The collection notice on the cafeteria door listed twenty-three family accounts owing a total of eight hundred eight dollars and forty cents.

I wrote the two numbers at the top of the page and took the debt away from my paycheck total.

Once the whole school lunch account was paid off, six dollars and sixty cents would be left on the page.

“Is six dollars enough to get my second-grade backpack?” Lily asked.

“Not yet,” I said.

“We’ve still got thirty-one thousand coins to wash.”

Noah looked up from his pan, his eyes wide in the porch light.