As Collins left her room to join Charlie, she saw that he was already awake and out of bed, getting ready for the day. "Another day, another dollar." He saluted on his way out the door.
And so it went that Charlie got a head start on a long day of guaranteed work ahead of him which was all they could really ask for after being screwed over by a storm. What the Kooks couldn't be bothered to clean or fix themselves was what lower class citizens like Charlie practically lived for. And although he would never claim to be a Kook sympathizer, Charlie had to admit, he sometimes felt a little bad for how helpless some of them really were. There are some things a person just shouldn't need to hire someone for, but hey, who was Charlie to protest when he was getting paid without barely even having to lift a finger? 
This meant that Collins was left to see for herself how the island was recovering after the long night, spending the most of her day passing by the docks where owners were cleaning salt and seaweed off their boats and small businesses rehung their signs which had fallen crookedly. There was something about a town picking up the pieces of itself that soothed Collins. It was sort of like getting a fresh start, and since they were in the very early days of summer break, Collins could get behind that. 
She liked thinking about the endless possibilities being laid out in front of her on how these next three months could go. But the only thing was, that every time optimistic thoughts appeared in her mind, it was as though the Earth felt scorn for her even daring to think about doing anything even remotely enjoyable when she had other things to worry about. For example, how she was going to go to college to make something of herself when she had a severe funding issue. 
Yet for some reason, as much as she worried about all of their money troubles, Charlie had never seemed to let it faze him one bit. Despite working so much to make up for what they lacked in capital, he'd never once demonstrated any kind of tension or anger over their situation. Sometimes Collins would, there were times when she'd experience a sudden outburst of "life isn't fair" syndrome and Charlie would have to talk her down. However, he didn't ever sit in a slump after working his ass off all day and just feel sorry for himself as if that would fix everything. He powered through it and kept up a placated exterior because crying never solved anyones problems. 
That never stopped him from complaining about the Kooks though and how much he hated how they treated them. He understood that a lot of them had earned what they possessed which gave them a sort of right to flaunt their riches, hell, Charlie would too if he had a billion dollar yacht and a stupid marble water fountain shaped like a swan sitting in his front yard. It wasn't the bragging that Charlie truly despised about the Kooks, it was their attitudes towards people less fortunate than them. Just because they lived two completely different lives that didn't grant a Kook a free pass to act like the Pogues were scum beneath their shoe. And that's how Charlie felt a lot of the time when he was working on Figure 8.
And for his hard work, along with putting up with his snooty bosses, Collins tried her best to make his life as easy as possible when he came home. She cleaned up when it was messy, she ran errands for him whenever he needed, and she helped organize their bills so that they were never late for a payment. It was the least she could do and it felt good when Charlie made a comment about dreading going through all the paperwork, Collins could tell him that she'd already taken care of it and he needn't worry. 
Her additional task that night was to make dinner for the two of them before Charlie came home. Since the power was out, Collins had been forced to provide the flame to the gas burners, taking one of  Charlie's lighters lying around the house and flicking it on before it became alight. She'd boiled a pot of pasta and was in the midst of dumping a jar of red sauce over the noodles when her brother came barging in. He looked dirty from the sweat and literal dirt clinging to his skin after spending the day sawing down large fallen branches into manageable logs of wood and fixing damaged roofs of three 온라인카지노게임 Kook mansions.