“What the heck are you doing, Thia?” Bucky asked, leaving the display of model cars he’d been ogling to join me at the counter. When I roped him into riding his bike to Logan’s Beach with me, I forgot to mention the real reason why I wanted to go so badly. Bucky’s eyes widened in horror as they darted to the object I’d plunked down on the counter. “That’s your Donnie Mcraw buckle, Thia! You can’t sell that!”

“It’s mine, so I can do what I want with it,” I argued. I’d won the buckle when I’d gone to the rodeo in LaBelle with Bucky and his dad last year. Well, not so much WON, seeing as I was the only eight-year-old even willing to try and ride the sheep, but they gave me a prize anyway.

“So?” I turned back to Troy who held the buckle in his hands. He turned it over and banged it against the counter.

“It’s hollow,” Troy pointed out. Grabbing a small glass tube he closed one eye and held up the buckle, examining it through the tube.

“I don’t need cash. Just a trade,” I said. “For that.” I pointed to a chain in the display case. Troy didn’t look to where I was pointing.

“This thing’s silver coated. Ain’t worth much. Sorry, nothing I can do for you,” Troy said, taking the toothpick out of his mouth, pointing it as me as he spoke.

“What the heck do you even need that chain for?” Bucky asked.

I sighed, growing annoyed with his questions. “I got something I wanted to put on it, is all.” I shrank back down onto flat feet and Troy slid my buckle back across to me, adding yet another scratch to the top of the glass case.

“What do you want to put on it?” Bucky asked.

“It’s nothing,” I said, my shoulders falling in defeat. I eyeballed the silver chain through the glass for the last time before turning back around to Bucky.

“Tell Me!” Bucky demanded.

I reached into my back pocket and produced the skull ring and held it up for him to see, but only briefly because I didn’t want to lose it. I placed it back into my pocket, patting it to make sure it was in there.

“Where did you get that?” Troy asked suddenly, squeezing his lanky frame through the hatch in the cage as far as he could, his waist resting on top of the counter.

“Can’t tell you that,” I said, considering sticking my tongue out at him. “Come on, Bucky.” I grabbed his arm and we turned to leave.

“Wait!” Troy called out. “I was being hasty. You seem like nice kids. The buckle for the chain is a fair deal.”

“You didn’t even see which one I was pointing to,” I said, crossing my arms.

Troy shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, actually, keep the buckle. We have too many chains anyway, now show me which one it was again.” Troy slid open the case and grabbed the chain I pointed to. He tossed it through the cage as if I was going to bite off his hand. It hit the floor by my feet. I bent over to pick it up, dusting it off. “Are you sure?”

“I’m totally sure,” Troy said, waiving us off. “Now run along and make sure that if anyone asks you that you tell them Troy at Premier Pawn was good to you, okay? You gonna tell them that, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, although I didn’t really think that anyone was going to ask me to rate my recent trip to the pawnshop anytime soon.

Troy nodded so hard I thought his head might fall off. “Good. Now off you go,” He waved us off, snaking back down through the hatch in the cage, slamming it shut.

We left and Bucky was close on my heels as we rounded the building to where we’d left our bikes leaning up against the alley wall.

I took the skull ring from my pocket and slid it onto my new stainless steel chain, securing it around my neck. I popped the ring into my Future Farmers of America T-shirt.

“You gonna tell me what that is?” Bucky asked as we picked up our bikes.

“That’s my secret,” I said with a sly smile. The truth was that I had been dying to tell Bucky ever since Bear and his biker friends visited the Stop-N-Shop, but I wanted to wait until I was sure we were out of range of the ears of the small town gossips.

Which in Jessep, was pretty much everyone.

“I can keep a secret,” Bucky said, keeping pace beside me as we walked our bikes toward the street.

I stopped and turned to Bucky. I held out my pinkie. “You have to pinkie swear first and only then I’ll tell you, but only because you’re my best friend and I know you won’t tell anyone.”

“I’m your only friend,” Bucky reminded me, rolling his eyes.

“Don’t make me punch you in the gut, BUCKY,” I said. He might have been older than me, but he was small for his age. Kids made fun of his size as much as they made fun of me for my pink hair. We’d bonded over being outsiders in the second grade and became fast friends. And now we were swearing, the most sacred and serious promise in the world, so that I could tell him all about the blue-eyed man with tattoos who changed everything.

Bucky grabbed my pinky with his own. “You have to swear you won’t tell a soul what I am about to tell you, and when you’re old and grey that you will take this secret to your grave, and even then you won’t tell like other ghosts and stuff,” I said.

Bucky nodded, shook my pinky, and spit on the ground, sealing his swear. “I promise, now spill it Pinky,” he sang, throwing my own hated nickname in my face. This time I did stick out my tongue as we dropped our pinkies.

We didn’t get on our bikes when we got to the road. Instead, we pushed on the handlebars and continued to walk beside each other. I pulled the ring back out of my shirt so Bucky could see it, turning it over so he could get a good look of the skull.

“Is that a real diamond.”

“I think so,” I said, unable to help the huge smile that spread across my face.

“So how’d you get it?” Bucky asked.

“This here?” I asked, holding up the chain, “This is a promise.”

“Like a pinkie swear?”

I shook my head. “Nope, it’s way more powerful than that.”

“How’d ya get it? You steal it? Looks like it cost a lot of money.” He reached out to touch it and that’s when I tucked it back into my shirt.

“No, I didn’t steal it,” I corrected. “It was given to me.”