Chapter 4: Black Rock

The wind on Lake Superior in June was fifty degrees and it smelled like cold stone.

I stood on a shelf of black basalt with my father's rock hammer in my hand, and I couldn't stop grinning.

"Okay, everybody who hasn't touched a rock before, raise your hand," the professor called.

Six hands went up out of twenty.

Mine stayed down.

"Tennison, is it?" The professor pointed at me. "What's the stone under your boot?"

"Basalt," I said. "It's lava that cooled fast. See the little holes? Gas bubbles. Those are vesicles."

"And the ones filled with white?"

"Amygdules. Minerals grew in the holes after."

She looked at me a second longer than she needed to.

"Good. Everyone, do what she said. Find me a hole with something in it."

A girl with red braids and paint on her overalls knelt next to me on the rock.

She had a phone strapped to her chest on a lanyard, and its camera was pointed straight at my hands.

"I'm Dani," she said. "I'm your roommate."

"I know. You were asleep when I got in."

"And you unpacked a hammer before you unpacked a pillow. I'm filming this so we can remember you were scary."

"It was my dad's."

"Even better. Show me a hole."

I showed her a hole.

By noon I had found a lake agate the size of my thumbnail, banded red and cream.

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