Wolfing the Wolves

I was ten when I invested in my first stock. Of course I had to do it under an account with my mom’s name but trust me, I have my ways. I had my mom’s MasterCard number memorized like my classmates knew times tables. When she asked what the Robintown charge was I told her it was a couple burgers, that the bank meant to put Round Robin; classic typo. She had just looked at me weird, what’s she supposed to think? I knew the charge would get lost in the flood of her shopping splurges anyway. Plus, I was ten.

Now most people assume kids are stupid. Stupid and innocent. But I knew I was different when my first “big boy” books weren’t the Harry Potter series but Stocks for Dummies. My parents would be prancing around the mall and I’d be getting real comfortable on the floor of Barnes and Nobles. It’d take me an hour and a half to get through the entire book; I never read fully. I have a system, hear me out. Read the chapter name, the first, and last paragraph. All the smack in the middle is summarized in those places anyway right? Don’t waste your battery. Make sure to look at the pictures too, my mind can take a little screenshot of them. Photographic memory is what they call it. The teachers at my school wanted to put me in gifted for it, but they said I had too many referrals for flipping off the upperclassmen. Their loss. Last thing you gotta do is write down all the bolded words. I scribble them in my black moleskin I got last Christmas; write them down as fast and ugly as you can. You’re never gonna look at them again, write them down once and they’re in your brain.

I was going through this very process at Barnes and Nobles one day, when I felt a shoe kick the bottom of mine. I figured it was an accident so I kept reading. “You know this isn’t a library right?”, a voice speaks. His voice box sounds like it got stuck up his nostrils. I don’t bother looking up but the schmuck kicks my heel again. I go to smack his leg with my book but something stops me. He’s short, like girl-short. He looked my age but in a toddler’s body. “Listen shrimp, first blow your nose. You sound sickly. Second, I can do whatever the hell I want and you’re the last person that’s gonna change that”. And he doesn’t move an inch, just keeps staring at me through these huge lenses. “That’s not the book you should be reading,” shorty says as he grabs another from the shelf and sits down next to me. Scotty P., my first friend.

When me and Scotty turned eleven that next year, we were talking about brokerage accounts in our sleep. His was under a stock custodial account, not the janitor kind, where his parents would monitor it. They recognized the genius in their kid, wanted to see him grow. The day after my birthday party, which consisted of Scotty and three of my girl cousins (who blew out my candles before me), I felt more man than ever. I had some special appearances of armpit hair and knew today would be different. Scotty and I were eating cheese puffs from the jar when we overheard my dad talking on the phone. “I understand Mark, but let me reiterate, when has my eye been off? Never. You know I have a six-sense for these. We focus on the Gamestonk short-sell and we’re swimming in it. You trust me man?”. Bingo. Scotty and I knew well that this gamble my dad was taking only works if Gamestonk falls and keeps falling. And besides Scotty’s coddling parents, Scotty knew people. He had a little internet gaming group on Reddit where he chatted it up; he kept anonymity, guised under the name ScottyD. Very clever. It was no Facebook, but I typed up statuses under his account, telling the world and their grandma to buy stock of Gamestonk.

My mom never looked at me straight in the eye. She always sort of looked past me. But when she woke up a few weeks later with an email about $20,000, well, she knew it wasn’t burgers I was buying.