Chapter 3 | How to Get Cancelled in 24 Hours (2)

By the time she signed off, the viewer count had climbed to twelve thousand. The chat had changed its tune.

She really is that tragic but she's really that funny. Why am I feeling sorry for a penniless heiress. She turned the rich-girl life into a standup set.

Luna closed the laptop and looked at the follower number. The two pot lids, she decided, were worth something after all.

Day four she did the thing she'd been turning over all night. She went to the family trust office, about the money her grandmother — the one person in the house who'd ever been kind — had left her when she died at eighteen.

It wasn't a fortune. Two million dollars. Enough to light a seed round for VELLUNE.

Her grandmother had been the only one. A woman who'd slipped Luna a ten-dollar bill on her eighth birthday and whispered, "Save it. Never rely on a man's checkbook." Luna still had that ten dollars, folded, in the back of a wallet she'd taken with her. It was the only inheritance the family hadn't managed to claw back. Yet.

The trust office was on the thirtieth floor of a glass tower in Midtown. The receptionist recognized her, smiled, froze for half a beat, then showed her into a windowless meeting room and told her to wait. She waited forty minutes, finished the water, and then a young man in a suit came in holding a file.

"Miss Sterling." He pushed his glasses up. His voice was polite as an obituary. "Per the trust terms, during a family 'material dispute event,' disbursements require board approval. Given your situation — well. Your situation may take some time."

"How long?" Luna said.

"Hard to say." He opened the file and tapped a dense line of small print. "The board's next regular session is March."

"March." She smiled. "Your definition of a 'material dispute event' — is it literally whenever my parents sneeze?"

He didn't answer. He pushed the file across. "You're welcome to review the terms. Or, of course, you could petition the board for expedited approval."

Luna looked at the file.

She knew what the windowless room meant. The water she'd finished and not been offered again. The word "March." It was all arranged. In twenty-one years on this island, she'd never felt it this clearly: the word family could be a net with no holes, or a wall with no door.

She didn't sign. She didn't raise her voice. She stood, set the file back on the table gently, like setting down a flower.

"Thank the board for me," she said. "Tell them by March, I might not need it anymore."

The young man blinked. Luna was already walking out.