The Wallet Pt. 1

There was nothing special about Tom. Every day he would get up at the same time. He would go to work, eat, go to bed, and then do the same thing the next day. That is, until after work one lazy Friday afternoon. Tom strolled down the sidewalk in his shiny black shoes and sat down at the bus stop because he could not afford a car. He saw something underneath the wooden bench: a wallet. There was nobody else at the stop, so he picked it up. Tom looked inside for an ID, but there was nothing inside the wallet except for $2.50 in cash. No cards nor even a driver’s license. “How strange,” he remarked.

The bus arrived, and Tom shoved the odd wallet into his coat pocket and pulled out his normal one. He fiddled around for his bus pass, but it wasn’t there. “You coming?” The bus driver called, tapping their foot impatiently.

Tom stuttered, “Oh? Ah, yes… how much is the bus fare?” Then he sighed because he only had a 20, and he knew that would be inconvenient for the driver.

“$2.50 for one trip,” the bus driver called back. “But you’d better hurry up, cause people here have got places to be!”

Two dollars and fifty cents, that was the exact amount of money in the strange wallet that Tom found a few moments before! Not wanting to take up any more precious time, he used the money in that wallet to pay for the bus fare and sat down. He would pay it back when he returned the wallet to its rightful owner, Tom reasoned. How fortunate that it happened to have exactly the amount that he needed.

Tom got off at his street and walked the rest of the way home, as was normal. He went around the corner with the shop that sold those expensive fancy jeans and the restaurant that had that expensive fancy pasta, where he would look through the windows every day and watch people spend more in a few minutes than he earned in two weeks. “What do they have that I don’t?” Tom huffed with jealousy. Not that he would ever wear those jeans if he had them, or that he even liked pasta very much.

He finally pried himself away from the corner and when he was about a quarter of the way up the stairs to his apartment, his neighbor called out, “Hey Tom, can I ask ya something?” Tom looked down, and his neighbor Shirley was waving to him.

He exhaustedly responded, “Fine, what is it?” and continued up the stairs to his apartment on the 4th floor.

“Can I borrow five bucks? I promise I’ll pay you back!” Shirley answered. She stopped waving her hands but was now standing at the bottom of the stairs.

“No!” Tom nearly shouted, which made Shirley jump back in surprise. “Barbara lent you money and you didn’t pay her back until two months later! And that was only after being harassed by everyone here until you did!”

Shirley insisted, “I just got busy!”

“No!” Tom repeated. “I don’t even have any to spare!” He pulled out the wallet that he found earlier, intending to show Shirley that he didn’t have any money, but instead, there was something strange inside: a five-dollar bill.