rock (4 page)

moonstone

On my third week living at Dad’s, I return from school early.

Usually I hang out with Ernie and Bert at Schmoos Café or the waterfront—anything to avoid the awkwardness of going back to Dad’s—but I have a test for science tomorrow and I want a perfect score. I pull out the key Dad gave me and enter his castle.

Piano music sounds from upstairs; I’m heading there anyway so I move toward it. It’s full and loud with tinkling interruptions. It’s complicated, as if proving a point. The music stops and starts. At the fiddly-sounding part, a curse replaces the chord, and someone bashes the keys in annoyance.

I jog upstairs and stand outside the gaming room where the music is coming from. The door is ajar. I peep through the crack and stare at Jace, who’s bent over the piano and knocking his head against the keys. I allow myself to watch.

Jace straightens, glances at his sheet music, and plays the piece again. Every now and then, his hands stray into my field of vision as he works the higher notes. His nimble fingers make quick, precise work of the notes and he easily dominates the tricky part.

It’d be too easy to slink off and pretend I didn’t hear, so I push open the door and clap loudly, whistle even louder. Whether I like Jace or not, I appreciate his skills.

Jace practically flies off his piano stool. “Wh—what? You’re home early.”

“Test to study for.” I drop my bag against the door. “You sound good.”

Jace glances over his shoulder at the piano and the sheet music that fell as he leaped up.

“You like the piano?”

He shifts from foot to foot. “Yeah. So what?”

Why is he so defensive? “I meant it’s cool. I like music.”

He studies me, then sits back on the piano stool. “Yeah. I want to study music but Mum says the music business doesn’t offer many jobs. Especially for a pianist.” He shrugs. “But as they say, even if you can’t do, you can at least teach.”

I grin. “Keep practicing. I’m in my room.”

“Won’t be too annoying?”

I shake my head. “I always listen to music when I work.”

“I start and stop a lot. Especially with this bitch of a piece.” His smile tells me he loves the challenge of wooing the music until he owns it.

Is that how I look when I hold my rocks?

“Later, Jace.” I drag my bag to my room, followed closely by Jace’s “later” and the tinkling of keys.

* * *

Later
comes sooner than I predicted. That night, Jace charges into my room and drags me out of bed. “Shhh,” he says, jamming a finger to his lips. When I ask what the heck is going on, he presses his warm finger to my mouth. “Just be quiet, would you? Put your shoes on.”

The light of the full moon slithers into my room through a gap in the curtains. Jace is dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt that’s inside out.

I pull on a pair of pants over my boxers, shove my bare feet into my Puma shoes, and shrug on a light jacket. I’m too curious to put up a fight or demand to know details. I follow him downstairs and out the backdoor. He closes it quietly. Usually a sensor light comes on but apparently Jace has disengaged it.

When we head into the thick of trees, my pace begins to lag. Pines loom above me, basking in a silver glow as they stretch toward the sky. “Jace, where are we going?”
And why are we out here together?

Twigs snap and leaves crunch as he continues walking. “It’s been bugging me,” he says.

A breeze on the cusp of summer blows his words back to me. I quicken my step until I’m next to him. “What has?”

His lips part but he closes them and shrugs. I hate his shrug. I want to know what he’s hiding.

“Come on.” I shake my head. “You can’t expect me to follow you out into the bush in the middle of the night!”

He smirks. “And yet here you are.”

“Wipe the grin off your face.” But I’m feeling one twitch at my lips too.

We walk around a bend of a hill where water from a creek tinkles nearby. At the bottom of a steep bank covered in tree roots, Jace stops. “I want to make up for shutting you in the closet.”

I frown. Dragging me into the woods with a sinister smile is the way to do it?

He chuckles nervously and holds out his hand, which strikes me as strange. “Do you trust me?”

I shake my head. “Not really.” But I grab his hand, which is rougher and warmer than mine. He leads me to a parting in the bank. “A cave?”

He squeezes my hand. “I discovered it last year. It’s small, a bit bigger than the two of us, but it’s cool. Keep to whispers inside, okay?”

He ducks into the cave and pulls me in with him. He’s standing incredibly close so I can’t see much else. For a second, I fluster, panic rising like it did in the broom closet. Why did he take me here! Why? Why? Why?

Jace whispers, “Wait. No. Turn around. Look outside. You’re not trapped.”

I gradually relax as I take in the vines and the curve of the stream.

Jace releases my hand. “Since you want to be a geologist, I thought you’d get a dig out of this.” He smirks and steps back, opening up the view.

Hundreds of green lights speckle in bunches over the entire cave. “Glowworms!”

“Shhh.”

“Sorry,” I whisper. My stomach spins as though I’m standing on a cliff with my toes dangling in thin air. A wonderfully daunting rush.

“It makes me think I’m looking at the stars,” Jace says, standing close enough that our sleeves are touching.

“Yeah. Stars.”

I try counting the beads but I give up after fifty-seven. I’d rather watch Jace. “Have you ever counted them all?”

“No. Think it might be impossible.”

“Like Stonehenge. No one knows exactly how many stones exist.”

“Really?”

“One guy tallied them once. He recounted to make sure and he came up with a new number. Every time he counted, he came up with a different number.”

The coolness of the stagnant air sends creeps over me. I rub my hands together and peer at Jace over my fingertips.

Jace beckons me outside. “You know a lot about rocks and stones, don’t you?”

“As much as you know about music.”

He slows his steps, staring toward the creek. “What is the difference between a rock and a stone, anyway?”

I move to the creek and stand on a large flat boulder. “They have different feelings.” Jace joins me, his weight shifting the rock underneath us like a seesaw. We move instinctively to balance. “To me, a rock is massive—something that portrays strength. Rocks are complicated clusters of minerals that have baked for a long time.”

I jump off the boulder to the stones edging the creek. Jace gracefully leaps off too. I pick up a small white stone that shines in the moonlight. “A stone is a fragment of a rock. Like a snapshot of a bigger picture.”

“Is that why you collect them? A stone for every memory?”

I hand him the stone, forcing myself to ignore the heat that rises in me when my sensitive fingertips brush over his soft palm. “If you collect enough stones and minerals and heap them together, does it become a rock?”

Jace rolls the stone and lifts it midair. “I don’t know. Is this a moonstone?

“No. River stone.”

“Oh.”

“You sound disappointed.”

He shrugs. “Nah. Moonstones are pretty cool, don’t you think?”

“They’ve been revered for thousands of years,” I say as we re-enter the path. “Hindus believe that moonbeams form stones that can reveal your future if you hold it in your mouth on a full moon.”

Other than a shared smile, we’re quiet until we approach the trees that fringe Jace’s backyard.

“I don’t know if that would be a blessing or a curse. Knowing your future, I mean.”

“True, I guess.” Pine needles brush against my cheek. “It’d frustrate me to know all my future mistakes but not be able to stop them from happening.” He laughs.

We don’t exchange words until climbing up the stairs to our rooms. Jace stops me at the top. “I want to say something else.” I raise an eyebrow. He looks fleetingly at me and whispers, “We’re not better than you. I wish you wouldn’t think that.”

I pause. “What? How do you know—”

“You’re defensive.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I can read it.” He hesitates, then glances back at me. “That’s what I used to think of you and Annie. Before Dad moved here, I always wondered why. I thought it was because you were better than me and Mum somehow. But it’s not like that.”

My belly thickens like stodgy old porridge. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I just—” Jace starts, and I shake my head.

“No.” I move past him and charge down the hall. He tries to catch up behind me but I shake my head vigorously and he backs off.

pegmatite

Dad and Lila pile out of the rental van, and Annie, Jace and I spill out of the back in desperate need of stretching our legs. One side of my leg still hurts from Annie pinching me sixty miles ago.
Too cramped
, she kept muttering. The other side of my leg tingles from the friction of Jace’s shorts rubbing against my knee.

Our first “family” trip—a day at Rainbow’s End theme park—is happening today, the end of summer, a week before my second year at Newtown High.

“Sunscreen, guys,” Dad says, framed by a distant Rainbow’s End sign.

Lila smiles and passes Annie the sunscreen. Annie fishes into her day pack and pulls out her own. Lila shrugs and lowers the bottle.

I take Lila’s offer, snap open the lid, and squeeze some onto my palm. Coconut—somewhat refreshing against the harsh heat of the mid-morning sun.

Jace’s guttural sounds snatch my attention. He is standing a few steps away, yawning, arms clasped and stretched overhead. His T-shirt rides up past his hips, the print of a grand piano and illegible writing.

Neither of us slept well crammed in the double bed at the hotel last night. I kept tossing and turning, and Jace tried pushing me out.

He finishes his stretch and we exchange scowls—our routine, but usually when we’re racing out of our rooms to stuff our school bags so we’re not late.

“All right,” Lila says, slipping between her son and me, herding us toward the entrance of the park. “Let’s have a day of adrenalin and adventure!”

Annie slumps along behind us with Dad, who’s telling her how much she used to love coming here. “Do you remember?”

“Yeah,” Annie says loudly. “We went with Mum.”

It’s awkwardly quiet after that. We stand in line for ten minutes before Lila hands us our unlimited day passes. “Okay, so,” she begins, but Jace and Annie skip off in two different directions.

I slip on my pass over my wrist. “Meet back here at four?”

Lila smiles. “We thought for lunch . . . never mind. You’ve all got money, I suppose.” She shrugs. “Whatever.”

Dad kisses her, my cue to leave. I thread through the crowd in Jace’s direction. I’m not searching for him
per se
, but increasing my chances of running into him.

What for? I’m not sure. At Dad’s house before the holidays, we were studying across from each other in the gaming room. He frowned at his papers and dropped his pen. “Why does brass discolor in air?”

I answered without looking up from my books. “Hydrogen sulphide.”

After scribbling with his pen he whispered, “Thanks.”

“Also, you know brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, right?”

Jace shook his head, and his lips quirked into a smile . . .

Screams from the roller coaster hit my ears, yanking me back to the reality of fresh popcorn and candied nuts, people lining up for rides, spilled Coke and discarded gum on the sticky ground—

Jace. There he is. Sitting at an octagonal table, straddling the bench, sunglasses perched on his head, texting on his phone. Lila allowed us to take them in case we needed something. Mine is vibrating in my pocket. Wait, vibrating?

A text.

I glance over the heads of a group of girls heading toward the roller coaster.

I open the text.
Bumper cars have no line.

A vague invitation? I accept. I’m not surprised the bumper cars have no line, considering they’re not exactly the most adrenalin-pumping ride here. Jace startles when I straddle the bench in front of him.

I jerk my head toward the bumper car arena across from the cafeteria. “Let’s go. I’ll totally bump your ass.” I meant
kick your ass
but it came out decidedly wrong and . . . weird.

I laugh.

Jace blinks rapidly and draws his sunglasses down over his eyes. “We’ll see who bumps who.”

Three minutes later, we’re climbing into bumper cars and swiveling around on the smooth surface. Jace rocks to one end, me the other. He’s taken his sunglasses off and his engine is
brrrr
ing. Other cars zoom around, bumping everything in sight. I narrow my gaze onto Jace and his car.

We move too slowly—it almost feels comical—but then we collide with a
thunk
and bounce off each other. Let the battles begin.

I slam into Jace repeatedly, and his car jerks back and slides. He doesn’t laugh, but his eyes spark every time we hit.

I bump him into the wall he started from, and then I ram him into his corner right before the cars stop for the round.

We climb out of our cars laughing uncontrollably. “Told you I’d totally bump—”

“Never again!” Jace shakes his head but he’s grinning. We exit the canopied ride and blink in the sun. Jace slips on his sunglasses like a Calvin Klein model.

We stop in the middle of the path. I feel awkward shifting from foot to foot in silence. What now? Do we part ways with a shrug?

Maybe I should leave before he does. That way, I’m in control. “Right. See you around.”

Jace grabs me by the arm. “You’re not going anywhere until I find a way to punish you for stealing my sleep!”

“So that’s what this was?”

“What else would it be?”

He smirks and jerks a thumb toward the giant swinging ship. “How do you feel about rocky seas?”

“Not great.”

“Perfect. We’re going up there.”