Page 13 of Finders Keepers
This is actually quite poignant advice. It’s also unexpected and notably hypocritical, considering my mother hasn’t talked to one of her cousins for thirty-five years over a minor dispute concerning the flavor of her wedding cake. Then again, who better to know, I suppose.
“I’m not holding a grudge,” I protest. “I don’t evencareabout it.” Maybe I did a long time ago, back when losing Quentin’s friendship and any possibility of more felt like the worst thing in the world that could happen. When it was the rug pulled out from under me, making me stumble and fall into a big puddle of anxiety and depression. But over time it slipped places in its importance, falling farther and farther behind in the Grand Scheme of Things. I figured out how to harness my angst, my heartbreak, and my worries, and transform them all into something more productive. That’s when Ambitious Nina made her debut, with her big dreams and determination to work her ass off to get where she wanted to go. Moping over a stupid boy certainly wasn’t part of the plan. Quite frankly, it still isn’t.
No. Thinking about the past, Quentin-related or otherwise, isn’t a good use of my emotional energy. Because all of that stuff happened to a different person, one who doesn’t exist anymore. Badass Nina may not have lasted long, and Ambitious Nina may or may not return, but it doesn’t mean I need to unearth that old, sad version of myself. I don’t know who to be right now, but I know I don’t want to go back to who I once was.
“I’m sorry for not telling you he was here, especially when you asked directly,” Mom says.
“Thank you.” I bend to wrap my arms around her and squeeze lightly.
“My sweet baby.” Her soft, familiar voice and the warm cucumber melon–scented squishiness of her hug loosens some ofmy tension. It doesn’t last long, though, because as soon as I pull away she says, “In the interest of full disclosure, I feel like I should tell you that Quentin and your father are currently at the hardware store together.”
Right. Because of course they are.
7
With each passingday, it becomes increasingly clear that I need to get back to Boston as soon as possible. Or, if not Boston, somewhere else that has the infrastructure to help me locate Ambitious Nina. I can’t linger in Catoctin, with its limited opportunities and reminders of the past. I love my parents to pieces, and I know that I am extremely lucky to have them both still alive and well—something I try not to take for granted, especially since Dad’s accident, which could’ve been so much worse. But I can already tell that spending the next month or two doing nothing but applying to jobs I’ll never hear back from and hanging out with my mom and dad (mostly Mom, though, given Dad’s basement troll tendencies) is not going to be good for my mental health.
Priority number one is figuring out how to get enough money to cover a security deposit and first month’s rent.
Quentin’s proposal that we continue looking for the treasure clangs around in my brain. Five thousand dollars of rewardmoney. That would be enough, or at least close to it. I wonder if there’s a way to make it more…
We agreed to hunt for Fountain’s treasure together, Nina. As far as I’m concerned, that agreement still stands.
And maybe I do owe Quentin this. Maybe I owe it to myself too. Because, other than how it ended, that summer was an absolute blast. The best I ever had. I always thought it was because we spent it exploring and doing research—ideal for a little nerd like me. But now I think maybe what made it great was that, for those few months, we were a team. Quentin and I stopped being two people competing to be the best at everything and started working together. As much as I enjoyed him being my perpetual rival, I enjoyed having him as my closest confidant more. Our nightly window conversations became deeper, more serious, the candid thoughts of two kids grappling with the world around them and their place in it. Then there were the long walks through downtown and along the river. The afternoons in the library’s special collections room trying not to piss off Mrs. MacDonald, the grumpy old archivist. The nights before his mom moved out, when Quentin’s parents fought too loudly and we’d sneak out to simply sit in silence side by side on my front steps. Sunday mornings eating Mom’s homemade cinnamon rolls while we updated our map of Sprangbur.
It was the intimacy of knowing him, enjoying each other’s company. That’s what I mourned when he left and didn’t keep in touch. That’s what I missed and then eventually convinced myself to stop missing.
Is that something I could have again? Something I would even want to have again?
I’m really not sure. But it doesn’t matter because tonight, when my mother mentions over dinner that she saw the localsteak house is hiring a hostess and also that she heard from a friend that her very nice, very handsome accountant is newly single, it acts as a double underline under the as-soon-as-possible part of my plans.
That’s why, the minute I’m finished doing the dishes, I hurry up the stairs to my room and throw the window open. It once again does an impression of a distressed seagull. Gotta see if Dad can fix that. At least it’s an easy way to alert Quentin to my presence. His own window slides open a foot away, much more mellowly, and I’m annoyed by the jolt of relief I feel knowing he’s there. I’m probably just glad I don’t have to sit with this stupid decision for too much longer. Either he agrees to my terms and we do this, or he doesn’t and I can finally stop thinking about it.
“Hey, Moon,” I say, feigning more nonchalance than I feel as I fold my arms atop the windowsill and rest my chin on them.
“Bonjour, mon amie.”
“You know, I used to worry sometimes about the pane slipping and guillotining me, but now I think that, if that’s what fate has in store for me, at least it means never having to upload my résumé before manually reentering all of the details ever again.”
“Aw haw, Nina, zat is very dark.” He pauses. “But très relatable.”
The moon is large and perfectly round tonight, glowing bright and hanging heavy in the sky like it weighs more than usual. “This fullness is a good look on you.”
“Merci, mon amie,” he says. “I’ve been doing zee squats.”
The way he says “squats” forces me to cover my mouth for a moment so I don’t bark out a laugh. It feels like giving him that will take away some of my bargaining power, and I’m going to need everything I can get; international business lawyers areprobably better trained in negotiation tactics than eighteenth-century US history PhDs. “Your hard work is certainly paying off.”
There’s a brief silence. I’m surprised that, when Quentin talks again, he’s already switched over to his normal voice. “Have you considered my proposal?”
“I have.”
“And?”
“I have an…amendment.”
Another pause. “Okay, shoot.”
“We only search for four weeks. If we don’t find anything by then, the agreement ends. And if wedofind it, I want sixty percent of the reward.”
