Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [18]
When I heard the phone ring on the other side of the house, and Mandarin answer, the temptation to explore became irresistible.
I didn’t know how long I had. So I started at the closest point: Mandarin’s dresser. Opening the drawers would be too invasive, so I settled for the Indian basket on top. I combed my fingers through the knickknacks inside: barrettes, bandages, tampons, a windup plastic puppy.
The top shelf of her bookcase held a dead cactus in a pot. It looked like old-man flesh, wrinkled and white-whiskered. A stereo stood on the shelf below. On the shelf below that, facedown, as if it had toppled forward, a picture frame.
I picked it up. It was a Polaroid of Mandarin as a little girl: scowling, the sun in her eyes, wearing jeans with an elastic waistband and a white T-shirt.
The photo reminded me of the way she’d looked the first time I’d seen her, eight years earlier. I wondered who had taken the picture. The person behind a camera told as much as who was in front of it. My pageant photos in Momma’s album were proof.
I set it back facedown on the shelf.
When I turned around, the first thing I saw was Mandarin’s bed. I stared at the balled-up comforter, the rumpled sheets, the pillow still indented from the curve of her head. And suddenly, I imagined her there: rolling across the mattress, her black hair sticking to her naked back, a male forearm curling around from underneath—
I blinked the image away as Mandarin burst through the door.
She thumped two glasses onto the dresser, shoving the Indian basket carelessly aside. “It’s ginger ale,” she said. “I considered lacing it with a shot or two of vodka, but then I thought, ‘Nah, she ain’t the vodka type. More of a Peach Schnapps kinda girl.’ Am I right?”
“Well, no … I’ve never—”
She laughed. “Just yanking your chain. Course you don’t drink. But seriously, what do you do?”
I hesitated. “What do you mean?”
“Like, what do you like to do? If we’re going to be working together, we’ve got to be pals too, right? So tell me: how do you fill your time, Grace Carpenter?”
I fumbled through my brain. I hated questions like that. I never knew what to say, what was babyish, and what wasn’t.
“I read a lot,” I admitted to Mandarin’s bare feet. Her toenails looked jagged, almost bitten. I wondered if the bottoms of her feet were scarred from all the stamped-out cigarettes. “And I spend a lot of time in the badlands. Looking for rocks and things.”
“No kidding?”
She sounded genuinely surprised. I risked a glance up.
“Like what kind of things? Like, arrowheads?”
“Sure. Or like, fossils and …”
Mandarin was on her hands and knees, reaching under her bed. She pulled out a jar filled with what looked like broken wedges of peanut brittle.
They were arrowheads. Maybe fifty of them, all jumbled together. Did she have any idea how ancient they were? She should have wrapped them separately in soft cloth and tucked them carefully into a shoe box, like I did my rocks.
Mandarin motioned me over. “What do you think?”
She unscrewed the top of the jar and dumped the arrowheads onto her bed. Involuntarily, my hand shot out and grabbed one.
“It’s perfect!” I exclaimed. “Look at it. Blue-white chalcedony, and not a single chip. Do you know how rare that is?”
“No clue.”
“It’s old, too. You can tell it’s old. Like ten thousand years. These aren’t even called arrowheads—they’re projectile points. They’re older than the bow and arrow.”
I knew how much of a nerd I was being, but I couldn’t help it. At least Mandarin seemed interested.
“Lemme see.” She stuck out her hand.
I set the arrowhead on the cushion of her palm. She examined it thoughtfully. “Huh,” she said. “What do y’know.”
“And this one! It’s tiger skin obsidian. My all-time favorite.” I held the amber-colored stone up to the light. “See the glow?”
Mandarin tipped her head to the side. Her eyes were the same color as the arrowhead.
“Where did you get all these?” I asked. I’d been hunting for years, and I’d only