Well, it represents their key of achieving their long term dreams. It can also symbolize Walters greed and the destruction to his own original beliefs.
The narrator, is the protagonist and she starts explaining that she is a teenager. She knows what the latest styles are, she reads the current editorials, she listens to the radio... She wants us to know that she is not a silly girl. In fact, she is a rational thinker. But in fact, when the boy takes her hand and invite her to the sakiting rink, she abandons all her rationality and she believes when he says that he will call her. When days pass by and he doesn't, she says " I'm not so really dumb".
All that, indicates the conflict: she is a sixteen year old, naive and soft in character behind that tough exterior.
