Chrysoprase (The Chalcedony Chronicles) (3 page)

“Um, I’m not really up to going out tonight,” I replied. And I wasn’t ever going to be up for going to my high school ex-boyfriend’s house.

“That is exactly what I knew you would say. That’s why I already talked to your grandfather, and he said it would be good for you,” Amy answered. “He said you needed to get out and blow off some steam. He agreed that a party would be a good idea.”

“What?” My grandfather hated how all the teenagers partied.

“You’ve avoided me since you moved off to the middle of nowhere. You owe me. I got the whole
I have to spread my wings and fly
thing, but really… Minnesota? Why so far away? It’s almost like you were trying to get away from us.” I could almost hear Amy pouting through the phone, like I personally insulted her by moving away. “Are you ready to come back here now? I bet you miss it. The Chicago life. Or any city life for that matter. How could you not?”

“I’m not moving back,” I replied. We had been arguing about this for over a month before we just stopped talking. She was convinced that I had enough time away, and needed to come back.

“Sure you’re not,” Amy teased. My friends really thought I’d move back after a semester. Actually, most of them gave me two weeks before I’d miss home. It didn’t happen. “Then I’ll pick you up in ten minutes for the party?”

“Ten minutes?” I asked. She lived farther than ten minutes away.

“Ten minutes,” Amy responded before hanging up without waiting for me to protest.

I sat up and pulled my fingers through my hair. There was no way I wanted to go off to a house party, but I was sure Amy wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I had no chance to talk her out of it. If I had just not answered my phone, I could have avoided all this. I looked down at my shirt and jeans. I was wrinkled, but didn’t care. I didn’t need to impress anyone at the party. After going off to college, and seeing something outside the little circle I grew up in, I was sure I didn’t have any plans to come back. No one at this party would even understand that. We’d grown up in Chicago, living our lives all around each other. No one else wanted to even venture to another suburb. Everyone just wanted to continue living on their parents’ wealth and having fun.

My hair was combed enough with my fingers, and I grabbed a sweatshirt. As I pulled it over my head, I heard a knock. That was faster than ten minutes. She was probably sitting in my driveway the whole time.

“Coming,” I shouted at the door.

The door opened, and my grandfather stepped into the room. He had changed his clothes since I saw him sleeping this morning, but he still looked different. The bounce in his step was less evident, and his smile didn’t reach his eyes. Sudden loss was hard for anyone to take. He was dealing with the same pain as I was, and I was sure I looked the same.

“Hey, sweetie,” he said quietly.

“Hi, Grandpa,” I replied, unsure what to say to him. I sat back down on my bed.

“Amy should be here soon. I wanted to be sure you were awake when she arrived,” he said, explaining why he was up in my room. He rarely came up here, said it was too girly for him, but he was just giving me space. He was pretty cool like that.

“I got her call,” I replied. “But I don’t exactly want to go.”

My grandfather smiled and laughed. “I figured as much. You are so like your mother. If I let you, I bet you would hibernate all day in your room. No, even more than all day. I bet you’d hibernate all Thanksgiving weekend in your room.”

I shrugged. That was the plan. I didn’t need to leave my room for anything but food.

“You can’t do that, Mari. You can’t let your life halt because your mother disappeared from it. I’m grateful James was here and let me keep my memories of your mother. I can only imagine how hard this must be for you, too. It feels like she should be here, but she isn’t and we can’t change that. I’d never change the fact that she came from the past in the first place. Your mother made my life worthwhile.” He stopped by my dresser and picked up the green stone Dee had given me.

“Taking an interest in chalcedony now?” He turned the stone over in his hand. “Like my missing carnelian?”

I wanted to smack my head. Yep, he would have noticed that. Even in his grief my grandfather noticed that his framed carnelian necklace was gone. I hadn’t even had time to come up with an excuse. I pulled up my sleeve to show him the reddish-brown lines. They were faded now, or maybe it was the lighting.

“Well, I planned to put it back after I used it, but it kind of got smashed into my arm permanently,” I replied sheepishly.

My grandfather set the green stone down with a stern look on his face. “We’ve talked about taking items from the house without permission.”

I knew exactly what he was talking about. I had only gone into his office once to snoop when I was eight. All the old stuff was enticing to me back then. I wanted to touch it all, and that wasn’t the best thing—handling all the old artifacts. I got caught and was punished badly enough that I never once even went back into that room without knocking first. I learned my lesson well that day.

“I swear I was just going to borrow it,” I added. I wasn’t planning to keep it.

He smiled then, and laughed at me for my response.

“James explained it to me. He told me that the carnelian was actually from the goddess, and that it was always meant for you. I was just teasing you.” My grandfather laughed. It was
more hollow sounding than normal, but it got him to smile a little. “It must have been the reason you were in there years ago. It probably called to you. What is this one? It looks like chrysoprase.”

“I have no idea what it is. It was given to me by Seth’s friend. I think it’s also from the goddess.” I shrugged. It was strange to talk to my grandfather about it, but he was part of this new weird world now.

Grandfather rubbed the stone and stared hard at it, like it held the clue to where my mother was. I stood up and hugged him. He would always miss her as much as I did. He never married or had kids, but he never felt the need to with me and my mother in his life. Even with me going off to college, he always had my mother around. Now his great big house would be empty when I went back to college. He would be all alone.

“I will find her and bring her back,” I told him as he placed his arms around me.

“I never doubted that,” he said into the top of my head. “But for now, be a kid and live a little. Go out with Amy. She’s been really worried about you. I think she’s stopped by over half a dozen times ‘on accident’ in the past few months, looking for you.”

He patted my back before letting me go. He went to the door and smiled at me with his sad new smile. After one last look from the doorway he was gone, shuffling down the hallway.

The party was
in full swing by the time we got there. That was typical Amy. She liked to arrive late. She felt that it made her presence even more important. It was still strange to find that nothing had changed. I thought it just made us late. I was used to it by now. It never used to bother me, but now it did. Amy was still Amy, but I felt like I was a completely new person.

“Did you hear that Logan still hasn’t gotten a new girlfriend after you dumped him last year?” Amy grabbed my arm and pulled me into the house when I hesitated at the door. This was the house of my ex-boyfriend after all.

I shook my head. I hadn’t heard that, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t connected to the gossip circle like her. I didn’t care who Logan was dating or cheating on now. He wasn’t my concern. Good luck to whomever he suckered into dating him. They could have the fun time of him running off at any day or time. I didn’t ever want to be back in his presence, but I couldn’t turn Amy down. She wasn’t one for taking no for an answer. Ever observant, Amy noticed my indifference.

“You did find someone at college,” Amy intuitively guessed. I didn’t want to reply or deny it. I couldn’t lie to her. She was my oldest friend. “Once you say hi to everyone, I’m going to have to get you cornered alone to hear all the details. You can’t date someone new without giving me a chance to assess him. You better show me a picture, and the more skin the better.”

Amy waved to another one of our friends as we walked down the lavish hallway. I noticed her, but was busy looking around. I was always impressed by the Jones house. In my two years dating Logan, I had been over often. Everything was decorated in a very regal manner, and when most homes had a new/old look to them where the homeowner tried to fake authenticity, the Jones home was
old
old. Everything from the floors to the ceiling was vintage and authentic. I first didn’t notice it, but my grandfather told me that everything in the house was real, and really old. The antiques around the entry room alone would cost a fortune.

Logan Jones came from money. I had no clue what his parents did, and in the two years I dated him, I never met his parents. They were always gone on business, but it must have been good business to afford him everything even most adults wanted. Without parents around in the gigantic house, you’d think he’d be alone, but that wasn’t the case either. There were butlers, maids, cooks, and people to do just about anything for him. He could have whatever he wanted, and could do basically anything he wanted. It was amazing what money could buy you. My grandfather had money, but nothing like Logan. I always felt like a commoner around him.

“Amy, Mari,” Stephanie Miller called out to the both of us.

Steph ran down the hallway, sliding the last few feet in her socks on the polished floor. We stopped her slide as she threw her arms around us in a big hug.

“You found our missing sister!” Steph cheered, hanging on tight.

In high school we were the three musketeers. We did everything together. I don’t even think I took more than half a dozen classes that didn’t have either Steph or Amy in them. They were
my everything. I hugged Steph back. How could she be familiar, yet so different now? The people were the same, and just as I remembered them, but something felt different.

Steph looped her arms through mine and Amy’s, pulling us back to the party room. I had no choice but to reluctantly go with them. In reality, I’d have been happy to sit in the car. It was too weird to be back with everyone. Nothing had changed, and I really didn’t want to see Logan or his friends. This wasn’t my world any more. But Amy would never let me sit out there alone. She was determined to make me have a good time.

“When did you get home?” Steph asked.

I didn’t answer as I looked around the house. There was something magical about this place. I always thought that. Too bad it had to be Logan Jones’ house. Amy and Steph stopped, so I stopped along with them. Then I realized Steph was talking to me. Guess it had to be me as I remembered the question. Amy really hadn’t gone anywhere to get home from.

“A few days ago,” I replied. By this time I wasn’t completely sure. My memory of the past three months was a bit hazy with the change in time without Seth in it. My memories were all a bit mushed together right now.

“And it took you a few days to call us?” Steph asked accusingly.

It was true. The old me from high school would have called them before I made it into the driveway, but the new me was a bit more preoccupied. I shrugged to her as my response. There wasn’t anything I could actually say that wouldn’t make it seem like something was up, or like I completely ditched them.

“She’s got a boyfriend,” Amy replied in hushed tones as we neared the noise of the party in progress.

“A boyfriend?” Steph squealed. “I need to see.” She grabbed my phone before I could stop her. I normally would have protested, but she would find nothing there. Amy grabbed my phone back and gave it to me before Steph could look through it.

“Later,” she promised over the noise. Steph led us into the room filled with both students from my old high school,
St. Maria’s Preparatory, and Bishop Glenwood, the male school we did everything with.

Steph wove between the groups of people standing around. I recognized most of them, but was glad we didn’t stop to say hi. I felt disconnected from everyone. What would I say to them? Could I continue to smile and take the ribbing about Minnesota? I actually liked it there. Steph wove her way further into the room and a couch that was miraculously empty. She pulled us down to sit before anyone else could, and was right back to talking with Amy about the latest gossip she had heard.

I ended up pretending that I cared about their conversation, too. I was really too removed to even know what they were complaining about now. Someone named Ned got in a fight with someone else named Jim at some club because they were from different colleges. I didn’t really get it. So I looked around the room instead. There were many people I hadn’t seen in months, yet I recognized most. People were still staggered around the room where you would expect them. Most people hung out with the same groups. Group A was glaring at Group B, while Group C was checking out Group D. Nothing was any different than when we were in high school. I looked down at the clothes Amy insisted I wear as my usual jeans and sweatshirt were not ‘Amy party approved.’ I was wearing the same kind of clothes I did in high school, and I was sitting with my same two best friends. From the outside, nothing had changed here either.

Unfortunately, from our seat, and in my distraction of looking around the room, I found Logan Jones. He was one person I never wanted to see again. We didn’t exactly have a nice break up. In fact, I had yet to talk to him since the day I said I was finished with him.