But … she didn’t have to trust Ander to learn more about the thunderstone.
She opened her desk drawer and set the small blue chest in the center of her bed. She was embarrassed to be considering testing his hypothesis, even alone in her room with the door and the shutters closed.
Downstairs, plates and forks clanked on their way to the sink. It was her night to do the dishes, but no one came to nag her about it. It was like she already wasn’t there.
Footsteps on the stairs sent Eureka lunging for her schoolbag. If Dad came in, she’d need to affect an air of study. She had hours of calculus homework, a Latin test on Friday, and untold amounts of makeup work from the classes she’d missed today. She filled her bed with textbooks and binders, covering the thunderstone chest. She slid her calculus book onto her knees just before he knocked on the door.
“Yeah?”
Dad leaned his head in. He had a dish towel slung over his shoulder and his hands were red from hot water. Eureka glowered at the random page in her calculus book and hoped its abstractness would distract her from the guilt of leaving him to do her chores.
He used to stand over her bed offering smart, surprising tips on her homework. Now he wouldn’t even step into her room.
He nodded toward her book. “The uncertainty principle? Tough one. The more you know about how one variable changes, the less you know about the other. And everything is changing all the time.”
Eureka looked at the ceiling. “I don’t know the difference between variables and constants anymore.”
“We’re only trying to do what’s best for you, Reka.”
She didn’t answer. She had nothing to say to that, to him.
When he closed the door, she read the paragraph introducing the uncertainty principle. The chapter’s title page featured a large triangle, the Greek symbol for change, delta. It was the same shape as the gauze-wrapped thunderstone.
She pushed aside her book and opened the box. The thunderstone, still wrapped in its odd white gauze, looked small and unassuming. She picked it up, remembering how delicately Brooks had handled it. She tried to achieve the same level of reverence. She thought about Ander’s warning that she must test the stone alone, that Brooks was not to know what she had. What did she have? She’d never even seen what the stone looked like. She thought of Diana’s postscript:
Don’t unwrap the gauze until you need to. You’ll know when the time comes.
Eureka’s life was in chaos. She was on the brink of being kicked out of the house she hated living in. She hadn’t been going to school. She was alienated from all her friends and was following birds through the predawn bayou to meet elderly psychics. How was she supposed to know if now was Diana’s mystical when?
As she reached for the glass on her nightstand, she kept the stone in its gauze. She placed it on top of her Latin binder. Very carefully, she poured a small stream of last night’s water directly over the stone. She watched the wet spot seeping through gauze. It was just a rock.
She put the stone down and kicked her legs out across the bed. The dreamer in her was disappointed.
Then, in her peripheral vision, she saw the smallest movement. The stone’s gauze had lifted in one corner, as if loosened by the water. You’ll know when. She heard Diana’s voice as if she were lying next to Eureka. It made her shiver.
She peeled back more of the corner of the gauze. This sent the stone spinning, shedding layer after layer of white wrapping. Eureka’s fingers sifted through the loosening fabric as the triangular shape of the stone shrank and sharpened in her hands.