“It’s fine,” she said. “We’ve worked it out. It’s just a few afternoons a week, a few hours here and there. It’s not bad.”

“Do you want to do it? I know it’s college money, but that shouldn’t be your big concern.”

It was college money. It was a lot of college money. Somewhere out there, a bank account with her name on it was growing.

“All I’m saying is, you can quit. I want you to quit if it feels like too much. The show is done. You don’t have to—”

“No,” Scarlett said. “I want to do it. I…like it.”

A piece of glass fell from the chandelier and landed on the silver fabric, like a dirty, loose tooth. It punctuated their conversation, bringing the matter to a close.

In Biology I, Scarlett had been taught that carbon was the building block of life. They forgot to mention the other element: Element M. Money. Money determined everything. You needed money for your health—they’d learned that lesson when Marlene’s medical bills came in. (Though they were never supposed to talk about that. It was a Martin Family Rule.) You needed money for school. You needed money to get across the city, and to do things on weekends. You needed money to go away for the summer, like most of Scarlett’s friends had. Summer in the city was hot and terrible, and outside of the city there were opportunities. If you had the money. Which most of Scarlett’s friends did. Dakota, for example, had been in France at a language immersion program. She had arranged this little picnic in the park to celebrate the fact that they were all back and together. Only Scarlett had been here all along, because she was the most stone broke out of the group.

Scarlett knew better than to resent her friends for being more well off. But sometimes…sometimes it was just a little annoying that she had to lead a slightly different life from the rest of them. Her dad could pretend all he wanted, but it did make a difference that she had a job. And when the time came for her to go to college, if they could even afford it, every penny in that account would matter. Her friends had more choices about how to spend their time. They could “improve” themselves. She just had to take what she was dealt.

By the time she reached Central Park, Scarlett was feeling massively sorry for herself. She didn’t exactly see herself as a character right out of Dickens—cleaning chimneys, eating soup made of fishheads and old shoelaces, getting sold to a local blacksmith for a few chickens and a dozen bars of soap—but it was still pretty bad. Add to that the fact that Eric was gone, and her tragedy was complete.