The Price of a Dollar

Growing up, one of my favorite things to do was lie across my bed and read. Back then, I would often spend hours lost in the pages of my many books. From their pages, I read of ancient forests where magic was real and heroes vanquished ferocious monsters with mighty swords. I still love to read.

There was a wall in my childhood bedroom lined with bookshelves that stood as sentinels of knowledge. It held novels and all sorts of different books, from classic fairy tales to graphic novels. Yet, among them all, my heart held a special affinity for an encyclopedia-size book teeming with Mother Goose rhymes, the enchantment of Hans Christian Andersen, and the odd tales spun by the Brothers Grimm. Those whimsical tales, stitched with mystery and shades of darkness, captivated me.

My father, a book lover, imparted to his children the love of literature. Every so often, he would bring home a new treasure, steadily transforming my room into a sanctuary of knowledge. When the shelves reached their brimming limit, the excess were put in boxes nestled beneath my bed.

We were far from wealthy; our roots were firmly grounded within the middle class. My father was a teacher, while my mother worked as a laboratory technician—it allowed us a modest comfort on the island.

We lived in a scheme, built on the grounds of a long-abandoned farmland, nestled at the foot of a low mountain. This settlement stood as a symbol of the governments aim at expanding housing opportunities. Each street was lined with generic copy-and-paste houses. With additions and remodeling over the years, a lot of these houses morphed into the personalities of their owners. We were comfortable in our generic house in our little part of the world.

My little primary school was about a fifteen-minute walk from my house. Adjacent to it lay an abandoned fish farm, its landscape dotted by numerous square-shaped ponds, where whispers of crocodiles roaming freely kept us away.

My school had no library. On Fridays, the teachers never teach, so I would bring a few books to school. I was known as the book guy. Clusters of children would gather around, their heads peering over my shoulder, hungrily devouring the words contained within those pages, while our distracted teacher would occasionally pop her head into the room and ask us to keep it down.

One Friday, a book I brought to school captivated one of my friends. The book kept him entranced and took him away from our usual antics at lunch. During recess, he sat under a tree, absorbing its pages, oblivious to the games on the playground. After school let out, he asked me if he could borrow the book for the weekend. I could tell that he genuinely loved the book, so I let him borrow it.

However, when I asked him for the book on Monday, he said he had forgotten.

“Why don’t I just pay you and keep the book?” he asked.

I jokingly told him a dollar. To my surprise, he happily offered me a dollar. Perhaps this was his intention all along. Needless to say, I took the dollar, and in that instant, I’d significantly increased my lunch money, and my two weeks as a book dealer started.

The next day I brought more books to school and conducted my transactions beside the concrete water fountain during lunchtime. As the days unfolded, my customers multiplied, and I traded away some of my most cherished books—the ones that had held me captive, unraveling the wonders contained within them.

I deluded myself into believing that the books I sold were because I had already read them and had their stories etched into my mind. However, the truth was, I had an insatiable craving for soda, chips, and candies, and I had discovered a way to fund these ravenous desires.

The school-provided lunch was unappealing. The buns tasted like stale cardboard, and the milk, with each sip, betrayed the grainy remnants of undissolved powder. So, during lunchtime, those who where fortunate enough sought the respite of the higglers, whose enticing array of sweets, beverages, and long-cooked but delectable foods awaited us along the chain-linked fence encircling our school. They greeted us with eager smiles, eager to fulfill our desires. Among them, the greatest indulgence came in the form of fried chicken, sold in greasy, flavor-soaked brown paper bags. At times, I found myself eating those paper bags as well.

Before my foray into book peddling, my lunch money was limited, forcing me to choose between a patty or a bag of chicken, with scarcely enough money left to purchase additional snacks for my journey home. However, I was now a high roller, liberated from that hard decision. I could indulge in both luxuries—a patty and a greasy bag of chicken.

During my walk home from school, I would stop at a wooden shop nestled alongside a dusty road, where I would generously treat my friends, splurging on sodas, chips, gum, and all the guilty amenities that afflict a ten-year-old's heart.

I reveled in the lap of opulence until on a fateful Friday, as he occasionally does, my father arrived home with a new book, accompanied by a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. When he entered my room, he noticed the shelves with books askew, gaps interrupting the once-unbroken rows. In my hungry quest for candy money, I neglected to restore the shelves' equilibrium with the books from beneath my bed—the ones that I have yet to read.

"You sold the books, didn't you?" without even asking whether they had been lent or given away. He just knew what I had done.

Perhaps the remnants of candy wrappers in the wastebasket or the perpetual scent of chewing gum wafting through my room over the past few weeks had betrayed me. I don’t know how he knew, but he knew his son well enough to sense the truth—knowing that I had, indeed, sold those books.

He gazed at me, firm and unwavering, and said, "Go get them. Now."

He then turned to my sister, "You, go with him."

My sister attempted to protest, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. In my father's eyes, she, my faithful accomplice in many of my escapades, was complicit in this one as well. Yet, my book peddling was a solitary endeavor.

Hours had passed since we started on our mission to reclaim the books. That day, the sun blazed with ferocity mirroring the fiery temperament that burned within my sister for being dragged into my punishment. She bore no affection for me in that moment, her bicycle carrying the weight of our burden. Affixed to the front of her bicycle was an oversized, pink, plastic-woven basket decorated with delicate white sunflowers. Within it were the books we had retrieved so far.

We traversed the familiar streets of our neighborhood, journeying from one house to another, dodging potholes that pocked the road, while children played in their yards. My sister's complaints echoed through the air, protesting the injustice of being punished for my transgressions.

My penultimate stop led me to the home of one of my best friends, the catalyst for my entrepreneurial spirit. Jeffrey, affectionately known as Jet Lee, from the perspective of a ten-year-old, the nickname was a clever play on his name.

Reluctantly, he surrendered the books, understanding the gravity of my predicament. But he kept his gaze on one book in particular. In his eyes, tinged with a shade of sorrow, I recognized a longing—the same longing that befalls a lover whose partner has gone off to war, uncertain of their safe return—for the book that had started it all, "Where the Wild Things Are."

I remembered the joy and wonder that brightened his face as he delved into its pages, discovering a realm of fantastical beings and adventures.

I remembered the same feeling when I first read it and realized how much the book meant to him.

As I handed him the book, gratitude filled his eyes, accompanied by a nod of appreciation. The book was in the hands of someone who valued it as much as I did. As I rode away, he reassured me that no repayment was necessary.

My final destination was Rohan, a fellow of rich melanin, his eyes profound and brown, brimming with intelligence. The youngest member of our sixth-grade class, he shared an unabated passion for books. When I explained, he returned some of the books, holding the remainder hostage until I paid him back in full. He thought that perhaps it was a ploy, an elaborate scheme to sell the books and then concoct a sob story, using my innocent sister as a way to gain sympathy.

Exhausted from my quest and weary of further debate, I gave in to his demands. The sun descent toward the horizon, cast a golden glow on the world. My sister was still complaining, so I decided to head back home. I told the rest of my customers on Monday that they needed to return the books for a refund, of course.

A veil of silence cloaked our ride back home, broken only by the sounds of the clanging of my sister's bicycle fender against potholes and the gravel crunching beneath our wheels. The hue of her displeasure etched on her face as she pedaled on her pink and white bicycle, its crowbar handlebar swept back. Guilt gnawed at my conscience as I regarded my sister, burdened by the weight of those books. She had been denied the spoils of my endeavors, yet she was forced to share in the repercussions of my actions.

As we drew closer to home, the sun, now a low, burnished orb, transformed the deep blue sky into a rainbow of fiery hues. The air grew cooler, signaling the approaching twilight. And as darkness enveloped our surroundings, the street lights flickered to life.

On our arrival, our father awaited us, seated on the verandah, his expression both stern and relief. As we rode up the driveway, sigh escaped his lips, laden with a mixture of exasperation and resignation.

"The price of a dollar, huh?" he uttered softly, his voice laced with disappointment.

“You know, son, books are worth far more than their monetary value. They’re gateways to worlds unseen.”

His words struck a chord within me, echoing with resonance through today. In that moment, I realized the gravity of my actions—the devaluation of something so profound in pursuit of fleeting pleasures.

He then turned to my sister, his eyes softening, and nodded at her to follow him inside. Her steps tentative and exhausted, she cast a lingering glance in my direction, her eyes reflecting both disappointment and forgiveness before disappearing in the comforting warmth of our home.

Left alone, I sat on the verandah steps as the silence of the night began to fade from the rising chorus of the crickets. Years have since passed, and my love for books has only grown stronger.

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