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Chapter 4

作者: Lucy Grove
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 of the living room and, through the narrow gap in the door, we locked eyes. His gaze was cold and mean. He abandoned the bedroom and started walking toward me instead.

He crossed the room one slow step at a time, his shoes landing heavily on the floor.

I pressed both hands over my mouth and dug my nails into my cheeks. I could not scream. I absolutely could not scream.

He reached the wardrobe and yanked the door open.

I was crouched inside, curled into the smallest shape I could make. He looked down at me and smiled, the kind of smile that had nothing kind in it. He had not expected to find a wide-awake child hiding in the dark.

He raised the knife and brought it down toward me.

I shut my eyes and did not move. If I threw myself sideways, I would knock against the wardrobe wall and make noise, and noise meant fines.

The blade went into my stomach, first cold, and then fiery hot. A tearing and burning pain a hundred times worse than the time I broke my arm.

Every instinct I had screamed at me to scream out loud, to let it out, to make some sort of sound that matched what was happening to my body.

I opened my eyes and looked at the decibel meter. 32.

Good. I had not made a sound.

Blood soaked through my pajamas and spread across the floor in a dark pool. The burglar stared at me for a moment, thrown off.

He had probably never stabbed a child who did not make a sound. He must have thought I was mute, or in shock. He pulled the knife out, and the pain came again in fresh waves. My whole body convulsed and I bit clean through my lip, the taste of blood filling my mouth.

Still, I did not make a sound.

He wiped the blade on my sleeve, then turned and went straight for the cabinet across the room. That was where Dad kept his hidden cash, and I watched, unable to do anything, as the burglar pulled out a metal lockbox.

It held everything Dad valued most, cash and valuables, and the burglar emptied it into his backpack, zipped it shut, and left the same way he had come in, over the windowsill and out into the rain.

The room went quiet again. There was only the thunder outside and the quiet, steady drip of blood hitting the floor.

The decibel meter read 29.

It was quiet enough. Mom and Dad were still asleep, so neither of them had been disturbed. Neither of them had been frightened.

I had done well. I was a good girl. The most cost-effective child there was.

My vision was going blurry at the edges and the cold feeling was spreading through my body slowly, the way it does when something is running out. I felt like a balloon with a hole in it, something essential leaking out with no way to stop it.

I looked at the coin on the floor. It lay still in the middle of a dark red puddle, catching what little light there was.

It was a shame, really. It had been enough to buy one small sound, one tiny distraction, but it was not enough to buy a hug from Dad, or tears from Mom, or my life.

I let my eyes close. I looked at the decibel meter one last time. 28.

Perfect.

I had slipped away without causing any trouble at all.

Dad would be proud of me. Right?

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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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