Chapter 1 - Two Coins in the Dust
The little girl was crying before anyone truly noticed her. Tears rolled quietly down her hollow, wind-chapped cheeks as she stood beside an old ice cream cart near the corner of 5th and Elm, where the city’s rush was at its loudest.
Automobiles sped past in an unending stream of noise and exhaust fumes. Pedestrians rushed along the sidewalk, buried in thick woolen scarves, gripping luxury department store shopping bags, and barking hurried words into mobile phones without paying the slightest attention to the fragile world beneath their elbows.
Yet the little girl remained standing there—small, hungry, shivering, and profoundly alone.
Her faded cotton dress was two sizes too small, its hem frayed and caked with dried mud from the drainage ditches near the railroad tracks. Her bare legs were blue with cold, and her oversized, scuffed canvas shoes were held together by thin rubber bands. Her trembling, amber-brown eyes stayed fixed on the glowing soft-serve machine like it was an enchanted artifact from a fairy tale she would never be allowed to enter.
Inside the machine's clear hopper, ribbons of creamy white vanilla swirled in hypnotic, rhythmic circles. The sweet aroma of toasted sugar cones and rich cream drifted through the crisp autumn air, making her empty stomach twist into sharp, painful knots.
She hadn't eaten a solid meal in nearly forty-eight hours.
Her mother was lying sick with pneumonia in a drafty, unheated basement apartment four blocks away, coughing until her ribs ached, having spent their last remaining dollar on generic fever medicine.
Very softly, the little girl whispered, “Mister... please.”
Most of the passersby who heard her voice only glanced down for a fraction of a second before averting their gaze. Some quickened their pace, pretending the child was invisible; others pulled their designer coats closer, treating her visible poverty like a contagious disease they might catch if they looked too closely.
Slowly, with fingers that trembled from cold and humiliation, she reached into the torn pocket of her dress. She extended her tiny, dirt-streaked hand toward the stainless-steel counter.
Her palm opened.
Resting in the center of her small hand were only two thin, scratched nickels.
Ten cents.
May you like
A single scoop cone cost one dollar and fifty cents.
Her small voice cracked, barely audible above the roar of an idling transit bus: "I have two coins... Can I have just a little taste?"
