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Chapter 2

作者: Lucy Grove
I stared at the cake. There was a little rabbit piped in frosting on top, and the cream looked impossibly sweet. I wanted it more than anything, more than I had wanted anything in a long time.

I glanced at the number on the wall.

"I don't want any," I lied.

Aunt Lisa's eyes went red. She shot to her feet and pointed a finger straight at Dad's face.

"Gary, this is abuse. What do you think she is to you?"

Dad dabbed his mouth with his napkin, unhurried. "I'm teaching her how the real world works. Your kind of coddling is what ruins children."

He set the napkin down. "Now please leave. You've been over the limit for far too long. I'll send you the bill."

Aunt Lisa was shaking so hard that I thought she might grab something off the table and throw it at someone. Then she looked at me, at the fear on my face, and she stopped herself.

"Fine, Gary. Have it your way. However, what goes around comes around."

The door closed behind her and the house fell back into silence. 28 decibels. Dad nodded, satisfied.

The noodles had gone cold and soggy by then, but I ate every last bite without making a sound. I had traded a piece of birthday cake for this bowl and, in this house, that made it the most valuable thing on the table.

That night I lay in my small bed, clutching a coin in my fist. Aunt Lisa had pressed it into my pocket on her way out without saying a word, but later I found a note with it.

It read, "Jenny, keep this. In case you ever need to buy yourself a way out."

I did not know what buying a way out meant, but I knew that this one dollar was the only money I had that was truly mine, and the only thing in this world of price tags that I could call my own.

I woke up in the middle of the night, burning up.

My throat felt like I had swallowed coals and my head was so heavy I could barely lift it off the pillow. I pressed a hand to my forehead. It was scorching hot.

What I felt first was not pain. It was fear.

Being sick meant spending money for doctor's visits, prescriptions, and lab fees. Dad had said before that getting sick was the result of poor self-management, a personal failing, and that all costs would be the responsibility of the one who got sick.

I pulled the blanket tighter and lay there shaking.

I needed water, but getting to the kitchen meant passing Dad's bedroom, and every step of that journey would betray me. Footsteps on the floor, a creaking door, or even the tap running. If I woke him up, the fines would be enormous.

So I stayed where I was. My throat was so dry it burned with every breath I took. I tilted my head back and opened my mouth, trying to pull in some cool air, but even that felt hot going down.

"Mom," I mouthed into the dark, tears sliding silently into my ears. I did not make a sound.

If no one found out, it did not count as being sick. If I did not take any medicine, I would not have to spend any money.

I held onto that logic as I drifted back to sleep, into a string of feverish nightmares. The decibel meter grew teeth and came after me. Bills fell like snow and buried me alive.

When I woke again it was morning, and Dad was shaking my shoulder.

"Do you know what time it is? Get up."

I tried to push myself upright and could not. Everything went dark and I fell back against the pillow with a dull thud. I looked at the decibel meter out of habit. It was still under the limit.

Dad frowned and pressed his hand to my forehead, then pulled it back. "You're burning up."

He checked his watch, then pulled out his phone and opened the calculator.

"Round trip cab fare, 60 dollars. Office visit fee, 50. Blood work, 80. Medication, roughly 200. Half a day off work for me, 500 in lost wages. Total, 890 dollars."

He held the screen up in front of my face.

"Your account is already in the negative. So how exactly are we paying for this?"

I could barely see the numbers through the fever haze.

"Dad, I feel really sick," I managed.

"Feeling sick is not an excuse to avoid settling your debts," he said evenly. "Sign the paperwork and I'll take you right now. The interest is three times the standard bank rate. You can repay it with interest once you're old enough to work."

He pulled a sheet of paper from his briefcase. It was densely lined with printed clauses, clearly prepared well in advance. He held out a pen.

My hands were trembling so badly I could not hold it. The pen slipped from my fingers and hit the floor.

Dad picked it up and placed it back in my hand.

Then Mom came running in. She must have heard the noise, because she took one look at my face and screamed. "Jenny!"

The decibel meter flashed red. Dad turned and looked at her. "What are you screaming for? That's a 50 dollar fine."

Mom ignored him. She crossed the room and pulled me into her arms, and I felt her tears land on my cheek, small and cool against my burning skin.

"Gary, have you lost your mind? She's burning up and you're making her sign paperwork? Take her to the hospital right now!"

It was the loudest I had ever heard Mom speak.

Dad's expression did not change. "Are you paying for it? Your paycheck goes through me. Every dollar you earn has already been allocated. This wasn't in the budget and someone has to cover it.”

"Either she signs or you sign. The moment one of you does, we leave."

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  • The Noise Tax   Chapter 9

    On the evening of the third day, the sun went down. No police car pulled up outside. No phone call came.Dad sat in his chair in the basement without moving, like something carved from stone. When the last sliver of light disappeared from the gap beneath the door, he stood up, took the hammer in one hand and the decibel meter in the other, the same one that had defined every hour of my short life.He was going to settle the final account.Rat had fled. He had crawled out of his hospital window and dragged himself on a broken leg through the city's back alleys and drainage tunnels, vanishing the way a rat always does, into the dark places no one thinks to look.He had not counted on Dad's ability to map every vein of a city the way other men read a balance sheet.Dad found him in an abandoned civil defense shelter on the edge of town. Rat had been trying to climb aboard a freight truck to get out of the city for good, and Dad blocked the only exit.The shelter was dark and damp,

  • The Noise Tax   Chapter 8

    The potassium would not kill him. It would only hold him at the edge of agony, his heart lurching and stuttering, his body screaming without being able to stop."What do you want from me?" Rat managed, shaking so hard that his teeth chattered."I'm here to collect," Dad said. He produced a printed sheet covered in line items."Pain and suffering. Lost wages. Funeral costs. And the price of a life."He tapped the last entry. "Your life isn't worth a single finger on my daughter's hand, so you'll be paying in installments. With interest, in the only currency you have left."Dad adjusted the drip rate on the IV, calibrating the flow until the pain held steady at exactly the level he wanted.Rat wanted to scream and throw himself off the bed. Instead, Dad pressed a folded towel firmly into his mouth."Shh," Dad said. "This is a hospital. Disturbing other patients is a fineable offense."He sat down and watched Rat writhe against the sheets, thrashing like a creature caught in a tra

  • The Noise Tax   Chapter 7

    The private investigator had come through. For the right price, one could find out anything, down to what color socks a man wore on a Tuesday.The burglar went by the street name Rat, and his real name did not matter.What mattered was that he was a gambler, and most of what he stole ended up lost at underground card tables before the week was out.Dad studied the photograph of the man, a wiry, rat-faced figure caught mid-stride by a surveillance camera, and looked at him the way he used to look at a debt that would never be repaid."Bad debt gets written off," he said to himself. "Permanently."He opened a fresh notebook, but he was not doing financial calculations this time. He was mapping time, routes, and probability.Dad had spent his career as an actuary, and he applied that same precision now, working out what time Rat left his apartment each morning, when he ate, when he arrived at the gambling den, and which route home gave him the lowest chance of being seen.On the wh

  • The Noise Tax   Chapter 6

    The officers pulled Dad away. The paramedics lifted my body onto a stretcher and drew a white sheet over me, and I left the house for the last time.Mom sat crumpled on the floor, her expression completely blank. Aunt Lisa arrived not long after, and the moment she took in the scene she fainted where she stood.When she came to, she threw herself at Dad with everything she had, and it took two officers to pull her off him.The apartment descended into chaos, and through all of it the decibel meter climbed and climbed, until Dad finally stopped moving and the number drifted back down on its own. 28. That same dead, familiar 28.In the days that followed, Dad became someone else. He stopped talking, stopped eating, and stopped sleeping. He sat on the edge of my small bed and held the decibel meter in both hands, staring at the number on its face without blinking.He gathered every ledger in the house and burned them. He deleted the black accounting app from his phone completely an

  • The Noise Tax   Chapter 5

    Dawn came and the rain stopped.I was awakened by screaming, except I was not really awake at all. I was already gone. I drifted somewhere above it all, looking down at the scene below me.Mom was on her knees, holding my bloodied body, and the sound that tore out of her was unlike anything I had ever heard her make."Jenny!"The decibel meter maxed out instantly, its red light flashing and shrieking in the early morning silence.Dad came bursting out of the bedroom, hair disheveled, still in his pajamas. "What is all this noise about? It's barely even mor..."The words died in his throat. He saw the blood on the floor. He saw me, pale, still and no longer breathing, cradled in Mom's arms.Then he saw the cabinet across the room, ransacked and hanging open. The metal lockbox lay on its side in the middle of the floor, completely empty.Dad's eyes went to the box. He crossed the room, picked it up, and turned it upside down. Not even a single coin fell out."Where is it?" His v

  • The Noise Tax   Chapter 4

    If Dad's hidden savings were stolen, he would lose his mind, and every bit of that rage would land on Mom and me. I could not let that happen.I had to do something, but I could not make a sound as that would cost money.I was sweating through my pajamas, my mind racing. My hand found the coin in my pocket, small and cold against my fingers. It was everything I had.One dollar. It was not enough to buy a piece of candy or a sheet of paper.However, it could make a tiny bit of noise that stayed under the limit.The burglar had his hand on the bedroom door handle. The knife was raised.There was no time left. I took a slow breath, flicked my wrist, and let the coin roll across the floor.It spun and caught the leg of the coffee table with a bright, clean ring. It was small enough to get lost amidst the lightning. The decibel meter ticked up to 38.That was under the limit, so there would be no fine.The burglar froze. He spun around and looked toward the wardrobe in the corner o

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