Lines 28-42 Summary

Lines 28-42

Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickel in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn't say anything.

• The speaker's offer to spring for the candy goes over well.
• There is a "light" in the girl's eyes and she starts to smile—good signs on any first date.
• That light in the girl's eyes echoes the description of her "bright face" from back in line 14. All this luminosity reinforces the idea that, in the speaker's eyes, this girl is downright radiant.
• We get another sensory description, "I fingered / a nickel in my pocket." The use of the verb "fingered" makes the description very tactile—we can really "feel" that lonely nickel along with the speaker.
• Things seem to be sailing right along on this date, but wait… what's she doing? She's grabbing a chocolate bar that costs a dime and the speaker only has a nickel. Not good.
• It looks like this date is about to be shipwrecked on the rocky shores of intense embarrassment. (We knows that island well.)
• What's this poor guy going to do? At this point, he's still playing it cool. He keeps his mouth shut.
• One other detail that is important to note. These kids are buying candy for a nickel or a dime. It clearly isn't the twenty-first century.
• These prices place the narrative around the mid 1960s—a time when a kid could hit the candy aisle with a quarter and really blow it up.

Lines 35-42

I took the nickel from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady's eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.

• Things start to get sticky. The kid is a nickel short, but he improvises.
• Without saying a word, he places the nickel and one of those oranges he's been carrying around onto the counter. He's going to try to barter his way out of the problem. Good thinking? 
• The sales lady gets what's going on.
• We can really feel the tension building as the lady and the kid stare at one another over the counter.
• The way Soto uses the line breaks in this section helps to develop that tension. Take a look at line 39: "The lady's eyes met mine."
• By ending the line mid-sentence, we are left hanging there for a moment, thinking, and… and… But we have to wait for line 40: "And held them, knowing."
• And we still don't know if she agrees to the deal. And you thought the season finally of Pretty Little Liars was suspense-filled.
• That line break after "knowing" does more than just build suspense. It also gives us some important information about the lady at the counter.
• In a literal reading, "knowing"refers to the saleslady knowing what the kid is trying to do with the orange. But the ambiguity created by the line break suggests the saleslady also "knows" young love and the significance of this moment. For the kid's sake, let's hope so. 
• The next lines pick up the duality: "knowing / Very well what it was all / About."
• "It" is that orange sitting there between them and "it" is also love. She knows simultaneously what the orange is all about and what love is all about.
• Line 42 is only one word and the line is end-stopped. The word "about" is left hanging there surrounded by white space. To make things even more intense, this is where the poem's lone stanza break appears.
• And we still don't know if the saleslady is going to accept the deal. Will she accept the orange as partial payment for the chocolate, or will she send the kids back out into the cold without their sugar-fix? As poems go, this is turning into a real cliffhanger, right?