Finders Keepers

The sound of sprinklers carried across the green as they rotated. The air was cool, still early, though it already carried the promise of midday heat. The sky was a hazy blue, with wisps of cloud, sun still low in the sky. A little girl sat against the cool concrete foundation of the public library. She had bony knees, one of them with a scrape. There were grass stains on her white socks. Her long brown hair was tangled and starting to frizz up from the humidity. She had a huge corduroy book bag with appliquéd flowers on it, the bag dwarfing her small frame. On her lap was breakfast; a candy bar, and a can of coke with beads of condensation running down the sides. She took a long, satisfied sip. Both acquired via a vending machine.

The girl had a pointy little face, her nose sunburned. There was something a bit fey about her appearance, something a little wild. Her eyes were deep and serious, the eyes of someone much older than she looked.

She was all alone. Nobody else seemed to be up yet, though it was well into morning. The public lawn was empty, all but for the statue of a town founder at its center. Nobody came or went from the large, stately library with its grand pillars at the entrance. Far away, there was the sound of cars thrumming along the highway, but here it was quiet.

The girl turned her face up to the sun, and stretched her legs. With a single bound she was up on her feet, leaving the soda can and candy wrapper sitting in the damp grass. She practically skipped down the sidewalk, avoiding the cracks. There were dandelions coming up through them here and there. Puddles from last night's rain still sat around the gutters. She stopped to pick up an earthworm washed up on the warm black top and toss it back into the grass.

She climbed the steps to the enormous, double library doors, and tugged on the door handles.

Inside the library the sounds of the outside world faded, the sprinklers, the chirping of birds, hum of insects, the waves lapping at the docks down the block at the pier. The city sounds.

Inside it was hushed, the kind of quiet which is almost tangible, a heavy quiet, the quiet of thousands worlds within innumerable pages.

The ceiling of the main room was high and domed, and from here one could go in four directions. The right wing, left wing, downstairs, or forward to the sitting area with leather sofas and magazine shelves, beneath an enormous window overlooking the park and far off the riverfront. There an old man with a drooping mustache sat, rustling through the morning paper.

A plump librarian at the front desk shot the little girl a look of suspicion through the glasses perched on the end of her nose.

“Hazel.” she sniffed, turning back to her computer.

Hazel turned into the right wing. This was where the fiction was kept. There was nobody here but her, and she took her time meandering through the isles. She ran her hand across the spines of the books, stopping every now and then to pull out one that seemed interesting. When she reached the far wall of the room, she climbed the stairs to go up a level.

This level had narrow windows that let in slivers of sunlight, rectangular beams that flitted across the shelves. Square in the center of one of these sunbeams was a title that caught her eye. The book was large, and had fanciful golden lettering up the spine. The edges of the pages were scarlet.

She flipped through the book, and something fell from its center onto the ground. It was another, smaller book. It was plain black, with no writing or pictures. The book was thin, about the size of a small journal. She opened this book and found no library print within its pages. It was all blank, an unused notebook. She ran her fingers over the fine, leather cover. It was very high quality. Without thinking too much about it, she slipped the notebook into her book bag and kept browsing.

Quite some time later Hazel emerged from the library, her book bag far heavier than when she had entered it. It was warmer now, brighter, that cool blue-hued time of the morning past.

She trudged past Victorian houses with scalloped roofs and manicured lawns. Past suburban homes with bright flowers and children’s toys scattered around.

As she walked, the quality and style of the houses gradually declined. Now they were run down and the grass was not so green.

Barking dogs followed her from one end of a fenced in yard to another as she passed. A woman in pajama pants smoked a cigarette as a baby cried from inside. She passed a closed down loan office with a cracked parking lot, a dingy Irish pub, and crossed through a dry field pockmarked with gopher holes.

She jumped a fence, trudged through a muddy alleyway, and arrived at her destination. An aluminum trailer in a lot that was all yellowed grass and weeds. A gnarled tree with a tire swing provided a modicum of shade. Faded floral curtains swung gently in the windows, in place of blinds.

As she entered the yard, a head popped up over the fence that divided her yard from the neighbor’s, a shack of a house with a small tree growing in the gutter pipe. This house sat on the corner of the street, and had an ugly mass of electrical wires hanging over it, going to the pole in the corner of the yard.

The head belonged to Jace, son of the neighbor. The boy was a few years older than Hazel, and nearly twice her height. He had a perpetual scowl on his face, and fiery red hair. He was gangly as a scarecrow, and wore the same grey camo tee shirt that he always seemed to have on. Jace jumped the fence and stalked around Hazel.

“Whatcha got in your bag?” He asked in a song-song voice.

“Go away, Jace.” Hazel ground out, hand resting protectively over the bag. She sneaked a glance at the trailer, which Jace noticed.

“Gonna cry to mommy? Too bad she’s not home!” He made a lunge at her bag, and she dodged him.

“Get away from me!” She shrieked. He made another grab for the bag, and she scratched him with her nails.

“Ow!” He exclaimed, looking stunned, before a stormy expression settled over his face.

“You’re gonna regret that, little girl!” He yelled, and grabbed at her. His skinny arms were deceptively strong.

She kicked and screamed as he lifted her off the ground, twisting like a snake. Before she could do anything about it, he had gotten ahold of the strap of her bag, and lifted it over her head. She was unceremoniously dumped in the dirt.

“What you gonna do now?” He crowed, waving the bag over her head. She was dirty and smarting all over. Angry tears pricked at her eyes, but they didn’t fall, and in a moment, vanished.

Jace flipped the bag upside down and emptied its contents out onto the ground. He kicked through the books and wrappers, a tube of chapstick, some spare change.

“What’s this, your diary?” He sneered, pouncing on the black notebook.

“Give me that!” She demanded, though there should have been no reason to care. But she had some sort of strong feeling about that notebook all of the sudden, and she didn’t want Jace to have it.

“Oh, is it really your diary?” He asked, excited. She kicked him hard in the ankle, and he went down, swearing. The black notebook tumbled across the ground, landing on the road. Hazel sprinted towards it, grabbing it without pausing. She ran for her life.

She could hear the long strides of Jace behind her, his furious quick breathing, rapidly gaining on her.

Something snagged her foot, and she went head over heels. Unable to stop, Jace went tumbling over her. The two of them sprawled in a stunned heap across the ground.

Something was raining down on them, slim green pieces of paper. It was money.

Fight forgotten, both of them grabbed for the mysterious raining money, snatching it out from midair. The notebook lay open where Hazel had dropped it. A now open envelope was wedged between its pages; this is where the money had flown from. With bunches of money stuffed into her pockets, Hazel picked up the envelope. A few bills remained inside. Jace was still crawling around, grabbing stray hundreds and fifties.

This was an enormous sum of money; in the thousands. The tens of thousands.

Hazel glanced at Jace, her nemesis. He was looking at her. The atmosphere seemed different now. The air had a chill in it, though it was around noon, and the sun shone brightly up in the pale blue sky. Goosebumps rose on both of them. It was very quiet, as if the sound of the city was miles away. Not even the leaves stirred. Jace picked up the envelope, and examined it. There was nothing, no writing, no evidence of who it was meant for.

“This isn’t yours.” He said, not a question.

“I found it. In a library book.” Hazel said. Their voices sounded too loud in the stillness.

They stared down at the crumpled bills in their hands. Jace had been a constant thorn in Hazel’s side, bullying her, picking at her, but now there was little question that this was something they were in together, and the risk of childish squabbles seemed aeons ago. A cloud passed over the sun.

Hours later, the two of them were still together, having never returned to their respective homes with the money. They sat in a pizza place, on red laminate booths, the kind with the glass screen above the headrest. It was going into the evening now, past the bright, hot afternoon. Clouds had swept in from over the bay. Rain drummed on the windows.

Between them sat a pizza, half eaten, on a little metal stand. The green hanging light over them creaked a little on its chain.

The air between them was quet and tense.

“I’m keeping it.” said Hazel in a low, completely serious voice. “And I’m going back home, either. My mom isn’t getting a cent of this.”

“It could be drug money. The library must have been a hiding place. Someone’s probably coming to pick up.” Said Jace.

“Do you want to come with me?” asked Hazel, cutting through Jace’s fearful musing.

“Come where?” Jace asked. Now all his bluster was gone, revealing the scared kid that had been behind it.

“I’m not going back home.” Hazel repeated, dead serious. Her eyes were like storm clouds.

“I-um.. Yeah.” Said Jace, though his voice was weak. No more words were needed. They both knew what they were talking about, and what they were leaving.

The two children walked together across a parking lot speckled with puddles, reflecting a grey-blue sky, clouds breaking up, and beams of light shining through. The girl balanced on a cement curb and the boy walked with his hands in his pockets. They were outlined darkly against the bright sun as it steadily sank lower over the city.

Off in another part of town an aluminum trailer and a broken down old house sat side by side surrounded by scraggly weeds. Two parents were busy, unaware of what changes the night would bring. Cats yowled, cars honked, and life went on. But two children somewhere were carried off by a greyhound bus, highway passing beneath the tires, streetlights like stars carrying them to another plane of existence, another life, twenty-thousand dollars wedged between the blank pages of a notebook, to be shared between them in the adventure to come.