“Fifty thousand what?” Amira steps to the left, closing in our little circle, and we have officially turned our backs on the rest of the semicrowded main hall, five minutes before the first bell.

I heartily approve of this maneuver.

“Dollars. People have donated fifty thousand dollars to Lullaby Doe’s funeral fund. And the number keeps going up by the minute.” Sophia shows us her phone, and sure enough, that number on the right changes as I watch, jumping up by twenty dollars.

Amira grabs Sophia’s phone and starts scrolling through the list of donors. It comes as no surprise to me that I don’t recognize a single one of the names. They’re strangers. From all over the country. No, from all over the world.

“Wow. But you know we can’t keep all that extra, right? We said we’d give anything over the funeral costs to a charity to be determined—”

“I know. But I didn’t think we’d really get to do that. I didn’t think we’d actually get to eight thousand! And now we have so many options!”

Sophia takes her phone back and starts walking, and Amira and I fall in next to her, listening to words spewing from her mouth like water from the crack in a dam.

“We have to hold another Key Club meeting and vote on some charities. And with this much money, I’m thinking we should hire someone to manage it. I mean, if it keeps coming in, this could be way more than a single donation. It could be an endowment.”

“What’s an endowment?” I ask. And immediately I wish I’d just kept my mouth shut and googled it later, to avoid looking like an idiot.

“It’s, like, instead of giving all the money to a single charity, you put the money in the bank and draw interest from it, so you can donate to that charity for a long time without ever touching the principal.” Sophia shrugs. “My uncle sets things like that up, at his job.”

“How did this happen?” Amira’s still staring at Sophia’s phone. The number’s gone up by another one hundred thirty dollars since we’ve been watching it. In small donations from people in California. And Georgia. And Wisconsin. And New Mexico. “This is crazy.”

“It’s the news. CNN ran a feel-good story about our GoFundMe last night, and donations skyrocketed.”

“Holy crap,” I breathe, still watching the numbers change on her screen.

“Yeah. So I’m calling another emergency meeting of the Key Club during tutorial, and it’d be great if you could each come up with a charity or two to suggest. For us to vote on. Oh!”

Sophia stops walking again, and I really hope she’s done consuming caffeine for the day.

“Beckett, can you find out how soon we can have the funeral? When they’re going to, um … release the body?”