Reincarnation (28 page)

"I don't know ... nothing. I guess ... I was just confused for a second. Want to go to that gem thing?"

"We might as well," she said, doing her best not to reveal how excited she was to be walking down the hall beside him. This was fate! It had to be! What were the chances of running into

him alone like this? Did he know how much she liked him? Had he noticed her watching him

every time he went by?

Then she was struck with a new, exciting thought: Had he lagged behind intentionally,

noticing that she was behind him? Was he really there waiting for her?

She gazed at him from the corner of her eye. Was that what had happened? Did he feel the

same attraction -- the same
connection
-- that she did? Oh, how she hoped so.

As they headed toward the Hall of Gems they talked about their college applications. He'd

been accepted to the Pace University Theater Department. "I can't wait to take their

playwriting and screenwriting courses," he said.

"Have you written any plays?" she asked.

"I got a scholarship based on this screenplay I wrote that was set during the Salem Witch

Trials."

"What happened in it?" she asked as they turned the corner.

"It's about this sailor who meets a girl he's crazy about and he gives her these earrings as a sign of his love. But

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her father doesn't approve of him and one night when he's trying to see the girl, the father

chases him with a gun."

"Pretty dramatic," she commented.

He laughed. "I know. I have this crazy imagination. Wait. It gets wilder. The father ships the daughter off to America to marry this creep lawyer and he finds the earrings that the girl has

stashed away. He gets so consumed with jealousy that he turns the girl over as a witch and

she's burned at the stake."

"Oh, that must be a horrible, horrible way to die," Samantha said as a shiver ran through her.

She could see it somehow, as though she was looking out through the woman's eyes; she

saw faces jeering at her. She smelled the acrid burning of the straw as it began

to ignite.

The hallway seemed to spin and Samantha lost her footing. She gripped Jake's arm to

steady herself.

"Are you okay?" he asked, guiding her toward a bench.

"I'm sorry, I got dizzy all of a sudden. I just need to sit a minute. Go on with your story."

"Okay," he agreed. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"I will be. Go on."

"Anyway, she doesn't know that the sailor has come looking for her. He gets there too late

to save her, but sees the earrings there in the ashes of the fire and knows she was wearing

them at the stake as a sign of her love for him. He gets the earrings out of the fire and

throws them into the Atlantic Ocean."

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"He came back for her and she didn't know it? " Samantha asked. She wanted to cry. Why

was this story affecting her so strongly? "That's the saddest story," she said.

"I know," he agreed. "The saddest part to me is that she died not knowing he had come looking for her. The sailor feels so horrible, like if he'd only gotten there sooner he might

have saved her. He blames himself for the rest of his life."

"He shouldn't have," she said. "He tried his best."

"He should never have let her go in the first place. He was an idiot," Jake said passionately.

"He deserved to be miserable for the rest of his life."

"You're too hard on him."

"He's my character. I can be hard on him." He sat beside her, seemingly lost in thought.

Then he turned to her. "Feeling any better?"

"Uh-huh," she said, standing. "It's a great story."

"It got me a scholarship, anyhow."

"How'd you think of it?"

"I don't know. Stories are always popping into my head."

As they walked through the museum, she told him about her upcoming audition. "I wasn't

sure whether to apply to their vocal department or their dance department," she confessed.

"I can probably study it all under Performing Arts."

"I saw you in the school play," he told her. "You were amazing. I saw you at the gymnastic performance on the balance beam, too. Man, you rocked it. First place!"

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"Thanks. Why were you there?"

"My brother, Ato, was on the rings."

"Oh, yeah, he was good," she recalled.

"You're so surefooted," he commented.

"Thank you. It's a good thing I wore orthopedic shoes as a kid. I was born with a foot that

was turned in, but the orthopedist corrected it and it's fine now."

"You'd never know," he said.

They had arrived at the Hall of Gems. The large poster in front of the room announced the

special show the museum had mounted. It read: FAMOUS EMERALDS THROUGH THE AGES.

Just as they'd thought, lots of their classmates were inside taking notes on the many

displays.

They took out their notebooks as they moved together past the displays. The room was

heavily staffed with security guards who kept their eyes on the priceless emeralds locked in

glass cases. One of the largest was from Peru. "I can see why they worshipped this thing,"

Samantha said as she read the plaque beside it. "It's so amazing."

The green riches were nearly overwhelming, each emerald larger and more spectacular than

the last.

Her eyes locked on an item in its own case. "Look at this emerald-studded collar," she said, peering into the case.

"That's crazy," he agreed, stooping to examine it more closely. "I can just picture it on some kind of big cat."

"You must be psychic," she commented, coming upon a picture on the placard beside it.

The black-and-white photo

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showed a beautiful dark-skinned woman in a satiny halter dress. She was about seventeen.

And at her feet sat a black panther in an emerald-studded collar.

"Let me see that?" Jake said, standing beside her. "Delilah Jones," he read. He looked up sharply at Samantha. "You look just like her."

Samantha peered at the photo. "I don't think there's any resemblance at all," she disagreed.

"It's in the eyes," he insisted. "You have the same eyes."

They both studied the photo. Maybe he was right. There was something in Delilah Jones's

eyes that spoke to her deeply, as if she were looking directly into her innermost self.

"What are you humming?" he asked her.

"Was I humming?" she asked, embarrassed. "I didn't even realize it."

"Yes, you were humming. I know the song but I can't think of its name. It sounded like an

old song."

She shook her head, bewildered. "Sorry. I didn't know I was doing it. It's gone from my head

now."

"Too bad. It was pretty," he said, gazing at her intently.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked.

He smiled apologetically. "Sorry. Every time I look at you I feel like I'm trying to remember something that I can't get a hold of."

"Me, too," she said.

"Really?"

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"Really." When she looked at him she felt it, too. It was something she felt was just out of reach, like trying to recall someone's name that she once knew but could no longer quite

call to mind.

"How freaky," he remarked, still studying her.

"It is," she agreed.

They continued walking through the hall. There were emerald rings and necklaces salvaged

from the wrecks of Spanish galleons. An Eye of Horus pendant with an emerald set in the

center had survived from ancient Egypt. The information card said it was among the

treasures Alexander the Great sent back to Athens after he conquered Egypt in 332 B.C.E. A

headdress called the Crown of Andes was set with 453 emeralds. It was named for

Atahualpa, one of the last emperors of the Incas, who was taken captive by Pizarro in 1532.

"There's so much death and fighting attached to these emeralds," Samantha observed.

"I know," Jake agreed.

Under a banner that read FABULOUS FAKES were gems that were often mistaken for

emeralds. There was a carving of Buddha made from a tall emerald, labeled the Emerald

Buddha. "It's really green jasper," Jake told her, reading the information card beside it.

A clump of green crystal was labeled EMERALD CRYSTALS IN CALCITE MATRIX WITH PYRITE

FORMATIONS.

"Read this card," Jake told her.

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Leaning close, Samantha read. The crystals had been found clenched in the fingers of a male

Neanderthal skeleton that had been washed ashore by the rushing water into which he had

apparently fallen from a cliff above. His bones were entangled with those of another

skeleton believed to be those of a Cro-Magnon female, the prehistoric figure most

resembling people today. The archeologists who uncovered them suspected that these two

had died struggling for the rock.

"Write a play about that," Samantha suggested to Jake. "That's about as tragic as it gets.

They died fighting for a rock."

"I know. Stupid, huh?"

They came to a display marked EVENING PERIDOT, BELIEVED TO BE ORIGINALLY FROM THE

RED SEA ISLAND OF ST. JOHN'S. FOUND WASHED ASHORE ON THE ATLANTIC COAST. It

was a single, lovely green drop earring.

They stood together, silent, staring down at it. It was strange: Samantha felt a lump forming

in her throat and came near to crying.

Jake noticed. "Are you okay?" he asked.

Was there a catch in his voice as well?

Not wanting to speak for fear of crying, she nodded. After a moment, she felt able to talk.

"Maybe it's just that... it's how I pictured the earring in your story."

"Me, too," he agreed quietly. "It's not even a real emerald."

"Who cares," said Samantha. "It's beautiful."

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"It is," he agreed. "And they found it here in the Atlantic, even though it comes from the Caribbean."

"Like in your story," Samantha said.

"Like in my story. Weird."

"In your play, he came back for her, right?" she checked.

"Uh-huh. But he was too late."

They continued to gaze at the earring. She wanted to take hold of his hand, suddenly

feeling strangely close to him, but fought the urge. She didn't know him well enough for

that.

"Hey," he said, looking up after a while, "where did everybody go?"

Samantha checked the schedule of events. "The IMAX comet movie starts in two minutes,"

she told him. "Want to try to make it?"

"Yeah."

Following the museum map, they made their way to the IMAX theater, showed their tickets,

and hurried into the already-darkened theater.

"Can you see any empty seats?" she whispered to him.

"No."

After a moment though, she spied a single empty seat right on the end. She went for it at

the same moment Jake tried to sit in it. They bounced off each other there in the dark, their

heads clacking together painfully.

"Ow!" she cried.

"Shh!" came a chorus of voices.

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"Are you all right?" he whispered. She could tell he was rubbing his head also.

"I'll live," she said.

"Want to share the seat?" he offered.

"Yeah."

Carefully, they both perched on the corners of the seat, squeezed against each other. She

found being so close to him exciting and oddly easy all at the same time.

On the enormous screen, the planet Earth rose before them from the vantage point of a

passing comet. It hovered in the darkness in its entire blue and green splendor -- a green,

turning orb more shining and gorgeous than any emerald.

This time, she didn't hesitate. She took hold of his hand.

He turned to her there in the dark. She waited, not daring to breathe. What would he do?

He squeezed her hand. "Is it just me?" he whispered. "Have I known you forever?"

"I'm so glad you feel it, too," she whispered in reply, relieved to hear him say what she felt.

"This thing between us ... is it real?"

"It's real," he assured her. "Don't ask me how I know, but it is. We wouldn't both be feeling it if it wasn't."

Samantha knew that this was the beginning of the rest of her life. Her life would be with him

from now on. They would never be apart again.

It didn't matter how or why she knew it. She knew.

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This was it. They'd made it.

Together they gazed at the screen in front of them as if out into the universe: The Earth and

the vast, fathomless universe -- the mysterious green jewel spinning in the darkness -- all

there for them to share, as it had been from the start.

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