On Monday morning, I was excited about school for the first time. I tried on five different outfits. I did my hair in a semi-fishtail, sort of, but then took it out because it looked bad but who cares and got all my homework packed in order of my classes.

I woke Berk up.

I woke Mom up.

I got cereal for everyone.

So excited.

But then

Mom’s cell rang. It was 7:25 in the morning.

We all looked at each other.

“I don’t know the number,” she said.

“Maybe it’s Dad,” Berk said.

Mom and I looked at her. Berk never talked about Dad. I’d almost thought she’d forgotten about him.

“It’s not Dad,” Mom said.

Mom answered it.

Berk and I watched as she listened to the voice on the other end.

“What are you talking about?” she said.

She stood up.

“What? She would never do that.” She walked over to the window. Glanced at Berkeley.

“I have nowhere else to take her. Why didn’t you tell me over the weekend?”

I looked at Berkeley who was not looking at me or Mom. Rather she was shoveling Cheerios in her mouth and maybe, just maybe, trying not to smile.

Finally, Mom got off the phone.

She walked over to Berk. Sat down.

“Berkeley?”

Berk took another bite. Still not looking at Mom.

“Berkeley. Did you take something at day care?”

I looked at Mom. Shocked. “What are you talking about?”

Mom ignored me. Stared at Berk.

“She said you took some money out of one of the worker’s purse.”

Berkeley was chewing. And chewing and chewing. Finally, each word taking forever to get out of her mouth, she said, “I put it back.”

“You put it back?”

“I put it back.”

Mom looked at me. I was just as surprised as her.

“She says you can’t come back.”

“Oh,” Berk said.

“And she said that she might call the police.”

“Okay,” Berkeley said. She reached for more milk.

“Did you hear me, miss? You could go to jail.”

Berkeley nodded. She was so calm.

She wasn’t going to jail. We all knew that.

Mom stood there. I thought she might yell at Berk. Or at me. Or at someone.

But then she just sat down. She was too tired to yell, I guess. “What am I going to do now?”

“Can’t you find another place?” I asked.

She looked at her hands.

“Mom. There are a lot of day cares.”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t even afford that place. I have to be at work in fifteen minutes. I don’t have time for this.”

We all sat quiet.

“Why can’t I just stay home?” she said. “Livy can take care of me.”

I looked at her. She smiled at me and I realized, she planned this. She planned it. She thought she could stay home if she got kicked out of day care. She probably thought I would get to stay home, too.

She was smart.

Mom looked at her. “Livy can’t stay home. She has to go to school.”

“What about Delilah?” I asked.

“She has work,” Mom said.

“Maybe she could stay home.”

Mom looked irritated. “I’m not going to ask someone to miss work for us, Olivia.”

I nodded.

Then I said, “Melody doesn’t have a job.”

Mom’s eyes narrowed. “No.”

“Why not? She’s really nice.”

“No,” Mom said again.

I didn’t understand why Melody made Mom so mad. All she did was make cookies and sit on her dumb step and tell me she’d reverse perm my hair. Had they had a fight or something? Had Melody done something wrong?

Mom rubbed her forehead. “What am I going to do? What am I going to do?”

She glanced at Berkeley. “Do you think you could take care of yourself?” Mom said.

Was she serious?

Berk perked up.

“Mom. She’s five,” I said.

Mom shot me a look.

She knew I was right. You can’t leave a five-year-old home alone, especially not where we lived.

But I’d made her mad. I could feel that I’d made her mad.

“I can’t take her to work. Dennis would go through the roof,” Mom said.

I thought about my mom’s boss going through the roof and he was bald with round cheeks and I thought it would probably hurt and he’d bleed a lot.

“There’s that one free preschool,” I said.

Some lady had brought over a flyer for a head start place that was free for people who didn’t have very much money.

She’d knocked on the door and Mom had stood on the stoop. “What makes you think we can’t afford a regular preschool?” Mom asked, holding the pamphlet up to shade her eyes from the sun.

The lady was really nice. You could tell because she was wearing Bermuda shorts with white socks and she had frizzy hair and when Mom got after her, she turned red and got all fidgety. She probably was just out of college and trying to save people like me and Mom and Berk. Trying to make our lives better. I wished Mom would let her alone. Sometimes she doesn’t let people alone.

“I’m sure you could afford it,” the woman said.

“Oh really? You think we have enough money?” Mom said back.

The lady looked at me and I tried to give her a nice smile. A smile like, “It’s okay. We probably don’t have enough money.” She looked back at Mom who said, “If you think we have enough money, why did you bring this here? Who sent you?”

“Oh,” the lady said, smoothing her hair. “No one sent me. I mean, I’m taking the flyers everywhere.”

“Everywhere?”

“Everywhere.”

“Are you taking them to the houses on the hill?”

“Absolutely.”

Mom stared at her and then the lady said, “I actually have to keep going. I hope you fine women have a fine day,” and Mom said, “Fine women? Fine day? Who talks like that?”

But the lady was already walking away.

I looked at Mom.

“Why’d you have to do that?” I’d asked her.

“Do what?”

“You know what.”

“I have no idea,” Mom said. “Plus we don’t need some stupid government preschool.”

“We don’t?” I asked.

“We don’t,” she said.

And that was that.

Until now.

Now we needed some stupid government preschool. We needed something.

She looked at me. “Do you think you could take her to school with you?”

I stared at her.

She stared back at me.

Not laughing.

Not saying, “Just kidding.”

Just sitting there with her Diet Coke and her makeup.

She wanted me to take my baby sister to school with me. To my classes. To lunch. To fifteen-minute break.

“I’ll just stay home,” I said.

She closed her eyes and blew out a big burst of air. “I’ll take care of it,” she said.

She got up, grabbed her mug, and walked over and slammed it in the sink.

She stood there, her shoulders slumped and then, this really happened, she started to tremble. Like a leaf.

Just watching her made the whole room shrink.

I had to do something.

I had to fix this.

I said, “I guess I can take her to school with me.”

Mom shook her head. “No, you can’t.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

Mom looked at me. “I don’t think it’s allowed, is it?”

She was asking me like I knew the answer to that question and she didn’t, even though I was pretty sure we both knew that no way was it okay for me to take my five-year-old sister with me to middle school. No way.

But I said, “It’s fine. People do it all the time.”

It was stupid.

It didn’t even make sense.

There was no way.

No way.

But then she nodded. She nodded. And said, “Just for today.”

Just for today.

Just for today.

“You can try it out and see how it goes,” she said.

Then I was nodding, too, hard to find any words.

She smiled. “Thank you, Olivia. I can always count on you.”