The Trillionaire Chapter Two: In the Lowest of Places are the Highest of Hopes

When Tori's mother died, Tori wasn't there.

She received the news from a voicemail waiting on the answering machine when she came home from school.

Her mother had wanted it that way. Before leaving for hospice, she had told Tori that she didn't want her there at the end. She wanted to let go, and the sight of her daughter made her want to stay too badly.

Tori played the message twice.

Then she sat down on the floor.

She stayed there most of the night.

There was no revelation in grief, no sudden understanding of mortality, no beautiful realization that her mother was finally free of pain. There was only the terrible fact that the one person who had been there for Tori's entire life was no longer anywhere in the world.

She cried until crying became physically exhausting. Then she lay on the floor in silence.

When morning came, she didn't go to school.

She didn't go the next day either.

The hospice facility handled most of the funeral arrangements with assistance from the cancer society. The ceremony was small and respectful. A few people said kind things. Someone brought flowers. Someone else spoke about dignity and peace.

None of it made Tori feel better.

She understood that she was supposed to cope. Adults kept using words like process and healing, as though grief were an administrative procedure that could be completed if she followed the instructions correctly.

The people in the trailer park were kinder.

They didn't tell her how to grieve. They brought food. They knocked on the door.

Sometimes they simply sat with her.

Her friend Molly brought the schoolwork she'd missed.

After a week, however, the expectation from school was that life resume as usual. Tori was warned that continued absences could result in a truancy officer being sent to the trailer.

Something hardened in her when she heard that.

Her mother had been dead for days.

Days.

And already the machinery of the world was demanding paperwork, attendance, explanations, signatures. Sit in the chair. Complete the assignment. Answer when your name is called. Move when the bell rings.

For most of her life, Tori had accepted whatever was given to her. She wore donated clothes. She ate whatever food was available. She lived wherever her mother could keep a roof over them. She waited in government offices and hospital waiting rooms. She accepted embarrassment because embarrassment was preferable to hunger.

But apparently there was a saturation point.

Tori had reached hers.

For once, she didn't want to be resilient.

She didn't want to look forward.

She didn't want to find the good in anything.

This was her moment to be furious.

This was her moment to admit that she was not okay.

So Tori stopped doing her schoolwork.

When her social worker called the trailer and asked what she could do to help, Tori had only one request.

She wanted to begin the emancipation process.

Sitting in a classroom waiting for bells to ring had become intolerable. Her mother was dead. Their home was empty. Tori couldn't make herself care about worksheets or attendance slips while confronting the realization that everything she had in the world now began and ended with herself.

The court agreed to emancipation under several conditions, including that Tori demonstrate she could continue her education independently. She pursued a high-school equivalency credential and passed the required examinations without much trouble.

Two court appearances later, Tori's life diverged permanently from the path followed by most American teenagers.

Not that she had ever really been on it.

Before fading from Tori's life, her social worker managed several acts of practical kindness. She helped Tori apply for food assistance and whatever financial support she qualified for, and arranged assistance with the lot rent beneath the trailer.

On paper, it looked like enough to survive.

In practice, Tori discovered how short a distance money traveled.

Her mother had taught her how to pay bills before she died, but Tori hadn't understood what the numbers meant. She hadn't realized how carefully her mother had shuffled one expense against another, postponing this payment so she could make that one, stretching food until another check arrived, measuring survival in increments of days.

For the first time, Tori saw the entire arithmetic.

It frightened her.

At least she was healthy.

She didn't take that for granted.

So she decided to get a job.

Tori asked around the trailer park and discovered that nearly every place hiring was more than ten miles away. That might as well have been a hundred. Many of her neighbors didn't have reliable vehicles. Others couldn't drive because of disabilities or circumstances of their own. There was no dependable person Tori could ride with every day.

Her friend Josie told her about the only vehicle in the park cheap enough to be remotely attainable.

Mr. Ronny's truck.

It was old, ugly, and barely functioning. According to Mr. Ronny, it would run fine once it had a new transmission. According to everyone else, it was one pothole away from dying permanently on the side of the road.

Still, it was transportation.

Tori sat down with a pencil and began calculating.

She needed money to get a job so she could make money.

The absurdity almost made her laugh.

Without some initial infusion of cash, she couldn't buy transportation. Without transportation, she couldn't reliably work. Without work, she would remain dependent on benefits that barely covered her existence.

Tori had seen where that road could lead.

She didn't judge the people who lived that way. Some of them had no other choice.

She simply didn't want that life to become hers before she'd even had the opportunity to choose something else.

A few nights after the emancipation ruling, Josie and her father invited Tori over for a celebratory dinner.

They served ramen noodles with sliced hot dogs and ketchup squeezed from packets they had accumulated from restaurants.

It was a feast by local standards.

Josie had dropped out of school years earlier after becoming pregnant as a teenager. She'd lost custody of her baby shortly after the birth following a positive drug test. Whatever the exact circumstances had been, the experience had broken something in her that had never completely healed.

Josie's father had once worked as a part-time bricklayer until an injury on the job destroyed his back. Now he walked with a permanent stoop and spent most evenings smoking cigarettes outside the trailer.

To much of the world, Tori knew, people like Josie and her father were easy to dismiss.

Failures.

Drains.

People who should have made better choices.

But they had invited an orphaned girl to dinner when they barely had enough food for themselves.

Tori thought about the relatives she'd never met—the ones who supposedly had money, education, respectable homes and careers. People like them could purchase almost anything Josie and her father lacked.

But apparently they hadn't been able to purchase empathy.

Tori loved Josie for that.

She also feared becoming her.

Josie's father stood over the stove smoking a cigarette as he scooped dinner onto mismatched plastic plates from the thrift store.

"If I was young again," he muttered, "I'd do everything different."

Josie nodded as solemnly as if she were listening to a sermon.

Her father pointed his fork at Tori.

"You don't do no drinkin' or nothin'?"

Tori frowned and waved both hands.

"No."

"Well, then, get yourself down to one of them donation centers. They'll pay you."

Josie agreed enthusiastically and suggested that maybe the clinic wouldn't look too closely at Tori's identification.

Tori finished her dinner, thanked them both, and went home.

Then she pulled the old Yellow Pages from beneath the telephone.

The following morning, Tori slipped onto the school bus with Molly.

It was the easiest way into town. The school sat near the business district, and Tori figured she could continue riding until the driver realized she was no longer enrolled.

Temporary transportation was still transportation.

When they arrived, Tori said goodbye to Molly and walked to the donation clinic.

Josie's theory lasted approximately thirty seconds.

The employee behind the counter looked at Tori's identification and immediately told her she was too young.

"I'm emancipated."

Tori produced a folded copy of the court order she had begun carrying everywhere.

The man barely looked at it.

"Can't help you."

"But legally I'm responsible for myself."

"Still can't help you."

People in the crowded waiting room had begun watching.

Tori felt heat spread across her face.

"Okay."

She shoved the papers back into her bag.

"Thanks."

She walked toward the exit with her head down.

Now she had another problem. There were five hours until the school bus could take her home.

A woman sitting near the door with a crying baby had overheard the exchange.

"There are other programs at the hospital," she told Tori. "You should ask over there. They might have something you qualify for."

Tori stopped.

"The hospital?"

The woman nodded.

Tori thanked her.

She had nothing better to do.

At the hospital information desk, an elderly volunteer listened patiently while Tori explained her situation. After several phone calls and a conversation with another department, the woman returned with a stack of information about compensated medical research and donation programs, along with eligibility requirements and appointments Tori could pursue.

For the first time all day, Tori felt as though she had found a direction.

She walked back toward the school in time to catch the bus home.

That night, she spread every pamphlet across the trailer floor.

She read all of them.

Twice.

She calculated potential payments against the cost of Mr. Ronny's truck and the repairs it needed. For the first time, the numbers came close enough that she could imagine making the plan work.

One pamphlet advertised a surrogacy program.

Tori stared at the compensation figure.

As much as eighty thousand dollars.

Eighty thousand dollars.

For several dangerous seconds, she let herself imagine it.

A reliable car.

A better place to live.

Savings.

Food without calculating the cost of every item.

Maybe even college someday.

Then she thought of Josie.

She remembered what happened after Josie's baby was taken away. The suicide watch. The months when nobody dared mention the child because Josie would disappear into herself for days afterward.

Tori dropped the pamphlet into the trash.

"No."

She said it aloud even though nobody was there.

She had learned enough from her mother to understand that desperation could make terrible ideas look reasonable.

She returned to the other paperwork.

One of the medical programs would suffice.

Over the following days, Tori underwent the required testing and interviews to determine whether she qualified. She hated hospitals now. The antiseptic smell alone reminded her of her mother, and every hallway seemed capable of returning her to some memory she had been trying not to revisit.

Still, she completed everything asked of her.

Eventually, she was given a date for the procedure.

Eight days away.

Tori was terrified.

She was also excited.

On the walk back toward the school afterward, she noticed a HELP WANTED sign taped inside the window of a fast-food restaurant.

Tori stopped.

She went inside and asked for an application.

Then she saw another restaurant.

She took an application from there too.

By the time she reached the school, she had collected several.

Summer was coming.

Maybe that could work in her favor.

On the bus ride home, Tori held the applications against her chest and began planning.

She could work mornings at one restaurant and evenings at another. Maybe weekends somewhere else. She could save everything she didn't absolutely need. Once the truck was running, she wouldn't have to sneak onto a school bus anymore. She could go wherever there was work.

The possibilities multiplied until they became almost frantic.

That was fine.

Frantic was useful.

Work was useful.

Exhaustion was useful.

Anything was better than sitting alone in the trailer listening to the silence where her mother's breathing used to be.

That evening, Tori sat at the kitchen table with a pen and began filling out applications.

Name.

Address.

Telephone number.

Availability.

She wrote carefully.

When she finished one, she started another.

Then another.

Outside, the trailer park settled into darkness. Televisions flickered behind curtains.

Somewhere nearby, a couple argued. A dog barked. An engine refused to turn over, then tried again.

Tori kept writing.

She told herself she would work until she was too tired to think.

She would stay busy until grief couldn't catch her.

She would make enough money to survive.

Then enough to leave.

She did not yet understand that grief could follow a person anywhere.

But neither did she understand something else.

She was already moving.

For the first time since her mother died, Tori wasn't waiting for someone to tell her what happened next.

She was deciding.