Kelsey trundled along on shoes velcroed tightly to her feet, fist wrapped around her brother’s index finger, and took in the spectacle of her surroundings. Shoulder showing halter tops, knees exposed at the edges of floral shorts. The clacking of plastic coolers, mostly pulled from truck beds, folded into the smattered conversations happening a few feet above her head.
The day was hot, even for early July, and her skin felt slimy from her mother’s insistent coat of SPF. A wide brimmed hat made it difficult to see the wispy strips of clouds, and she kept losing her balance, tilting her face up toward the great crystalline blue. Her big brother tugged her forward and into the park.
With minimal grass and even less shade, the plaza was mostly concrete, decorated with intermittent statues of rewritten history, a massive fountain adorning the center.
They took a lap.
Weaving in and out of the gathering clumps of people, Kelsey’s brother spoke, but she wasn’t listening. Instead, she inspected the bearded men of marble, each standing on an intricately carved pillar. She didn’t recognize any of them, and assumed they must be somehow important to the grown ups. Kelsey turned to her brother for answers, but the words faltered on her toddler’s tongue.
Some time after she lost count of the stone soldiers, they approached the fountain and her attention took an entirely new course. Heat rippled in the late afternoon air, the pool beneath it glinting in the sunlight and mirroring the same gentle waves. Kelsey was captivated.
Whisked beneath her brother’s arm, she floated to the waters’s edge and locked her eyes on its sparkling surface.
Swarms of people moved around in every direction, claiming their temporary territory for the evening’s festivities, but Kelsey’s intent was individual. Planted back on her feet, she gripped the edge of the masonry and leaned, entranced by the lapping water and imagining its cool kiss against her cheeks.
Hidden below the shimmer, a flash of light caught her eye. The silver circle reflected in ways the water could not, and suddenly, Kelsey sensed treasure in the depths. She stretched up onto her toes and reached to no avail. Chest pressed against the ledge, she clutched her hand at the sunken coin but barely dipped a finger into the fountain. Dejected, she resigned herself to stare, bottom lip jutting forward in a wordless, determined pout.
The day waned. Kelsey’s brother chatted with friends who came and went, sipping from a frothy can wrapped in a paper bag. He did his best to occupy his sister, but the girl wanted little to do with his games and silly faces, only a glimmer at the bottom of the concrete pool.
With each passing hour, more people congregated into the plaza. As the dusk grew and the temperature relented, Kelsey’s brother slung a sweatshirt around her shoulders, an unwelcome sensation against her sunscreened skin. Stressed, concerned about the coin’s reduced visibility, she squirmed until the first burst of sulfur ignited the sky.
The flash, and its ribbon arms of descending luminescence, drew a rumble of approval from the crowd, but Kelsey looked only at the fountain. Another firework exploded in the summer sky, and the trinket in the water became a beacon.
The pyrotechnics intensified, each concussive thump accompanied by a pulse of light across the plaza. The coveted coin reflected each, strobing and holding Kelsey’s gaze as she again pressed her body into the barrier surrounding the fountain.
Awed by the barrage of false armament, Kelsey’s brother didn’t notice as she gripped her tiny fists around inside lip of the ledge. The bombshell din obfuscated the sound of her grunts, elbows desperately digging into the concrete, muscles at maximum contraction to hoist her little body up the containment wall. The finale fanfare, composed of overlapping explosions of every color, dazzled the spectators and distracted them from the child leaping headlong into the water.
The sounds were muffled below the surface, but still the flashes of light illuminated the coin as Kelsey paddled furiously downward, eyes wide despite the chlorine burn. She scrambled toward the shining circle, but slowed under the weight of her saturated sweatshirt. She flailed, losing sight of the precious object as the show concluded and darkness retook the park.
For a moment, everything was still.
A slow wave of applause moved over the crowd, a distant popping sound to Kelsey’s submerged ears. She heard her brothers panicked shouts through three feet of water, increasing in clarity as his arm hooked around her torso and pulled her sopping from the pool.
Kelsey barely noticed the mix of judgment and concern from the now attentive onlookers, and didn’t lose sight of the fountain as her brother rushed her away in embrassment.
Bent over his shoulder, she coughed and cried, drenched, stretching her hands toward the bounty that could have been.