With Jack and his shovel, my still-sparkly new metal detector, and a fresh place to find whatever I was supposed to discover, it seemed that everything was in order for Friday. And when my moment finally arrived, I led Jack to that pond where Dominic and I put together our skit for ASL.

As the afternoon turned to evening, it was all quiet for a Friday nearby a college campus, but the bugs were just beginning to come out. That was fine as long as there weren't any people around to bother us. No one needed to know what we were up to, especially since as far as I knew, it wasn't quite legal.

"So how did you even find this place?" Jack said when the wet ground squished beneath our feet. Most of the water was contained in the murky pond, but not all of it.

"It's not a secret, you know. No one comes here because the mosquitoes are annoying," I said.

"And this is where you think we'll find something?"

I nodded. "Seems perfect for it, doesn't it?"

He swatted at his arm, then looked back at me. "Not really."

"If you don't like it, you can leave. I don't really care. I'll handle the digging myself."

I thought it would be nice to have him around, but if he wanted to complain, I wouldn't miss him.

"Lindsay, don't be like that. I'll help. It'll be fun," Jack said.

Better.

Before we began our search, I looked over the pond. Although there was a buzzing noise that lingered in the air, there was plenty of space to find things until we ran out of pockets.

I was a few hundred dollars into the investment, and with the way my heart fluttered when I took another glance at the place, there was no doubt in my mind that there was something in the ground.

When did my feelings about anything steer me wrong? Never.

"Okay, so give me the metal detector, and we'll start here," I said.

"Give you the metal detector what?" Jack asked.

Oh my god. "Please."

He smiled as he handed me the metal detector. "Don't they teach you how to say please and thank you in kindergarten? Or did you skip those days?"

I laughed. "Okay, fine. That was a good one."

As soon as I lowered the metal detector to the ground, it let out a beep.

So that was what it sounded like.

Adrenaline rushed through my veins. That was the sound of being right.

Jack laughed. "That was fast."

There was no way in hell we were standing in a perfect spot as a coincidence. This was what I was supposed to find.

Maybe if I showed my parents that I was doing something at school besides fucking around, they'd finally send me the money they promised.

"I think we finally found what we've been looking for," I said. "Right here. There's something here."

"Finally? What are you talking about? We just started." He laughed, but he stabbed the shovel into the ground anyway.

Scoop by scoop, he dug up the muddy earth that hid my treasure. And although he was probably going at a normal pace, it wasn't fast enough. Whether he dug up something priceless or worthless, it could only help me get the money I needed.

Something glimmered in the pile of dirt he just removed, and I reached for it.

"Wait, stop. That's what we're looking for," I said.

I ran my thumb over the surface as I brought it up to my eyes. Dirt filled every deformity on the ping pong ball-sized circle.

This definitely wasn't a quarter.

"What the hell is that?" he asked.

"It's a coin, maybe. There are some markings on it, but I can't read what they say." I held it up to what was left of the sunlight. "Yeah, it's hard to see anything on it."

"Is it gold?"

I shrugged. "It looks like it."

I ran it under the water to clear off the dried-on mud until the surface of the potential coin glimmered.

But the markings weren't assembled into words. It was something else.

"Huh," I said. "It looks like a picture instead of words."

"No words at all?" Jack asked. He stuck the shovel in the ground so it stood straight up and held out his hand.

I handed it to him. "Maybe I just don't see or understand them, but I don't think so."

"Oh." He studied it for a moment. "It seems like gold to me too. So what are you going to do with this now?"

"I should probably make sure it doesn't belong to somebody else, and then I'll take it to Dr. Reed. She probably knows something about it, at least."

There was no way it belonged to Dominic, but it would be unethical not to ask. Any of my other professors probably wouldn't like the fact that I started digging without permits, and even though Dr. Reed was the one who just gave a lecture on proper ethics in excavations, she didn't even bother to make the PowerPoint for herself. The concept didn't seem all that important to her.

"Which one is she? Is she the one who teaches the class you like?" Jack asked.

I nodded. "She's got to know something about it. And if she doesn't, she'll know who we can talk to around here to get some answers."

I was pretty sure of a few things about our finding: it was a coin, it was shiny, and it had to be worth something, either in terms of money or intellectual value. And I was perfectly fine with either one of those. I liked old stuff, and I also liked paying for school.

"But what if she takes it? You found it, so it should be yours, even if it's the most important discovery in the history of humanity, which I hate to break it to you, but it's not," Jack said.

"She wouldn't do that. It's not like she's the most upstanding anthropologist out there. I mean, she stole a PowerPoint lecture to teach us not to steal things from an excavation site," I said.

He laughed.

I smiled. "Seriously. That's why I picked her over every other professor I've had. She might judge me, but that'll be it."

"You don't know that," he said. "Everybody has a personal side and a professional side, and you'll be treading on the professional side of her."

I did know, but I didn't tell him. When he figured it out that I knew Dr. Reed pretty well didn't matter as much as the coin in my hands.

As long as it didn't belong to Dominic, I had a new shiny thing. Even if it was his, finders keepers.

***

Even though I had Dr. Reed's class on Monday, I kept my mouth shut about the coin until I could talk to Dominic. With pockets full of bottle caps and nickels, it was enough to tie me over until I could make sure I wasn't stealing from him.

Perhaps I learned something from the stolen lecture in Theory of Socio-Cultural Anthropology.

Dominic was already in the ASL classroom, and he didn't look up from his notes when I took the seat to his right. I hadn't looked at my sign language textbook since Thursday when we worked on our script for our skit, but he didn't need to know that.

"Hey, I have a question for you. Did you lose anything by the pond?" I asked.

He ignored me.

Then he didn't lose a thing, and the coin was officially mine.

He flipped to a separate sheet, one that had boxes of requirements that he had a faint checkmark next to. Every single one.

I didn't know a thing about him besides the observations I made during our unfortunate time together, but he certainly cared way too much about a class that was nothing more than foreign language credits required to graduate.

He tried too hard. His looks, his academics, his thing where he ignored me until he had something to say.

I bit my cheek. That was fine with me.

"What's your last name for the rubric?" he asked.

He finally had something to say. Funny. "It's Hughes."

He scribbled in Lindsey Hughes right next to Dominic Bachmann, and once again, I didn't bother to say that I spelled my name with an a.

"So the coin I found at the pond isn't yours?" I asked.

He looked up. "What?"

"I found this weird coin by the pond a few days ago, and I just wanted to make sure it wasn't yours before I took it to my professor. I'm just trying to do the ethical thing."

"What do you mean by weird?"

"Well, it's not a silver dollar or anything like that, but I can't tell what's on it. And I think it's my ticket to get what I want, so just say that it's not yours, and we'll never speak again after this presentation."

"It's probably some Indian shit or something. I mean, this is Tillamook College in Tillamook, Oregon. Sounds pretty indigenous to me," he said.

I shrugged. "Maybe, but I think it'd be better if I ask someone who knows what they're talking about."

"I'd like to hear what they have to say too. Whatever you found is partly mine since you wouldn't have found it without me."

I hesitated. "That's not how this works."

"You're right. It's not. But if we get anything less than a hundred on this skit, you owe me. I haven't missed a single point yet, and you'd be failing if it weren't for me."

"No way. After this, we're not talking again. I have better things to worry about, like what I'm gonna do with this coin once we figure out what it is."

"What about passing this class?"

Well, yeah, I did have to worry about that, but that was my own problem. It certainly wasn't his.

I smiled. "I'll be fine. Everyone tells me that I would be such a good student if I just applied myself, and I think right now is a good time to start. Thank you though."

"You sure?"

I nodded.

"You still owe me for keeping you out of the gutter on this presentation," Dominic said.

"You had to. The socialist grading system, remember?"

"I didn't have to do anything. I can afford to take a bad grade, but you can't."

Based on the patterns I noticed, his ego certainly would never let that happen, but I had to get him to shut up somehow. That ego wasn't going to stop until he got his stupid way.

"Fine. We'll swing by Dr. Reed's office after this class to see if she's in there. Is that good enough for you?" I said.

He nodded. "Perfect. Now let's get in one more practice run before we have to do our skit for real. I'm sure you didn't do any sort of rehearsing by yourself since we worked together."

It was true, but I shook my head. "We're gonna be fine. I know exactly what I'm supposed to say."

He signed something at me, but with his hands moving faster than we ever practiced, I didn't know exactly what I was supposed to sign back.

He just loved making me look stupid, didn't he?

----------------------------------

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for your patience. I really wanted to work on this book, but three was just too many for me. Thank you so much for reading!

So it seems Lindsay found the treasure and the break she was looking for. How do you think this is going to play out?

And for a fun question, what is something you're good at, but not many people know about it? What's your secret talent?

I don't think I have one actually. When I'm good at something, I want everyone to know. It doesn't happen very often.