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I frown up at the sky. At nothing. At everything. What were you thinking, Universe? What’s your endgame here?

And, a question I probably should have been asking all along…

Why involve me?

“Hey,” says Quint, touching my elbow. “Don’t let her get to you. She just feels strongly about these things. But we’re all doing the best we can, right?”

I peer at him, not convinced that’s true. Because if we were all doing the best we can, then there’d be no need for karmic justice in the first place.

THIRTY-THREE

“Which brings the total donations to…” Shauna hums to herself as she punches a few numbers into a calculator. The money from the donation jar is spread across the table in the break room. Stacks of green bills and an entire bank vault’s worth of quarters and dimes.

Iwantthe number that’s about to come out of her mouth to be spectacular. Mind-blowing. I want everyone to gasp and cheer and high-five each other.

But I know what the number is going to be. Or at least, I have an idea of what it’s going to be.

My jaw is clenched as I brace myself to look surprised.

We’re all in the staff room, me and Rosa and Shauna and Morgan and a whole bunch of volunteers… and Quint. Even though this is supposed to be his day off. His second day off in a row, and the second day on which he’s shown up anyway. I keep telling myself not to make assumptions. He came yesterday to watch Lennon and Luna being introduced for the first time, and he’s here now because he’s curious to know how the fundraiser went. We’re all curious.

It’s not like he’s here to see me.

Rosa beats her palms against the table, faking a drumroll. Quint and a couple others join in.

“Three hundred sixty-four dollars and eighteen cents!”

There’s a moment of stillness in the room, and I know it’s that spacebetween high expectations and a disappointing reality. That moment in which expressions are dismayed, before everyone hastily tries to cover them up.

I glance at Quint. He’s frowning at the piles of money, and I know he feels the same way. There should be more. Wasn’t there more? He catches my eye, the corners of his mouth wrinkling with a frown. I return the look.

He doesn’t know the half of it. There shouldn’t just be more. There should bea lotmore.

I want to go track down that beachcomber and demand an explanation. Why would she lie to me about selling that earring and donating the money to our cause?

My attention shifts to Rosa. She’s smiling at me, but there’s an apology behind it, like she feels bad for me. My gut wrenches.

“It’s not terrible,” she says. “It’s on par with how our past fundraisers have gone. A little better than some of them, actually.”

I force myself to smile. I know I’m doing a lousy job of concealing my own disappointment, despite howchin-upeveryone around me looks.

“It’s more money than we had last week, at least,” I say.

“That’s right,” agrees Rosa. “It is.”

But we’re all smiling through our frustration. Especially Quint and I, who put hours and hours into that event. We tried so hard.

“But remember,” says Rosa, “the purpose of the cleanup wasn’t to raise money. It’s far more important that we filled eleven huge trash bags with garbage that otherwise would have been going right out into our oceans.”

I nod. “Plus, one of our big priorities right now is to raise awareness, and for a lot of people in our community, this was the first time they heard about us. And I like to think we made a pretty good first impression.”

“Absolutely,” says Rosa. “We should all be proud of what we accomplished this weekend.”

A few volunteers start to clap and it’s a struggle for me to swallow back my bitter disappointment and believe my own words. I still feel like I failed.Three hundred and sixty-four dollars.I don’t even know if that’s enough money to buy a day’s worth of fish.

But wallowing about it won’t fix anything.

“On that note.” I take in a deep breath and clasp my hands together. “Thebeach cleanup and some of the outreach we’ve started doing, such as the website and social media pages that Quint has been building”—I gesture at Quint and he responds with an elaborate bow—“are all a part of the foundation on which we are going to build a thriving nonprofit.”