Dark Intentions - Charlotte Byrd Page 0,17
feel just a little bit better and I guess that's kind of the point of guilty pleasures like this. It takes your mind away, off of everything I should be thinking about or maybe have thought about too much.
I glance over at myself in the mirror, just a little bit of eyeliner and brow liner to make my over-plucked eyebrows not look so haggard. My hair has been seriously starting to get curly and frizzy over the last couple of years and now I have to rely on the flat iron more than I want to just look decent.
Why does this kind of stuff keep happening? Everything was so good for so long. Why did that have to change?
Later today, I meet up with Allison, completely distraught. I insist that she see me for lunch, even though she has a meeting right at 1:00. She manages to squeeze me in, and that's why we've been friends for so long.
I tell her what's going on, and she puts her hand around me and sits down on my side of the booth. The waitress comes over with our drink order.
"I don't think I want to eat anything," I announce.
The waitress looks mildly annoyed.
"We'll both have the salmon and the salads." Allison takes charge.
"I'm just not sure how this is going to work out," I say. “I don't know what I can do, but I can't lose her."
"You're not going to," she insists, but we both know that she's lying, or rather, maybe just wishfully thinking for something to be true that can't possibly be true.
"How will this even work out? How can I come up with the money?"
"I have no idea," Allison says, playing with her fork.
"Do you know anyone? Do you know anyone that I can borrow this from? Do you know anything?"
She shakes her head no.
"What about your boss?"
"I can't ask my boss."
"I know, but I was thinking maybe, with you working in marketing, I can set up a GoFundMe page and raise some money that way if you do a story on her. I mean, she was an elementary school teacher and now she has a chance to get this treatment and she can't afford it."
"I can ask around, but those kinds of stories usually are kept for little kids with cancer. You know that."
I nod. Yeah, and they're usually situations that are a lot more dire. It just feels like you need this perfect story in order to have anyone pay attention, and by perfect I mean perfectly tragic.
"That's pretty much true.” She nods. "Otherwise, no one's going to care. If you set up a GoFundMe, you'll probably be able to raise some money."
"I doubt that it'd be more than $10,000," I say. "I mean, it's something, but it's not a solution. I sent back the materials today and they..."
"What do you mean, you sent back the materials?" she asks.
"That's exactly what I mean. I told them that I had the money. I told them to go ahead and we'll be there at the end of the month or whenever they give us a date. She'll be on the first flight out."
"And how are you going to pay for it? I mean, don't they expect the money to be deposited?"
"Yeah, for $75,000. They want it there before they start anything."
"And how are you going to do that? How are you going to get the money?"
"That's what I'm here for. I need to talk to you about any ideas that you could possibly have.”
"Well, I don't have any."
"What if I were to set up a webcam and do that OnlyFans thing?” I ask.
She shakes her head no.
"Come on, I mean, there’re a lot of webcam girls and they show their booty, their assets. They get paid."
"They don't get paid as much as you'd think, mainly because there are so many women willing to flash and show what they have on camera."
"Really?" I ask.
She nods. "They used to get paid a lot more back when doing pornography was kind of taboo, but now anyone with a cell phone and a boyfriend pretty much can shoot whatever they want, so it's all about content, developing your brand, just like pretty much any other business, and you won't be able to do it in a couple of weeks. That's not to say that you won't make some money, but it's not going to solve your problem."
I exhale loudly. I put my head down on the table. Our food arrives, and she's back