“Just a friend” was all I said at the time as I stared down into the blue-gray depths of that stone. I was too upset to say more than that.
This meant it was real. It was all real. He was real.
Thank God I didn’t tell Mom the truth. Thank God she was so distracted by the divorce, she never mentioned the necklace again. Thank God I always wore the diamond tucked inside my shirt after that, too confused by what its existence in this world implied about my so-called “lucid dream” to share it with anyone.…
Well, except for what I mentioned to Hannah about it when I got back to school. And even that had quickly shown itself to be enough of a mistake that I learned to keep my mouth shut.
But not as bad as the mistake I made a week or two later, when Mom was “unavoidably detained” by Dad’s lawyers from picking me up after an outpatient appointment, and I found myself wandering into a jewelry store I’d spied on the same block as my doctor’s office while I waited for her. Gazing absently at all the “gray quartz” they happened to have for sale, I must have unconsciously pulled out the diamond and started playing with it, since the man behind the counter noticed it and commented on its beauty.
Blushing furiously, I’d tried to tuck it away, but it was too late. He asked to look at it more closely, saying that he’d never seen such an unusual stone.
What could I do? I let him look but kept the chain around my neck, as always. I’d never removed it since Mom had given it back to me. I don’t know why. The stone fascinated me. It never seemed to be any one color or another but was constantly changing. Even as the man behind the counter held it, it was turning from a pale silver to a deep, rain-cloud purple.
The next thing I knew, the guy behind the counter said he just had to show it to his boss, who was in the back, having his lunch. He was going to love it.
I don’t know what I thought was going to happen…or why I had such a strong urge to run away.
I should have listened to my instincts. I should have seen what the stone was trying to tell me.
But I didn’t.
After the assistant disappeared, the head jeweler came out, wiping his mouth on a napkin. By that time, I could see that my mom had pulled up in her car across the street.
“Actually,” I said, a surge of relief rushing through me. Now I had an excuse to leave. “My ride is here. I need to go. Sorry —”
The older jeweler had already seized the end of my pendant by then, though, so I was trapped…held suspended across the glass counter by the gold chain.
That’s when several things seemed to happen all at once.
Something went cold in the jeweler’s gaze when it fastened on the stone. The closer he bent to look at it, the more nervous I got…and the darker the diamond seemed to turn at its heart. My own heart began to beat very hard.
And though I couldn’t turn my head all the way to look because the jeweler had me almost literally by the neck, I could have sworn I saw, out of the corner of my eye, him standing outside the store, looking at us through the window.
“Do you have any idea what this is that you’re wearing, young lady?” the jeweler demanded. And then he launched into some kind of bizarre diamond speak. “This is a fancy deep gray blue. If I’m not wrong, it’s probably worth anywhere from fifty to seventy-five million dollars. Maybe more if its provenance can be proven, because it looks uncannily like one I’ve seen somewhere before.”
What could I say? The stone had turned ebony. I tugged gently on the chain, hoping he’d let go.
Except of course he only held on more tightly, keeping me a prisoner in his store.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really do have to —”
“You shouldn’t be walking around the streets wearing this,” the jeweler interrupted. “It belongs in a safe-deposit box. By rights I should confiscate it, if only for your own safety. Where did you even get it? Do your parents know you have this?”
It had been only a month since the accident. Everyone at school was already beginning to treat me differently because I’d been acting so weird since coming back from the dead. I’d lost all interest in going to the mall and working with the animal rescue groups I used to love. I’d said that odd thing to Hannah about how I’d always protect her from “the evil” (I’d been referring to my necklace, of course, but she hadn’t known that). Soon I would lose the part of Snow White in the school play.
I was already slipping into a glass coffin of my very own.
But somehow I still found a way to assure the jeweler, in a stammering voice, that the necklace was a family heirloom, thank you very much. And that my mother was, in fact, waiting for me in the car outside and that I needed to go meet her right now. Though I was actually more frightened at the idea of walking outside that store and possibly running into him than I was at staying inside with the extremely irritable jeweler.
That’s when I heard the bells on the shop door tinkle behind me, indicating that someone was coming in.
My heart sank. No. Please, no.
“I don’t believe you,” the jeweler said flatly. “In fact, just so you know, my assistant is on the phone in the back with the police right now. They’re on the way. So your mother — if she is waiting outside, which I sincerely doubt, since you’ve clearly stolen this — can come inside and join us, if she cares to, and watch you being arrested for grand theft.”
Except that my mother was never given the opportunity to do so. Because John stepped forward.