Nickels and Dimes

A frozen bake sale, a viral failure, and the realization that internet fame pays better than local respect.

The vanilla was the problem. It was too sweet. It smelled like a lie.

Mara Halloway stood behind a folding table that wobbled every time she shifted her weight. She had spent three hours the night before baking scones. Cranberry orange. Vanilla bean. Heavy, dense triangles of dough that were supposed to represent comfort. Now, arranged on a paper doily that looked ridiculous against the peeling industrial grey of the General Store’s back wall, they just looked desperate.

It was thirty degrees inside the building. Maybe thirty-two. The space heaters Tarek had scavenged were humming bravely in the corners, orange coils glowing like dying cigarettes, but they were losing the war against the draft coming up through the floorboards. The air smelled of damp rot, mouse droppings, and that cloying, aggressive vanilla scent.

Mara adjusted her scarf. She felt ridiculous. She was the town historian. She was the woman who had cataloged the cemetery records. She was supposed to be a pillar of the community. And here she was, freezing to death, trying to sell a two-dollar scone to Mrs. Gable from the post office, who was looking at the ceiling like it was about to collapse on her head.

"It's... rustic," Mrs. Gable said. She didn't buy a scone. She just clutched her purse tighter, as if the rot was contagious. "You girls have certainly taken on a project."

"It's a process," Mara said. Her voice sounded thin. The acoustics in here were terrible. The ceiling was too high; it swallowed sound and spat back echoes. "We're in the early phases."

"Mmm," Mrs. Gable said. She took a step back toward the door. The wind outside was rattling the taped-up windows. "Well. Good luck with the... art."

She left. The bell above the door didn't jingle because it was rusted solid. The door just slammed shut with a heavy, wooden thud.

Mara looked down at the scones. They were getting cold. Cold pastries turn hard. Rocks. She was selling rocks in a ruin.

This was the "Hard Hat Tour & Bake Sale." That was the official title on the flyer Tarek had designed. It looked cool on the screen—bold, sans-serif font, a filtered photo of the exposed brick. In reality, it was just Mara standing in a coat, shivering, while five or six locals wandered around looking confused. They weren't seeing the vision. They weren't seeing the potential gallery space or the community hub. They were seeing a building that had been condemned for a reason.

Mara felt a sharp, hot prickle of shame behind her eyes. It wasn't sadness. It was embarrassment. The specific, gut-churning embarrassment of inviting people to a party and realizing the music is bad and you forgot to buy ice. She was begging. That’s what this was. Begging for nickels and dimes to fix a roof that cost thousands.

She looked across the cavernous room.

Lila was over by the south wall. The "Mural Workshop."

It was going worse than the bake sale.

Lila had set up a tarp. She had buckets of eco-friendly, water-based paint. She had brushes. She had a plan. She had explained it to Mara yesterday: *"We’re going to let the kids express their somatic response to the environment. No rules. Just color blocking. It’s about claiming space."*

The reality was a screaming match.

There were seven kids. Three of them belonged to the Davidsons, who treated every public event as free daycare. They weren't expressing their somatic response. They were throwing paint.

"No, hey—listen," Lila said. Her voice was pitched high, tight with panic. She was wearing her 'artist' uniform: coveralls covered in intentional splashes of color, combat boots, hair tied back in a messy bun. She looked cool. She looked like she belonged in a loft in Montreal. Here, surrounded by six-year-olds in puffy snowsuits, she looked like a substitute teacher who had lost control of the room. "We're not throwing it. We're placing it. Look at the line work. Look at the—"

*Splap.*

A handful of blue slime hit the wall. It missed the canvas entirely. It hit the exposed lath where the plaster had crumbled away.

One of the Davidson kids, a boy with a runny nose and eyes like a shark, shrieked. It was a sound that drilled straight into Mara’s molars. High. Piercing. The sound of chaos.

"Okay, stop," Lila said. She grabbed the boy's wrist. Not hard, but desperate. "You have to hold the brush. Use the tool."

"I want the red one!" the boy screamed. He yanked his arm back. He knocked over a quart of yellow.

The sound was distinct. *Glug-slap*. The paint pooled on the warped wooden floorboards. It looked like egg yolk. It began to seep immediately into the cracks, dripping down into the crawlspace where the raccoons lived.

Lila stared at the puddle. Her shoulders dropped. The posture of the defeated. She wasn't an avant-garde leader. She was a janitor.

Mara looked away. She couldn't watch. It was too painful. It was the dissonance between the idea and the object. The idea of the mural was beautiful—collective ownership, bright colors against the grey winter. The object was a dirty floor and a screaming child.

This was a mistake. All of it. The lease. The insurance. The scones.

She looked for Simon.

He was by the support beam near the entrance. He wasn't participating. He wasn't eating a scone. He was just... existing. He had his tool belt on, though he wasn't working. It was a security blanket. He was leaning against the beam, testing it with his shoulder. Checking the load.

He caught Mara’s eye. He didn't smile. He just gave a small, grim nod. The nod said: *I told you so.* The nod said: *This building is dead.*

Mara looked down at her hands. Her knuckles were red from the cold. There was flour under her fingernails. She felt old. Not wise-old. Just worn-out-old. Like a part that couldn't be replaced anymore.

Then she saw the camera.

Tarek was in the corner. Shadowboxing.

He moved like a ghost. He was wearing black—black hoodie, black jeans, black beanie. He blended into the dark spots of the room where the light bulbs had burned out. He held his phone in a gimbal, a stabilizer that kept the shot fluid.

He wasn't filming the scones. He wasn't filming the smiling faces (there were none).

He was filming the puddle of yellow paint.

He moved the camera low, skimming the floorboards. He captured the slow, oozing spread of the pigment. Then he tilted up, catching Lila’s face. He didn't catch a flattering angle. He caught the exhaustion. The smear of blue on her cheekbone. The way her eyes closed for a second, just trying to breathe.

Then he panned to the window. The tape holding the glass together. The grey light filtering through the grime.

Mara wanted to yell at him. *Stop recording this. Stop documenting our humiliation.*

But she didn't have the energy. She just rearranged the scones again. One. Two. Three.

Nobody bought one.

***

**LILA**

Her hands were wet. That was the worst part. Wet and cold.

The workshop was over. The parents had dragged the screaming Davidson brood out five minutes ago, leaving behind a silence that felt heavy, like a wet wool blanket. The wall looked terrible. It wasn't art. It was vandalism. Smears of primary colors that turned brown where they overlapped. It looked like a crime scene in a kindergarten.

Lila grabbed a rag and started wiping the floor. The yellow paint had started to skin over, getting tacky.

She scrubbed hard. Her arm ached.

*"Claiming space,"* she muttered to herself. *"What a joke."*

She had gone to art school. She had a degree. She knew who Rothko was. She knew about negative space and color theory and the socioeconomic impact of public art. None of that mattered here. In Melgund, paint was just something you put on a barn to keep the wood from rotting.

She felt stupid. She had used words like "agency" and "expression" with these kids. They just wanted to make a mess. They didn't care about her theory. They didn't care that she had come back from the city to "save" the culture of the town.

Maybe there was nothing to save.

She threw the rag into the bucket. It landed with a wet thwack.

"Texture," Tarek said.

Lila jumped. She hadn't heard him approach. He was standing three feet away, the camera pointed at her boots.

"Don't," she snapped. She held up a hand. "Not now, Tarek. I look like shit."

"You look real," Tarek said. He didn't stop filming. He moved around her, circling. "The wall looks... violent. It's good."

"It looks like vomit, Tarek."

"No. It looks like struggle." He lowered the camera. He looked at the wall, really looked at it. "The texture is honest. It’s not pretty. But it’s loud."

Lila wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist, leaving a streak of yellow near her hairline. She looked at Tarek. He was sixteen. He shouldn't be the smart one. He should be playing video games or vaping behind the arena.

"You're filming the failure," she said. It wasn't a question.

"I'm filming the process," he corrected. "People like the mess. Perfection is boring. Perfection looks like AI. This?" He gestured to the ugly brown smear on the wall. "This is human error. It's high value."

Lila stared at the wall. Human error.

She snorted. A short, sharp sound. "Well, we're rich in that."

"I'm going to talk to Simon," Tarek said. He turned, the gimbal keeping his phone perfectly level.

"Good luck," Lila muttered. "He's in a mood."

***

**TAREK**

The lens was a shield. When he looked through the screen, he wasn't Tarek Bouchard, the quiet kid who sat in the back of math class. He was an eye. A recording device. He didn't have to feel the cold; he just had to adjust the ISO. He didn't have to feel the awkwardness; he just had to frame it.

He approached Simon.

The old man was packing up. He hadn't actually done any work, but he was organizing his tools. It was a nervous tic. Putting the hammer in the loop. Taking it out. Putting it back in.

Tarek didn't ask permission. He just started rolling. Close up on Simon’s hands.

They were incredible hands. Knuckles the size of walnuts. Skin like leather that had been left in the sun for fifty years. Scars that mapped out a history of slips and mistakes. One fingernail was black.

"Simon," Tarek said softly.

Simon didn't look up. "Battery's dead on the drill."

"How does it feel?" Tarek asked. He kept the camera on the hands.

"How does what feel?"

" The building. The day."

Simon stopped moving. He looked at the camera. His eyes were grey, watery. There was fear in them. Not fear of a monster, but fear of uselessness.

"It's cold," Simon said flatly. "Insulation's shot. R-value is zero."

"Is it fixable?"

Simon looked around the room. He looked at Mara shivering by the scones. He looked at Lila scrubbing the floor. He looked at the ceiling where the water stains bloomed like dark flowers.

He didn't answer for a long time. The silence stretched. The wind whistled outside. Tarek didn't cut. He held the shot. The silence was the content. The silence was the answer.

"Wood's good," Simon said finally. His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. " The bones are good. It's just... neglected. Needs to be stripped down. Needs primer."

"Primer," Tarek repeated.

"Can't paint over rot," Simon said. He looked down at his boots. "You need to seal it first. Needs a base. We don't have it."

"We don't have the money," Tarek said.

Simon laughed. It was a dry, rusty sound. "We don't have anything, kid. We have scones."

Tarek cut the feed.

He looked at the footage. The close-up of the hands. The grey eyes. The line: *"We don't have anything."*

It was perfect. It wasn't a promo video. It was a hostage tape. It was raw.

He sat on a crate in the corner and opened his editing app. He didn't use music. No upbeat ukulele track. No inspirational piano. He just kept the ambient sound. The wind. The scratching of Lila’s brush. Simon’s heavy breathing.

He titled it: *Can't Paint Over Rot.*

He hit upload.

***

**SIMON**

Three days later, the truck showed up.

Simon was at the store early. He liked being there when it was empty. It was peaceful. The ghosts of the old town were quieter in the morning. He was measuring the door frame for the third time, trying to figure out if he could shim it straight or if he had to rip the whole thing out.

A heavy diesel engine idled outside. The air brakes hissed.

Simon looked out the window. A delivery truck from the hardware supply in North Bay.

He walked to the door, his knees popping. He opened it. The cold air slapped him awake.

"Delivery for... the Art Thing?" the driver asked. He was a big guy, chewing on a toothpick. He looked at the clipboard, confused.

"Store's closed," Simon said. "We didn't order anything. No budget."

"Paid for," the driver said. "Guy named Miller. Said he saw the video. Said he knows what rot looks like."

The driver walked to the back of the truck and rolled up the door.

Simon stepped out onto the sidewalk. The snow was packed hard, slippery.

The driver started unloading buckets. Five-gallon pails. heavy. heavy white plastic.

"What is it?" Simon asked.

"Industrial primer. Kilz. The heavy-duty stuff. Blocks stains, seals odors. Ten buckets."

Simon stared.

Ten buckets. At retail, that was maybe two grand. Maybe more. It was the good stuff. The stuff you used when a house had fire damage. The stuff that erased the past.

"Miller?" Simon asked. "From the lumber yard?"

"Think so," the driver said. He stacked the buckets on the sidewalk. They formed a white wall. "He left a note on the order."

The driver handed Simon a crumpled packing slip.

Scrawled in ballpoint pen at the bottom: *"Saw the kid's video. You're right about the bones. Seal it up. - M."*

Simon looked at the buckets. He reached out and touched the handle of the top one. It was cold plastic. Solid. Heavy. Real.

He wasn't an artist. He didn't understand the mural. He didn't get the pottery. But this? This was material. This was physics. You put this on the wall, the wall stops rotting. Cause and effect.

He felt something loosen in his chest. A knot he hadn't realized was there.

The internet was fake. Tarek’s phone was a toy. But the buckets were real.

He picked up two of them. The weight pulled on his shoulders, a familiar, comforting ache.

"Alright," he said to the empty street. "Alright."

***

**MARA & LILA**

The studio was hell.

It was a twelve-by-twelve converted garage behind Mara’s house. Usually, it was a sanctuary. The smell of wet clay, the hum of the wheel, the dust motes dancing in the light.

Today, it was a pressure cooker.

The electric kiln was firing a bisque load, radiating a dry, suffocating heat that seemed to suck the moisture right out of their eyeballs. The thermometer on the wall read eighty-five degrees.

Mara was at the wheel. Lila was at the work table.

They were fighting.

"It's tacky, Lila," Mara said. She centered a lump of clay, slamming it down on the wheel head. *Thump.* "We are not making 'ruin porn'."

"It sells!" Lila paced the small room. She was sweating. Her t-shirt was stuck to her back. "People love the decay aesthetic. We should make shards. broken pieces. Dip them in gold. Call it 'The Fragility of Memory' or something. Charge fifty bucks."

"I am not selling broken pottery," Mara said. Her voice was low, dangerous. She pressed her thumbs into the clay, opening the well. The wheel hummed—a low, rhythmic *whirrrrr*. "I make functional ware. Mugs. Bowls. Things that hold soup. Things that work."

"Things that are boring!" Lila snapped. "Mara, nobody wants a beige mug. You can buy a beige mug at Walmart for three dollars. We need a narrative."

"I am the narrative!" Mara shot back. She took her hands off the wheel. The clay spun, slightly off-center, wobbling. "I have been throwing pots in this town for forty years. My work is the history."

"Your work is invisible!" Lila yelled.

The silence that followed was heavy. The only sound was the clicking of the kiln relays and the whir of the wheel.

Lila stopped pacing. She looked horrified. She hadn't meant to say it that loud. But it was out.

Mara looked at the spinning clay. Invisible.

Yes. That was the fear. That she had been working for decades, making solid, good things, and nobody had noticed. That she would die and her pots would end up in Goodwill, priced at fifty cents.

"We need money," Lila said, softer. "The primer is great, but it doesn't pay the hydro bill. Tarek says the electric at the Store is going to be cut off in three days if we don't pay the arrears."

Mara wet her hands. The water in the bowl was murky with slip.

"I can't make shards," Mara said. "I can't make garbage on purpose."

"Okay," Lila said. She walked over to the wheel. She leaned against the table. "So make something strong. Make the strongest mug you've ever made. Heavy. thick."

"And?"

"And let me ruin it," Lila said.

Mara looked up. "What?"

"Not break it," Lila said. Her eyes were bright, manic. The heat was getting to her. "Let me glaze it. Not your nice dipping. Not the landscape blue. Let me attack it. Let me use the splash method. The way the kids did the wall. But... controlled. Chaos on structure."

Mara looked at the clay. She thought about the Store. The rot. The primer. The way the old and the new were grinding against each other.

"Chaos on structure," Mara repeated.

She centered the clay again. She pushed down. The wobble disappeared. The walls rose.

She didn't make her usual delicate tea cup. She made a tankard. Thick walls. A heavy, pulled handle that you could fit four fingers through. A mug for a lumberjack. A mug for a winter storm.

She cut it off the wheel with a wire. *Zzzzt.*

She handed the wet, dark clay body to Lila.

Lila took it. She held it like a grenade.

"More," Lila said.

They fell into a rhythm.

Mara threw. Wedging, centering, pulling, cutting. Her body took over. The muscle memory of forty years. She was a machine of earth.

Lila prepped. She took the greenware. She didn't smooth it down perfectly. She left the finger marks. She scratched the surface.

Hours passed. The sun went down outside. The studio became a capsule of yellow light and dust.

When they got to the glazing stage (using the rapid-fire biscuits from the day before), the war turned into a dance.

Mara dipped the base in a matte black iron oxide. The void. The rot.

Lila took a brush loaded with a high-gloss neon orange—a glaze Mara hated, a glaze that looked like construction tape. Lila stood back and flicked the brush.

*Splatter.*

The bright orange slashed across the matte black. It looked like a warning sign. It looked like a scar.

Then a rim of white. Dripping down.

Mara looked at the first finished piece.

It wasn't pretty. It was aggressive. The black absorbed the light; the orange screamed for attention. It looked like a burning building. It looked like Melgund.

"It's ugly," Mara said. But she was smiling. A tired, small smile.

"It's striking," Lila corrected. She was covered in glaze. Her face was smudged. "It looks like we survived something."

"The Fusion Mug," Mara said. "Nickels and dimes."

"Fifty bucks," Lila said. "Minimum."

***

**THE LAUNCH**

Back at the Store. Night.

The temperature had dropped. It was five below zero outside. The wind was hitting the north wall like a physical blow, shaking the window frames.

They huddled around the space heater in the center of the room. Tarek sat on a crate, his laptop balanced on his knees. The screen was the only light source, casting a harsh, blue pallor on their faces.

Mara, Lila, Simon, Tarek.

The object sat on the table next to the computer. The prototype mug. The "Survivor Series."

"We have twelve units ready to ship," Tarek said. "I photographed them against the primer buckets. Industrial chic."

"Is anyone online?" Simon asked. He was rubbing his hands together. The cold was settling into his joints.

"The video has forty thousand views," Tarek said. He didn't look up. His fingers flew across the trackpad. "The one of Simon talking about the rot. It got picked up by a sad-core algorithm. People love old men being sad about buildings."

Simon grunted. "Great."

"Okay," Tarek said. "Store is live. 'Support the Restoration. Buy a piece of the struggle.'"

He hit Enter.

They waited.

The wind howled.

A minute passed. The screen didn't change.

Mara felt that familiar sick feeling in her stomach. The scone feeling. The bake sale feeling. The world didn't care. They were just people in a cold room, lying to themselves.

"It's a Tuesday night," Lila said, her voice shaky. "People are... eating dinner."

*Ding.*

A soft chime from the laptop speakers.

Tarek’s eyes widened. "Order #001. Toronto. One mug."

"Fifty dollars?" Simon asked, incredulous.

"Plus shipping," Tarek said.

*Ding.*

"Order #002. Vancouver. Two mugs."

*Ding. Ding. Ding.*

The sound was small, digital, artificial. But in the hollow acoustics of the General Store, it sounded like a choir.

"Order #005. Chicago. They want the 'full set'."

"We don't have a full set," Mara whispered.

"We do now," Lila said. She grabbed Mara’s arm. Her grip was tight. "We have to make more."

*Ding-ding-ding.*

The notifications streamed down the side of the screen. A waterfall of text.

*Sold out.*

Twelve minutes.

"That's it," Tarek said. He sat back, exhaling a plume of white breath. "Inventory zero. Waitlist is... forty people."

Mara stared at the screen. She did the math in her head. Six hundred dollars. In twelve minutes. That was the heating bill. That was the insurance premium.

She looked at the mug on the table. The ugly, splashed, heavy thing.

Strangers were buying it. People who had never stepped foot in Melgund. They weren't buying the clay. They were buying the story. Tarek’s story. Lila’s chaos. Simon’s primer.

She felt a strange sensation. Not relief, exactly. But a shift in gravity.

The town council didn't matter. Mrs. Gable and her rejected scone didn't matter.

The audience was out there, in the dark, behind the blue light.

"We need more clay," Mara said. Her voice was steady. Practical.

"I'll drive to the supplier tomorrow," Simon said. He looked at the laptop with a mix of suspicion and respect. "If the truck starts."

"It'll start," Tarek said. He closed the laptop. The blue light vanished, plunging them back into the gloom of the store.

But the darkness felt different now. It didn't feel like a tomb. It felt like a workspace.

Outside, the wind screamed, tearing at the shingles, trying to get in. But inside, in the silence, there was a new sound. The phantom echo of the digital chime. The sound of currency. The sound of a future.

They stood there for a moment, the four of them, breathing in the cold, electrified by the terrified realization that they now owed the world forty mugs.

"Back to work," Mara said.