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Sixty-three people. Nine dollars. I did the fees in my head without meaning to. And I sat there, staring at the number and thought, that’s money I made while I was asleep. While I was at the post office.

Everything inside of me lights up. That’s never happened to me before. Every dollar I’ve ever earned, I worked hard for. It doesn’t need me in an aisle. It doesn’t need a Goodwill, or a car, or a post office. It just needs the internet.

I don’t let myself get too excited. I just print the labels.

Paige comes in without knocking because my door is open, which is the rule now. Open means come in. Rafe is at his parents’ house, getting ready for camp.

Paige has her coffee in one hand and my coffee in the other. She does little things like makes me a coffee since she’s making hers. It’s sweet. She puts mine on the desk next to the printer, sits on the chair and drinks hers, watching the labels come out.

We’ve gotten like this. I don’t know when. She just started being here, and I just started letting her, and now she’s in my room most mornings and most nights. Kylie pulls me out into things. Paige just sits next to me inside of them. It’s different. I like both.

We went to Goodwill together last Saturday, and she held up a blazer and said worth it or not, deadpan in my exact voice from the videos, and I laughed so hard a woman at the end of the aisle looked at us.

Her phone lights up on the floor next to her. I can see the screen from the desk. Koda.

She looks at it and turns it face down on the carpet without picking it up. She drinks her coffee.

I don’t say anything.

It lights up again through the carpet. I can see the glow at the edges. Then it stops.

Rafe comes back that afternoon. I thought that after the draft, he’d go somewhere in his head. Pull back. Start leaving early, the way people do, so it doesn’t hurt when they actually go. He doesn’t. He’s here with me a lot. He trains in the mornings at the Woodbury rink with whoever’s around, skating and working on his first three steps the way the woman with the binder told him to. And then he comes here. Every day, smelling like the rink. He eats my food. He lies on my bed, watches me edit videos over my shoulder and tells me which ones are boring, which he’s wrong about. He drives me to the post office and carries the packages in. He sleeps here every night, taking up the whole bed under my slanted ceiling with his feet hanging off the end.

Camp isn’t leaving. I know that. He told me it’s a week. They look at him. Then they sit down with Sato. They might say go back to Woodbury for another year. They might say sign, start in the fall. They might say anything. It isn’t decided. But he’s decided that he’ll sign.

I’m so proud of him I can feel it everywhere in my body.

That night, after he’s asleep, I make a spreadsheet. I name it Fall. And I make columns. Housing. Income. School. Transportation. Savings. Travel.

Housing. The grad student comes back mid-August. I message her, right there, at eleven-forty at night, and ask if there’s any chance she’d sublet through December and write asked — waiting in the cell. Under that: Paige? She hasn’t said what she’s doing in the fall. Under that: Kylie — Hargrove floor (lol). Under that: two listings I found on the board at the student center, both rooms in houses, both within walking distance of campus, both cheap. I put the prices in. I put the distance to the post office.

Income. That one I know. I put in June. I put in a conservative guess for fall, and I lower it because sourcing is harder in winter. I put in the guide. Sixty-three sales in three days. I don’t put in a guess for that. I don’t know how to guess that yet.

School. I look up the community college two towns over, and their online classes, and what a semester costs there, which is so much less than Woodbury that I have to read the number twice. I look up a business certificate. I write maybe spring? and move on.

Transportation.

I stop.

Rafe’s car. I’ve been using it all summer. He leaves the keys on my dresser in the mornings when he goes to train and gets a ride from Barnes, so I can go to Goodwill, the post office, and the estate sale on Saturdays out on the county road. He gave it to me in Buffalo. He’s going to give it to me again for camp. I already know he is. And after camp, if he signs, he takes it with him.

I look it up the bus route 4 that goes from the corner of Wren to the Goodwill on Route 9 with one transfer every fifty minutes and the last one back is at six-fifteen. The post office does carrier pickup if you schedule it the night before. There’s a woman in a Facebook group who sells a used bike, a good one, for sixty dollars. I write it all down. Route 4 — transfer at Main. Carrier pickup — schedule PM before. Bike — $60? I look at estate sales I could reach without a car. There are fewer. I write that down, too.

And then Travel.

I look up the city where the Sentinels’ minor-league team plays. Flights from the airport an hour from here. Round trip. Booked three weeks out. Booked a month out. Which days are cheapest. How far the arena is from the airport. Their schedule last season, so I can guess at this one. How many home games. What months.

I do the math, even though he’s not even signed yet. I can’t not consider it. I can see him once every six weeks. Once every five, if I work hard enough. A long weekend. Thursday to Sunday, when there’s a home game Friday and Saturday.

Once every six weeks is realistic, I type, in the cell.

And then I look at it.

Realistic.

Realistic for what? For who? I’ve never had this conversation with him. He’s never said a single word about it.

I look at my spreadsheet. The flights, the weekends, the bus to the Goodwill, the bike, and how often I’m allowed to see him, and he’s right there behind me, asleep, and he doesn’t know any of it is happening.