“There’s a grace period,” my dad says. “Calm down. Everything will be fine.”

“You say that, but that doesn’t make it true. We can’t have a grace period indefinitely. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to figure out a way to pay.”

“We’ll get there,” my dad says. “Yelling at me and acting like a . . . like this all the time isn’t going to help.”

“Acting like a what?” my mom says.

“Just forget it.”

Footsteps come closer to the front door, so I quickly run back to my bike and pretend I just got here.

My dad swings open the door and stomps out. He doesn’t even see me as he storms to his van. He gets in and pulls out way too fast. If I’d just been pulling in the driveway, he could have hit me.

My mom yells a bad word through the screen window as she slams something into the kitchen sink. It clangs and she swears again. Until recently, my mom never yelled or swore. And certainly never called my dad names.

I go inside and find her crying in the kitchen.

“Oh, Rachel. I’m sorry. Did you hear us fighting?”

“I think the whole neighborhood might have.”

She slumps onto a chair at the kitchen table, looking completely wiped out.

“Is everything OK?” I ask. “Why aren’t you both at work?”

“Huh? Oh.” She sighs. “The bank called and . . . we just got caught up in dealing with some money stuff.”

“Why were you fighting?”

She smiles weakly at me. “It was nothing, honey. Money stuff always makes us stressed, but we’ll manage.”

“It didn’t sound like you believed that a second ago.”

She clasps her hands together, then unclasps them and sweeps away imaginary crumbs from the tabletop.

“Sometimes I overreact,” she says.

It feels like a lie.

I sit down in the empty chair next to her. “Mom, I want to help out. I’ll give you the money I make from the Townsends. I know it’s not much, but —”

She reaches over and pats my head in her special way. “Thanks, Rach. We’ll see.”

We’re quiet for a minute, then she looks around. “Where’s Ivy?”

“She stayed at the beach with Micah.”

“Why did you come home without —?” She stops and notices my lobster-red skin. “Oh, dear God, Rachel, what happened?”

She jumps up and wets a dish towel with cold water and presses it against my cheeks, arms, and shoulders. It feels so good and awful at the same time.

“I fell asleep while everyone was playing in the water. I forgot to put sunblock on when I got out.”

“Oh, Ray,” my mom says. “This is going to hurt for a while.”