He stares at the brooch for a long time. He thinks about the eviction notice. He thinks about the bag of frozen peas in the freezer that's almost gone. He thinks about his mama's back when she stands at the stove—how it started to hunch, how she stretches it when she thinks he isn't looking.
The lady gave it to me, he thinks. She wanted me to have it, right?
He puts the brooch back in the pouch. He hides it inside his social studies textbook. He lies down in the dark and doesn't sleep.
Wednesday after school, Bryce takes a different route home. He walks down Beatties Ford Road, past the laundromat, past the church with the broken sign, until he sees a flickering neon window in a strip mall: Sullivan's Loan & Trade. We Buy Gold.
He stops on the sidewalk. He is 9 years old. He doesn't really know what a pawn shop is; he has heard the word "pawn" in cartoons, but in his head, it's tangled up with prawn and chess pieces. What he sees is a window that says, "We Buy Gold." And inside the velvet pouch in his backpack is something gold. In his mind, it is simple: gold goes in, money comes out. Money pays for an apartment. His mama smiles again.
He pushes the door open. A bell rings. The shop smells like dust and lemon cleaner: glass cases full of watches and rings, a wall of guitars, a wall of power tools. Behind a counter with bulletproof glass sits a man in his fifties, soft middle, thinning ginger hair: Trevor Sullivan.
He looks up from a sports magazine. His eyes do a very specific thing: they go from kid in a wet hoodie to kid alone in a wet hoodie in less than a second.
"Help you, son?"
Bryce steps to the counter. He has to stand on his toes to see over it. He sets the velvet pouch on the glass and slides it across. "I want to sell this. Please, sir."
Trevor opens the pouch. His face doesn't change. That's the giveaway: a man who has seen ten thousand pieces of jewelry doesn't react when an $80,000 emerald lands on his counter. He just nods. "Huh. Interesting." And picks the brooch up between two fat thumbs. "Where'd you get this, kid?"
"A lady gave it to me, sir, yesterday. She was sitting on a bench at the bus stop and she was sick, and she gave it to me before the ambulance came."
"Mm-hmm."