A Penny Saved

 

Photo credit: Robsalot (that's me!)

April was pretty sure family vacations were the worst part of being an only child. Sure, all her friends with siblings complained endlessly about being stuck with their brothers and sisters for a week, but then they came back from vacation with stories about how their older brother taught them how to do the pizza wedge on the bunny slope for the first time (whatever that was), or how they built an epic sandcastle with their little sister. Yeah, family vacations as on only child really sucked, which was why she wasn’t thrilled when her parents told her they would be taking one in a week.

By the time dinner came around, she had formulated a plan.

“Dad?” she asked as she pushed her mashed potatoes around the plate, “do they have wishing wells in Scotland?”

“Sure hone, I bet we can find a wishing-well.”

She smiled, but she didn’t dare tell her dad her secret plan.

After dinner snuck a hammer up to her room, and with the door securely closed, she pulled her piggy bank down from the top shelf. With a great thwack it broke open.

“Sorry piggy.” She whispered as she scooped up the coins and deposited them into her suitcase.

The flight was long, and the drive from the airport was boring, but as they approached town she grew excited, because out in the field in front of the bed and breakfast stood a well.

“Is that the wishing well?” she asked, pointing out the window.

“Why yes, honey, I think it is.”

After check-in, she ventured out to the well, her pockets filled with as many coins as they could hold. She held her breath and tossed them in one by one, making the same wish each time, but nothing happened.

It became her routine throughout the week-long vacation. Every day they would go out and look at lame churches, and statues, and museums; and each night she would run out to the well, but she was beginning to doubt her plan would work.

On the very last night of vacation, she made one more walk out to the garden, clutching the last coin she had left, a penny from the year she was born. She approached the well, closed her eyes, and wished as hard as she could as she tossed the penny in, but instead of the familiar plunk of water, she heard a different sound, a sort of cry.

She ran back inside, screaming “Dad, there’s someone in the well!”

Back out in the garden, she stood impatiently next to her father as he raised the bucket from the bottom of the well, but instead of a little brother or sister, a fuzzy head with a big wet nose appeared.

“It’s a puppy!” she exclaimed.

“So it is,” her dad replied, turning towards the Inn Keeper who had appeared in the garden, “is this your little guy.”

“Nope,” the Inn Keeper shrugged.

“Hmm,” her said, turning back towards April, “what do you think we should name him?”

“Does that mean I get to keep him?” she squealed.

“Well, I suppose so.”

“I think he should be called Penny.”