Amber Liu

I picked up a rock in the woods and slipped it into my pocket. I don’t know why, but I was compelled to. She was not perfectly circular, nor particularly beautiful, but smooth and round with marbled thin black veins scattered across her pearly exterior. She had a good weight to her as I held her in the palm of my hands. I flipped her over several times before I decided to pocket her, interchanging her between my right and left and back to my right hand again to better understand her. Is this what some people mean by energy? She felt good, dense. 

I made her mine. 

I’m drawn to objects. My love language is gifts, and items feel like a physical manifestation of my emotions and my state and my season. 

I didn’t give her a name. I just kept her in my pocket. All I needed was for her to be next to me, this rock. She wasn’t going anywhere. In fact, she went everywhere that I went. When I got back to my room, I put her on my dresser. 

“Welcome to my room. You’re going to help me. You’ll cure me.” 

When I finally got out of bed after sleeping through a final exam and ignoring texts from family and friends, I put on some clothes and a bit of makeup. I plopped her back into my pocket before heading out to pretend to socialize. 

“You’re the only reason I can leave this room.” 

She wasn’t light enough that I’d forget about her. I’d never forget about her. I always knew she was there, and she knew I was here. I needed her. And everyday, when I thought I couldn’t go any further, I put my hand in my pocket and held onto her. She never forgot about me. 

She was my literal rock. 

Eventually, as I stopped vaping, feeling like I was always trying to catch a breath with a cartoon-like anvil resting on my chest; as I stopped sticking my finger down my throat to catch a bulimic thrill; as I spent more time reluctantly connecting with the people around me and yet finding delight in the pockets of goodness and intimacy; as I stopped lying about being sick whenever I skipped class, I’d walk out my room without her, leaving her on my dresser. It was never a moment of active choice, it just happened slowly and over time. In the same way that healing happens. In the same way that forgetting happens. But I’d come home and shower and change into pajamas and tell her about my day. Sometimes, I’d be so tired from my busy day, preoccupied with laughter and a sense of normalcy and newfound purpose of nothing particularly interesting, it’d slip my mind to greet her on my dresser when I got back to my room. 

Eventually, when it was time to move out of my room at the end of the year, I was reminded of her only because I had to pack her. Nothing gets thrown away, but she certainly gets forgotten. She stays now in a box of memories, a cache of lonely and repetitive experiences but a representation of her consistency. She will be there, however I choose to arrive, even when I’m not there for her; especially when I’m not there for myself. 

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The day before we broke up, we drove down to Carmel-by-the-Sea. I saw a pebble with a spunky cartoon green face with big eyes and a dramatized disgruntled mouth painted on it perched on a fence by the sidewalk. She seemed up for grabs. 

“Look! Look at this!!” 

“Oh cool,” they responded nonchalantly. I should have known then that they weren’t the one. 

“Isn’t this cool?” I love having mementos. Plus this one was free. A free souvenir that we organically found during our romantic road trip, like serendipitous fate. A souvenir I could keep forever that we could later pull out of a dusty box and reminisce on when we first fell in love that reckless summer. So young, so in love. 

We stopped talking a month later. I cried everyday. The bed felt empty. I felt numb. I blocked them, unblocked them, blocked them again. The stone, I kept: both a cruel reminder or a happy artifact. Holding the stone as its stupid grumpy face and big gaping eyes stared back at me, I flipped the pebble over. On the back of the pebble, the artist had left their Instagram handle, @kem_3122. Damn you, @kem_3122. 

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My dad, my sister, and I used to sift through pebbles on the beach, looking for the most smooth, flat, and round pebble. The trifecta. My dad knew how to skip them, and he tried to teach us. We still don’t know how. 

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My mom won’t give me her jade bracelet. It’s not fair. How else am I supposed to carry her wisdom with me? I got a tattoo of her Chinese zodiac animal instead. It’s a tiger. She hates it. 

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Around Christmas when I was little, we’d visit Dottie and Ray, a nice old couple from church  to exchange family gifts. We’d be greeted by a flurry of wagging tails and enthusiastic barks from their five golden retrievers, and as a ten-year old, I would be buried in a sea of golden brown fur and drool. Dottie would make cookies, and Ray would pour us juice. I couldn’t help but think that my grandparents would never bake cookies nor have juice. Chinese grandparents don’t bake. Nor do we drink cold beverages; it disrupts the body’s homeostasis. 

One year during one of these visits, I noticed a beautiful rock that sat by Dottie and Ray’s welcome mat. This rock was larger than my two fists combined! It had an elaborate white flower engraved and painted on it. Once Dottie and Ray noticed me pointedly staring at it, they insisted I take it home. Dottie and Ray were the archetype of adorable, warm fuzzy grandparents that you see on TV, but that I’d never have. 

Just a couple weeks later, we went to Galveston for a family day trip on a long weekend. My sister and I scoured the boulders on the jetty, collecting hermit crabs as pets. When we got home, I put them in a fish tank with the special rock from Dottie and Ray and some water. The rock was a little island for my new pets. Slowly, the hermit crabs died until there was just one left. One day, I got home from school to find the last hermit out of its shell, literally. Its naked crustaceous body and fleshy curled tail floating lifelessly in the shallow waters. I’d never seen a hermit crab without its shell before– I wanted to vomit at the sight. After my dad cleaned up the tank, he gave me my rock back. 

I chucked the contaminated rock into the trash.  

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It was a lazy Sunday afternoon. We lay on his bed, legs intertwined, both respectively scrolling aimlessly through our phones. I was happy but some malaise nagged at the back of my mind. 

“You clearly don’t love me,” I chimed nonchalantly. 

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you haven’t gotten me anything shiny.” I switch to a playful tone. 

“You want something shiny?” he asked, eyeing my phone screen as I scrolled through the Cartier website. 

“I don’t know. Maybe.” 

“We can get you something shiny, but I don’t know about Cartier… you’re just paying for the brand…” 

We had been dating for three months, but I needed a big shiny rock to prove to me that he loved me. Otherwise, it was just words. What if he didn’t really mean it? What if he doesn’t know that he doesn’t mean it? What if he changes his mind? I was fixated. He had never gotten anything so expensive before, for himself or anyone else. He was accustomed to funneling his earnings to savings. But to make me happy, he eventually acquiesced. We didn’t go to Cartier, but instead, he got me a pavé set emerald necklace for my birthday. She’s a deep green with a halo of small diamonds protecting her. I never take her off. I’m reminded when I put my hand to my sternum where she rests that he loves and supports me. I feel better.