Fallen leaves floated around our calves as we tried to catch a big crawdad that had eluded us all summer. With a twig, Kyle tried to coax it out from under a rock while I stood poised to grab the crustacean. It darted out, mottled red like a pot lobster. Kyle screamed. I thought he'd been pinched until I saw what he saw. Coins glinted in the creek's clay bed. Their luster danced like minnows with the water's movement. We lifted the rock to find water-rotted money bags. I polished the tarnish from one dull coin. Its sovereign silver gleamed, uncorrupted by water and time. Each silver dollar bore the image of that gorgeous goddess, Liberty. 

 

We piled our treasure on the stony bank. I ran up the weedy path to the Kwik-e-mart, which Kyle's dad part owned, and where my mother picked up shifts. I brought back buckets from behind the dumpsters there. Our feet churned the creek cloudy as we dug up coins. We filled our pockets, hid the buckets in a hollow tree, and covered what remained with a heavy shale slab.

Our pockets jangled as we hit the ice cream parlor to celebrate our find with the biggest cones we could buy. Kyle could demolish an ice cream. We licked quickly in the muggy, autumn dusk. 

"How come you think it's there?" he said. 

"It's got to be stolen. Why else bury it?" I pulled a few from my pocket. "These are all dated 1920." 

"There's hundreds," Kyle said. "I'm rich!"

 

"What on earth?" my mother said at my muddy state.

"Crawdadding," I said.

"Right." 

My parents were struggling. Dad's library had closed and Mom's Kwik-e-mart shifts weren't covering the mortgage payments. They had heated conversations about money and something called "APR." Dad kept his old brown suit freshly pressed, for interviews that seldom came. He scanned for jobs at the computer, his mouth moving as though he was muttering something, only no sound came out.

Under a certain age, you sense more than understand your parents' stress. We needed money, sure, but Dad also needed to provide, to shake the inadequacy that dogged him when Mom left for work. He worried about her, working nights. To compensate, he picked up around the house, tried to get on top of fixing up our place. But that took money too. He planned elaborate dinners that didn't come off. "Don't worry, he'll get something soon," Mom said as we scraped our plates into the trash. 

 

Kyle and I returned to the creek the next day. All told, we pulled out six sacks of 1920s silver dollars. We hid more in the woods and snuck hundreds home. That's when Kyle started acting funny. 

"I saw them first," he said. "You can have those, but the rest are mine, got it?"

"You're kidding, right? I helped you dig them out," I said.

"And you'll be compensated. But I'm the boss here, like your mom works for my dad."

"I was the one who found the crawdad."

"That has nothing to do with it."

"Doesn't it?" I said. "Fifty-fifty's only fair."

"One word to my dad, and your mom can find a job somewhere else."

"And I'll tell everybody about this. You think someone hasn't looked for this money?"

That seemed to chill Kyle out some, but he didn't exactly play it cool. He ran right out and bought expensive sneakers and a matching tracksuit, arousing suspicion from our schoolmates and teachers. 

"Ya'll rob a bank or something?" our friend Terry asked. 

"We need a story," I whispered to Kyle in the back of English class.

"We could say we saved up money mowing lawns?" he suggested.

"No one'll believe that. Just slow down on blowing our fortune, will you?"

"My fortune," he said.

"Whatever." 

 

I visited the library, did research. The coins almost certainly came from a Prohibition-era heist that had gone down in our town. 

"Look," I said, showing him a book I borrowed, called The Numismatist's Manual. "See? These coins are super collectible. They're worth much more than face value. And you're spending them like water. But if we sold them, you'd be looking at a fortune." 

"Sell them?" Kyle scoffed. "Money's for spending, not selling."

"You're such an idiot."

Kyle's face darkened. "Don't call me that." 

"Listen," I said. "Just hear me out. There's this place downtown." On my phone, I showed him the shop that dealt in collectible coins.

 

Saturday morning we took a bus to the shop and waited for its proprietor. 

"Ah!" he said, scrutinizing several through a lens. "Where did you get these?"

"My godmother left them to me," I lied.

"Lucky girl," the coin dealer said, skeptical. "I can give you fifty for each."  

"Sixty," I said. 

"Fifty-five," he said. "Final offer."

"Holy cow," Kyle said as we boarded the bus. "I'm rich."

"You would've squandered the lot if I hadn't shown you what they're worth," I said.

Passengers looked at us.

"Keep your voice down," Kyle whispered. "Remember, I decide what happens with this money."

"Can you imagine what the news would do with a story like this?" I said.

"I said quiet," he hissed.

"Fifty-fifty," I said.

"Fine."

 

For months, we visited dealers across town. Kyle sold coins and bought game systems, a moped, a drum set. For a while, he was the most popular kid in school, but eventually his fortune ran out. I held on to a few hundred, betting these rare coins would grow rarer and more valuable. I liked to handle them, to feel the icy heft of their metal faces between my fingers. I felt changed, and not in a good way, clouded, somehow, like the water in the creek. It was as though their silver substance had entered my veins, given me a taste of the power we lack in childhood. And I'd gained a sense that the world sometimes dupes people into doing things that aren't necessarily in their own best interest.

 

The day we moved the last money from the woods, an early freeze wafted ice flakes among the now-nude trees. The creek ran lifeless and tea-brown. We hated one another then, we who had once been friends. 

"Later," Kyle said, starting his new moped. He burned out from behind the Kwik-e-mart, where he would soon work. 

 

My mother came home with a grim look.

"They let me go," she said. "No reason given why."

But Dad had another interview coming, a big one, with the Main Library, downtown. It was his birthday, but my parents didn't seem celebratory. So I went shopping.

"Where did you get the money?" Dad said when he saw the gift I bought him, a new suit, navy blue. Mom ran her fingers over the coat's striped satin lining.

"I mowed all those lawns last summer," I lied. 

"I can't accept this," Dad said.

"You can," Mom said. "She worked hard for this." 

"For your interview," I said. Newly shaved, with his hair freshly cut by Mom in the backyard, he donned the suit. He looked younger somehow, flushed with ruddy confidence. 

"Knock ‘em dead," my mother said, planting a kiss on his cheek. 

I held out a single, silver coin. "Here," I said. "For luck."

My father seemed to want to say something, but kissed us instead. 

"He's going to be just fine," my mother said.

 

Later that year, my father and I would pass the Kwik-e-mart on our way home from the Main Library, where I met him after school. I would glimpse Kyle in its yellowed interior, surrounded by soda and snacks. It seemed a world away from the book-lined aisles where I spent my time. I refused ever to enter that store. But for years, I'd walk the creek, watch water trickle over stones, and gather in bright pools beneath the trees.