"Bad day?" he asked.
"Complicated day."
"Did someone get sick on the plane?"
"Someone was scared during turbulence. Another passenger helped him. Then the rest became something else."
Ben set down his pencil. "You look like you're going to cry."
Chloe laughed once, but it came out badly. She dropped her bag beside the kitchen table and sat down. She had held herself together during the interviews, through the delayed baggage release, through the ride home, and past every stranger on the bus. Now she was looking at the person she had been trying to protect with her silence, and the truth would not stay contained.
"I might lose my job," she said.
Ben stared at her. "Why?"
"Because I wouldn't put my name on something that wasn't true."
His expression shifted slowly from alarm to disbelief. "They can fire you for that?"
"They aren't supposed to. I don't know what happens next."
Ben leaned back in his chair. He was taller than she remembered from the previous winter, but his face still held the earnest uncertainty of a boy who had lost too much stability too young. He looked around the kitchen at the envelopes on the counter and the little calendar where Chloe had marked each pay date. He knew exactly what her job meant to them.
"Did you do something wrong?" he asked.
"I should have spoken up sooner. I helped move a woman from a seat she was entitled to use. I was afraid. Then a supervisor asked me to sign a false report saying she'd done things she hadn't done. I said no."
Ben was silent for a long time. Chloe worried that she had placed too much on him, that a teenager should not have to absorb adult employment fears along with his chemistry homework. She began to say that everything would work out, then stopped. Their mother had taught them not to offer reassurance as a substitute for facts.
"You always tell me not to lie," Ben said.
"I know."
"So if you lose the job, we'll figure it out. I'll get more hours after school."
"No," Chloe said quickly. "You finish school. That's our agreement."
"Then you can't break your side of it either. You told me we don't let being scared decide whether we tell the truth."
She covered her face with both hands. The wisdom sounded different coming from him, because he had learned it by watching her struggle. When she finally lowered her hands, he came around the table and hugged her with the awkward strength of a nearly grown boy who still needed his sister. She let him hold her for a moment longer than either of them expected.
"I'm proud of you," he whispered.