Good Luck

Good Luck

I still have my dad’s notes; I carry the worn out letters scribbled on yellow-edged pages pasted in a leather cover beside my hip, everywhere I go. In fact it’s the only thing I still have from earth. Well that and the rusty 2057 penny wedged in my jean pocket. It was a gift that I received my last full day on earth. I was given it by Ky Merkely, who had scrapped it off from the dirt in the space between our feet.

            He rubbed it on the inside of his nicely ironed shirt and placed it in my palm, wrapping it up in my fingers.

            “For good luck,” he smiled at me with sparkling eyes. I smiled back with the heads up penny blanketed in my hand. We stood there grinning at each other by the lake a mile from my house and a mile from his. We’d snuck out, more like told our guardians we were going on a walk alone, and met up in the middle.

            Ky Merkely wasn’t all that special just important. He was the first boy who had ever shown interest in me, or so Leela Beach said so. I never knew him all that well, in fact hardly knew him at all. Just that he was a pretty good looking boy from school, who apparently had been checking me out. Now that’s all I’ll ever know of him.

            When we parted ways that afternoon, looking back at each other, the thought never crossed my mind that that would be the last time I’d ever see him. I’m sure he never thought that either.

            And certaintly neither of us could have guessed that he should have perhaps kept the penny for himself, because he needed the luck more than I did.