GOOD, I signed back. “That was Beau. He just got his acceptance letter from Yale.”

WOW, Mom signed one handed. COOL.

Her focus was on the vegetables, her shoulders tense, her movements short and jerky. It didn’t take more than a mere second to tell that Mom was seriously stressed. And she didn’t get like this often, only when things were really overwhelming. Immediately I wanted to berate myself for not doing more to help out.

Mom always said my main focus should be on school, but I couldn’t just ignore everything else going on at home. Connor was still on the mend and he needed more attention and care than usual, and Mom and I had been working extra to make sure that happened—or at least I hope I’d been working extra.

I was still contemplating this all when Mom asked me to get the bell peppers she forgot to pull out from the fridge. What was even more glaringly obvious than Mom’s stress was that there wasn’t as much food in the fridge as there usually was. The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t remember the last time Mom had been grocery shopping.

I snatched some bell peppers from the crisper, went to the sink to rinse them, then grabbed a cutting board to do some chopping. I had to shove a stack of mail off the counter to make room for the cutting board and paused when I saw the bill laying open on top, from Spring Meadows Home Health Care. The amount listed beside the due date next week made my jaw drop.

That’s almost the same as a hospital bill, I thought, my mind buzzing as I started carefully slicing into the pepper. The kind of hospital bill that took months to pay off.

We got plenty of those thanks to the extended hospital stays Connor seemed to have every few months or so. And Mom worked for a good company and had decent health insurance, but even as a seventeen-year-old I knew a bill like that was just outrageous.

I needed to start applying for jobs. Now was as good a time as any to start pulling my weight around here.

When I walked into AP Statistics the next morning, I saw Beau sitting in his regular spot with his sunshine smile in place. I gave him the once over as I crossed the room to my seat, trying to decide for myself if his smile was genuine or not.

He perked up more when I took my seat and he signed, GOOD MORNING.

HELLO, I signed back. YOU OK? YESTERDAY—

Beau started signing before I could even finish my sentence, saying, NO, FINE.

SURE? I signed skeptically.

PROMISE.