Lucy and the Lockets

12:56pm

Outwardly confident and fearless, but still nervously touching and twisting her mom’s locket. That was how she always walked around the small town where she grew up.

12:59pm

She could always make the walk, from one end of town to the other, in under an hour. Normally this would be the start of Summer break, but there hasn’t been school, or much else, since the first attack. During Summer break she would look forward to her midday walk to deliver a freshly packed brown paper bag lunch to her father. It was the type of town where children could do that.

1:00pm

The faint sound of the unfamiliar and unwanted, no matter how far beyond the barrier wall, made everyone walk a little faster now.

1:01pm

Her destination was the south eastern barrier wall where her father was stationed as a guard. It was a dangerous, but very well-respected, job and he packed his own lunch from the town’s rations everyday. Except the days when he forgot.

1:03pm

Slowing her pace as she approached the barrier wall, she heard her footsteps dig into the dirt. The streets needed cleaning. Three knocks on the door, as always, and one of the guards opened it up for her. She didn’t remember his name but she thought he might have been a high school senior when she was a…

“Hey Lucy…your dad is up on the left”. Human interaction had a way of catching her by surprise and breaking into her thoughts.

She smiled and nodded. She still couldn’t remember his name. Was he on the soccer team? Didn’t really matter.

1:04pm

“You forgot your lunch again.” She answered her father’s initial inquisitive glance that quickly turned into kinder eyes. Her father was a kind, sad, but strong man.

“I don’t like you walking around alone,” her father said, albeit with gratitude.

“Well, a bike would make it safer, and faster…” Lucy shot her shot for the millionth time, even though she knew a bike would also be difficult to afford right now. The demand was too high, especially since the last attack. She sat down next to her father and leaned back against the wall. Her father sighed because he knew what was coming next.

She had already scoured her mother’s belongings a few times looking for something to sell. The last time didn’t go so well.

“No Lucy,” her father had snapped. “You cannot sell any of her things.”

They had barely been able to put up the missing person posters, alongside thousands of other missing city workers, before the evacuation began. Lucy knew her mother was gone, but she suspected that her father hadn’t given up hope yet…

She used to have a bike that got left behind when they left their whole life behind in her father’s packed pickup truck. At least they could find their passports and remembered her mom’s jewelry in time, her dad had said… time and time again.

Some people, and even some kids in town had bikes and they popped up in the depot for sale or trade once in awhile. The feeling of wind blowing in her hair while flying down the streets seemed worth bringing it up to her father one more time.

“What about all the other lockets? I counted at least ten. You know that this was the only one she wore and cared about, and I would never sell it…” Lucy looked down and reached for the small, gold, heart-shaped locket around her neck, delicately engraved with her mother’s initials. She’d been wearing it for almost a year and it still felt foreign but secure on her neck.

Her father was silent, and she could tell he was thinking.

“Ok. I just don’t know how much the lockets are even worth now?” Her father shielded his eyes from the sun and looked at her.

Lucy’s heart rate jumped and she tried not to jump up with it. “I’ll find out- thank you Dad!”

“Be careful, Lucy. Thanks for lunch. Love you.” The kind man said with a sad smile.

Lucy gave her dad’s hand a squeeze. And she was off.

1:30pm / $0

There were two bikes in the depot. Lucy liked the hunter green one and the depot worker noticed. “It’s $100 or trade” he said.

1:40pm / $0

Back at her house, Lucy pulled down her mother’s locket collection from it’s hiding place behind the radiator. Some were tangled so it took her a moment to start counting. One, two, three…she counted 20 lockets, all similar but all different.

1:50pm / 21 lockets

The depot worker was outside the warehouse this time, and he followed Lucy inside.

“Sale or trade?” He asked.

“Trade.” Lucy responded.

“I’ll get her.” He said as he headed around a corner and behind a curtain.

1:52pm / 21 lockets

Lucy didn’t have to wait too long for Isabelle, the short woman with short silver hair who ran the depot, to pull the curtain back.

“What do you have for us? Trading for the bike?” She asked Lucy, getting straight to business with a rifle under her arm.

Lucy held her head up and brought the rosewood jewelry box she had been carrying, over to the dusty counter Isabelle was behind. “I have gold and silver lockets.”

“Jewelry?” Isabelle shook her head laughing as she snapped open the rifle and looked down the barrel of the gun. “What, do they ward off zombies or ghosts or something? Not sure I need them. Not for a bike anyways.”

Lucy hadn’t really thought this though.

“How much can I get per locket?” She asked

“Hun, I don’t think I can give you anything worth writing home for. $5 a locket if…”

“Done.” Said Lucy definitively. “I have twenty lucky lockets and I need a bike”

Isabelle looked up and stared the lanky teenager down. She leaned her rifle up against the display case and didn’t say anything as Lucy opened the jewelry box and started lining up the lockets one by one on the display case. One, two, three… twenty all in a row.

1:59pm / 1 locket / 1 bike

“What about that one?” Isabelle asked, pointing to Lucy’s locket with her chin.

Lucy put her right hand up to her mom’s last locket, leaving her left hand on her new bike handlebars. It wasn’t the only piece of her mother that she had left, but it was close.

“It’s broken, but it’s mine.” Lucy said as she paused for a moment before walking the bike out the door, down the step and onto the dusty road home across Town.

The wind in her hair promised to drown out any scary sounds and her new wheels promised to help her escape from anything the uncertain world had in store.