He laughs at my eyes, big as dinner plates. “Sold every one of those boxes of brownies, Peeper. I bet I can sell the same amount on Monday too if you can get more boxes.”

“How much is it?” I ask.

Daddy shrugs. “Don’t know. More than a little, I suspect.”

I sit down at the table, carefully separate the bills into stacks, and start counting. I gasp. I count a second time to make sure I’m right.

“Daddy!” I say. “There’s one hundred and thirty-eight dollars here!” I can hardly believe it. I quickly do the math in my head. “That only leaves us a little over three hundred dollars to raise.”

Mama comes out of the bathroom, braiding her wet hair. “That’s wonderful, honey. Let’s put it in an envelope and take it down to Mrs. Bailey. She’s the one handling the business end of this.”

Riding the elevator down with Mama, I sing over and over in my head, only three hundred more, only three hundred more. I curl my toes inside my shoes. Our plan might actually work!

“Guess how much money Daddy gave me from brownie sales at work today?” I ask Karina, snapping my fingers with excitement when we get to their room.

Karina shrugs. She’s doing her homework on her bed like I do. “Sixty dollars?”

Her little sister, Chloe, bounces on the other bed. “A million dollars!” she shouts.

I laugh. “More than sixty and less than a million.”

I hand the envelope to Mrs. B. She looks at the amount Mama wrote on the outside of the envelope and whistles. “That’s fantastic!”

“Yeah,” I say, “and Daddy says he thinks he can sell that much again on Monday if you can get more brownies.”

Mrs. B smiles. “I just got off the phone with the district troop leader. She’ll be bringing over a bunch more boxes and order forms first thing tomorrow.”

She takes the envelope and puts it in a metal lockbox. “This is a great start, Piper, but don’t forget, we only get to keep a portion of our brownie sales money.”

My heart drops down ten floors on the Elevator of Disappointment. I’d conveniently forgotten that little fact.

I look from Mrs. Bailey to Karina. Karina shakes her head. “The National Firefly Girls Council keeps sixty percent of what we raise to cover things like the cost of the brownies, vests, badges, craft supplies, that sort of thing.”

How could I have forgotten that? “Forty percent of one hundred thirty-eight dollars isn’t much.”

“All the more reason to keep selling brownies,” Mama says.

Mrs. B touches my cheek. “Don’t you worry, Piper. I’ll let you know as soon as those boxes come in. We’ve just started.”

We don’t have time, though, to “just start.” We’ve got to be over halfway done.

50

Just in Case

“You’re one special boy,”