the idea of leaving them there. So I started a collection. Brian helped me
with it, and together we found garnets and granite and obsidian and
Mexican crazy lace, and more and more turquoise. Dad made necklaces
for Mom out of all that turquoise. We discovered large sheets of mica
that you could pound into powder and then rub all over your body so
you'd shimmer under the Nevada sun as if you were coated with
diamonds. Lots of times Brian and I thought we'd found gold, and we'd
stagger home with an entire bucketful of sparkling nuggets, but it was
always iron pyrite—fool's gold. Some of it Dad said we should keep
because it was especially good-quality for fool's gold.
My favorite rocks to find were geodes, which Mom said came from the
volcanoes that had erupted to form the Tuscarora Mountains millions of
years ago, during the Miocene period. From the outside, geodes looked
like boring round rocks, but when you broke them open with a chisel and
hammer, the insides were hollow, like a cave, and the walls were covered
with glittering white quartz crystals or sparkling purple amethysts.
I kept my rock collection behind the house, next to Mom's piano, which
was getting a little weathered. Lori and Brian and I would use the rocks
to decorate the graves of our pets that had died or of the dead animals we
found and decided should get a proper burial. I also held rock sales. I
didn't have that many customers, because I charged hundreds of dollars
for a piece of flint. In fact, the only person who ever bought one of my
rocks was Dad. He came out behind the house one day with a pocketful
of change and was startled when he saw the price tags I'd taped to each
rock.
"Honey, your inventory might move a little faster if you dropped your
prices," he said.
I explained that all my rocks were incredibly valuable and I'd rather keep
them than sell them for less than they were worth.