Mom stood there, hair in a low bun, not in her grocery polo or her bar black—just jeans and a soft flannel shirt I’d only ever seen on laundry day. Her eyes crinkled.

  “You’re home,” she said, like this was surprising information. Then she stepped back to let me in. “Good. I was starting to worry that the bus had eaten you.”

  I blinked. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  “I traded with Marta.” She closed the door behind me. The apartment smelled like lemon cleaner, coffee that had gone from fresh to just-warm, and something tomato-y simmering low on the stove.

  “First day at your fancy school? I’m not missing that.”

  My throat did a small, traitorous tighten. I looked down so she wouldn’t see it.

  “Oh,” I said, very eloquent. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I know.” She gave a little shrug, like rearranging her entire day was no big thing. “But I wanted to. How did it go?” She tipped her head toward the backpack. “You look like they sent you home with half a library and fancy new luggage.”

  “They did,” I said. “I’m…gonna put this in my room first. It’s heavy.”

  “Go,” she said. “Then you’re giving me the full report.”

  No escape clause there.

  In my room, the light cut a thin bar across the quilt. I dropped the backpack onto my bed; the springs complained. For a heartbeat I just stood there, hand on the zipper, thinking about the brown-paper bundle and its tidy YOUR EYES ONLY.

  Later.

  I unzipped the main compartment, slid out the obvious textbooks—bio, history, English, a shiny algebra that looked like it meant business—and left the parcel tucked flat against the back. Zipped the bag again, like I was sealing a secret. The normal books went into my arms, their weight still massive.

  When I came back out, Mom had migrated to the kitchen table. The yellow citation from the other night was gone; in its place sat a notepad with “Questions for Cho” written at the top in her neat, looping print. The pen was lined up perfectly parallel to the page.

  She stood when she saw the stack. “My God, Di,” she said, taking some from the top before I dropped them. “They’re not kidding around.”

  “Yeah,” I puffed, setting the rest down. The table thunked.

  She ran her palm over BIOLOGY’s glossy cover, thumb grazing the raised letters. “Brand-new,” she murmured, half to herself. “They smell it.” She caught herself, smiled. “You know what I mean.”

  “Like money,” I said.

  “Like…opportunity,” she corrected gently, but her eyes had the same flicker mine did.

  She reached for the paper on top of the stack. “Is this your schedule?”

  “Yeah. Patrick said it’s not final-final until they grade my tests, but this is the idea.”

  We sat. The chair opposite scraped as she pulled it in. She smoothed the page once, then again, corners aligned with the table's edge.

  English 9, Bio, Algebra, World History, Latin I, “PE / Conditioning,” “Free period,” a couple of blocks labeled simply “Elective” and one that just said ENRICHMENT in generic type.

  “They’ve got you in some serious math,” she said, tapping Algebra. Pride threaded through the worry. “And biology. You always liked science.”

  “Still do,” I said. “I didn’t have any classes today.” I shrugged. “They did a ton of testing this morning. A guy named Mr. Adler proctored. He was nice. Not…scary nice, just regular nice.”

  “That’s good.” She traced down the page. “What’s ‘Enrichment’?”

  “No idea.” I kept my face casual. “They said something about logic puzzles today. Maybe it’s more of that. Critical thinking or whatever.”

  “Hmph.” She filed that under “Ask Cho” with a look. “And lunch?” Practical as ever. “You get it with tuition, right? I don’t need to pack you anything?”

  “They have a student center. Food’s…insane.” I thought about the pizza, the china plates, the way my cafeteria back home had always smelled faintly of boiled hot dogs. “It’s included.”

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  Her shoulders dropped a fraction. One tension line erased. “Good,” she said. “One less thing.”

  She looked up at me, eyes bright. “Okay. Start at the beginning. Bus okay? Did you get lost? Were the kids—” a tiny pause “—nice?”

  I wrapped my hands around the china teapot Mom kept on the table “for company”, to give them something to do. “Bus was fine. It’s more like a shuttle van.” Little kids in jumpers and unicorn

  backpacks flashed in my head. “I was the oldest on it this morning. That was…weird, but whatever. The driver knew where to drop me.”

  “And the school?”

  “It’s…a lot.” I huffed out a breath. “Like living in a college brochure. Old brick, huge lawn, a pool that looks like the Olympics called and asked for it back. You remember it.”

  Her mouth tugged up. “How could I not?”

  “So they threw me in a room with Mr. Adler and a stack of tests. Math, reading, writing, science, then these logic puzzles that were actually kind of fun, which I’m trying not to think about too hard.” I gave her a crooked smile. “They fed me, too. Real pizza, not cardboard.”

  “Good,” she said again, more firmly this time. “You need fuel for all that thinking.” Then, carefully casual: “Did you…meet anyone?”

  “Yeah.” I fiddled with the edge of the schedule. “There’s this guy, Vinh, who sat in for the last test. Kind of…serious. In a good way. And my student guides were these twins, Sera and Shara Torres? They’re in my grade.”

  “Twins?” Her face opened. Linda had a soft spot for family, even if our version was a half-remembered dad-shaped hole. “Nice?”

  “Really nice.” A little too nice, if they knew about monsters, but that was a later problem. “They showed me around. The lawn, the academic buildings, the pool. They’re on the swim team. Like…Trials-level. Mom, you’ve literally seen them on TV.”

  “Those girls?” Her eyebrows climbed. “With the…what was it, national something?”

  “Olympic Trials qualifiers,” I said. “Yeah. Those girls. They’re just…walking around. Going to chem.”

  She let out a low whistle. “That’s…wow.” She shook her head like she could rattle the awe back into place. “And they were friendly?”

  “Yeah.” I couldn’t keep the small smile down. “They said they’d see me in gym, at least. Help me not get run over by the lunch crowd.”

  “I’m glad,” she said quietly. Her thumb stroked the margin of the schedule once, then again. “I worried, you know. New school, rich kids, you coming in the middle of the year. I didn’t want you eating alone in a bathroom stall.”

  “Gross,” I said automatically, but the picture lodged anyway, a little ghost of what could’ve been. “I’m not. Eating alone, I mean. Or in a bathroom.”

  She snorted, the sound small but real. “Good.”

  For a moment, the only sounds were the fridge’s hum and the faint tick of the stove. She flipped the schedule over, then back, as if it might reveal more on a second pass.

  “I’m proud of you,” she said, almost abruptly, like the words had been building pressure and finally found a crack. “For…all of this. For doing the tests, for going, for…trying.”

  Heat crawled up my neck in a way that felt different from shame. I stared very intently at the butterfly crowning the lid.

  “It’s just school,” I said, too fast.

  “It’s not ‘just’ anything,” she said. “It’s a big deal. And you’re handling it.” She cleared her throat, as if that had been too much honesty in one go. “Tomorrow, same shuttle?”

  “Yeah. They said it’ll pick me up at the door again. I should probably leave five minutes earlier, I don’t want to make them wait.”

  “I’ll be here.” She tapped the table lightly. “I don’t go in till ten tomorrow. I can make you breakfast. Walk out with you. See the van.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I know,” she said. “I want to.”

  That same stupid tightness tried to climb up my throat again. I swallowed it down with a nod.

  “Okay,” I said. “You can vet the mysterious shuttle. Make sure it’s not secretly a clown car.”

  She made a face. “Don’t even joke about that.”

  I laughed, for real this time. The sound bounced off lemon-clean walls and came back warmer.

  Her gaze flicked to the book stack. “You want to put these in your room? Or are we starting homework now?” She half-smiled to show she was kidding. Mostly.

  “Room,” I said quickly. “I’ll…look at them later. After dinner.”

  “Speaking of…” She pushed back her chair and stood, tucking a strand of hair back into her bun. “I’ve got stuffed shells in the oven, celebrate your first day with carbs.”

  “Carbs are the only acceptable celebration,” I said gravely.

  She shook her head, amused, and crossed to the stove. I gathered the heavy books back into my arms. Their weight was more than physical.

  In my room, I set them down on the desk, spines lined up like soldiers. The backpack sagged on the bed where I’d left it, secret parcel still hidden inside.

  My phone teased me from the nightstand. I grabbed it and thumbed out a text before I could overthink.

  Me: Survived Day One. No clown car.

  Me: Also probably attending monster-hunting school. You free after dinner?

  The dots popped up almost immediately.

  Sketch: After dinner? Nooo! Save me! Mom’s making something with vegetables. ??

  Me: Heroic sacrifice. I’ll remember you fondly. ?? 7?ish?

  Me: I have MATERIALS.

  Sketch: You can’t just say “materials” in all caps and not expect me to run.

  Sketch: 7 it is.

  Warmth pooled low in my chest. Mom had rearranged her whole day so she’d be here when I walked in; Sketch was rearranging his evening because I’d texted one word.

  Dinner smelled like every Sunday we couldn’t afford to eat out. Mom moved around the kitchen with that particular focused calm she only got when she was cooking and not also doing six other things.

  We didn’t talk about citations or cops or how close I’d come to juvie. We talked about bus times and alarm clocks and whether my old sneakers could survive gym in the new school. We both pictured my ratty sneakers in the shiny, expensive facility. Mom looked embarrassed and said I needed a new pair. It was…nice. Warm. Like someone had turned the apartment’s brightness up a notch.

  After dishes—me drying, Mom washing, both of us pretending we weren’t tired—I escaped to my room with a “I should probably look at the books before my brain shuts down.”

  Door closed, I scanned the texts on the desk.

  Algebra, not the baby pre?stuff. Latin, because of course they did dead languages at a place with cupolas. Biology, World History, an English anthology that could double as a doorstop. Serious, heavy, real.

  The parcel stayed zipped in the backpack. I could feel its presence, though, like a hidden level on a game map.

  Belonging, but the good kind. Not the “jump off this metaphorical cliff and maybe Montana will let you sit at her lunch table” kind.

  I put my phone down and pulled the Algebra book closer, flipping through pages of fractions and linear equations that looked sharper than what my old school had thrown at us. My brain made a half?hearted attempt to care. Mostly, I was marking which sections would make Mom proud versus which would make me want to quietly die.

  Every few minutes, my gaze slid back to the backpack. To the brown paper I knew was inside, neat string, YOUR EYES ONLY in block letters.