Ricky’s Fortune
“A quarter!” he cries out, excited beyond reason.
Ricky is the eight year old son of a single mother. His father ran out when he was three, and his mom has struggled ever since to make ends meet. She tries hard to give him an allowance, but it still only totals one dollar each month, and Ricky always spends it on the same thing. So, faced with something as valuable as an unclaimed quarter within his grasp, he tends to become rather single-minded. He rushes to pick it up.
Through the rest of the school week, Ricky keeps his eyes open as always. He’s always been surprised, but also secretly very pleased, that people are so careless about their change. To his young disadvantaged eyes, each one is a gold mine. A nickle here, a dime there, always vigilant, Ricky builds his fortune one coin at a time.
Luck strikes when one of the richer kids at school idly drops twelve cents of his change in the cafeteria. Ricky glances quickly, sees nobody looking, and snatches them up into the coinpurse that he always carries, a christmas present from Santa two years ago. He tries to act nonchalant for the rest of the period, but inside he is bubbling.
When lunch period is almost over, he strides up to the teacher keeping watch over the cafeteria. “Mister Robertson, can I have the bathroom pass?”
“Why yes Ricky, you may have it. But be quick, the period is almost over.”
Ricky snatches the pass from the teacher’s hand, and rushes out of the room, while trying hide his hurried mode. He rounds the corner and bounds into the boys bathroom just down the hall, and promptly enters the toilet stall furthest from the entrance.
Holding the bottom edge of his shirt up to catch the coins, he empties his tiny purse. He carefully counts the total as he lifts each one back from the impromptu pocket up into the purse. “Ninety-four!” he exclaims, unable to contain himself. With a quick glance around, he sees that noone else is in the bathroom, and his sharply surging embarassmant fizzles flat.
Through the four remaining classes of the day, Ricky fidgets and bounces with his barely-pent-up energy. His teachers easily recognize the gleam in his eyes and let him be, so long as he doesn’t grow too disruptive. After what feels like an eternity, the final bell for the day rings, and school is out.
Ricky sets out home with a quick energetic trot to his step. Three blocks from the school, he takes a familiar detour towards the busy main street of his mid-sized town. In just a few minutes, which magically pass much more quickly than those that passed back in school, his eye catches the sign for the shop he’s looking for. He sprints down the rest of the block and steps through the door, a wide grin shining from his face.
“Master Ricky!” the shopowner greets him warmly. “It’s so nice to see you. Amassed another unscheduled fortune have you?” He asks, while already reaching under the counter. He knows what Ricky is going to ask for.
And Ricky knows that he knows. But he goes through the ritual anyway, because it truly is a magical thing, “Yes I have Gus, thank you. One chocolate bar please.”
Gus pulls out the cheapest bar in the shop, places it on the counter with a flourish and recites, “That will be eighty-five cents.”
Ricky empties his coinpurse onto the counter besides the candy bar, and his small fingers shuffle coins around adeptly. In the barest moment, there are two piles, eighty-five cents which he leaves, and another nine which he carefully scoops back into the purse.
Gus watches with a smile as Ricky counts out the coins, takes the change left over and the candy bar, turns and leaves the store. It’s the kids like Ricky that keep Gus in the candy business, and keep his shelves stocked with the best quality chocolate at a specially low price. It’s the feeling he gets when he can share the pure joy of a simple bar of chocolate with the people that enjoy it the most.
Prompt: Sunday Scribblings #4.