Who Would Have Thought? (Final)

June
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. That’s all I found as I groped in my pocket for money, standing at the cool, black restaurant counter. My food rang up on the register as seven bucks and three cents and all I had was this. I was too young to have a credit card, or to use one, and I had somehow managed to lose the other ten bucks I had been carrying. Oh yeah… I lent it to my friend to buy something yesterday, and this was the change. What had I thought I could buy with only the change? I didn’t want to hear the lecture about money management, which my mom had essentially pounded into my head, over and over, using her words as mortar and pestle, for the thousandth time. The cashier, who was tall, thin, and wearing a lot of black eyeliner, started looking at me impatiently. Maybe she thought I was being parsimonious. I just wasn’t sure what to do.
*****
Shannon
A teenaged girl, probably about sixteen, stood before me, wearing faded blue jeans and a navy blue hoody. Her dirty blond hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, and it draped down behind her like a curtain. Her initially confident expression faltered as she searched her pockets for money and found very little. I drummed my fingers on the cash register, watching each shiny red painted nail hit with a satisfactory thud. Her food sat on the counter, getting continuously colder. She glanced up, an apologetic, nervous look on her face. I shifted from one leg to the other, then back again, waiting.
“Are you gonna pay?” I finally asked.
She looked up again, and then continued pulling copious numbers of pennies from her pocket.
“I sure hope so.”
*****
Danny
I went out to lunch with Mommy the other day. She got us food (I got chicken fingers and French fries), and she let me play with her smooth, tan wallet, as long as I didn’t spill the coins on the floor. Mommy had lots of money in her wallet, with endless numbers of silvery, shiny coins, each like a little moon, and crisp, greenish dollar bills. I stuck a few coins in my pocket, ‘cause Mommy said I could. I felt like a big grown-up.
While we were eating, there was a girl who couldn’t find enough money to give the food lady. The food she was going to buy looked very yummy, and she looked very sad. I thought that maybe she would be happier if I gave her the coins that I had in my pocket. I told Mommy that I was gonna walk around, and, pretending that I was a knight, galloped up to the girl on my invisible horse. When I got closer to her, I pulled up on the reins, and my horse stopped with a loud whinny. The girl was a lot taller than she had looked from near Mommy, and she looked almost as tall as Mommy is
I tapped her on the leg, said, “Here you go,” and handed her four very shiny quarters. She looked down nicely and said softly, “Thank you, little boy, but I can’t take your money. Why don’t you keep it?” I shrugged, shoved the quarters back in my pocket, and galloped away.
*****


Samantha
I was in the middle of my second meeting of the day when my phone started vibrating. I wouldn’t have noticed except for the fact that I had put it on the table in the meeting room and it caused the entire table to shake. I hung up on whoever was calling, and then put it on silent. I turned back to my coworkers, slightly embarrassed. The meeting finished about ten minutes later, and by then I had sixteen missed calls, all from my daughter. With a tired sigh, I called June back.
“Hello?”
“Hi, June, it’s Mom.”
“Oh thank goodness! I’m at that restaurant downtown and I only have a buck eighty-seven. Can you come help me out?”
“Honey, I’m at work, and I have yet another meeting in about fifteen minutes for this big project the company’s doing. I can’t go running all around town.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Well… here, this is what I would do. Find someone at one of the other tables who seems like someone you would be comfortable talking to, ask if you can borrow some money, and write down their contact information. We’ll pay them back.”
“Um… ok… I guess.”
*****
Terri
The girl approached my table where I was eating lunch on my own. She seemed unsure as to which table to go up to, but mine won out.
“Um… hi,” she said. “Could I borrow six bucks? I will definitely pay you back if you write down some way I can contact you.”
I studied her for a minute, running my fingers through my curly brown hair, pulling it back into a ponytail. She seemed vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t sure from where. Did she go to my school? Was she in the dance class before mine? She seemed honest enough, either way.
“Sure…” I said. I pulled my hair through the hair elastic, then handed her the six dollars. “Here you go.”
She began to walk away. She didn’t have anyone to sit with either.
“Hey,” I called. “D’you wanna come sit over here and eat? I can give you my email address…” I clicked open a pen and began to scribble it down on a napkin.
“Sure,” she said. “Thanks.”
*****
June
Who would have known that one dollar and eighty-seven cents would lead to me meeting one of my best friends for the rest of high school and beyond? It turned out that Terri, the girl who lent me the money, went to the same school as me, and was the same age. We even shared an interest in cooking, something none of my other friends thought was a huge waste of time. I had just somehow never seen her at school before, each of us blending into a crowd of high school students. I did eventually pay her back for that day, both in money and in trust. We are great friends to this day.