Tomas Solis had eight hours left to prove he could stay awake, or he'd lose the second job that kept his mother's hospital bills from turning into a lawsuit. He stood behind the pump island at four in the morning, sixteen years old and already bigger than the man who signed his checks. The unpaid statements in his front pocket crinkled every time he moved. Three of them. The newest one had red ink across the top. His boss came out of the office with a coffee and didn't offer one. "You nod off again tonight, you don't come back. I mean it, kid. I got grown men who want this shift." "Yes, sir." "Your mama's problems ain't my problems." Tomas kept his eyes on the concrete until the office door closed. He'd worked the landscaping crew from six that morning until three that afternoon, pushing a mower across lawns bigger than his apartment building. His shoulders still buzzed from the handle. His palms still smelled like gasoline and cut grass. At five, a customer pulled up in a clean white SUV. The man wore golf clothes and didn't look at Tomas while he paid. On the passenger seat sat a folder stamped with a photograph Tomas recognized — the stucco mansion on the hill above town, the one with the orange tile roof and the arched windows. Tomas had mowed its front lawn twelve hours earlier. The man drove off without a thank you. Tomas walked back inside and splashed sink water on his face. In the mirror above the soap dispenser, his eyes looked like someone else's. He counted the bills in his pocket again. Two thousand, four hundred, and change. He made nine-fifty an hour here. He did the math the way he did every night and got the same answer. Not enough. Not close. At six-fifteen, the bell over the door chimed and he realized he'd been staring at the register for a full minute without moving. His head had dropped. He didn't remember it dropping. The boss was standing in the office doorway with his arms crossed. "Grab your jacket." "Sir, I wasn't—" "Grab your jacket, Tomas." He walked out into the gray parking lot with his last paycheck folded against the medical bills. The morning air was cold enough to sting. He sat on the curb by the ice freezer and did the math a third time, subtracting the job he'd just lost. The number got worse. He thought about the mansion on the hill. He thought about the man in the SUV who hadn't looked at him. Somewhere up there, people paid a crew forty dollars an hour to trim hedges. He'd been paid twelve. Tomas stood up. He still had the landscaping job. He still had his mother. He started walking toward the bus stop, working out how to ask for more hours before the sun was all the way up.