“Trees are nice,” Caleb says, after a moment. “I’m sure that’s why you’re staring at them. Just thinking about how nice trees are.”
“They do provide us with oxygen,” I say. “That’s nice.”
It’s true: trees are nice. But Caleb is also fully correct in his suspicion that I’m not staring into the trees because they’re nice. I’m staring because I think something I want might be in there.
Possibly. Maybe. If I’m lucky. The trick’ll be finding it, though.
“You gonna share with the class, or…?”
“Not yet,” I tell him. From the other side of the house, I can hear tires on gravel, meaning that Levi’s probably just arrived. “First things first.”
The project is done before noon. When I suggested it, I imagined it taking all day. Several days. Turns out, when you know what you’re doing, simple structures don’t take that long.
“I still think it’s a bad idea,” Levi says, looking at the finished product.
“Again,” I say, “you’ve been helping an elementary school student build medieval —”
“And yet, that feels more responsible than this,” he says.
I snort and glance past the structure, into the forest again.
It’s there, somewhere. I’ve got time.
“Excuse me,” I tell my brothers, pull out my phone, and step away.
“He was staring at trees a bunch before you got here,” Caleb says to Levi, shrugging.
“I’m sure it was because he thinks trees are nice,” Levi says, and Caleb snorts.
I find the name I’m looking for and call. It rings three times, and then he finally picks up.
“Hey,” I say. “I’ve got a strange favor to ask.”
“And you’re calling me?” Silas says, a little fuzzy on the other end of the line. My mom’s house doesn’t have the best reception.
“Let me know if it’s something you can’t do.”
Levi, who was quietly surveying my mom’s back yard, turns and gives me a look.
“How about you tell me what it is first?” Silas says.
“Is there any chance you can get me a metal detector?”
On the other end of the line, there’s a long pause.
“A metal detector?” he says, sounding stumped. “Why?”
“I need to detect metal and thought you might know someone,” I say. Another look from Levi. “Listen, if I’m asking the impossible of you —”
Silas laughs.
“Asking me to break into the Library of Congress and steal a first edition of The Federalist Papers is impossible,” he says. “Metal detectors? Nah.”
I almost ask, but decide to hold off until he’s here.
“You sure?” I say. “I could always call someone else if it’s too hard.”
Silas snorts.
“Don’t you dare,” he says. “Tell me where you are, I’ll get you a metal detector in two hours.”
When I hang up, Levi’s still giving me that look, and I start to feel slightly guilty.
“I’m not sure that was nice of you,” he says. “You know how he is.”
“Do you know a better way to get a metal detector in a couple hours?” I ask.
Levi is trying very, very hard not to smile.
“Probably not,” he admits.
“Stone cold, Seth,” says Caleb, but he’s grinning.
“I’ll apologize when he gets here,” I promise. “Should we go eat lunch while we wait?”
One hour and forty-five minutes later, Silas shows up with three metal detectors, a huge roll of bright yellow police tape, and a detailed search plan involving a grid. I’ve already spent the past half-hour reconstructing the search parameters as best as I can, so we get to work.
It’s fun at first. There’s tons of stuff on the forest floor, especially close to the back yard: bottle caps, crushed aluminum cans, the aluminum spirals from notebooks. Silas finds an entire three-ring binder buried under years and years’ worth of leaves, worksheets and homework mostly rotted away.
Still visible is a very large C- on one of the papers, so we decide it was Daniel’s.
There’s more. Nails, bike chains, old barbed wire. Old shotgun shell casings. A small, heavy sphere that might be a Civil War-era bullet. A metal ring that I think is from a stove and Silas thinks is from an old-timey headlight.
News spreads, and by afternoon, we’ve got more help. Silas takes a break, and Rusty steps in, enthusiastically excavating a door hinge from the forest floor. Daniel reminds her a thousand times about tetanus and makes her wear gloves.
Caleb takes a turn. My mom takes a turn. Levi takes a turn and gets grumpy about all the trash we find in nature. June and Violet show up at various points to help out.
When the sun sets, we still haven’t found it and the grid is almost done. Everyone else heads back but I keep looking, knowing that with every sweep of the detector I’m less and less likely to find what I’m looking for. Sure, I could come back tomorrow and search a wider area, but I don’t know how useful that would be because my memory is crystal clear.
I know where I stood. I know I squeezed it in my bare palm and stared into the woods, the trees naked of leaves, the cold wind blowing. I remember thinking that this was stupid, that I should just return it, that throwing it into the woods where I’d never find it wasn’t going to accomplish a single thing.
And then I remember winding up and hurling the thing as hard as I could into the trees. It flashed once in the low, cloudy light, and then it was gone. I remember how savagely victorious I felt in that moment, how triumphant. How it felt like I’d gotten some kind of revenge and that made me freer, lighter.
It didn’t. It took me years to finally learn it, but lashing out at someone who hurt you doesn’t do shit except cinch the noose a little tighter around your own neck.
BEEP.
It startles me out of my thoughts, and I sweep the detector over the area again, slowly this time.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEEEE—
I sigh, pushing away the leaves with my foot. Swing again. Still beeping, so I crouch, put down the detector, and start brushing away the soft, dark soil of the forest floor in the fading light.
I don’t find anything, so I dig a little harder. My fingers tear through tiny, hairlike roots, unearth tiny chunks of rotted wood, and I brush them all off, hope I don’t touch anything too disgusting in my search for what’s probably an old bolt or, if I’m lucky, a quarter.
I see the sparkle before I touch it. I hold my breath. I lean in, digging around it, reminding myself that it’s probably a stainless steel ball bearing or some ancient refrigerator piece, and I pull it out.
It’s an engagement ring. It’s the engagement ring. It’s caked with dirt. One of the prongs that holds the diamond is missing, and the ring itself is slightly bent, but the gold still shines and the diamond still catches the light.
God, I was dumb. I was dumb to throw it in here and I was dumb to propose in the first place. Our relationship had been crumbling for months. I thought that this was the way to make her stay with me, and I was heartbroken and furious when it didn’t work.