“Did he have his gun when you saw him?”
“Sure,” Olive said.
“Oh man, oh man!” He dropped the grass, looked at her in wide-eyed amazement that soon morphed into this stupid, furrowed-brow reprimanding-parent kind of look. “Olive, do you get how dangerous that was?” There was spittle on his lower lip.
“Like he was going to shoot me for coming to his store in the middle of the day. Quit trying to act like you’re my dad,” Olive said.
“That’s not what I’m doing,” Mike shot back.
“Oh, really? ’Cause that’s what it seems like.”
“I don’t want to be your dad,” he said.
“Well, what is it you’re trying to be? A boyfriend, maybe? Because Isodo not need a boyfriend.”
His cheeks turned lobster red and he stood up, glaring at her. “I am trying to be yourfriend,Olive.” He was wheezing a little, giving his words a whistling sound, like a freaking talking prairie dog with big sad eyes. “I’m, like, youronlyfriend. If you’re too dense to get that, then maybe we shouldn’t be friends at all.”
He looked at her, waiting. Blood rushed in her ears. “Maybe not,” she said, glaring at him.
He turned his back and walked away.
She sat on the edge of the old stone foundation, her metal detector beside her, eyes on Mike’s back as he made his way along the edge of the bog to the path up through the woods.
“Scaredy-cat asshole!” she yelled after him when he was almost out of sight. “Think you’re so smart, but you don’t know shit!”
She got up and started working the grid in a halfhearted, half-assed way.
She didn’t need Mike. She didn’t need anyone.
She rubbed away tears with a balled fist, let the metal detector fall to the ground.
She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for anymore.
The treasure, sure.
But more than that, she wanted answers.
What had her mother been up to? What had she found in Lewisburg? Something about Jane? Something that led Mama to find the treasure? Something that got her in trouble? And what had she been up to with Dicky and his friends at the old hotel? What did the chalked drawing of Mama’s necklace mean?
She felt like the pieces were all there in front of her like loose beads waiting to be strung in a pattern that made sense. Maybe if she’d told Mike everything, he could have helped her figure it out.
Too late now. He would’ve just gone running to her dad anyway, blabbed everything.
Her head ached. Her eyes stung. She sat heavily back down on the short wall of stones that had once been a part of Hattie’s foundation.
Olive took Mama’s necklace off, pulling it out from its hiding place under her shirt. The necklace hung, the thin leather cord pinched between her index finger and thumb. She stared at the eye at the center, which seemed to wink at her as it caught the light. She imagined it hanging from her mother’s neck. She pictured her mother’s shoes, the fairy-tale slippers, and imagined her mother dancing in them slowly, languidly, across the bog, floating out over the water, leaving pale pink lady’s slippers in the places where the magic shoes had touched down.
The pendant hung at the end of the cord, swaying slightly on its own, as if remembering what moving with her mother had been like.
Spin,Olive thought as she watched it start to spin.
Faster,she told the necklace, and it picked up speed, twirled in the air at the end of the line.
I’m doing this,Olive thought as she sat perfectly still.I’m doing this with my mind.
She stared at the necklace, concentrated.
Move clockwise,she told it. And it stopped spinning and began to loop in a circle clockwise, slowly at first, then faster, faster.
