in her designer sneakers without looking back once.

A sleek black Mercedes was waiting. She slipped into the back seat, and the car sped away.

In the distance, the wail of police sirens grew louder.

The crowd on the field scattered instantly, boys running in every direction.

Travis stood frozen, holding a blood-slicked iron pipe, looking around in a daze.

He turned, realizing Courtney was already gone.

When the police cruisers slammed to a halt at the edge of the field, panic finally registered on his face.

He looked up at the school building and locked eyes with me standing by the second-floor window.

His eyes lit up with desperate hope.

He bolted toward the building, dragging the heavy pipe behind him, leaving a harsh scraping sound on the concrete.

"Maeve! Come down here!"

"Hide this for me! Hurry!"

He wanted to hand me the weaponthe heavy iron pipe coated in someone else's blood and bone.

The voice in my ear screamed with terrifying authority.

"Step back! Do not touch a single thing he has!"

Heavy, frantic footsteps echoed up the stairwell.

Travis kicked open the back door of the classroom, his hands dripping red.

He thrust the pipe toward me.

"Take it! Put it in your bag, now!"

He was hyperventilating, his veins bulging, his eyes wide with animal terror.

I looked at the weapon inches from my face and took two deliberate steps backward.

Travis stared at me, his face twisting into a hideous snarl.

"Why the fuck are you moving? Give me your jacket to wipe the blood! Hurry up!"

He lunged forward to grab my clothes.

I dodied him, my voice flat and cold.

"You did this. You deal with the consequences. I'm not helping you."

The heavy thud of tactical boots echoed on the linoleum outside.

Two officers burst through the door, tackling Travis to the floor before he could react.

They pinned his face to the dusty tiles.

The iron pipe clattered to the floor, rolling to a stop right by my sneakers.

The lead officer picked it up, sealing it inside a clear plastic evidence bag.

Travis thrashed under the officers' weight, forcing his head up to glare at me.

A venomous light flickered in his eyes.

"Officer! It was her! She made me do it!"

He screamed at the top of his lungs, spit flying from his lips.

"Maeve told me to beat him up! That switchblade in my pocket is hers too! She forced me!"

The classroom fell into a dead, suffocating silence.