As the only day student in my class, I had spent three years picking up breakfast for my classmates, and until the Monday Zach Mercer transferred into our senior class, nobody had ever asked what that cost me.

Chapter 1

Not money.

Sleep. Study time. Patience. Pieces of my life I had handed over so gradually that even I had stopped noticing they were gone.

That morning, I was setting paper bags on desks when Zach leaned back in his chair and said, “Hold on. You guys have been paying eight dollars for the brown-sugar oatmeal?”

Several heads turned.

Zach had been at Ridgemont Academy for exactly six school days. That was apparently enough time for him to know everyone’s name, everyone’s favorite team, and enough jokes to make half the class think they had known him for years.

He held up his phone.

“My uncle has a breakfast truck by the west gate. He knows the vendors on that whole strip. If you place a group order, that oatmeal is six-fifty.”

The room went strangely quiet.

Zach looked from his phone to me.

“You guys haven’t been paying full price all these years, have you?”

Nobody answered.

Then somebody near the windows said, “Connor charges eight.”

I stopped with a bagel in my hand.

Zach gave a low whistle.

“Wow.”

It was only one word, but it did the work of an accusation.

The bell rang before I could explain.

Maybe that was lucky. I was too tired to explain well anyway.

Three years earlier, when we were freshmen, our class president, Chloe Jenkins, had asked me for a favor. Ridgemont was a private academy with a large boarding program, and students living in the dorms weren’t allowed off campus before classes.

I lived with my mother fifteen minutes away by bicycle.

“Could you grab breakfast for a few of us?” Chloe had asked. “You pass the shops anyway.”

At first it was three orders.

Then six.

Then twelve.

By sophomore year, I was carrying insulated bags on both handlebars. By junior year, I was waking at four in the morning to visit four or five different shops because Ethan wanted a bacon burrito without onions, Meline wanted oatmeal thick enough to “stand a spoon in,” Rachel wanted two extra eggs, somebody else wanted a cinnamon raisin bagel lightly toasted, and another person insisted his breakfast sandwich be wrapped separately so the bread wouldn’t steam.

Group discount?

There was no group.

There were fifty individual customers who happened to share one exhausted delivery boy.

I never charged an errand fee. Sometimes I paid the difference myself when somebody’s balance was short.

No one knew that.

No one had asked.

During math class, I stared at the board while numbers blurred in front of me. Zach’s words kept circling in my head.

You guys haven’t been paying full price all these years, have you?

My phone vibrated beneath the desk.

The class group chat had exploded.

Zach had posted a neatly organized price list.

Oatmeal: regular price $8.00. Group price $6.50.

Breakfast burrito: regular price $9.00. Group price $7.00.

Bagel: regular price $1.50. Group price $1.20.

Then he wrote:

“My uncle can arrange everything. Food gets delivered to the gate, I run down and grab it. I’m not looking to make anything. I just want to help everybody save money.”

A smiling cat sticker followed.

Chloe answered first.

“That’s amazing. Connor always charged me full price.”

Meline added, “I knew there had to be money in this somehow.”

Someone defended me weakly.

“Maybe Connor was charging an errand fee.”

Zach replied immediately.

“I never said Connor made money. I’m only offering a cheaper option.”

Another cat sticker.

I almost laughed.

He hadn’t called me dishonest.

He had merely laid out the rope and watched everyone else tie the knot.

Then the calculations started.

Thirty people saving one or two dollars a day.

Hundreds a year.

Thousands over three years.

By lunchtime somebody had decided I must have pocketed more than sixty thousand dollars.

That figure was so absurd I stared at it for a long time.

I thought about the winter morning I had wiped out on black ice with twenty-seven breakfasts strapped to my bicycle.

I thought about standing in sleet outside Davis Café because Rachel had texted me, “PLEASE don’t forget the extra egg.”

I thought about the hundreds of dollars in small shortages I had quietly covered.

Then I thought about my latest academic ranking.

Two hundred thirtieth.

Freshman year, I had been in the top fifty.

Mr. Harrison, my homeroom teacher, had called me into his office a month earlier.

“You’re a senior, Connor. What’s happening?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re falling asleep in class.”

“I know.”

“If this continues, you may not qualify for the state recommendation exam.”

I had nodded and promised to work harder.

I hadn’t told him that I was already working hard.

Just not on anything that belonged to me.

At the next break, Chloe came to my desk.

“Don’t take Zach personally,” she said. “Everybody just wants to save money.”

“I understand.”

“You could probably keep doing it if you match his prices.”

I looked at her.

She smiled as if she were offering me an opportunity.

“People trust you. Just reduce whatever you’ve been making.”

“No thanks.”

Her smile disappeared.

“No?”

“No.”

She seemed almost offended.

Then she remembered the prepaid breakfast balances I kept for everyone.

“You’ll refund those, right?”

“Of course.”

I opened the records on my phone.

One by one, I sent back every dollar.

When I finished, the strangest sensation passed through me.

Lightness.

For the first time since I was fourteen years old, tomorrow morning belonged to me.

My deskmate, Dawn Zobel, nudged my arm.

“You okay?”

I smiled.

“I think I’m better than okay.”

That evening the group chat filled with praise for Zach.

Angel.

Lifesaver.

Finally somebody with common sense.

One message came from Rachel Turner.

“Honestly, Connor’s prices were ridiculous anyway.”

I remembered buying her five burritos that month alone, each with extra eggs she had never fully paid for.

I put my phone down.

At 8:47 that night, Zach sent me a private message.

“Hey, no hard feelings, right? Could you send me everyone’s breakfast preferences? It’ll help me organize.”

I considered telling him to ask his new friends himself.

Instead, I sent the file.

Three years of names, orders, allergies, preferences and special requests.

Three minutes later, my phone buzzed.

“Dude. What is this?”

Another message followed.

“These orders are all different.”

Then another.

“My uncle does BULK orders. We can’t get a group discount if one person wants oatmeal, one wants burritos, one wants bagels and everybody has special instructions.”

I stared at the screen.

Finally he wrote:

“You didn’t make this complicated just to mess with me, did you?”

For a moment, I almost replied.

Then I turned off my phone.

At nine-thirty, I went to sleep.

It was the earliest bedtime I had had in three years.

And the next morning, when my alarm rang at six instead of four, I opened my eyes feeling as though someone had quietly returned a part of my life I had forgotten was mine.