Making Ends Meet

“Holly, did you look at the mail?” Josh asked his sister as he walked into the kitchen, waving a stack of unopened envelopes around. She was bent over the stove, pouring dried pasta into a pot of boiling water. “No time”, she said without looking, as she started to search for the salt.

Josh frowned. His sister could be irresponsible at times, he knew, but then again, it wasn’t her fault that they were struggling. She did her best to stay in college while he was trying to get his acting career off the ground. Both of them worked part-time jobs to make ends meet, but with neither of them having any qualifications to earn them more than minimum wage, and without support of their parents, it had been difficult just to get all the bills paid, let alone leave much room in the budget for luxuries.

His finger slid through the opening as he tore the envelope open. “Final notice”, the letter started alarmingly. “Holy fuck! Holly!” he exclaimed. “What?” she asked as she covered the pot with the lid and whipped her head around. “Rent is due this Monday! Do we have the money for that?” he asked anxiously.

“I’ll check”, Holly replied as she opened her laptop on the kitchen table, “you watch the pasta.” He nodded and stirred the pot. She logged into their shared bank account. “And?” he asked while stuck a fork in the pot and took a bite. Not quite done yet.. She shook his head behind him. He didn’t see, but he knew the answer anyway. One of the special powers that the twins shared was that they always knew what the other was thinking.

Josh sighed. There was no way they’d be able to raise that much money over the weekend. “Do we have any sauce to go with this?” he asked, trying to put the matter out of his mind for now. Disappointed, he realized he knew the answer to that question, too.
 

“Josh, listen to me”, Holly said in her serious voice, the one she used when she had a crazy idea that she needed his support for. He frowned at her, as he watched her sitting cross-legged on her bed. They shared the bedroom, though his bed was on the opposite side of the room. He sat down next to her while she closed the lid of her laptop.

“Okay. I’m listening”, he said softly, careful not to commit to anything just yet. She smiled at him. “I have a solution for our money problems. A way to make a lot of cash, fast. Tonight, in fact.” He glanced dubiously at her. “Really? What did you come up with this time?”

Holly bit her lip and looked down at her lap. Josh observed her, curious, because Holly wasn’t the least bit shy. Was she putting on an act? “Come on”, he encouraged her, “tell me. We don’t keep secrets from one another, right? We agreed to that.” She nodded briefly as she looked up at him. “I didn’t think it would come to this, but desperate times call for desperate measures. So I’ve decided to sell my body for rent money.”

Josh burst out in laughter. “Okay, seriously now…” he said as he pulled up his legs and turned towards his sister. She frowned at him, and he realized she wasn’t joking. “Seriously? Prostitution? That’s your solution?” he looked at her, still incredulous.

“Why not?” she retorted, “I’m hot enough, don’t you think? And I’m old enough to do it.” He couldn’t deny those facts, but he also remembered them playing with dolls together, he driving his toy car around her while she put her Barbie passengers in the seats. That image was hard to reconcile with what she was proposing now.

“Look”, she said and she flipped open her laptop. “I’ve already found a guy that’s willing to pay $5,000 for a single evening, if we show up tonight. He’s not even bad-looking…” she added as she turned the screen to show the profile on a less-than-legitimate dating site.