The next week ,to Nadia, felt like a blur. It was the same pattern everyday.
She was extra careful and avoided Olivia at all cost. Sometimes she could see from her hindsight Olivia was burning holes at her side of the head but she said nothing. Other times their eyes would meet and Olivia would flinch and fuss over something else entirely.
It was happening to a point, that if anyone paid close attention, they would notice how strange she was acting. Nadia couldn't figure out this girl, if she wanted to harass her she should have done that already and if Nadia was too boring and uninteresting to be bothered with, why the silent stare?
She once caught Olivia laughing with Eva and Emi and it infuriated her further. Her intentions were clear , Nadia had been right all along. She was half expecting everyone in class to eye her differently once Olivia spread things about her, but to her surprise, nothing changed. Nadia was still transparent to her classmates.
Nadia was certain, the Olivia she had been on that day was someone else entirely, she had donned on a mask of polite interest only to mock her. They never had anything to do with each other and they never really will. Their lives would not intersect ever again.
She behaved like Nadia didn't exist not unlike every one else did in the school. It worked for Nadia. For all her spite and rage, the thought of confrontation only bought unease to her. Also it would make a big deal out of nothing.
Now that Nadia didn't have to worry about her events at school anymore, she solely focused on her treasure again. Her shiny beautiful rock that somehow she had started believing was her own to keep.
She had discarded the thought of ever handing it to someone else. She had found it and she intended to keep it. Initially she went to the burnt clearing in the woods multiple times to see if someone would turn up inquiring about it , but no one ever did.
No one bothered coming to the place, since the explosion the spot lay untouched as it always was but it wasn't her special place anymore. Whatever magic it held, whatever spell that bound Nadia to its beauty and made her want to keep visiting the place had been shattered.
Nadia felt like she had lost something very dear to her. She lamented for a while but there was no one she could hold accountable for it and it would never return, so she stopped going to the clearing all together. Going there only reminded her of what she had lost.
Her life had started becoming normal.
The rock may not be something of much value to an ordinary person but to Nadia who didn't have much to look forward to anyway, she was amazed by it greatly. She often sat there silently and wondered if she would ever find out the source of the explosion or where the stone came from.
The stone itself had not changed at all. It remained as glowing as ever and as weightless as ever. But the temperature of the stone was no longer cold or even cool to touch. It was warm now.
She kept the stone on herself at all times. Not wanting to be apart from it for some strange reason. She never let anyone see it either. She was convinced now that she was the only one who could see how exceptional the rock really was.
The thought that maybe today, the rock will do something new now, the thought alone was enough to give her strength to go from day to day. The undeniable fact that it had gone from ice cold to warm enough to touch in a matter of days was exciting. So she kept it with her, everywhere she went.
She also assumed that, day dreaming about the magical origin of the rock made her so exhausted that she had trouble keeping her eyes open for more than a couple of hours. No matter how much sleep she got at night, she still dozed off in classes and she dozed off as soon as she went back home as well. She felt weared out almost all the time now. Was it because she was using her brain too much?
It was a full moon when something did change. Her mother had sent her to an errand in the far west of the West Well Island , some kind of limited deal high yielding fertilizer that could only be bought there.
When Nadia first heard her mother say that, she couldn't believe her ears. Her mother? wanted her to get something from so far away? Scratch that, she was actually asking for a favor? Nadia had trouble controlling her excitement . She was elated. She ran all the way to the shop and made it back in half the time it actually took.
As Nadia was climbing up the hill, night had already set and she had to depend on her instinct and sense of familiarity of the roads to navigate back to her house. Her mother had never let her roam around so late at night, never, for as long as she could remember.
As soon as the sun set, she was supposed to be back in the house, but today her mother had specially asked her to bring something from another island, it was so bizarre and pleasant. Did that imply that her mother had finally started trusting her a bit more? Will her mother praise her when she sees that Nadia bought all the required things and took half the time she herself takes?
Her mother never asked for her to do anything and always brought all the farming necessities by herself. Only minimal things from nearby markets, Nadia was allowed to buy. But today had been wonderful. Nadia couldn't help herself, she was smiling like an idiot.
Even if meant nothing, it gave Nadia hope that maybe her life could change even now, maybe her mother could actually trust her enough to entrust her with more things and finally let her choose her own future? Nadia laughed suddenly. She was getting ahead of herself again. This was something new not new enough to get so excited over it.
She turned the corner and stopped in her tracks. For a few seconds , she wondered if her sense of direction at night was not as good as she had hoped it was. After all, the roads looked eerily similar. And she could barely see enough through her phone's flashlight but she was familiar with the woods so she had taken a shortcut through the trees.
She was sure she had turned left on the stone figure, crossed a overturned trunk, then right on the small spring and she should have seen her house. She had even counted steps to be extra careful.
The lights were on in the house. The only reason her mother had asked her for that favor was because she was going to be tardy coming from the shop.
Why were the lights on then?
She crept to the house. Had she forgotten to turn off the switch? Her mother would be furious.
She came closer still until she was certain it was her house. Frightening thoughts went through her head at once. Thieves? what do they want? money? kidnappers? What could it be?
She edged to the window sill and crouched. She lifted herself slightly and tried looking through the window. She couldn't make out much because of the curtains covering the window.
Suddenly she heard a man's voice. Had she come to the wrong house, after all? There was no man in her house. But thieves in these part were also unheard of, they didn't have any money or treasure that could be stolen. Even small burglaries did not happen here, so much so that the South Kua island didn't even have a police force protecting it. It was never needed.
But something was still out of place, she had a sinister feeling. She took out her phone from her pocket and dialed her mother's number through trembling fingers.
"This is not what i was told" Nadia froze. That was her mother's voice. Unmistakably. But somehow it also wasn't? It was high and scared and displayed emotion. Her mother's voice was always monotonous.
One thing was for sure, her mother was in there.
She was in there with..... a...... man?
Nadia's ears turned red. Was it what she was thinking? Her mother was in no way past her prime. She had few grey streaks in her hair but she was young and all the manual labor made her fit as well. It wouldn't be a surprise, if she had a man in her life.
But to Nadia this was unthinkable, 'my mom?... a woman who did not register any emotion? That woman has a man ?' Not only that , Nadia had never ever heard of a man from her mother's mouth. She never even told Nadia of her father. All she said was, she got drunk and knocked up, never bothered to check who the man was and decided to keep the baby and that was it!
Isn't having a man in your life a good thing? Then what was the reason she still remained gloomy and unhappy with life? Her mother wasn't the kind of woman who had time to fool around with men, she was too busy, or so Nadia had assumed and accepted.
Maybe there was a part of her mother she didn't know. That would imply, all this talk of making Nadia go to a far away shop to fetch special fertilizers was probably a ruse so that she could spent more time with her lover. Her heart deflated a little, so much for getting a praise out of her mother.
Even so, Nadia couldn't picture it at all. Her mother smiling? Her mother being in love? How? When did that happen? How had she never sensed that?
Nadia had many questions to ask her mother, but this was not the right time, as much she wanted to, it would be impolite to just barge down the door and intrude on a couple. It looked like her mother's voice was agitated, even so, it wasn't Nadia's place to say anything.
It was her mother's secret, even if it made no sense to keep something like that from her own daughter, it just didn't feel right to her to say something until her mother said something first.
So Nadia, silently turned away and started to make her way back to the woods. She would spent some time there and as soon as the man left she would go back home.
"Well, isn't it rude to eavesdrop? How much longer are you going to just stand here outside, Miss?" a voice said behind her and Nadia screamed.