I Told You, Eli Oxley

Chapter Nine

I sat in my car outside Rusty's again. I kind of people-watched all the patrons of the different establishments on the strip while again studying philosophy. I would have much rather been studying with Al, like she suggested, but this was like an unscratchable itch that, well, I just had to scratch. And if I were being completely honest with myself, I would have recognized that it was kind of exciting and thrilling (arousing?) being in this area again.

Anyway, to make a boring story exciting, I got a hit. No, that's not another euphemism. I mean, my pairing system alerted me that someone was accessing the ATM with my dad's bank account information, but I looked up and saw that it wasn't my dad. The force pair was successful, and the ATM screen appeared on my laptop.

An option menu, like any other ATM I had ever used, showed up, giving the options to make a withdrawal, make a deposit, or transfer money, etc. But the guy using the ATM must have pressed an option or entered in a code I couldn't see, because a new menu appeared on my screen. The guy clicked on "Account Balance", which read $18,068.98. The man then clicked a button to confirm a recurring transfer of $300 every two weeks between this new/secret account into my dad's normal account. The mysterious $1800 the previous month had no doubt come from this account. But maybe that was too large of a sum, so the man reduced the amount?

The man then withdrew $1,000 from the secret account and logged out, which brought him back to my dad's account, from which he also logged out. I didn't know exactly how, based on my limited understanding of how banks work, but I knew that the secret account was like a second level/tier of my dad's account that could serve as it's own account, primarily for hiding money.

At this point, yes, I wondered why my dad was hiding money. And I questioned who this man was and why he was withdrawing a good amount of money from my dad's account and strolling into Rusty's. But what was dominating my thoughts was my anger. Do I even have to describe the level of my anger? How would you feel if your dad was sitting on nearly enough money for a year's tuition plus room and board at your dream college, and he not only doesn't tell you about it, but he also won't even bother to take out student loans, loans that we could obviously find a way to afford, especially given this "extra" money? And how would you feel if you found out that the money sending you to Crockett-Freaking-State was also going to some random guy's sexual addiction? Let me just tell you. Pissed. That's how you would feel. Effing pissed. But more than anything, betrayed.