Chapter 6: The Money Mom Gave Grandma

Clara's POV

I placed the towel and the nightgown on the bed, then opened the box.

The money inside wasn't neat. It wasn't organized into any kind of order.

There were ones and fives folded into uneven squares, a ten that had been smoothed flat and then creased again at an angle, a few quarters and dimes sitting loose at the bottom, cold against my fingertips.

I looked up at Grandma Irene.

She was standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, not quite looking at me—her gaze angled somewhere toward the window, like she was checking the weather.

"Your mama gave me that," she said. Her voice was flat, the same tone she'd used to tell me where the blankets were.

"A little at a time, whenever she could." She paused. "For now... just consider it returned to her."

I looked back down at the box.

I don't know what broke first—the part of me that had been holding it together all day, or the part of me that finally understood what I was holding.

I pressed my hand over my mouth and tried to breathe through it, tried to keep it quiet.

I didn't want to make a scene in this small plain room in this house that wasn't mine yet.

But my shoulders shook anyway, and I held the box against my chest like it was something that could hold me back together.

"Thank you," I managed. My voice came out wrecked. "Grandma, thank you—"

"Stop that." Her voice was sharper than I expected. "That money isn't from me. I was just keeping it. There's nothing to thank me for."

I tried to get my breathing under control.

She made a sound in her throat. "You're going to school tomorrow," she said. "I'm not taking you. There's a bicycle out front. Old. It makes noise. Use it anyway."

I wiped my face with the back of my hand and looked up at her.

"I will," I said. "I'll handle it myself."

"Good." She shifted slightly in the doorway. "Just remember, I’m not getting involved in anything else."

"Your only job is to study hard and get into college. The moment you get accepted, you leave this house and make your own way." Her chin lifted slightly. "That's how this works."

"I understand." I set the box carefully on the nightstand. "I won't be a problem. I promise."

She looked at me for a second and something crossed her face that I couldn't quite name. Then she turned toward the hallway.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time after that, with the wooden box on the nightstand and the room quiet around me.

After Grandma Irene left, I cleaned up the small room and finally let myself rest.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow I would go to my new school.

The thought stayed in my mind as I lay there, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, until exhaustion finally pulled me into sleep.

The next morning, my body woke me up.

For a few seconds, I just stared at the small room around me, confused.

The narrow walls. The unfamiliar dresser. The rain was gone. Through the window, sunlight filled the room.

This wasn't my corner of the living room.

I had actually made it to Grandma's house.

I sat up fast. My heart was going.

I got up, grabbed the change of clothes I'd set out the night before, and went downstairs.

But when I came fully downstairs, the house was quiet.

Too quiet.

I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked around.

The kitchen was empty.

The table was still clean from last night. The cabinets were closed. Nothing had been moved.

For a moment, I just stood there, unsure of what I was supposed to do.

Where did Grandma go?

Was I supposed to make breakfast?

The thought came and went almost immediately.

I didn't know where anything was. I didn't know what belonged to her. I didn't want to walk into her kitchen and start taking things like I owned the place.

My fingers tightened around the fabric of my shirt.

I was still learning how to be here.

How to exist in someone else's home without becoming a burden.

Maybe I could cook dinner tonight.

By then, Grandma Irene would probably be back, and I could ask her what she liked.

For now, I quickly cleaned up the living room instead.

I straightened the blanket on the couch, folded the things that had been left out, and made sure everything looked the way it had when I arrived.

Then I grabbed my backpack and stepped outside to find the bicycle.

The bike was older than I'd expected and louder than she'd warned me.

The moment I stepped outside, I saw the auto repair shop across the street—the place where I had seen that boy yesterday.

The roll-up door was already half-open. I could see the shapes of engine parts arranged along the front wall, and the legs of something large—a truck, maybe—up on a lift in the back.

No one outside. I kept going, but I looked back once before I turned the corner.

I didn't know why.

A couple of residents were out already—an older man walking a dog, a woman in scrubs heading to her car—and they both glanced at me the way people glance at something slightly out of place.

I put my head down and pedaled.

Oak Grove Community High School sat back from the road behind a parking lot and a low chain-link fence.

The building was brick, the old dark kind that had absorbed decades of weather, and the trim around the windows had started to peel in places.

The sign by the front entrance read Oak Grove Community High School—Building Futures, Serving Community, and the corner of it had warped away from the post, leaving a gap that someone had tried to fix with a zip tie.

I locked the bike in the rack and stood there for a second, looking at the building.

It wasn't what I'd come from. That was just a fact. The school in Pittsburgh had a glass atrium and a dedicated recording studio and a waiting list for AP Music Theory.

This one had a patched gymnasium window and a basketball scoreboard with two letters missing from the team name.

But it had a music program. I'd checked. Which meant it had everything I actually needed.

I gripped my backpack straps and walked through the front doors.

The hallway inside smelled like old floor wax and somebody's breakfast sandwich.

A few students stood by the lockers, and two of them turned to glance at me. I straightened my back, refusing to look away, and followed the signs toward the main office.

Mr. Lawrence's door was the one at the end of the hall with the name plate and the small ceramic apple on the corner of the desk that I could see through the glass panel. I knocked.

"Come in."