Chapter One

My mother could hear money through walls.

When I was fourteen, I came home with forty dollars folded inside my bra. I’d earned it cleaning out Miss Patsy’s storeroom. I wanted sneakers that hadn’t belonged to somebody else first.

Mommy was frying chicken. She took one look at me and asked, “How much she pay you?”

At seventeen, I’d stopped trying to hide my paycheck.

Mostly.

“Two hundred and eighty-six dollars and forty cents,” I told her outside the restaurant on Friday afternoon.

Danielle Collie held out her hand.

Her nails were done. Mine weren’t. That shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did.

“I need lunch money for next week.”

“You work at a restaurant.”

“They don’t let us eat the food.”

“Maya.”

I handed her the envelope. She counted the cash while I stood beside her car, still wearing my apron.

“Your phone bill due,” she said.

“I know.”

“Light bill high.”

“I know.”

“You eat. You bathe. You have somewhere to sleep.”

“I know, Mommy.”

“Then stop watching my hand every time I take money from you.”

She put the envelope in her purse.

Across the parking lot, a man sat on an overturned milk crate beneath the awning of a closed electronics shop. Grey threaded through his beard. He held a newspaper open, though he was watching us over its edge.

Leon.

Everybody at the plaza knew him. Some called him Professor. Some called him Bum. Most people walked past as though the milk crate were empty.

Mommy followed my gaze.

“Don’t fool with them people.”

“I don’t.”

She opened her car door.

“My money for the week?” I asked.

She sighed. “How much?”

“Twenty-five?”

“Twenty.”

“Bus is—”

“Maya.”

“Twenty is fine.”

She pulled a bill from the envelope I’d just given her.

“Thank you,” I said.

I hated myself for that.

Mommy drove away. I went back inside and spent another three hours smiling at people.

At closing, a man left twelve dollars on his table because he didn’t want to wait for change. I stared at it until Tasha came up behind me.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“I’m putting it in the tip pool.”

“I know.” She picked up two plates. “I mean don’t let them people make you bitter.”

“I’m not bitter.”

“Mm-hmm. Table six need clearing.”

At nine-thirty, I clocked out. Leon was still under the awning.

“Your mother short-changed you,” he said as I passed.

I stopped. “That’s none of your business.”

“Didn’t say it was.”

“Then why are you talking about it?”

“Because you stopped.”

I should have kept walking. Instead, I turned back.

“She pays bills.”

“Most adults do.”

“She takes care of me.”

“I hope so.”

“She gave me twenty dollars.”

“I saw.”

Leon folded his newspaper. “You work hard?”

“Yes.”

“Then I hope you get to keep something you earned.”

A bus passed at the far end of the road.

“That yours?” he asked.

I checked my phone. “Damn.”

“Next one in forty minutes.”

“How do you know?”

“I ride the bus too.”

I glanced at his milk crate. He noticed.

“Homeless people travel, Maya.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Your coworkers say it.”

Mommy picked me up twenty-three minutes later and complained the whole drive home. Gas wasn’t free. She had work in the morning. I needed to be more responsible.

After she went to bed, I took my chemistry textbook down from the shelf.

Sixty-nine dollars lay between the chapters on acids and bases. Almost five months of tips, saved bus fare, and small lies. By my eighteenth birthday, I might have a hundred. Maybe enough to spend one night somewhere else.

My phone buzzed.

Is this Maya Collie?

Unknown number.

Then:

David Collie’s daughter?

I sat down.

Who is this?

My name is Renee. I’m your father’s cousin. I’m sorry. I thought someone told you.

I called her before she could send another message.

“What happened to my father?”

“Maya.” Her voice softened. “He passed away Tuesday morning.”

Friday.

He had been dead for three days.

“How?”

“A heart attack.”

From my mother’s room, I heard the television. The fan beside my bed clicked each time it turned left.

“Your father talked about you all the time,” Renee said.

I almost laughed. “You have the wrong Maya.”

“Maya Danielle Collie? Seventeen? Birthday November twenty-third?”

“How do you know that?”

“Because David knew his daughter’s birthday.”

Mommy’s bedroom door opened.

I ended the call, deleted the messages, and put my phone facedown. Three seconds later she knocked.

“Maya?”

“Yeah?”

“Open the door.”

I opened it. She looked at my bed, then at my phone.

“Your father dead,” she said.

I should have looked shocked. Instead, I looked surprised that she’d told me.

Her eyes narrowed.

“Who called you?”

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