Short Stories

Short Story #6

(This story borrows some ideas from a book whose name I forgot)

"Hey, look!" I pointed at a small silver circle on the ground. "I think I found a quarter!"
My older brother Dylan high-fived me. "Nice," he commented. I understood he only said that to make me feel better- he'd already found about three dollars worth of coins, as well as a gift card to Target and a Nerf bullet. I'd found a penny, this quarter, some chewed gum that I'd hastily thrown away, and a crumpled up Post-It. 

It was a strange hobby of ours; whenever we had time to spare, we'd go out into our small, quiet neighborhood and look for cool things on the ground. Sometimes, we'd find a few oddly shaped rocks. Sometimes, we'd find a couch next to the dumpster (Author's note: This actually happened to me in real life, and with the help of my dad, we brought it back to our house and cleaned it off). Typically, we just found a couple of coins and maybe some things that fell out of the Dumpster.

Sometimes, whenever "business" wasn't good, we went around and helped out people in the community. We helped old Mr. Branam mow his lawn, and we also helped Mrs. Zolla walk her dogs. There were plenty of other things we did, and it earned us a reputation as the people who helped out in the neighborhood. We often got plenty of requests to help out with some chores, and Dylan and I started bringing in some money from that as well. Our parents suggested that we could save it for our college tuition, but we blew most of it on snacks.   

We rounded a corner and nearly ran smack into a Day-Glo orange sign proclaiming that the sidewalk and road were closed off for construction. My brother suggested that we ignore the sign and go look over there; there weren't even bulldozers there yet. But I shook my head. I knew that even if there was stuff on the ground over there, the construction workers would've cleaned it out. 

We turned around to go home. The sun had begun to set, casting its final rays of light across the ground. The sky seemed to become a fire, becoming various hues of orange, with traces of red and pink. But I had no interest in the sunset; I had just noticed a small object on the sidewalk in the corner of my vision. I glanced in that direction and my heart began to race when I recognized the object. It was a wallet! They were normally full of cash.

It was only a dozen feet or so to the wallet. I scooped it up and turned around to show it to Dylan. "Look what I found!" I exclaimed proudly. Dylan blinked repeatedly, his face moving from confusion to shock to excitement. "Parker... that's awesome!" He hurried over, and I held it between us. "Should we look at it here?" I asked. Dylan vigorously shook his head. "Let's go home first, and then we can look at it in my room." I nodded, still full of jubilation. A wallet... that could buy us so much!

We crashed through the door, barely stopping to say a quick "hello" to our mom and dad. We pounded up the stairs, flew into Dylan's room and quickly slammed the door. I giddily set the wallet on the ground and opened it. 

I stared at it in shock and my jaw practically punched through the floor and ground and went to the other side of the Earth. When I looked over at Dylan, he was in the same state. "Whoa... that-" "This is so much!" I grinned from ear to ear. "I bet this is enough to buy us a laptop for every day of the month!" I scooped up the thick stack of bills and began counting. "One, two, three, four, five, six..." 

After a few minutes and checking how many bills were left, I decided to split off a bit and have Dylan count those. A few minutes after that, we totaled up the amount. "This... we...."

"You were only kinda wrong- this is enough for a MacBook every day for four months!" Dylan squealed.

"Who even keeps this much in their wallet?!? Like, they just see a nice house, and they go, 'Ooh, I want that house', so they just knock on the door, hand the owners their wallet, and get to have the house?"

"I don't know, but this is the best day of my life!"
"We can both go to Stanford and still have, like, thirty grand!"
"We can buy, like, a thousand bags of chips!"
"Dude, we could probably buy fifty thousand!"
"We can probably buy three or four kilograms of 24K gold!"
"What is the point of that?"
"I don't know!"
"We can buy half a Ferrari!"
I cracked up at this. "Do you just take a chainsaw to it?"

We ate dinner normally, trying to tamp down our excitement. That night, we slept well, with dreams of pools of money, half of a Ferrari, and MacBooks. 

However, the next day, when we took it to the bank, they told us the money was counterfeit. There were only two real bills in the entire stack. We were disappointed, but two hundred dollars was still a significant sum. We thanked the teller and left.

"I wish that the money was real," I said soberly. "We could have done so much with it." Dylan shrugged. "Hey, at least we still have two hundred dollars. C'mon, I'll buy you some lunch." He pointed at my favorite burger place, Bob's Burger Barn, which was just a few blocks away. I sighed, nodded unenthusiastically, and allowed myself to be half-dragged several blocks to a restaurant.

. . .

As the waitress took our orders, I mulled the whole situation over in my head. Even if we'd gotten over one hundred and thirty grand, people would surely think that we got it by stealing or selling things on the black market. Besides, the whole thing was comparable to a lottery. Sometimes, luck will dangle a prize in front of you, and even let you grab on for a few moments before jerking it away and causing you to lose your balance. But I'd be fine. 

After we'd finished our burgers and the plates were taken away, we paid the bill, got up and left. I stared at the ground the entire way home, not even noticing when cyclists swept past inches away. 

My brother pointed at the ground. "Hey, is that a wallet?"

A/N: (1057 words) This is actually probably the worst writing I've ever done. No structure whatsoever and the whole thing is chaotic and disorganized. Still, I did my best. It spawned from a story prompt I've heard fairly often: What would you do if you found a ton of money? If you want, go ahead and tell me in the comments.