“There are like a billion stars,” he said into my shoulder.
“More than that,” I said.
Nolan’s birthday was in September, four months before the hearing.
I wanted to give him something special. Something that would make him feel like a regular kid, not a kid whose mom cried in the bathroom with the water running so he wouldn’t hear.
But I didn’t have anything left to give.
Except my grandmother’s locket.
It was gold, shaped like an oval, with a tiny engraved rose on the front. My grandmother Eleanor wore it every day of her life. Inside were two photographs, cut by hand to fit. My grandmother and grandfather on their wedding day in 1952.
She gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday. She told me it would remind me that love can last a very long time.
It was the last valuable thing I owned.
I took it to a pawn shop on Chapman Highway called Second Chances.
The owner was an older man named Walt Harmon. He had kind eyes and a gray beard, and he looked at the locket for a long time.
“This is a nice piece,” he said. “Old. Real gold. You sure about this?”
“No,” I said. “But I need to.”
He gave me a hundred and eighty dollars. Then he wrote my name on a little tag and tied it to the chain.
“I’ll hold it for you as long as I can,” he said. “In case you want to come back for it.”
With that money, I bought a small chocolate birthday cake from Kessler’s downstairs. Mrs. Kessler gave me a discount and added blue frosting stars without being asked.
