Picking it up, I realise it’s a jeweller’s bag. Pulling open the drawstring, I push the bottom up until I see a glint of gold. I drop the thin gold chain into my palm. The pendant is a sweet little rock that has streaks of different colours in it. There are heaps of different rocks and things like this just lying around the hills. No one bothers with them because they aren’t valuable, but they’re pretty. Still, none of us would turn something like this into a necklace for fear it might be one of ‘those’ rocks. The ones Nan and all the aunties and uncles warn us about, that you only ever find in the caves around here. Not that I believe in those things anymore, but Laney sure as hell does, so why did she have this?

The last time I saw her played out in my mind’s eye, letting her brush by me, watching her run off to Troy’s car. The feeling in the house that afternoon, like something wasn’t right. She has always been more trusting than me. The present from the dream? If he’d given it to her and told her he got it from a shop? The black velvet bag even made it look official. Laney would buy that. Besides, only the old people could tell which rocks were normal and which were taboo.

Everyone knew the story of the anthropologist who’d come to town way back when my great-grandmother was a girl. He’d gone up into the hills and come back with a rock from a cave, talking about how beautiful it was and showing it all around the pub. The old people warned him, told him straight to take the rock back and do it fast. He scoffed at them and did what he wanted, as whitefullas will do. He got sick that night and was rushed to the hospital. When they couldn’t find anything wrong with him, he got scared and asked the old people to take it back. They told him it wouldn’t do any good – he had to be the one to take the rock back and put it exactly where he’d got it from or he’d die. They reckoned that man crawled up them hills he was that sick. Later that night he came walking down like nothing was wrong. The anthropologist left town after that and no one saw him again.