Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life Read online

  I elbow Lizzy in the ribs and say to the woman, “We’re looking for some old keys. Do you have any?”

  “Sure,” she says, snapping her fingers. “I got some around here somewhere.” She goes off to search through her stuff on the ground, and Lizzy and I high-five. The woman unearths a faded metal trashcan from behind a pile of mismatched shoes, and waves us over. We hurry around the table and kneel down onto the old threadbare blanket. Greedily, we dig our hands into the can and pull out handfuls of what we expect will be keys. We look at each other and frown.

  The lady is busy giving change to a young man who just bought a pair of old tap shoes for $1.50, so we have to wait until she is free again. I tip the trashcan forward so she can see inside and say, “Um, these aren’t exactly what we had in mind.”

  “Huh? Why not?” she asks.

  “Well, for one thing,” Lizzy says, “they aren’t keys. They’re locks.”

  “Is that right?” the lady asks, peering into the can. “Oops, sorry ’bout that. Keys, locks, all part of the same thing, right?” She laughs a little, and then turns away to assure a young mother that the Sing and Snore Ernie doll will still work if she puts fresh batteries in it and sews the ear back on. With a sigh we drop the locks back into the can.

  After a quick detour for a slice of pizza, we find a bearded man who has a small dish of assorted keys amidst a selection of marbles and plastic combs. Even Mom wouldn’t buy used combs. I can’t help wondering if the man brushed his scraggly beard with those combs. Lizzy quickly reaches for the keys, but the man puts out his hand to stop her. “You break it, you bought it,” he says gruffly.

  “How could we break a key?” Lizzy asks, hands moving naturally to hips.

  “Kids have a way of breakin’ things,” he replies. “You’d be surprised.”

  “We’re not really kids,” I feel compelled to announce. “We’re almost teenagers, actually.”

  “That’s even worse,” he says.

  “Look,” says Lizzy, “we just want to see if your keys open a box that we have.”

  “Yeah? What box is that?”

  “Show ’im, Jeremy,” Lizzy says.

  I’m about to unzip my bag when I realize I don’t want this guy’s big dirty hands all over my dad’s box. I shake my head. Lizzy opens her mouth to argue, but then stops when she sees my expression.

  “You want the keys?” the man asks. “You’ll have to buy ’em like everyone else.”

  “Fine,” I say, reaching into my pocket. The first rule of flea markets is that you only put a few dollars and some change into your pocket so the vendor will think that’s all you have. If they see more money, they’ll ask for a higher price. I pull out fifty cents. “Is this enough?”

  The man shakes his head. “Two dollars,” he says.

  “Two dollars!” Lizzy exclaims. “There’s only, like, eight keys!”

  The two of them have a standoff. Lizzy glares, and the man looks bored. Then all of a sudden Lizzy darts her hand out and grabs the dish with all the keys. Before the man can register what she’s doing, she takes off running down the aisle. My mouth falls open. The man starts to go after her, but soon realizes he can’t leave his stand. He stands directly in front of me and holds out his hand. Hands shaking, I hurriedly place two dollars into his waiting palm.

  “You can add the extra fifty cents, too,” he says. “For the dish.” I have no choice but to hand over the quarters.

  “Your girlfriend’s quite a firecracker,” he says with a hint of admiration in his voice.

  “She’s not my girlfriend!” I tell him, already hurrying to put as much distance between him and me as possible. I move as quickly through the crowd as one can with a backpack on his back, and find Lizzy waiting on a bench near the front of the market. She is already halfway through a snow cone.

  I sit down next to her and watch as the blue ice drips down her chin. “Words fail me,” I say, pulling the Razzles out of my backpack. Candy never fails me. I rip open the packet and hold it up to my mouth. I shake it until all the Razzles empty into my mouth. Now I couldn’t talk even if I wanted to.

  “I know you don’t approve,” Lizzy says, tossing the empty cone into the garbage next to her. “But come on, that guy was totally obnoxious.”

  I continue to chew furiously and don’t respond.

  “Okay,” she says. “You don’t have to say anything. Let’s just try the keys.”

  She pulls the box out from the bag on my lap and tries each key in each hole, just like we did before. One of them slides halfway into one of the holes, and we both give a little jump. But then it won’t go any farther no matter how hard we push. When she’s done, Lizzy tosses the whole bunch into the garbage bin.

  “Why’d you do that?” I ask, almost choking on the huge chunk of gum. “We should have kept them.”

  “What for?” she asks.

  “I don’t know, but they cost me two-fifty!”

  She laughs. “You paid the guy?”

  “Of course I paid him! He was gonna beat me up!”

  “He wasn’t gonna beat you up,” she says.

  “I thought you only stole things that had no monetary value,” I point out as we head back into the market.

  “We were just going to borrow them,” Lizzy insists. “He was the one who was so rude about it.”

  “No excuses,” I demand. “No rationalizations.”

  “Fine!” she says. “Let’s just keep going.”

  I pause to spit out my gum into a garbage can. Razzles lose their flavor pathetically quickly. We don’t speak to each other as we scour the booths. We continue to find people who have small jars or dishes of keys, and if they don’t let us try the keys for free, no one charges us more than a quarter. A girl with an NYU tank top and a hoop earring in her nose keeps turning up at the same booths and buying keys each time. At one point she and I reach for the same key, and I pull back my hand. I turn to Lizzy and whisper, “Are you gonna ask her, or should I?”

  “I’ll ask her,” Lizzy says, and taps the girl on the shoulder.

  The girl turns around and raises an eyebrow at us. “What?” she asks.

  Lizzy points to the girl’s nose ring and asks, “Does that hurt when you sneeze?”

  Ugh! That wasn’t the question! She was supposed to ask why the girl was buying so many keys!

  The girl stares at Lizzy, and then shakes her head. “Why? You thinking of getting one?” she asks. “It would look good on you.”

  “Really?” Lizzy says, clearly flattered, although I can’t imagine why. Before she can get directions to the nearest piercing place, I step forward and ask, “Why are you buying so many keys?”

  The girl laughs. “What are you guys, the flea market police? I’m doing an art project. I have about a hundred keys so far,” she boasts. “Sometimes I make jewelry out of them, too. See?” She moves her long black hair away from one ear. A tiny silver key dangles from a hook. “It’s from my diary in fifth grade!”

  “Cool,” Lizzy and I say, because really, what else could we say?

  “Any more questions?” she asks, letting her hair fall back down over her ear.

  We shake our heads, and she turns back to the table and scoops up another dishful of keys. What if the keys to my dad’s box are already a part of some art project? Or hanging from some girl’s ears? Whatever happened to the good old days when all people wanted keys for was to open locks? We reached the last block of the market when Lizzy stops short and grabs my arm. “Look!”

  I follow her gaze to an entire table with what looks like all different types of keys and locks in clear plastic bins. We hurry over, jostling a customer or two out of the way. This is key heaven! Small keys, long keys, fat keys, short keys. Old rusted keys, shiny new keys. My eyes can’t absorb all the bounty before us.

  “Where do we start?” I ask Lizzy in a daze.

  She just shakes her head, equally overwhelmed.

  An elderly couple sits behind the table on matching rocking