Chapter Five

Eighteen Years Earlier

“Val! Stop dickin’ around and take the third register. Don’t you see there’s a line out there?”

Val cringed at the sound of Mr. Albright’s voice, then set down the mop he was using. Stepping over to the sink, he turned on the faucet and squirted some soap onto his hands.

Keith Albright, the second shift manager at the shitty fast-food restaurant where Val worked most days after school, was short, skinny, and balding, and he was neither married nor dating, as far as Val could tell. According to his grandmother, that was the reason the man despised Val and rarely spoke to him without barking out some command or insult. Maybe she was right and Mr. Albright was jealous of Val’s physical appearance and quiet confidence. Or maybe the old woman just saw Val with her heart rather than her eyes.

Regardless of why Mr. Albright treated him so poorly, Val never talked back or got angry. If he had learned anything from being bullied all his life, it was that the greatest reward you can give a bully is a reaction. Val simply followed orders and kept coming back for more. Besides, he didn’t want to give Mr. Albright an excuse to fire him. He needed that paycheck every two weeks if he was going to have any chance of going to college. And without a car, the fact that Val could walk to work from his house made it the best job he could hope for.

Val dried his hands and walked over to the cash register. He swiped his ID badge and entered a passcode to unlock it, then looked up to summon the next customer in line.

“What can I get for you tonight?” he asked, trying to sound pleasant.

He took the middle-aged woman’s order, helped her use a credit card to pay, then handed over a receipt with a number printed at the top. “We’ll call your number when your order’s ready.”

The woman stepped aside, and the next customer stepped up to order.

It was a busy night. The after-work crowd was out in full force, and Val marveled at the number of familiar faces he saw, sometimes two and three times in the same week.

At around seven, the crowds died down, and Val considered closing his register and going back to cleaning the floors that Mr. Albright had ordered him to clean earlier in the shift. Just then, however, a group of girls entered the place, giggling and bouncing their heads from side to side in animated conversation.

Val recognized the girls from school. They were seniors, like him, and they were in the brainy, but somewhat popular crowd. Three of the four of them were in his English class and his history class.

One of the girls, Terri, was in almost all his classes. In fact, she had been his lab partner for a time in physics, and she had always talked to him in class and said hi when they passed each other in the halls. Val had wondered on more than one occasion if perhaps Terri had a crush on him, which would have been wonderful.

“Hi, Amanda, what can I get for you tonight?”

In addition to knowing how to deal with bullies, Val also knew how to talk to girls. He had watched enough boys in his classes and in the hallways to know what worked and what didn’t. Granted, he hadn’t had much practice applying what he had learned from his hours of observation, but there was no time like the present. Besides, girls were much more likely to talk to him, and even flirt with him, when there weren’t other guys around and there was no one to keep up appearances for.

One by one, Val took their orders and their money, then assembled their trays of food as each order came up. The last girl to order had been Terri, and so she was the last one lingering at the counter, waiting for her food.

“So, how’s it goin’, Val?” she said as he came back to the counter with her drink.

“Oh, not bad. Can’t complain,” he replied, flashing her a quick smile.

“Can you believe prom is next week? It seems like the whole year has just flown by. Only a few weeks and we’ll be done with all of this, graduated and off to make our way in the world. Kind of scary.”

“Yeah,” he replied, setting a box of fries and a sandwich on the tray. “It goes by fast. But I can’t say I’m not happy to be moving on.”

Terri’s order was all there, on the tray, but rather than move the tray toward her, Val stood there, trying to think of something else to say.

Luckily, she spoke first. “Speaking of prom, are you going?”

Val would have bet his minimum wage job that she knew full well he didn’t have a date to the prom, but he went along with it. “Nah, I don’t think so. You?”

Terri smiled shyly. “I was hoping to, but I haven’t asked the guy I had in mind yet.”

Was she asking him to go to prom? Could that actually be happening?

He swallowed. “So, who did you have in mind?”

She looked Val in the eyes, and his heart almost stopped. “You.”

He laughed to cover up his utter amazement and excitement. “You don’t say. So, you’re asking me to go to prom with you?”

“I am. Do you want to go?”

“Sure,” he replied, letting a little of his excitement spill out. “I don’t think I’m working next Saturday night, but let me go check the calendar in the back, just to be sure.”

“Okay,” she said, beaming.

Val walked as fast as he could without running to the wall where Mr. Albright posted the schedule every two weeks and searched for the nights he was working. Sure enough, he was off next Saturday.

Val had a huge grin on his face when he turned to walk back to the front counter and almost ran right into Mr. Albright.

“What are you doing back here? Didn’t I ask you to man the registers?”

“Yes, Mr. Albright. I was, but there’s no one in line right now and I just wanted to check my schedule for next Saturday.”

“Why? You have a hot date or something?” The man looked at Val with utter contempt.

“Maybe,” was all Val said in response. The contempt was easily reciprocated.

“Well, I’m afraid I need you here next Saturday.”

“No, you don’t. I’m not on the schedule.”

The color in Mr. Albright’s cratered face rose, and, nostrils flaring, he took the pen that was behind his ear and marked up the schedule. Then he turned to Val with a self-satisfied smirk. “Now you’re on the schedule. You’ll be here, right?”

Val seethed with anger. How could this little man ruin everything for him, just like that? Just when things were starting to work out. It wasn’t fair—it wasn’t right.

Val could have just quit, right then and there. He could have told Mr. Albright to take the job and shove it up his ass. But he didn’t. Val needed that job. He needed that $4.25 an hour to pay for classes at the community college next semester. He gritted his teeth and turned around. He couldn’t bear to look at Mr. Albright’s pock-marked, big-nosed, sickly pale face anymore. The man was disgusting, inside and out, and at that moment Val hated him.

Val walked sullenly back to the front counter. Terri was still standing there, and half her fries were gone.

“Sorry it took so long,” said Val. “I talked to my boss, but unfortunately I do have to work on Saturday night, and I can’t get out of it. I’m really sorry.”

Terri swallowed the food. “Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s probably going to be lame, anyway. I should go find the girls before they send a search party for me. Anyway, see you on Monday. Bye, Val.”

She turned away before Val could even say “bye” back. Terri had gone out on a limb and asked him out, and he had rejected her. She would never ask him out again. And if he asked her out sometime over the next few weeks leading up to graduation? Would she say yes, or would she give him a taste of his own medicine and reject him in front of everyone?

Half an hour later, at the end of his shift, Val left quietly and walked home.

It was mid-May, and the days were getting longer. The sun had just set, but there would be at least another twenty-five minutes of light in the sky, and it only took ten to get home.

With each step Val took, anger over the events that had transpired that night bubbled within him anew. All he could see was the pock-marked face of his terrible boss; all he could hear was cruel sniggering as that odious man wrote Val’s name onto the schedule for next Saturday night.

The worst part about it all was that there was nothing Val could do to defend himself, nothing he could do to make things turn out the way he wanted them to turn out. Val was helpless, at the beck and call of a sniveling, hateful man. He never wanted to be in that position again. He never wanted to turn away from something he wanted just because he couldn’t pay the price.

The house was dark and quiet when Val slipped inside, and he found his grandmother had fallen asleep in the ratty armchair in her makeshift bedroom. Poor woman. What did she do all day?

It had to be past eight, and Val was hungry. He went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and sighed. His parents hadn’t been to the store in at least a week, probably more like two. There was a container of cream cheese and a tub of margarine on the top shelf; a jar of apricot jam, a jar of mayonnaise, and an almost empty bag of bread shoved all the way to the back of the second shelf; three cans of beer and a half-empty bag of corn tortillas on the bottom shelf; some wilted lettuce in the crisper; and a pitcher of water, a bottle of ketchup, and a bottle of mustard in the door.

So many condiments, and nothing to put them on.

Val contemplated pouring the cans of beer down the drain so his parents’ trip to the grocery store would be expedited, then decided against it. The beer would likely be gone by morning, anyway. He shook his head and sighed again, pulling out the bag of bread and the jam.

There were two slices of white bread left in the bag, and one of them was an end piece, which didn’t really count as a full slice. Val got a paper plate out of the pantry and put the slices of bread on it, side-by-side, then started spreading the jam on the bread before putting the two pieces of bread back together to make a sandwich.

The selection of canned foods in the pantry was just as depressing, but Val found a can of green beans hiding behind the crushed tomatoes. After heating the green beans in a bowl, he put the food on the kitchen table and sat down. Just as he was picking up the sandwich, however, it occurred to him that his grandmother had likely had very little to eat all day.

So, he reached for a butter knife on the counter and cut his sandwich in half, then got another bowl from the cupboard and spooned half of the green beans into it. He carefully made his way to his grandmother’s room, balancing the plate of sandwiches in one hand and the two bowls of green beans in the other.

His grandmother was awake now and had moved to the folding chair by the door, next to her nightstand, where she sat knitting something that vaguely resembled a blanket.

“Baba?”

The old lady looked up from her knitting and beamed in welcome. “Valentin, come in!”

“Hi, Baba,” he said, walking over to her. He set one of the bowls down on the nightstand, then picked up one of the sandwiches and held it out for her to take. “Sorry, Baba, I couldn’t find anything else for us to eat.”

She looked at him thoughtfully, then took the sandwich.

“What your sister eating?” she said in her comforting version of the English language.

“I don’t know. She’s not home yet.”

His grandmother shook her head. “She at boyfriend house. She gonna end up like other one, with baby. Stupid girls.”

Val didn’t respond. The old woman was probably right. His eldest sister, Gabriela, had followed in their brother Dimitar’s footsteps a few years ago, leaving the house only a week after graduating from high school to live with her boyfriend. Shortly thereafter, Gabriela found out she was pregnant and got a job at a daycare center a couple of hours away. She then dumped her boyfriend, who may or may not have been the father of the child, anyway.

Eva, who was only a year older than Val at nineteen, still lived at home, but only because she had no money and her boyfriend didn’t have his own place. It wasn’t a secret that Eva dreamed of the day she could follow in her older siblings’ footsteps and be out on her own. She rarely spoke to Val or their parents. Sometimes, Val was amazed at how, even in a house as small as theirs, they could all live under the same roof and avoid each other so thoroughly.

He sat on the edge of his grandmother’s bed, and they ate in silence. When Val was finished, he waited patiently while his grandmother took the last few bites of her sandwich, then finished off the green beans.

“Thank you, Valentin. You good boy,” she said, putting down her fork.

Val smiled and stood up. He was about to reach for the empty bowl, but she waved him back down to a seated position.

“Stay for minute. Talk to Baba. Here, I provide dessert while we talk.”

Chuckling, he watched her open the drawer of the nightstand and pull out an open box of vanilla wafer cookies. She slowly reached into the box and withdrew four of the cookies.

Val took the cookies from his grandmother, then leaned over to kiss her cheek. “Thank you, Baba.”

She reached for his hand and squeezed it. “You are good boy, Valentin. Do not let anyone tell you different.”

He smiled at her. His grandmother always knew how to make him feel special and loved. No matter what kind of day he’d had, no matter what insults he had endured, Val always felt he was enough when he was with her. “What would you like to talk about, Baba?”

“You. What you gonna do with life?”

Val leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees and rubbed his chin, thinking. “What am I going to do with my life? I don’t know, Baba. Something. I want to do something. I just don’t know exactly what yet.”

His grandmother sat there watching him, as though contemplating how to say what was on her mind, then finally spoke again.

“Come. I show you something special.”

Val watched as she opened the drawer of the nightstand again and pulled out a small sack made of black velvet material. The sack was tightly cinched with a silver ribbon. Carefully, she loosened the ribbon, opened the sack, and poured out its contents.

Into her hand fell what looked like a necklace. Placing the black bag on her lap, she held the necklace up for him to see. The necklace had a thick, cumbersome-looking silver chain with a large, oddly shaped blue stone mounted on the flat piece of silver that was hanging from it. There were several hairline cracks in the stone, and those cracks had turned black over time. The stone itself, however, looked very smooth, as though someone had been rubbing it with their finger for the past hundred years.

Val looked at her, puzzled. “What is it, Baba?”

She looked at him again, her expression pensive, although he had no idea what the old woman was considering. “You ready, I think.”

“Can you understand if I speak to you like this?” she continued, speaking in her native Bulgarian, which he knew was her way of making sure her words weren’t lost in translation.

Val nodded. “Yes, Baba.”

“Good. Because I have a story to tell you, and it is important that you listen, understand, and remember what I say.”

“Okay.” Val couldn’t help being intrigued.

At that, his grandmother looked at him, eyes wide with excitement. “This is an amulet,” she said simply, as though stating the obvious. “It has magic—it can give you what your heart most desires. You believe in magic, don’t you, Valentin?”

Val shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m a little too old to believe in that kind of stuff.”

His grandmother huffed. “Luckily, whether you believe it makes no difference at all. The amulet does have magic—magic that has been passed on in our family from one generation to the next. Well, more or less—I am about to skip a generation because your father and your aunts and uncles are all idiots and do not deserve to have this amulet.”

Suppressing his laughter at the old woman’s frank assessment of her children, Val looked at the amulet again, trying to determine if it could really be magical. The idea was nothing short of ridiculous, and the amulet itself was rather plain and ugly-looking. But his grandmother wouldn’t be making up stories, would she? There had to be a reason she at least thought the necklace possessed some sort of power.

So, Val simply replied in Bulgarian, “Tell me, Baba.”

His grandmother smiled and nodded approvingly. Then she began to tell him the story of the amulet.

“In the last decades of the Ottoman Empire’s rule in Bulgaria, there lived a jeweler in one of the biggest cities in the country. This man had a daughter and a son—twins—and he loved them more than anything else in the world. You see, his wife had died giving birth to the children, and he had no one else. On the eve of his daughter’s wedding, the man decided he wanted to give the girl something special to remember him by. He found a rare stone in his collection that he had obtained in a trade with another jeweler from the Orient years before, and he proceeded to make the girl a necklace. As the man began to fashion the chain and the mount for the stone, a thought occurred to him. He could not give his daughter such a gift without giving something to his beloved son, as well. So, he carefully cleaved the stone to obtain two similarly-sized stones. With one, he finished the necklace for his daughter. With the other, he made a ring for his son.”

Val said nothing as his grandmother paused, reached for the cup of water sitting on the nightstand, and raised it to her lips. Setting down the cup, she continued.

“Once the necklace and the ring were ready, the jeweler took the pieces to the parish priest, who was also a good friend of the family, and asked the priest to bless them. When the priest gave the jewelry back to the man, the man could sense great power in the items—a power that he did not feel in them before. He asked the priest about what this might mean, and the priest explained that sometimes a thing that is physical absorbs a thing that is spiritual. It embodies it and becomes a vessel for it. The priest said that when he held the necklace and the ring and recited the blessing, he could sense the man’s great love for his children.

“That was all the priest would say on the subject, but based on those few words, and what the man felt holding the two pieces, he grew to believe these trinkets had become the embodiment of his love for his daughter and for his son. And just as the father would do anything for his children, he believed the necklace and the ring now had the power to do anything his children asked.”

Val could feel himself frowning. “Is this true, Baba?”

“Of course it is.” Her tone left no room for further questions, so Val shut his mouth and listened to what else the old woman had to say.

“My great-grandfather, my mother’s grandfather, told my mother this story on the morning she was to be married. The necklace had been given to him by his own mother on her deathbed, because, you see, she was the twin daughter. The necklace had been created for her. My great-grandfather, who had raised my mother after both her parents died, in turn, gave my mother this necklace, this amulet, and told her to keep it safe always. He told my mother that whatever she asked of the amulet, the amulet would grant to her—but she could only ask for one thing, the thing she most desired. So long as she kept the amulet, that thing she most desired would be hers.”

The old lady looked down at the necklace she held tenderly in her hands for a moment, then looked back up at Val and smiled.

“You understand story so far, Val?” she asked, confirming in broken English that he was understanding the tale she wove in her native tongue.

“Da, Baba,” he answered.

She nodded, satisfied, before continuing in her comfortable Bulgarian prose.

“My mother married my father, and a few months later my father moved her to a tiny village in the Balkan mountains, where my father had been born and raised. My mother had lived in Burgas all her life, a beautiful city on the Black Sea that was one of the largest cities in Bulgaria and still is today. But she adjusted to life with her husband’s kin around her, and over the next ten years, she had four children—three boys and me. I was the youngest.”

It was hard for Val to picture his grandmother as a young child, running around her parents’ house, chased by three older brothers. All he could see was a wrinkled old woman who could do nothing but sit in a chair all day. It was only when his grandmother looked at him, her eyes sparkling with excitement, that he caught a glimpse of the person she used to be—the person she still was, somewhere under all those wrinkles.

“I was two years old when my eldest brother, Konstantin, died. He was nine years old, and to this day, I don’t know exactly what he died of. My mother used to say he caught croup. There was no doctor in the small village where they lived, and my brother got sick during a very bad winter storm. As a result, they could not reach the closest doctor until the storm had passed and the weather warmed enough to allow passage into and out of the mountains. By the time the storm ended, poor Konstantin had died.

“After my brother died, my mother begged my father to move them back to Burgas, or any city for that matter. But my father refused. You see, my father liked to drink. He liked to drink and gamble, and he liked to do those things with his cousins and his friends, all of whom lived in that little village. He had no desire to go elsewhere, even for his wife. Even for his children.”

The old woman shook her head slowly, eyebrows raised, silently reprimanding her father for his weakness, no doubt.

“My mother was a strong woman and did something few women did back then. When spring came, she gave my father an ultimatum. She told him that she was going to take her children and move back to Burgas, and my father could either come with us or stay behind in that little village drinking and gambling. He chose to stay behind and let his wife and three surviving children go on without him. But he warned my mother that he would come for her someday, that she was his and always would be.

“Well, that night, as my mother was packing up all our belongings for the journey, she found this necklace. She hadn’t set eyes on it in years, having hidden it for fear that her husband would gamble it away, just as he had done with many of the other pieces of jewelry she had brought with her when she married. And when she saw the necklace, my mother remembered what her grandfather had said about it. Whatever she asked of the amulet, the amulet would grant. She need only ask for the one thing she most desired. It was clear to my mother that this was the moment she was meant to use the amulet. What’s more, she knew without a doubt what she wanted most in her life, and that thing was freedom. She wanted freedom from her husband’s selfish ways; freedom from being told where she could live and what she could do; freedom from the feeling that everything was beyond her control.

“My mother spoke those words out loud, then placed the necklace around her neck. And she knew at once that it had worked, and that she would be free for as long as she kept that necklace.”

Here, the old lady paused, reaching for the water to take another sip. As she placed the cup back down, she looked at Val and smiled.

“And that is how we came to live in Burgas again. Not once did my father come to visit. And never again did he threaten to take us or my mother back to the mountains.

“Years later, I married your grandfather. I was twenty-eight—an old maid by the standards of the day. Soon after we were married, I got pregnant with your uncle Georgi. The pregnancy was easy, and your uncle Georgi gave me no problems. Two years later, I got pregnant again, with your father, and it was a different story. In my seventh month of pregnancy, I fell ill—very ill. I had a high fever that lasted several days, and I could not eat. Ironically, none of the doctors that came to see me could help. My mother, of course, saw my illness as punishment for leaving my father, as though God were saying to her, ‘Do you think I can’t take another of your children just because you’ve moved to the big city? You see, even the doctors cannot help her.’

“But then my mother remembered this necklace. She came to my bedside and told me the story of the amulet, of what it had done for her, and what it could do for me. She told me that as long as the necklace was mine, I would keep that which my heart desired most, but that once I gave the necklace to someone else, I would no longer have the amulet’s power in my life.

“We had heard years earlier that my father had died in that same little village where I was born. So, when I took the necklace from my mother and wished for my health and the health of the child that grew inside me, I had no fear of my father coming back to claim my mother.”

At this, the old lady shook her head from side to side, eyebrows raised and lips pressed together, as though she still had trouble believing what had happened next.

“Val, I tell you, the very next day I woke up as a new woman. My fever was gone, and by the afternoon I was up and about the house, as though nothing had happened. It had worked. The amulet’s power had saved me and your father. But my mother, she had made a great sacrifice for my sake.

“Your grandfather and I had been living with my mother when we first married, but a few weeks after your father was born, your grandfather’s aunt died and your grandfather took possession of her house. We moved into that house a month later, and my eldest brother Nikola said my mother could not live alone in the house where we all had lived together. He said my mother was too old to be on her own, and he moved her to his house to live with him, his wife, and their three children.

“My sister-in-law ruled her house with an iron hand, and my mother was treated like one of the children. She was told when to rise in the morning, what to wear, what to eat, and where to go. You see, Val, my mother lost her freedom because she gave me the amulet.”

His grandmother paused for a moment, then sighed.

“Do you understand what I am telling you, Valentin?”

Val didn’t speak right away but instead looked at his grandmother’s eyes. They peered at him expectantly and expressed a strange combination of sadness and excitement, of satisfaction and eagerness to see what would come next.

Finally, Val answered. “I think I understand, Baba. I think you’re saying that what your mother believed about the amulet was true, that it’s special somehow.”

The old lady grinned from ear to ear and nodded several times. “Yes, my dear Valentin. It is very special, just as you are special. And that is why it must now belong to you.”

Val looked at her, puzzled. “What do you mean? You’re giving it up? Why?”

“It’s time, Valentin. It is not mine, I only borrowed it. Like my mother before me and her grandfather before her, I must pass it down. It’s time.”

“But what about my father, or my uncles or aunts or cousins? Why me?”

His grandmother gazed tenderly at him and brushed his cheek with her fingers. “Because, my dear boy, you are the only one who deserves it. Of all your aunts and uncles, cousins, siblings, your father even, you are the only one who has love in your heart. And if this amulet derives its power from love—my great-grandfather’s love for my mother, my mother’s love for me, and now my love for you—how can it belong to anyone who cannot feel love, cannot know it or recognize it in himself or in others? It must be you, Valentin. It always has been, and it always will be.”

“You think too highly of me, Baba,” replied Val, shaking his head.

“I most certainly do not!” said his grandmother, almost angrily.

He was quiet for a moment. “Baba, what if I ask for the wrong thing?”

His grandmother’s stern expression relaxed into a knowing smile. “This is why you are the right choice. Not only love resides in you, but wisdom, patience, and compassion. Tell me, what will you not accomplish if you maintain these virtues?”

Val leaned in and hugged his grandmother tightly. “Thank you, Baba. Not just for the amulet, which I’m very grateful for, but also for how much you’ve loved me over the years. If I have love in my heart, it is only because you put it there.”

At those words, his grandmother hugged him again, with more strength than he expected.

“Are you sure, Baba? Are you sure you want to give it to me now? I can wait.”

“Is time,” she said, slipping back into her broken English. “No worry about me. I am eighty-five, no longer young woman. And I wish for health, not life. I not die tomorrow, I promise.”

Val took the old woman’s hand and, in a surge of emotion, kissed it and held it to his cheek for a moment.

“Go on. Take it.” His grandmother pressed the necklace into Val’s hand, and at the feeling of cold metal against his skin, an inexplicable sense of peace came over him. She reached out her other hand and gave him the bag. Taking the bag, Val slipped the necklace back inside it and cinched the silver drawstring closed.

“Baba,” he said, looking up at her, “you said there was a ring, also. Does it also grant a person’s greatest desire?”

The old woman raised her eyebrows in a look of surprise, as though she hadn’t expected the question. “I suppose yes, but I not sure. Twin brother who got ring, he marry a few years later and go to America. I hear no more about him.”

As Val considered all that his grandmother had just told him, she smiled lovingly at him. “You know what you want, Valentin? What you will ask amulet?”

“Yes, Baba. I think I do. After tonight, I think I do.”

His grandmother’s face smoothed in a most peaceful expression, and Val felt she approved of what he would be asking for, even though he never told her.

He leaned in and hugged her one more time before saying goodnight and leaving the room. As he walked down the hall to his bedroom, Val wondered how his grandmother’s life might now change without the amulet, if what she had told him were true. Of course, it probably wasn’t—there was no such thing as magic. But what if it were? How might his own life soon change, now that the amulet was his, if his grandmother was right? Was it possible that he could be rich and successful in his life? Could all his hard work at school and work actually pay off?

Back in his room, Val opened his sock drawer and tucked the little black bag into the folded-over end of the navy blue dress socks he hardly ever wore. He hated to let go of the amulet, but he smelled like french fries and greasy burgers—he had to take a shower.

The bag was still there when he emerged minutes later. Throwing on a white t-shirt and a pair of boxers, Val got into bed with the lights turned off and the bag in his hand. He pulled the covers over himself and waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Then he slowly opened the bag and reached in with his thumb and forefinger to draw the necklace out.

The silver chain sparkled as it caught the light coming in from the almost full moon outside his window. He turned the necklace around until he could see the front of the stone hanging from the chain.

It was not as ugly as it had first seemed. He traced the imperfections in the curvature of the silver mount and followed the black scars on the face of the stone as he imagined his ancestor making the necklace so many years ago. Somehow, holding that necklace, Val felt part of his family for the first time, part of that history. The life of the amulet would continue with him, and then after him, just as it had with his grandmother, and in some way a little piece of his own life would go on with it, as well.

Val nervously slipped the loop of the chain around his neck and held the stone in his hand. In that moment, with the words of his wish unspoken on his lips, he thought about how he had felt when Terri asked him to go to the prom and when, for thirty seconds, he thought it would work out. He had felt like a whole person, like he was worthy. Because for those thirty seconds, Val had felt how wonderful it was to have someone who wanted him.

He shook his head, clearing away the distracting thoughts. He knew what he wanted. “Iskam uspekh,” he said in the language of his ancestors. Then, lest the amulet not understand his mediocre Bulgarian pronunciation, Val repeated in English: “I want success.”

Feeling satisfied and exhausted at the same time, Val tucked the necklace inside his t-shirt and rolled over onto his side, closing his eyes and quickly falling asleep.

****

Now, sitting at his desk in his comfortable study in a condo that was over four times the size of his childhood home, Val once again traced the cracks in the blue stone of the necklace cradled in his hand.

“I have had success in my life from the moment I uttered those words,” he said, speaking to the amulet, remembering that day as though it were yesterday. “I know you won’t fail me now.”