Chapter 3

The days went by like that, one after another, plain but with a faint touch of sweetness.

Senior year, the countdown sign on the blackboard dropped a little every day, and the pressure was so heavy it was hard to breathe. Everyone was like a wound-up alarm clock: if we weren't studying, we were sleeping.

But because I was finally eating enough, I shot up and grew past six feet. I was still thin, but it was a lean, wiry kind of thin now. I had energy to burn, and I carried myself like a completely different person.

It was June, less than a month before the SATs.

The heat was like a steam oven, and the cicadas in the trees droned on and on until everyone was on edge.

That day at noon, Rose didn't come to class.

I started to panic a little. In more than two years, she had almost never missed a class. Even with a cold or a fever, she toughed it out and came anyway.

The first class that afternoon was Mr. Bennett's. When he walked in, his face was grave, and he didn't have a book in his hands.

"I have something to tell you all. Rose's family has run into some trouble, and she'll be out for a few days. Don't let it distract you. Focus on your review."

My heart lurched, as if it had skipped a beat.

Trouble? What kind of trouble?

I wanted to ask, but I was a boy, and a poor one at that. I didn't have the nerve to pry into a girl's family business, and I didn't even know exactly where she lived.

For those few days, I was in a daze. There were no more warm buns in my desk, and I suddenly realized those buns weren't just food. They were what held me together. I couldn't concentrate on problem sets, couldn't take in a word I read. All I could think about were her smiling eyes.

Three days later, Rose came back.

She had lost weight, her face was sallow, and her eyes were red and swollen. The girl who used to smile all the time had gone quiet, almost dazed.

I wrote her a note and passed it over: "What happened? If you're in trouble, tell me. If I can help, I will. Don't keep it bottled up."

I knew a broke kid like me probably couldn't do much, but I just wanted her to know I was there.

She read the note and didn't write back. She just put her head down on the desk, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed. Hearing her muffled crying cut me to the heart.

When evening study hall let out, the field was empty. I stopped her under the pull-up bars.

The moonlight stretched our shadows long, and it looked a little bleak.

"Rose, what's going on? Please don't cry. When you cry, it tears me up inside." I was frantic now, standing in front of her with no idea what to do.

She looked up at me, her eyes brimming with tears, her voice terribly hoarse. "Grant, my dad... something happened to my dad."

Those words hit me like a bolt out of the blue.

It turned out her father had been dragged into an embezzlement case by someone else and taken away. Their house had been seized, and her family, which had always been well-off, collapsed overnight. On top of that, paying back the government's losses had drained everything they had, and they were buried in debt.

"My mom couldn't take it. She got sick, and now we don't even have money for groceries..." She was crying like a helpless child. "Grant, I might... I might not be able to stay in school."

Looking at her, my heart ached as if someone had squeezed it hard. Without a second thought, I pulled a bundled handkerchief from the inner pocket of my undershirt and unwrapped it, layer after layer.

Inside was the money I had saved over two years. Some of it I'd earned hauling bricks at construction sites over summer break, some from selling scrap I collected, and some was bus fare I'd saved by not going home. All together, it was a little over three hundred dollars. I'd meant to keep it for my travel money to college and my first month of living expenses.

"Take it!" I pushed the money into her hands, my own hands shaking. "You can't quit school! Even if the sky falls, you've still got me! Use this to get your mom to a doctor first, or pay your tuition!"

She refused no matter what, pulling her hands back. "This is money you sweated and bled for. I can't take it! You still have to go to college! This is everything you have!"

"I'm strong. If it comes to that, I'll go haul bricks at a construction site to put you through school!" I shouted, my eyes red, so loud the birds burst out of the trees. "Rose, you listen to me. If it weren't for those two buns of yours these past two years, I'd have starved to death long ago! This money is me paying you back for the buns! If you don't take it, it means you look down on me! It means you want me to feel guilty for the rest of my life!"

She looked at me, her tears falling harder and harder, until finally she threw herself into my arms and burst into loud sobs.

That was the first time I ever held her. She was so thin, so soft, trembling like a leaf in the wind. My arms were stiff, and I didn't dare move. All I could do was let her tears soak through my polyester shirt. They were scalding tears, and they burned straight into my heart.