Page 67 of State of Ruin

Forgiven with support of donors nationwide

I begin to shake. I can barely see straight.

“It has to be a scam, right?” Sylvie asks, a note of hope quavering in her voice. That little wobble slays me.

“Yeah,” I say, still scanning the letter. “Pretty fucked up that they know how much we owe, though.”

“Right?”

This is the number that keeps me awake at night. It’s also the number I try super hard not to think about, because it’s a sum so large that it could cut you off at the knees if you fixated on it too much.

“Google it,” I tell Sylvie. “Google Unburdened.”

She looks thrilled at the prospect of having a plan. “On it.” A moment later, she twists her laptop around so I can see the screen. “It’s legit.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the letter is,” I point out. “Could be phishing.” I push to my feet.

“Yeah.” Her shoulders drop. I hate it.

“Want me to call them?”

“Would you? I don’t think I can bear it.”

“Of course.” This is my role: to be strong when Sylvie cannot. When the sheer effort of rehabilitation and trauma and worrying about Fleur and the un-freaking-fairness of it all threaten to pull her under.

She recites the phone number straight off the official website, and I punch it into my cell with trembling fingers as I pace in a little circle.

“It’ll probably be a call center,” I say. “Or some automated service.”

It is neither. After a few rings, my call is answered by a woman whose energy levels match that of the letter.

“Good afternoon! You’ve reached Unburdened! This is Tracy. How may I help you today?”

“Hey, Tracy,” I say. “I—uh—my sister received a letter in the mail claiming that her medical debt has been paid off? And, uh, we’re not sure if it’s genuine.”

She chuckles warmly. “Oh, that’s wonderful! And I can tell you, this isn’t the first call I’ve gotten like this today. Whenever we do a mail-out, we get a lot of folk wondering the exact same.”

“Oh, really?” I ask. I raise my eyebrows at my sister, like This is actually encouraging. She raises hers right back, like What did she say?!

“Sure, honey. It can be a real shock. Tell me, did you get a case reference number on the top right of the correspondence?”

“Uh—yeah. Yes, we did.” I recite the eight-digit number slowly and wait.

“Let me see… Sylvie Ward, Hudson County?”

I’m shell-shocked. I don’t think I have really let myself think this could be legit until right this second. “That’s right.” I mouth OMG at Sylvie, whose face has gone bright red with tension.

“Excellent! Well, I’m delighted to say that your sister is now debt-free! Unburdened has forgiven all of her debt.”

Slowly, I sink back into my chair. I think I might faint. “But how can that even be? Why us?”

“It’s the best kind of lottery, honey. Unburdened uses donations to purchase debt in big bundles off all kinds of debt-holders. Usually, we can actually buy the debt for far less than you owe. We do it at a county level, all completely randomly, and I guess yours got swept up into our latest Hudson County bundle. And hey presto, the debt is forgiven.”

Forgiven strikes me as such an odd word—kind of religious, and sort of… not tangible. Like it could be reversed. “Forgiven?” I repeat, because I want to be super clear on what’s going on here before I get my sister’s hopes up.

“It’s a weird debt term,” Tracy says. “It means canceled or paid up, I guess. We have paid your creditors on your behalf, so there is no outstanding debt. We’ve cleared the balance.”

I put my hand over the microphone. They’ve cleared the balance, I mouth at Sylvie.