9 Hot Rock

It was a good thing, Nick and Lottica realized, that people cut you some serious slack when your parents had been blown up.

Otherwise, it would have been difficult to explain to the Bordens and the rest of their neighbors why they'd returned to the barbecue a bit sooty and disheveled. Their evasive comments about what they'd been doing with themselves the past two months, not to mention the last 20 minutes, weren't very satisfying. But what civil person was going to badger the newly orphaned with prying questions?

As they tried to make small talk, all Lottica and Nick could really think about was the amazing object, now in Nick's pocket, they'd found in the cavity of staircase's center post. Why had it been hidden under the iron hawk? Why had their parents kept it secret from them?

They had so wanted to visit their old neighborhood and reconnect with friends and memories of better times. Yet, now all they wanted to do was escape their well-meaning neighbors and figure out what they'd found.

Ironically, it was their grandparents who came to their rescue, appearing at the Borden's front door requesting that Nick and Lottica be excused so they could return home and, as Grandmother Breima put it in her stilted English, "Have suitable time to complete school studies."

Once in the car, Lottica kept turning to Nick as if to confirm that he still had the object they'd discovered. In her mind, she replayed what had happened, especially when her brother had motioned her to look inside the center post. Awed by the brilliance within, she'd reached into the hidden compartment in the center post and drew it forth.

The thing was mesmerizing, and they lost themselves in its glimmer and glow until realizing they'd better get back to the Borden's backyard.

Lottica gave it to Nick to put in his pocket. Then, she told her brother they needed to put the Hawk statue back atop its iron perch. She had a strange storybook feeling that it was the safe thing to do.

As they drove back with their grandparents, Lottica's sense of excitement was intermingled with a darkening sense of unease. What was this marvel they'd found? And who'd put it there?

The obvious answer pointed to their parents having hidden it. And that raised more questions. Why? When? Though, the really big question on Lottica's mind: Now what?

Lottica wondered if her grandparents knew about the object, wondering if it was why they'd come to America in the first place. Not to be close to their son and put up with their too-American family. Is this why they'd uprooted themselves from their precious Lebreima? In the last few weeks, had they been secretly searchingthrough the burnt-out house trying to find this treasure, instead of working to salvage what was left of their family?

Feeling as if she might burst with all these questions, Lottica closed her eyes and visualized the constellations. It was her way of calming down. She started with Orion. That was the first constellation in the night sky her mother had taught her to recognize, and Lottica always found a sense of peace in sighting its signature stars of red and blue. Fire and ice. Hot and cold. Passion and reason. Just like the emotions she was tring to keep in check.

In the seat beside her, Nick, to keep calm, was visualizing the chambers of his heart, focusing on each beat and his blood being pumped from his right atrium through the valve into his right ventricle, then back to left atrium and finally out through the left ventricle.

Strangely, it was as if the mysterious object tucked in his pocket was pulsing in concert with his heartbeat. Impossible. Though as the ride home wore on, he could not ignore the concentrated heat growing where the object nested at the bottom of his pocket.

The discomfort grew so bad that as soon as they pulled up to their grandparents' house, Nick bolted from the car and upstairs to their room. To cover for him, Lottica told her grandparents that Nick had been complaining of a headache at the Borden's, and then she rushed after him.

She found clenching his teeth and fanning his fingers in the air.

"What's wrong?" Lottica asked equally concerned and amused.

In answer, Nick hopped over to his dresser. He had trouble opening the drawer and stammered, "Get-t-t me a so—!"

Nick bent at the waist and swatted at his pocket. Lottica wanted to laugh. He looked ridiculous, but it obviously wasn't funny to her brother. "What do you need?"

"A so—"

"A saw?" Lottica asked confused.

"So—"

"Saw what, Nick?"

Lottica ran to her brother's side as he frantically kicked a shoe off. He pointed to his toes, at which point, Lottica put it all together. She rushed to his dresser, pulled a drawer open grabbed a sock and threw it to Nick.

Nick frantically pulled the sock over his hand and shoved it into his pocket. He whooped as his sock-covered hand flew back out and, with it, a flaming object. It rocketed across the small room, bounced against the wall, pinballed off their bookcase, skittered behind the desk and tumbled to a glowing stop at the base of Lottica's telescope.

"Whoa! What's going on?" Lottica asked, emoji-eyed.

Ripping the sock off his hand, Nick inspected his fingers and patted his leg where the object had been in his pocket. "The thing was on fire! It felt like it was burning through my leg. I couldn't touch it with my bare hand." He shook his head in disbelief. "It was like a hot coal."

They both moved cautiously closer to it. Lottica kneeled and poked at it with her finger. She was ready to draw back and shriek, but she didn't have to. Nick flinched for her.

"It's warm," she told him.

"It was hot!"

"I believe you, Nick. What do you think it is?"

For the first time since they spied it inside the little vault of the spiral staircase, they were able to take a really good look at the thing. It was some kind of crystal, or gem-like stone about the size of an avocado pit. The odd cellular facets of the stone roiled as if about to erupt fiery lava.

The ruby-red color of the stone bothered Lottica. She ventured another poke at the thing. "Nick, wasn't this thing blue when we took it from the staircase?"

Nick thought for a moment. "Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty sure it was. Maybe it was just looked blue against the sky. It could be that it's transparent."

"Nick, the carpet is beige. This thing is red—" Just as Lottica spoke, the stone began to change. The fiery red facets slowly paled into a vague pink. Then soft blues began to percolate, bubbling from the center of the stone.

Before Nick could stop her, Lottica gingerly picked up the stone. "Feel it now, Nick."

He cautiously took it from her. The stone was cool. Refreshingly cool, like a basement floor in the middle of August. Not wishing to tempt fate again, Nick handed it back to Lottica. They gazed in wonder at the now cool-blue stone.

What kind of gemstone could do what they had already seen this one do? Dramatic changes in color and temperature. Was that even possible?

Lottica turned the stone over in her hand. On first inspection, the gemstone seemed roughly oval, but now she noted it was more pear-shaped, or, if she held it just right—

Heart-shaped.

She thought of their father. How, as he'd been loaded into the ambulance on the night of the explosion, his hand had passed over his damaged eye and the gemstone of his wedding ring had seemed to wink at her and fall away in a salute.

Suddenly, her pulse quickened, and a streak of red appeared in the strange stone along with a growing warmth in her palm. As she recalled those last moments of her father, the stone grew warmer. With each fluttering beat of her heart, a cool suspicion merged into burning certainty that her father's wedding ring and this hot rock were somehow connected.