Natural Selection

12

Earth

We left Coconino National Forest the morning after my talk with Morgan. At breakfast, Morgan ignored me, but she looked sad while she sat with Zach. Part of me always knew she would react this way. She had never had gay friends or family before, and the few times the topic of gay people came up she always made a face as if they were gross. I felt stupid for ignoring that part of her for so long.

On the bus, I was stuck sitting with Ryan Walker. His parents had forced him to join Nature Club because they thought he needed outdoor exercise, but he never seemed to enjoy it. His nose was already deep in a book when I sat next to him in the only empty seat. He didn’t even look at me until the bus pulled to a stop at the visitors’ center on the way out of the forest. Ms. Lucas told us we had half an hour to pick out a souvenir, and Ryan’s hand shot up.

“Yes, Ryan?” she said.

“Can I use the bathroom?”

“Yes. There are bathrooms around the side of the visitors’ center.”

He stuffed his book into his backpack and was about to get up when he saw that I was still sitting there. “Hey, I heard about—” He cut himself off, turning beet red.

“Yeah? So?” I hadn’t thought Ryan would bring it up.

He looked embarrassed. “Just—I read this book once, and these girls liked each other, and—” He hesitated. “I think it’s okay. You’re okay.”

I was surprised. “Um, thanks.”

He hurriedly brushed past me out of the seat, and his backpack banged against my head. “Sorry!” he said, and then fled the bus as if he were afraid of me.

I waited till the rest of the kids were off before I followed them out. Some of them were hanging out by the edge of the parking lot, talking. Morgan was among the group of girls, their heads pressed together. I went into the visitors’ center before I could catch them staring at me.

Inside there were various tourist souvenirs for purchase in addition to maps and hiking gear. A couple of kids were buying postcards, but I avoided them and headed to the back of the store. I found a rotating jewelry display beside a bin full of sale-priced T-shirts, and I spun the display around to look at the earrings and pendants. I wasn’t planning to get anything—what did I want a souvenir of this weekend for?—but something on the bottom of the rack caught my eye. I bent down and pulled the necklace off the display. It was a piece of amber about the size of a quarter on a silver chain. In the center of the hardened resin was a curled frond, like a fiddlehead fern. I flipped over the card on which the chain was looped, and read: “This GENUINE piece of Amber was formed twenty-five million years ago in Central America.”

I pulled the pendant off the card and cupped it in my palm, gazing at the twenty-five-million-year-old fern preserved within the golden-orange resin. I couldn’t wrap my head around the age of the amber. It was here long before humans existed. Were my people alive back then? Were they only beginning to learn how to stand? This tiny object, warmed by the skin of my hand, had existed throughout all of that. It would exist throughout so much more to come. I rubbed a finger over the smooth surface, and for a second I thought I felt an electric charge in the palm of my hand, as if the amber were tugging at me.

I closed my fingers around it and took it to the cash register. Maybe I did want to remember this place, this planet. I wanted to take a piece of it home with me.