Show and Tell

Paved by the shattered beer bottles of wayward teenagers, the shortcut to town is well traversed. My eyes are cast downward, in search of treasures. A penny will do. For the record, they’re all lucky, not just the Lincoln-face-up ones like some pessimists will tell you. I don’t find any coins, but amongst the infinite shards, I see a beautiful chunk of bluish glass, crudely shaped like a heart. Back at the high school lunchroom, I play show and tell. My fellow twelfth-graders aren’t impressed. They’re the type that’ll argue only Lincoln-face-up pennies are lucky. I’m not one of them.