On a Dime

Ethan tried to be good. Really, he did. But it seemed there were a hundred voices in him begging him to go this way and that, say this, investigate that. The counselor at his school said he might have ADHD. His older brother Josh said he was just a natural pain in the ass. Whatever it was, his particular condition had resulted in him having none of his allowance left to spend when town day came. Nothing except a single dime, which technically wasn't part of his allowance at all, but something he'd found on the ground in the hallway at the hotel where they were staying.

"Look at this!" he proclaimed to his mother, who was too busy arguing with his father about where she'd put the car keys. 

"That's nice, honey," she said vaguely, not looking at him. 

"It's ten cents," Josh, who was eleven, and a big meany-head, said. "You can't buy anything with ten cents."

"Yuh-huh you can," Ethan argued. Maybe like a piece of gum, surely. He didn't need Josh to tell him a dime was ten cents either. He was seven, not dumb. If what his brother said was true, why were dimes even a thing? Besides, it wasn't the buying potential of the thing that got him, really. It was how shiny it was. Normally coins were all dull and icky, covered in other people's germs and dark gross stuff that his dad called 'schmutz'. But this one was so bright it was like brand new. Like it had come straight out of the money factory and materialized here, just for him. Pick me up, it said to him, Use me.

"I think it's a lucky coin," Ethan said, as he settled into the car. He held it in his palm, tilting his hand back and forth so it caught the glare of the street lamps going by outside.

"You need a new brain," Josh said.

"Josh," their mother said.

"Fucking traffic," their father said, employing a word that two days ago had gotten the last of Ethan's allowance taken away when it had come out of his mouth. Adults were hippo crates like that.

Ethan's parents had 'a lot on the agenda' as his father was fond of saying. They went to the bank and a couple of stores, doing boring grown-up stuff, and then finally they took Ethan and Josh to a toy store. Josh complained a little because he felt like he was too old for toys, but immediately became enamored with a remote control car. He had all of his fifteen dollars left from his allowance, but he also had twenty five for helping move some boxes. Ethan had tried to help as well but he'd only gotten in the way, and when he'd broken a box of mugs, his mother had threw her hands to her forehead and told him to go play in the other room, in a weird kind of voice like she was trying not to yell. So he didn't think it was really fair they paid Josh, who now had FORTY dollars, as he liked to remind Ethan.

"That means I could get this car and something else probably," Josh said. "You couldn't even buy, like, a piece of this car with your lucky dime."

"Shut up." Ethan looked over at their parents for backup, but his father had just got off his phone with someone and they were arguing, it sounded like about more house things. Josh was excited for the move, because the new house was big and they were allowed to pick their own rooms; their parents seemed to expect he should be happy too. 'We're very lucky,' his mom told him the night they'd announced the move. 'If it weren't for your father being promoted…’ (she always said that but then never finished the sentence.)

All Ethan knew was that a new house meant he'd have to start over and make all new friends, and Ethan wasn't great at making friends. Kids often thought he was annoying and tattled on him for dumb stuff.

To take his mind off the squirmies that had started to accumulate in his stomach at the thought of the move, Ethan wandered around the store, on the hunt for something that cost ten cents or less. This pursuit was short-lived: the store was tiny and it turned out Josh was right, an annoying thing that happened too often. Ethan paused in the breeze coming from the open door of the shop, looking out into the summer night, his dime a sweaty circle in his cupped palm. He knew it was a Wednesday, which meant it was a school night, even though it was summer vacation now. There were only a couple cars on the road. Across the street, someone popped up in the lit window of a shop, only to turn the open sign hanging there around. Something stirred in front of the store, and Ethan regarded what he had mistaken for a large trash bag on the sidewalk outside with surprise. 

It was not a bag at all, but a person.

Agatha shifted just slightly to stretch her legs. The cement was rough, a decided step down from the park bench she had been shooed unceremoniously away from days before. The shopkeeper here didn't seem to mind her presence out front. He had those bars over his window, which she guessed made him think his product was safe. Besides, what was she going to do, bite his ankles? She was just an old lady. 

Agatha is such an old lady's name, her daughter Desiree used to laugh.

Stop it, she’d said, smacking at her girl affectionately. 

No, but it fits, Desiree had laughed fondly. Old maybe, but kind. Spiritual.

One of those was still true, at least. She hoped two- that despite her utter failure to thrive post-tragedy and the ugly addiction that had claimed her life, she was still kind. Spiritual was a thing of the past. Too much effort, too much hope involved. Maybe God had gotten her hooked on smack as a trial, sure, but no loving God would have allowed for her girl to marry a man who shot a hole in her head and left her lying, bleeding out on the kitchen floor for her mama to find. 

This part of town was quiet. Too few passed by her encampment and those who did tended to avert their eyes, put distance between herself and them, skirting her like her need was radioactive, or contagious.

As she'd grown older, the physical toll of the drug more evident on her face, as the time between showers stretched, whether due to lack of opportunity or general lethargy, the results of daily panhandling became more and more dire. It turned out the more homeless you looked, the less people saw you, as if the house made the person and not the other way around. And the more addicted you looked, the more the people who did look at you thought you deserved it.

And maybe they were right, Agatha thought as she steadied the cardboard sign between the ground and her trembling hands. It seemed every time she'd had a boon thrown her way, she'd immediately spent it on her next fix. And yet that didn't stop her from thinking each time the withdrawal burned off, this time I'll be good for once. This time I'll be sensible But, a smaller, more hollow voice always followed up, what is there really to lose? What was wrong, after all, with taking the edge off of a life gone spoiled?

"I saw your sign."

Agatha blinked; her reflexes weren't what they once where- and looked up to see a little boy standing there in a Hot Wheels shirt and jean shorts. When she looked beyond him, across the street, there were no sign of any adults around, any parents to whom he might belong, though he looked perfectly clean and well-cared for. 

"I can read good," the kid told her, as if her silence had been a claim to the contrary. "It says 'anything helps'. Is that true?"

Agatha nodded. "It is, child," she said, noticing that her voice came out strangely raspy. How long had it been since she'd properly talked to anyone?

"What do you need help with?"

"Well," she said, "I don't have a house right now."

"Why not?"

"I don't have the money to buy one right now."

As she spoke, the boy's eyes widened, but not in a way like he was afraid. In that way little kids had of finding fascination in absolutely everything. She remembered it too well with Desiree.

"We're moving to a new house right now, my mom and my dad and my brother. You should of moved into our old one, maybe."

Agatha, still half-smiling at him, continued to scan for his parents. "That would have worked out nicely," she agreed, smiling. She felt it in her chest, like something beautiful but terrible was coming awake again. Terrible like it hurt. Beautiful like she didn't want it to stop.

"Anyway," the kid said, "Here."

Agatha watched uncomprehendingly at first as the boy worked at something stuck in his palm, turning his hand over and letting go with small fingers. She heard the clink of money hitting the inside of the shallow bucket beside her, filled up until now with only a couple crumpled one dollar bills and a cigarette butt. A nearby streetlight clicked on, activating at last, and a single coin gleamed up at her in its soft beam. It was curiously bright, as if it had been printed out of thin air. 

"It's just a dime," the kid said by way of explanation. "You can't really buy anything with it. But if you get enough of them, you could get a house probably."

"Thank you, dear," Agatha said. For a moment she continued to stare at the coin rather than his small, earnest face, because if she did that she might cry. When she finally did meet his eyes, the words came to her lips again. "Thank you." She'd never meant it more. The stars beyond his head seemed to swirl around it in the sky, each one a small polished coin on its own, studding the sky with promise.

"Ethan!" 

Mom's voice was panicked the way it got when he'd done something wrong and dangerous besides. He turned around; she was marching across the street towards him as Dad and Josh hurried in her wake. When she reached him she grabbed his arm hard, moving him along, away from the woman on the sidewalk. Once she'd gone a distance, she leaned down and hissed in his ear.

"What do you think you're doing? You scared the hell out of us." She kept casting glances back in the direction they'd come. 

"Ow," Ethan complained, and she took her hand away immediately as Dad caught up on the opposite side, applying a heavy touch to his shoulder.

"You ought to know better, son," he said. "What did we tell you about talking to strangers?"

“Don't do it," he recited, resigned. He wanted to add about how she was fine and also how she didn't have a house, but his father was not wearing his listening face.

"That's right," Dad said, “you don't know what these people are going to do. It's not safe.”

And then he went and crossed the street without looking (which Ethan was pretty sure he'd also said a billion times not to do… hippo crate). Ethan nodded in the right places as his parents ranted on but he mostly stopped listening. They got ice cream next and as they walked, Josh kept doing stunts in the air with his brand new remote car, trying to make him jealous, but Ethan didn't care. He felt good, not the shiny kind like finding a lucky coin or getting a new toy. More like something sticky, like when his mom made his favorite mac and cheese and he ate three helpings of it. Uncomfortable maybe, but also warm. Like he couldn't imagine ever being hungry again.