He started acting all stupid around me, like we were a couple or something. He came to McDonald's every night and dropped by the trailer unannounced, which really p.i.s.sed me off because it was hard enough living with my new-levels-of-loserdom parents without having to show them off to the neighbors.

By prom night, he'd worked himself up into a nervous wreck and his mood fluctuated between morose insecurity and babbling excitement. I began to hate him for it, so much so that, as I slipped into the dress, I half considered calling the whole night off. Before I could, he arrived at the trailer door with a boxed corsage and his hair combed and slicked down with some sort of shiny stuff.

I'd put on makeup, and this shocked him as much as his hair shocked me.

"Wow. You look great." The way he said it felt insulting-as if I'd never looked great before. Before I could answer, my mother was posing us next to the front window, inching Sam to the left or right to hide the peeling paper paneling.

"Hold that!" she said. "Saffron, smile, will you?"

I smiled.

"Sam, can you lean in toward Saffron a little? I can't fit you both in the frame."

She was backed up against the far wall of the living area, and I let her snap a few more shots before I suggested that we go.

Sam had left his pop's truck at #20, so we walked over there, and the old folks came out on the warm May night to watch us. There was something about how they looked at us that I tried to connect with. Though I felt as stupid as a sack of rat s.h.i.t in my beaded dress, lacy shawl, and a wrist corsage, I felt a little bit of happiness for us, too.

But then, Sam opened his mouth.

"Uh, I'm not sure I can dance tonight. I think I sprained my ankle."

"You look fine to me," I said. "We don't have to dance if you don't want."

"Oh good."

What a pathetic lying jerk.

Sam's granny and pop took some pictures and then we got into the truck (Sam didn't open the door for me) and headed for the Jefferson Hotel. About a hundred yards from the trailer park entrance, I saw two guys walking down the road in hooded sweatshirts. As we pa.s.sed, my eyes met with Junior's. I groaned.

"Do you know those guys?" he asked.

"No."

"So how come you made that noise?"

"I just did," I said.

"Did you used to date one of them?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

I turned my head to look at him. He was clearly doubtful, upset, and, from the sounds of things, possessive. "Yes I'm sure. Though it's not any of your business."

"It is is my business because you're my business because you're my my date." date."

And that was pretty much how the rest of the night went. When he found me having an innocent conversation with Mike from the Quiz Bowl team, he grabbed my arm so roughly it left a little red mark. When he saw me heading to the bathroom with Susan and two other girls, he asked, "Where do you think you're going?"

"To the bathroom."

"Just don't talk about me behind my back," he said. Susan looked at me and made a crazy face. I smirked. Wasn't this her idea to begin with?

Sam and I had one dance together, a slow number, and he grabbed my a.s.s. Like, grabbed it so hard it hurt and I let out a little yelp. I walked off the dance floor, gathered my shawl and my purse, and waited for him to catch up.

"Why'd you do that?" he demanded.

"Let's just go home," I said. "I don't feel well."

"But, I-" he stopped when he saw my face. I must have looked three hundred years' worth of p.i.s.sed off and ready to kill him. And I was.

He drove home emotionally. At first, he seemed sad and tried to get me to feel sorry for him, and then, when I didn't, he drove like an a.s.shole. When we got back to the trailer park, he stopped at the entrance, put the truck in park, and pouted at me.

"I can walk from here," I said, reaching for the door handle.

"But I thought since we went out we could, um ..."

I was already stuffing his eye sockets with salted limes, already carving his acne off, zit by zit, and feeding it to him. What more did he want? I made a move to open the door. He slammed the truck into drive and peeled forward on the gravel, aiming for every pothole there was. By the time we arrived in front of his granny and pop's place in a cloud of gray dust, I'd hit the truck's ceiling twice.

Before I'd regained my balance and straightened myself, he leaned in to kiss me. I recoiled a little, and then figured if this was prom night etiquette, and if it would get me out of ever doing anything remotely "normal" again, then I was willing to give him one stupid kiss. But then there was a knock on the truck's window and I saw Sam's granny standing outside, crying and gesturing toward the trailer.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I didn't want to interrupt your special night, but Sam, I need your help."

Sam was out of the truck before she finished the sentence. She started telling him what happened. I was still in the truck and couldn't hear her. But I heard Sam say, "Who would steal a wheelchair?" and then I slowly turned the handle on the truck door and slipped out. I knew exactly who would steal a wheelchair.

"Two of them, in ski masks," Sam's pop said as I neared the front door.

"They pointed a gun at me!" his granny cried. "And they took all of our pills!"

I reached out and touched Sam's back, but he flinched. "Didn't anyone call the cops?" he said, and when they shrugged at him, still obviously in shock, Sam took off for the pay phone as if I wasn't standing there.

And then I realized that if Junior had been to Sam's place, then he'd have been to ours, too, and I worried about my parents. I walked (as fast as I could in two-inch heels) to our trailer and scanned a hundred mental images-Mom and Dad shot, sliced, hung, burnt, and beaten-but when I got through the door, I found them alert and watching The Late Show The Late Show.

"Was Junior here tonight?"

My father stared at David Letterman. My mother said, "No."

"Are you sure?"

I looked around the room, trying to see the gaps Junior would usually leave. The toaster was there. The heater was there. The microwave.

"I've been here all night and I didn't see him," my mother said.

"Well, he robbed #20 tonight," I said. "And he stole Sam's grandfather's wheelchair."

My mother looked at me sideways. "How was your prom? Isn't it still early?"

"Mom! I just told you that Junior stole an old, handicapped man's wheelchair! Don't you care?" I stormed into my room to take the stupid dress off and get myself into a pair of jeans as fast as I could.

"How do you know he did it?" she asked. "I mean, it could be anyone, right?"

I walked into the bathroom to wipe off the stupid prom face I'd painted on, and then I saw it. The cigarette b.u.t.t in the toilet.

"Did you hear me?" she yelled, aggressively. "Anyone could have done it!"

I poked my head around the faux wood accordion bathroom door. "Yeah. Sure. And so this is anyone's anyone's cigarette b.u.t.t in the bathroom, then, is it?" cigarette b.u.t.t in the bathroom, then, is it?"

I heard some cars arrive and went outside. Two cop cruisers were parked outside #20 with their lights on. When I got there, Sam was sitting on the steps talking to himself. When he saw me, he scowled.

"Are they okay?"

"Yeah."

"Can I do anything to help?" I asked.

"Who would steal a wheelchair from two poor old people?"

I shook my head.

That's the thing with drug addicts. They steal wheelchairs and hearing aids and walkers and canes and seeing-eye dogs, and I'm sure if Junior needed a fix that he would reach right into every one of those trailer-park old people and grab their pacemakers. Sam didn't understand this, so he just looked at me and repeated the question.

"I mean, who would steal a wheelchair?"

The police never found out it was Junior who stole Pop's chair on prom night, even though I found his cigarette b.u.t.ts outside three other robbed trailers and it was about the simplest puzzle there ever was.

After that night, Sam stopped dropping by to see me, which was a relief. The last thing I needed in my life was an overly possessive pseudo-boyfriend who couldn't take a hint. I was less than a month from high school graduation and the fulfillment of a lifelong plan. I started taking double shifts at McDonald's as the warmer nights approached. I had plenty to do without having to worry about a twentieth-century boy's fragile feelings. Ugh. The mere thought of it made me want to gouge my own eye out.

As the school year wound down, I tried to get myself in the mood for what lay ahead. I did my final senior research paper for AP English on King Philip's emerald-and concluded by blaming historians for misleading us into the belief that its whereabouts were a mystery. In the high times of privateering and piracy, we all knew where the emerald ended up. Well, at least I did, anyway.

I got my pa.s.sport in the mail the same day I got my last report card. I'd aced finals and, as expected, I was crowned cla.s.s valedictorian. I think my mother showed her pride by blinking twice after I told her.

All the other speakers at commencement had been awarded college scholarships and grants, and gave speeches about their glorious academic futures. I didn't want to speak but I had to, so I wrote a piece about how graduates should do what they want to do, and not let themselves be steered by anyone else's desires.

Parents probably didn't like what I had to say, but what did it matter? It got me as much applause as it got the others. It made my parents burst from their chairs and pound their pasty palms together, even though they probably hadn't heard a word I'd said. They were stoned out of their minds anyway, with new tablets my mother had gotten for her migraines. My father wore a wrinkled linen blazer with jeans and sandals, and a POW/MIA baseball cap. My mother didn't take off her sungla.s.ses once.

I kept looking around for Junior. If he had any brains, he'd show up and try to take the cash out of all the cards I got that day, but he was nowhere to be found. Maybe he was in jail somewhere, maybe asleep in a crack house. Maybe uptown scoring more drugs.

My mother was still wearing her sungla.s.ses when we got home from the ceremony.

"I don't want you drinking tonight, Saffron. I'm scared you'll be killed in a horrible accident or something," she said through my bedroom door. I sighed, sliced off a strip of her ear, and ate it like beef jerky.

"Don't worry. I'm only going to Susan's house and I'm sleeping over. I won't be on the road at all."

"What time will you be home?"

I walked past her and out the door. After all those years at the kitchen table, and all the years living through Junior's bulls.h.i.t together, she hadn't the courage to tell me she was proud of me that day. So I refrained from answering her at all.

The next day, I arranged my flights from Susan's house. On Sunday night, I packed my few summer clothes and my father's collapsible army shovel into a drab duffel bag Pat had given me. Before Susan drove me to the bus station, I said goodbye to my parents.

"I'll call you once I get there," I told them.

My father searched for the missing remote control. My mother had a gla.s.sy-eyed stare. Neither of them made a sound. It was as if they were finally suffering from the years of imaginary torture I'd inflicted.

From the bus station, I traveled to Philadelphia, to spend one night and catch a plane the next morning. For two hours, as I struggled to fall asleep under the glow of a city night, I walked through my plan of action in my mind-each time throwing a different wrench in the works to see how I could solve unforeseeable problems. What if I get there and no one meets me at the airport? I'll find a taxi. What if I get to a town and there are no rooms available? I can stay with someone, I'm sure. What if I'm robbed or lose my money? That's why I bought traveler's checks. What if I can't find the bay?

That was the big one. What if I couldn't find the bay? Things would surely have changed since I'd seen the Jamaican coast in 1664. If an important town like Port Royal had sunken thirty meters under the sea, then what else would have changed in three hundred years?

In my mind's eye, I was confident I would recognize it somehow. Whenever I'd closed my eyes to sleep for the past three hundred years, I'd walked that sand in long, measuring footsteps. But what if all my information was mixed up? I knew that no one had ever officially claimed Philip's emerald, but who knew? Maybe someone had already found it all and sold it, not knowing what it was. Then what? Back to Hollow Ford? On to medical school?

I got up four times to pee during the night. Each time, I was increasingly agitated about not sleeping. Finally, at four thirty, after listening to delivery trucks honk outside the supermarket across the street, I turned on the blinding fluorescent bathroom light, stared at my reflection, and decided to trust myself.

The only mirror in Fred Livingstone's office was behind a small bar in the corner. It often captured Fred's nose or chin in its beveled edge, causing a distorted reflection he could not help but stare at.

A week had pa.s.sed since Winston brought back the new deeds from Miami. Fred knew he had to go to the bank to deposit them with the rest of his paperwork, but it seemed an eternity, forty minutes each way on the treacherous Jamaican country roads. Plus, there would be Winston, chatting and singing and generally being annoying.

"I can go tomorrow," he said, and propped his feet on his desk.

It was eleven o'clock and there was no one on the beach. He hadn't seen Sarah since the day she stood him up and enough time had pa.s.sed, he figured, to know that she wasn't interested.

He closed his eyes and imagined her. "You look stunning," he said. "Beyond words you are beautiful, Sarah."

Get to work, you flabby p.r.i.c.k. Go to the bank.

"Shut up! Sarah, excuse him. He is a rude, rude man. Where were we? Oh yes, you look stunning. That silk hangs so well on you. Versace? Oh yes, it was made for you, dear, made for you."

You sound like a f.a.ggot, Fred.

"I am not a f.a.ggot."

You like men, Fred. You are are a f.a.ggot. a f.a.ggot.

"Sarah, please, don't go. I can make him stop. Security! Sarah! Don't believe him!"

f.a.ggot.

"You're the f.a.ggot," Fred said, pouting.