The Library Coins at Greta’s Depot¶
The token was warm when it landed in my palm, like it had been sitting in someone’s pocket next to their skin. I didn’t thank Mrs. Peet. She never took thanks. Just shoved the thing at me and said, “For the sugar,” like she hadn’t already traded three apologies and a shoelace to get it.
The depot smells like mildew and burnt tea. Always has, since the roof started weeping two years ago. Greta used to say the damp kept the rats away. Greta said a lot of things. Her chair’s still behind the counter, lashed together with twine, but nobody sits there now. Not since she left. Not since the regional committee stopped answering our signal flares.
You want to know how it works? The coins? They’re library things, older than the collapse. Thick, brass, with a face stamped on one side—some man with sideburns like he’s trying to eat his own ears. Greta found a box of them in the basement, said they were meant for checking out books. Now they’re currency. But here’s the trick: the coins don’t care what you use them for. Buy a bandage, apologize for stealing your neighbor’s turnip, sign your name to a petition about the water pump—same value. Same clink.
Problem is, people get creative.
Mrs. Peet’s coin? She meant it as payment. But the coin remembered she’d used it last week to say sorry for kicking down the door of the ration locker. So it was still wet with apology. Useless for sugar. I told her. She spat on the floor and left.
Twelve more transactions that day. All of them slippery. A boy traded a coin for a pencil, but it turned out his mother had used it to sign a complaint about the depot’s mold. The coin wouldn’t let go of the signature. Just sat there, dull and stubborn. I had to give him the pencil anyway. Can’t have the kids thinking we don’t keep promises.
Greta’s voice in my head: You’re too kind, Lars. They’ll walk over you. But Greta’s not here. Greta’s in a convoy that never made it to the coast, or so the last runner said. We keep her name on the sign—Greta’s Civic Depot (Temp. Mgr: Lars)—because people like the idea she’s still stitching things together. Even the ones who hated her.
My sister calls every morning. “Tell me you haven’t spent the reserve coins.” I don’t. The reserve is gone. Traded for antibiotics last winter. But I say they’re there, in the lockbox under the counter. Let her think the lies are still holding.
Tonight, after the last customer, I sorted the day’s coins. Twenty-three, if you count the ones that still smell like other people’s guilt. The face on each one seems to smirk. I flipped one over and whispered, “What are you?” It didn’t answer. Coins don’t. But the next one I checked had a scratch across its face, like someone had tried to carve a new expression. A frown. Or a smirk. Hard to tell.
The depot’s phone hasn’t worked in six months, but the regional committee sent a message anyway. Courier delivered it this afternoon. Paper so thin it felt like spider silk. “Audit scheduled. Prepare all ledgers.”
I burnt the ledger years ago. Greta’s idea. “Numbers lie,” she said. “Coins don’t.”
I’ll tell the committee the truth: we run on apologies now. On promises that don’t hold. On the hope that someone, someday, will trade a coin for forgiveness and forget to specify which.
But I need one more day.
So when my sister calls tomorrow, I’ll say the audit went fine. I’ll say Greta would be proud. And I’ll slip a coin across the counter to Mrs. Peet, free of charge. Let her have her sugar.
The coins will balance. They always do.
Even if it takes a lie to keep them moving.
Even if the face on the brass starts to look like Greta, sometimes. Like she’s in there, smirking, waiting for me to admit I’m drowning.
I didn’t tell anyone, but the last coin of the day? It was mine. I’d been saving it for months. Meant to use it to apologize to Greta, if she ever came back.
Instead, I traded it to the courier for the message about the audit.
It felt like spending a part of my throat.
The coin didn’t care.
It never does.