Emma's POV
The day everything changed started like any other Tuesday. I woke up in my yellow bedroom with the butterfly stickers I'd put on the ceiling myself, had Cheerios for breakfast, and walked to school with Mom like always. But when I got home that afternoon, Dad was there, not in the garage hunched over his computer like usual, but sitting at our kitchen table with a smile that made his whole face crinkle.
"Emma-bug!" He scooped me up and spun me around, something he hadn't done since I was little. But today, I giggled and let him twirl me until we were both dizzy.
"Dad! It's not even dinner time. Why are you home?" I asked when he finally set me down.
Mom was leaning against the counter, a strange look on her face, half smiling, half like she might cry. "Your father has some news."
Dad pulled out a chair for me at our small kitchen table, the one with the wobbly leg we'd fixed with a folded paper napkin. He sat across from me, his hands folded like when we had serious talks about things like why I couldn't have a puppy yet or why I had to eat vegetables.
"Remember the company I've been building? RaceTraq?" he asked.
I nodded. RaceTraq was Dad's baby, that's what Mom always called it. For as long as I could remember, he'd been working on it, then full-time in our garage after I came home from school. This was after he had some issues with his previous app RobShare, though we were very comfortable, but it didn't give him the massive breakthrough he envisioned.
"Well, today we signed the papers. A bigger company is buying RaceTraq." His voice sounded different, like he was trying to stay calm but might explode with excitement any second. "They're paying a lot of money for it, Emma. More money than I ever dreamed of."
I looked at Mom, who was still doing that weird half-smile thing. "Is that good?"
"It's very good," Mom said, coming to sit beside me. She took my hand, her fingers cool against mine. "It means things are going to change for us. Good changes."
"What kind of changes?" I asked, suddenly worried. I liked our house with my yellow room and the tree in the backyard perfect for climbing. I liked my school and my best friend Zoe who lived three houses down.
Dad leaned forward. "For starters, we won't have to worry about money anymore. I won't have to work such long hours. We can move to a bigger house in a better neighborhood with better schools."
My stomach did a funny flip. "Move? But what about Zoe? And my tree?"
Mom squeezed my hand. "Honey, we won't be moving right away. And you can still see Zoe. But this is an amazing opportunity for our family."
Dad got up and came around the table, kneeling beside my chair. "Emma, do you remember when we talked about how some people have a lot of money and some people don't?"
I nodded. We'd had that talk after I'd gone to Melissa Porter's birthday party at her giant house with a pool and a housebigger than our whole first floor. I'd come home asking why we couldn't have a pool too.
"Well, we're going to have way more money now," Dad continued. "Not show-off money, but enough that Mom can quit her graphics designing job and finally venture into interior decorations if she wants to. Enough that we can take real vacations to any country of our choice instead of the small vacations we have been having. Enough that we won't have to check the price of everything at the grocery store any longer."
"Will I finally get a puppy?" I asked, because that seemed like the most important use of money.
Dad laughed, a big booming laugh I hadn't heard in a long time. "Maybe. But having money doesn't mean you get everything you want right away. It means we have more choices."
I thought about this, trying to understand. "Like choosing a house with a pool?"
"Like that," Mom agreed. "But also choosing to save money for your college, or to help people who don't have as much as we do."
That night, we had pizza for dinner, the good kind from Gino's, not the frozen kind, and ice cream sundaes that we made ourselves with three flavors and all the toppings. We stayed up late, and we all sat on the couch watching funny cat videos on his laptop, laughing until my sides hurt.
It felt like a celebration, but also like saying goodbye to something I couldn't quite name.
The changes didn't happen all at once. First came the new car,not a fancy sports car like in movies about rich people, but a safe-looking blue SUV that still smelled like new inside. Dad said our old car was "on its last legs," which made me picture it with actual legs, worn out and tired.
Then Mom quit her graphic designing job. She'd always worked, for as long as I could remember, and she finally set up her interior decoration business, and it was booming. Now she was home when I got back from school most times, as she had people working for her and she didn't look tired most ofthe time.
"What do you do all day?" I asked her one afternoon as she helped me with homework. We were sitting at the kitchen table, sunlight streaming through the window, making patterns on my worksheet.
"I read books," she said, smiling. "I take walks. I'm learning to cook new recipes. And I'm looking at houses for us."
I frowned at that last part. The moving thing still bothered me, like a pebble in my shoe I couldn't shake out.
"Do we have to move?" I asked, not for the first time.
Mom tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. "We don't have to. But your dad and I think it would be good for us. The schools are better there. You'd have a bigger room. There's a community pool and tennis courts, you will also make new friends and connections."
"I don't know how to play tennis," I mumbled.
"You could learn," Mom said gently. "You could try lots of new things."
But I didn't want new things. I liked my old things just fine.
The biggest change came at the end of that week when Dad sat me down for another kitchen table talk.
"Emma," he said, his face serious. "Now that we have more money, your mother and I want to make sure you understand its value."
I nodded, trying to look like I understood, though I wasn't sure I did.
"So we're going to start giving you an allowance," he continued. "fifty dollars a week."
My eyes widened. fifty whole dollars! I could buy a lot of girly accessories with that.
"But," Dad held up a finger, "you have to earn it."
He pulled out a chart, neatly printed with checkboxes for chores: Make the bed, arrange the house, do the dishes. Help set table. Feed Mr. Whiskers (our cat who wasn't actually ours but came around enough that we fed him).
"Each of these is worth ten dollars," Dad explained. "If you do all five chores every week, you'll get fifty dollars. If you only do three chores, you'll get thirty dollars."
I studied the chart. It didn't seem too hard. "What about extra chores? Can I make more money?"
Dad exchanged a look with Mom, who was pretending to read a magazine but was obviously listening. "That's good thinking, entrepreneur," he said, using a big word I'd heard him say before. "Yes, there can be bonus chores worth extra."
"Robert," Mom said in her warning voice.
"Within reason," Dad added quickly. "The point isn't to make you work all day, Emma. It's to help you understand that money comes from work."
I thought about the money Dad got for his company. "Did you do chores to get the RaceTraq money?"
Dad laughed. "In a way. I worked very, very hard for years. Many late nights. Many disappointments. The money didn't come easily or quickly."
That made sense. I'd seen Dad working in the garage until way past my bedtime. I'd heard him on phone calls that made him pace around with his hand tugging at his hair.
"So if I work hard enough, I could make a company too?" I asked.
"Absolutely," Dad said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "You can do anything you set your mind to, Emma-bug."
I started my chore chart that very day, making my bed so neat you could bounce a quarter off it (Dad checked), washingevery single dirty plate, and even volunteering to help Mom with the laundry, which wasn't on the chart but seemed like a good extra credit option.
By the end of the week, I'd earned seventy dollars, my fiftyregular dollars plus twenty bonus dollars for the laundry and for helping Mom clean out the refrigerator, which was disgusting but kind of fun too, especially when we found a container of something so old neither of us could remember what it had been.
Dad paid me with crisp ten-dollar bills that smelled like the bank. I arranged them carefully in the purple wallet Grandma had given me for my birthday.
"What are you going to do with your money?" Mom asked as I admired my wallet's newfound thickness.
I thought about it seriously. "I'm going to save some. And maybe buy a present for Zoe."
Mom's smile faltered a little. "That's thoughtful, honey."
The next day, Dad took me to the bank to open my very own savings account. The bank lady was extra nice to me, maybe because Dad kept using big words like "portfolio" and "investments," or maybe just because she liked kids. She gave me a plastic piggy bank and explained that I could put money in my account and it would grow all by itself because of something called "interest."
"Really?" I asked.
"Like math," she corrected, but she said it kindly.
Dad had me put fifty of my seventy dollars into the account. "Always save more than you spend," he told me as we drove home. "That's how you build wealth."
"What's wealth?" I asked, looking out the window at the houses we passed, some small like ours, some bigger.
"Wealth is having enough money that you don't have to worry about it all the time," Dad said after thinking for a moment. "But true wealth, Emma, is having people you love and who love you back."
I liked that definition. By that measure, I was already very wealthy indeed.
The house-hunting started in earnest after that. Every weekend, Mom and Dad would take me to see different houses in Maple Heights, a neighborhood about thirty minutes from ours with bigger houses and greener lawns. The houses were nice, many had pools or a unique feature or fancy kitchens that made Mom's eyes light up, but none of them felt like home to me.
"What about this one?" Dad would ask, showing me a bedroom that could be mine, usually twice the size of my yellow room.
I'd shrug or find something wrong with it. "The closet is too dark." "The window doesn't face the right way." "It feels echo-y."
After the fifth or sixth house, Dad made eye contact in yet another potential bedroom. "Emma, what's really bothering you about moving? Is it just about leaving Zoe?"
I kicked at the plush carpet, nicer than anything in our current house. "Partly. But also..." I struggled to find the words for the knot in my stomach that tightened every time we looked at these perfect houses. "I'm scared we'll change."
Dad's eyebrows went up. "Change how?"
"Like..." I waved my hands around, trying to explain. "Like, we won't eat popcorn on the couch anymore because it might make a mess. Or you won't let me climb trees because I might get my nice clothes dirty. Or you and Mom will be busy with rich people stuff instead of spending time with me."
Dad's face softened, and he pulled me into a hug. "Oh, Emma-bug. Is that what you think happens when people get money?"
I nodded against his shoulder, breathing in his familiar Dad smell of coffee and the peppermints he always kept in his pockets.
"Some people do change that way," he admitted. "Money can change people if they let it. But that's not going to happen to us. You know why?"
I leaned back to look at him. "Why?"
"Because we're going to make a pact right now." He held out his pinky. "I promise that no matter where we live or how much money we have, we will always eat popcorn on the couch, climb trees when we find good ones, and make time for what really matters, being together. Do you promise too?"
I linked my pinky with his. "I promise."
"And one more thing," Dad added. "If you ever think Mom or I are changing in a bad way because of money, you have permission to call us out on it. Deal?"
"Deal," I agreed, feeling a little better.
We did eventually find a house, not the biggest one we'd seen, but one with a yard that had two perfect climbing trees and a kitchen with a window seat where I could imagine doing homework while Mom cooked dinner. It had four bedrooms instead of our current two, and yes, a pool, a big pool, bigger than the kind that Melissa Porter had.
The day we told Zoe's family we were moving was one of the hardest. We invited them over for a barbecue, and after the grown-ups talked for a while, I took Zoe to my room.
"I have something to tell you," I said, my heart pounding. "We're moving."
Zoe's freckled face scrunched up. "Moving? Where? Like to another street?"
I shook my head. "To Maple Heights. It's pretty far."
"But you can't move!" Zoe protested. "We're best friends. We're going to be in Mrs. Thompson's class together next year!"
"I know," I said miserably. "I don't want to go either. But my dad sold his company, and now we have a lot of money, and they say the schools are better there."
Zoe flopped back on my bed, staring at my butterfly ceiling. "Rich people are weird."
I flopped down beside her. "We're not rich. We just have more money now."
"Same thing," Zoe said. Then she turned to face me. "Will you have a pool?"
"Yeah," I admitted.
"Can I come swim in it?"
"Duh. Every day if you want."
Zoe considered this. "Okay. But you have to promise we'll still be best friends. No ditching me for fancy Maple Heights kids."
"Never," I promised, and I meant it with every fiber of my being.
Moving day arrived hot and sticky in late July. The moving truck took all our furniture, and Dad's friend Tom helped us load the last boxes into our new blue SUV. I sat in the back seat with Mr. Whiskers in his carrier beside me (we'd officially adopted him when we realized we couldn't leave him behind), my purple wallet in my pocket, and a lump in my throat the size of a baseball.
As we drove away from the only home I could remember, I watched our little house get smaller and smaller in the back window. I thought about all the memories inside those walls,learning to walk, birthday parties, Christmas mornings, nights when Dad would read me stories with all the funny voices.
"You okay back there, Emma-bug?" Dad asked, catching my eye in the rearview mirror.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
"It's okay to be sad," Mom said, turning in her seat to look at me. "Leaving a place you love is hard, even when you're going somewhere good."
"Will we be happier in the new house?" I asked quietly.
Mom and Dad exchanged one of their grown-up looks that said they were having a whole conversation without words.
"Happiness doesn't come from houses, sweetie," Mom said finally. "It comes from the people you share them with."
Dad nodded. "And from knowing what really matters. Like popcorn on couches and climbing trees."
That made me smile a little. "And our pact."
"Exactly," Dad said. "Our family pact. More important than any amount of money."
As we turned onto the highway that would take us to our new life, I pressed my hand against the window, saying a silent goodbye to the old one. I was scared but also a tiny bit excited. Maybe change didn't have to be bad. Maybe, like Dad said, it was just about having more choices.
Mr. Whiskers meowed loudly from his carrier, as if agreeing with my thoughts.
"We're going to be okay," I whispered to him. "As long as we remember what matters."
And as our old neighborhood disappeared behind us, I thought about what true wealth meant, not the bank account or the new house or even the pool, but the people sitting in the front seat who loved me, and the knowledge that no matter how much money we had or didn't have, that love would never change.
That was something worth more than all the dollars in my purple wallet or all the dollars in the world.