“Guys,” Scarlett said, wincing, “can’t you put up a sign or something?”

Her dad was pretending to be very interested in something behind one of the three refrigerators.

“Is it you or Marlene who freaks out about mice?” he asked casually. “I can never remember. I know one of you is spiders and one of you is mice.”

Scarlett responded by backing up against the worktable and pulling herself up to sit on it.

“Oh, right,” he said. “It’s you. You should ignore what we’re doing then.”

For once, the sucking face may have been preferable.

“Mrs. Amberson spoke to us this morning,” her mom said, opening a box of no-kill traps. “Has she told you her idea?”

“Oh, she told me,” Scarlett said, warily watching the floor.

“You don’t seem happy about it. I thought you’d be excited about working on a book.”

“Wait…what?”

“She wants you to be her assistant!” her mother said happily. “You really seem to have impressed her.”

“I thought you said I couldn’t get a job,” Scarlett said quickly.

Her parents gave each other googely-eyes for a moment.

“Look,” her dad said, “we had a long talk in bed this morning about all of you. And we’ve come to some decisions. We’ve realized just how much you all try.”

“Lola works hard and has voluntarily taken a year off from going to school or moving,” her mother said, reaching out for her dad’s hand. “Spencer has tried his best at auditioning, and he’s really straightened up in the last year—getting up at five every morning to work a breakfast shift. And you…you’ve never gotten much of a chance at all. And here comes something that is what you love, writing, that would pay a really generous amount.”

“It would?” Scarlett said.

“She’s offering to pay you five hundred dollars a week,” she said. “Cash. We need the help around here, but she is your guest, and that’s a lot of money. And a good opportunity.”

Five hundred dollars a week was an actual, literal fortune. Some of her friends got almost that much for their cab, clothing, and going out allowances.

“So,” he said, “are you happy with that?”

This would have been the right time to tell them about the tuna, and the lying to the security guard. But…five hundred dollars.

There was something else lingering here, though.

“What did you decide about Spencer?” she asked.

“Spencer told us that this show is connected to NYU and Juilliard, and that doing it might give him a very good chance to go there, maybe even get another scholarship, this time for something he really wants to do,” her dad said.

“We called the culinary school,” her mother said. “They said they’d have to let his scholarship go today, but there’s no reason he can’t reapply, and they’ll make a note on his file. There is a strong chance that if he reapplies in the next few weeks, they’ll be able to give him the same package. It’s not guaranteed, but it sounds like he has a good shot.”