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ARIZONA
Where do pigs keep their money?
In the piggy bank, of course.
* * *
“Ahhh-choooooo!” My sneeze sent a cloud of dust billowing into the air around me. I wiggled my nose, desperately trying to stop the annoying and persistent tickle that would no doubt cause me to sneeze for the umpteenth time that evening.
Blinking my watery eyes, I picked up a clean rag and swiped at another thick layer of dust that lay heavy on the museum archive shelves. Floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with bones, relics, and fossils surrounded me. If the depth of the dust that coated everything was anything to go by, this monstrosity of a room had been neglected for decades.
“We came from dust, and we’ll return to dust. Which is why I don’t dust…because it could be someone I know.”
I mumbled my mother’s favorite quote and wiped at my still teary eyes with my cleanest shirt sleeve. I’d always thought the saying was funny, but surrounded by the very real remains of lives long past, I felt slightly creeped out.
“Think of warm beaches and drinks by the pool, Arizona.” I forced false positivity into the words, hoping to distract myself from hypothesizing about the number of dead bodies that were probably in the room with me.
The only reason I’d taken this job was to save for a much-needed vacation to sunny Mexico. I enjoyed my day job at the museum, leading tours and selling tickets, but it barely paid me enough to cover my bills. Which made splurging on my dream vacation completely out of the question.
When the museum higher-ups decided to hire someone to clean the storerooms packed full of pieces they’d deemed unworthy to be displayed publicly, I’d jumped at a chance to earn some extra cash. It’d meant giving up my days off and working late several days a week, but I didn’t mind. I enjoyed putting in my headphones and being able to work without constant interruptions from the entitled museum guests who thought a certain search engine knew more than I did, or coworkers looking to offload extra work onto me.
The room I was currently cleaning was the size of the large warehouse-style grocery stores where you buy stuff in bulk, knowing that you’ll be unable to use it in your lifetime. All the items with insanely high value were on display or being held in another of the museum’s back rooms. The items stored in this section of the museum weren’t nearly as valuable, which made it slightly less stressful when handling the items, and also meant the museum didn’t feel the need to hire security to watch me. They were satisfied with the security cameras that recorded every angle of the room. I still had nightmares where I accidentally knocked over one of the pieces. While they didn’t compare in value to the items on display, I’d still be unable to repay the value if I broke something.
Few items ever left this room, and when they did, it was to create elaborate displays for the rarer items that generated crowds and newspaper articles. They were odds and ends, things not valuable enough to draw a crowd, but still too important to toss into the trash. Some were donations that were gifted to the museum from well-meaning benefactors, and they held a higher sentimental value than a monetary or historical value. The museum curators wouldn’t risk offending those wealthy benefactors, so these donations were sent to the abyss that was the storerooms.
Glancing down the impossibly long row, I realized I needed to pick up my pace if I wanted to finish even half of it before I clocked out for the day. A quick glance at my watch showed it was already late afternoon on this Sunday, and I preferred to get home before darkness fell on the city. I wasn’t afraid of walking the streets alone… but I wasn’t exactly not afraid either.
The clearing of a throat had me spinning around. I snatched up a broomstick, fully prepared to channel my non-existent inner ninja if needed. I spotted Pete, the sweet old man who greeted guests and ambled around the museum all day. My shoulders sagged with relief.
Pete quirked an eyebrow at my makeshift weapon. “Jumpy today, aren’t ya, Miss Charcoal?”
I wheezed out a relieved laugh. “Oh! Pete! Being alone in here makes my skin prickle. It’s almost as though some of these things are still alive, like ghosts of the past are floating around.” A cold gust ran along my arm. My voice lowered to a whisper. “Can you feel it too?” How could he not? I wasn’t into all the new-age mumbo jumbo flavor-of-the-week beliefs, but the energy in the room was palpable, and you would have to be dead not to feel something. But not like the sort-of-dead that I was feeling in this room, but like dead-dead… worm food dead.
Pete stared at the broomstick I held as though preparing to joust, and his eyes softened. “No, I don’t feel anything but a chill from the old air conditioner. Everything in this room is ancient, and the people are dead and have moved on.” His expression changed to one of a worried grandfather. “I think you are spending too much time alone and scaring yourself by imagining things lurking in the shadows. I’m leaving for the day. Why don’t you head home too? Get some sleep. You’ve barely had any time off for the past month.”
With a reassuring smile, I waved away his concern. “Stop worrying about me, Pete. You know I have an overactive imagination. Once I finish this row, I’ll head home too.”
Pete hesitated but finally gave me a resigned nod and headed out the door, leaving me alone with my music and the shelves filled with fossils. Dead fossils. I eyed them warily, my stomach fluttering. Dead-dead.
Chewing on my bottom lip and procrastinating a bit, I fiddled with the tags on the various bones. Why did I struggle to match up a pair of socks, yet paleontologists could tell which bone belonged to which dinosaur with pretty much zero context?
Magic. It was probably magic. I snorted at the idiotic thought. For that to be true, magic would have to actually exist.
Shaking my head, I turned my attention back to the task at hand. I spent the next hour alternating between sneezing and dusting and dusting and sneezing. Reaching the end of the long metal shelf and out of clean spots to wipe my eyes on my shirt, I decided to stop for the night and pack away my cleaning supplies.
I bent over to tuck my dirty dust rags into the bright yellow cart. My eye caught something glinting on the lower shelf of the row across from me. One I hadn’t cleaned yet. With everything still covered in a half-inch of dust, the sparkle was out of place and shouldn’t have been possible. Moving across the narrow aisle, I reached behind the cracked bowls and various broken pottery items to pick up the small clay vase.
Pulling it out into the harsh overhead lighting, I squinted at the orangish piece of pottery. At only fifteen centimeters tall, it was far too small to have made a decent water jug. I traced my finger along the intricate design that someone had painstakingly brushed on the tiny vessel long ago.
Slowly turning the vase, I tried to find what could have caught the light and caused the glint. Carefully gliding my fingers across the pottery, another layer of dirt and dust fell away, exposing a green emerald nestled deep into the clay. My breath caught as the emerald sparkled, as though fireflies were trapped in its depths.
I blinked, fully expecting the glittering lights to disappear. It had to be a trick of the light, didn’t it? The museum would never have anything valuable hidden back here.
Unable to resist, I reached out the tip of my finger, pressing it against the gem. To my surprise, the emerald was hot beneath my skin. Forget a trick of the light; it had to be my mind messing with me now!
My heart lurched in my chest as a faint click echoed in the quiet room. The emerald lit up like a party glow stick, and a tiny hidden compartment in the vase sprung open.
Crap!
