The kid and the labradorite
There was a boy, maybe thirteen, who came into the shop every Saturday for most of last spring. He'd go straight to the labradorite tray, pick up the same palm stone, a dark one with a flash of peacock blue that only shows at one angle, tilt it around in the window light, put it back, and leave. Week four, I asked if he wanted me to hold it for him. He looked mortified and said no, he was saving up. It was $28. He was mowing lawns. So I didn't hold it. I just moved it to the back of the tray, under a couple of plainer ones, where nobody else would spot it first. Every Saturday he'd dig it out, tilt it, and tuck it back under the others exactly where he'd found it. We never discussed it. It was our arrangement. In June he came in with a sandwich bag of crumpled bills and quarters. Exactly $28, plus the tax he'd worked out on his phone. I'd love to tell you I gave him a discount, but he was so proud of having the exact amount that I took every coin. What I did do was find him a little velvet pouch and tell him what labradorite means to me: the color is always in there, even when you're holding it at the wrong angle and it looks like grey rock. You just have to keep turning it. He came in last week, taller, with a friend, and showed her the stone. Still in the pouch. Still flashing. That's the whole reason I run this place.