Tiny Tim

To my surprise, that actually worked! We settled on a lump sum payment of $4,500 for the work already done, and an hourly rate of thirty-five dollars for all future work. All of that as a freelancer, for now, since the hours I was allowed to work as an employee would be strictly limited and regulated by labor law until I turned sixteen. My first job would be to rework the apps his men used to upload photos, surveillance-videos, and to log their hours. I was fully prepared to get stuck with minimum wage again, since I was ‘just a minor’. Gladly, Bill didn’t care about that in the least. As long as the work was done right, I would be paid like any other employee who did their job.

The next day, Claire accompanied me to the bank to open an account. As we were sitting in that bank, the idiot teller tried to make her open a custodial account for me, which basically means that the account would be in my name, but I couldn’t do anything without either Claire’s or Aaron’s signature. She was all for it, but I told her in no uncertain terms that, since I was working for that money, it should be my money. She compromised with a joint account with safeguards for reckless spending. I could live with that. At that point, I was seriously worried about getting money transferred into an account the parents had access to. Sadly, contrary to Bill, the bank did absolutely care about me being ‘just a minor’, so I didn’t have much of a choice.

The single debit card and the login data for the online banking were sent directly to me alone, so the only way for them to check my account balance, or make withdrawals, was to actually walk into the bank and ask for it. My hope was, since they didn’t know about Bill paying me more than minimum wage, they wouldn’t feel the need to go through that trouble. At least as long as I didn’t give them reason to. So, no reckless spending for me. Back to feature-phones and cheap snacks.

I also had no idea how taxes work for freelancers, since I never made enough before to file for them. So, I would save as much as possible until I found that out. I made only two mentionable investments: A small fridge for my room to store my food in, and a nice gaming chair. The fridge didn’t cost nearly as much as I thought it would, and I figured, if I’m going to spend a lot of time in front of the computer, I might as well sit comfortably while doing so.

The fridge, though, did not go unnoticed. When I carried it inside, Logan saw me and his eyes grew wide immediately. Last I saw before reaching the stairs was him pulling out his phone. I learned whom he called when Aaron stood in my door as soon as he arrived home.

“Boy! If you’re going to put a fridge in here, you’ll have to pay rent. Those things burn energy like a hair dryer running non-stop!” he told me in an annoyed tone.

I didn’t know if this was yet another attempt to piss me off, or if his children were demanding personal fridges of their own now, so he wanted to nip this in the bud. Either way, I looked at him for a while, contemplating my options. Then I took all the bills out of my wallet that were left after my shopping spree, counted them, and handed him seventy-five dollars. I made sure he saw I only had a whopping six dollars left, hoping he wouldn’t think I wasn’t hurting for money.

“That should cover the rest of the month. I’ll set up a money transfer order starting from the 1st. I hope three-hundred bucks a month are enough for this room?” I asked him, with my now usual tired voice.

I waited a little for a reply, but he just looked at me confused, so I closed the door in his face. He apparently didn’t expect me to readily pay up without complaining. And certainly not such an amount. However, as far as I was concerned, this interaction had finally officiated our new relationship. I hadn’t felt like part of this ‘Family’ in a while. Now I was officially nothing more than their tenant. Too bad nobody else would rent out a room to a fifteen-year-old kid, regardless of him having an actual taxable income. I’d have been out of that house in a heartbeat.

The next two weeks followed a pretty set pattern: Get up in the morning. Go through the motions while getting slapped around in school. Pick up some groceries or take-out on my way home, so I would have something to eat. Go to sleep while trying to ignore the occasional bed-squeaking coming from one (or more) of their bedrooms. Repeat.