"This really bites", Mira remarked.
"No, really?" replied Vicki sarcastically.
They had all been dusting a pit for about an hour and a half now, and they were tired, thirsty, hot, covered in orangey-red dirt, and had leg cramps from crouching for so long. Debi stood up to stretch, grimacing in pain as her legs reminded her that they were really sore.
"What do you say we go off and chill in the woods over there?" asked Mira, squinting to look up at Debi, and then looking over at Lis and Vicki.
"Sure!"
"Great idea!"
"I've been waiting for someone to suggest that!"
They climbed out of the pit and headed towards the edge of the lush forest just a few hundred feet away. They weren't worried about getting spotted, since "their" pit was the one farthest away from all the others. As they entered the shade of the trees, they all breathed sighs of relief.
"This feels so much nicer here,"said Lis, "what were we thinking sitting in that pit for all that time?"
"Umm�I personally plead insanity," offered Vicki.
They walked off into the woods for a little bit. The undergrowth was dense, and Lis cautioned everyone to watch out for poison ivy. They soon reached a bit of a clearing in which there was a huge fallen tree.
"Wow! This is awesome!" exclaimed Debi.
"It's kinda sad though, such a big tree falling-it must be decades and decades old," mused Vicki.
Debi began to climb up the sideways tree, looking back down at the three bemused people left behind.
"Come on, you guys," coaxed Debi,"it's perfectly clean, and there's a nice breeze up here!"
They followed her up the tree reluctantly. Debi, happily ensconced in a comfortable nook of the tree, waited for the rest to catch up to her. After all of them were situated to their liking, everyone agreed it was nicer up in the tree, and with less danger of poison ivy. Debi couldn't resist saying, "Told ya so".
After a little while, Vicki happened to glance at her watch.
"Oh, crap! It's almost 2:30! That's when we're supposed to all meet back at the bus!"
All of them scrambled precariously to get down the tree. Debi, who had been the highest up, found that she couldn't get down from the branch she was on. As the others waited testily, she walked along the trunk down to where the roots of the tree jutted out from the ground, and began to make her way down from there. As she was climbing down, however, she saw a glint in the roots of the tree. Overwhelmed by curiosity, she yelled to the others to hold on a second, and she moved closer to the object. It was perfectly in the middle of the mass of roots, whatever it was. She stuck her hand into the tangled roots, and withdrew it with a small crystal pendant on a chain made out of a dark silvery black metal.
"Debi, what's the @%!$# holdup?!" yelled Mira.
Debi suddenly heard herself say "I stumbled-I'll be there in a minute." and she stuck the crystal in her pocket. She ran towards her friends, and together they rushed to the pit, grabbed their digging stuff, and hauled it all the way to the bus.
When they got there, everyone was already in their seats, and the chaperones looked at them questioningly.
"W-we lost track of the time, we were absorbed in our work," stammered Debi,"I'm really sorry."
"Is that so?" asked Mrs. Ruen with a self-satisfied smirk on her face.
"I personally went out to your site, and saw nothing but your tools there."
"Oh, I had to go�umm�to the restroom, and since I couldn't find one�" Mira trailed off, with an embarrassed smile.
"And you ALL went?"
"Well, yeah, we didn't want her to get mugged or anything," said Lis,"that's when we saw the time, and we headed back as quickly as we could."
Mrs. Ruen, with an angry look on her face, told them all to get on the bus and sit down. She said she hoped they were happy for making everyone else wait for them. The only seats left on the bus were the seats right up in front, directly behind the teachers. For the entire ride back the four exchanged knowing glances and meaningless pleasantries, working hard to stifle their laughter.

When Debi got home, she remembered the mysterious pendant she had found in the tree roots. She took it out of her pocket and examined it. She wondered how it had gotten to where it was. Maybe, she thought, someone had left it there by accident, but then how did it get in the middle of the roots? She wondered if it had been dropped years ago and the tree simply grew up over it. But the finish on the chain was too perfect for it to have been in the ground that long. The chain was another thing that puzzled her. It looked very similar to hematite, but when she examined it more closely, the design of the chain convinced her that it was too intricate for it to be made out of that stone. The crystal seemed to just be an ordinary quartz crystal, a very beautifully formed one, nonetheless. When she held it up to the light, however, she fancied that she saw dancing swirls of color within. She closed her eyes unbelievingly and shook her head. When she opened them the swirls of color were gone. I've been out in the sun too long, she thought, and stretched out on her bed to take a little nap.

Her dreams were hazy. In them she saw the dancing swirls that she had seen in the crystal, except they would focus every so often into a clear image, then just as randomly dissipate into the swirls again. Somehow when she awoke to the sound of her parents calling her to dinner this dream left in her mind a vague inexplicable feeling of unpleasantness.

She decided to wear the crystal to school the next day. Despite all the questions it posed to her, it was, in itself, a beautiful item of jewery. Throughout the day she received compliments and questions as to the pendant's beauty, origin, and design.
"Hey Debi! I like your necklace! Where'd you get it?" asked Mira.
"Thanks, my mom gave it to me--oh, by the way, way to save our butts yesterday at the bus!"
"Hey Debi, cool necklace-new, isn't it?" asked Lis.
"Yes-my mom gave it to me yesterday."
"Debi! Good to see ya! Nice necklace-what's it made of?" asked Vicki.
"I don't know, quartz I think."
Even Thomas, Debi's (briefly aforementioned) current crush, complimented her on it. She received it with a smile and a blush. She decided that she definitely liked the necklace. The little affair of the dream completely left her mind. She was even happy when she stepped through the door of Mrs. Ruen's class.
That didn't last for long. "Pop quiz, everyone!" the teacher announced. She passed out the quizzes with, Debi thought, an inordinate amount of zest. She rummaged in her bookbag for a writing instrument, and came up empty-handed. She tapped the shoulder of the boy in front of her and asked him for a pen. Predictably, Mrs. Ruen seized this as an opportunity to embarrass Debi.
"Ms. Waite-do you have something you want to share with the class?"
"No, I was just asking Ben for a pen," Debi replied.
"You know perfectly well that I have spare pens, and in either case there is NO TALKING during a quiz of any kind," retorted Mrs. Ruen.
"But-" started Debi.
"No buts," interrupted Mrs. Ruen, who seemed to enjoy interrupting Debi. She walked up to Debi's desk and took the blank quiz paper from her.
"You get a ZERO. Perhaps next time you'll remember not to socialize during a quiz."
Debi almost began to say something else, but decided to not risk having detention and a parental phone call. She toyed with her pendant, looking downwards. She seethed silently, mentally cursing the day she got assigned Mrs. Ruen as a teacher. She wished the evil troll was dead, or never existed at all. A slight movement in the crystal caught her eye, but when she looked into the the crystal, she could see nothing but the button of her shirt on the other side. It must have just been a shadow, she thought, and hearing a drone of converstion begin in the room, she looked up. And saw Mrs. Eunice standing at the blackboard writing an outline. She scanned the room, but Mrs. Ruen was nowhere to be seen.
"Psst-Alana!" she hissed at a girl sitting in a desk to her right.
"Yeah?"
"Where'd Mrs. Ruen go?"
Alana looked at her with a puzzled and shocked look on her face and said, "Mrs. Ruen? Didn't you hear? She had an accident driving home from school yesterday. She's in the hospital."
"No, I didn't hear�that's�awful�" Debi turned away with a confused look. She didn't remember hearing it at all, and didn't Mrs. Ruen just yell at her for talking during a quiz? She felt like she had just stepped into an episode of the Twilight Zone. She spent the rest of the class in a daze, taking scrawled notes automatically.