Free The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls Page B

anger, and only if we back-talked or disobeyed a direct order, which was rare. The only rule was that we had to come home when the streetlights went on. "And use your common sense," Mom said. She felt it was good for kids to do what they wanted because they learned a lot from their mistakes. Mom was not one of those fussy mothers who got upset when you came home dirty or played in the mud or fell and cut yourself. She said people should get things like that out of their systems when they were young. Once an old nail ripped my thigh while I was climbing over a fence at my friend Carla's house. Carla's mother thought I should go to the hospital for stitches and a tetanus shot. "Nothing but a minor flesh wound," Mom declared after studying the deep gash. "People these days run to the hospital every time they skin their knees," she added. "We're becoming a nation of sissies." With that, she sent me back out to play.
    * * *
    Some of the rocks I found while I was exploring out in the desert were so beautiful that I could not bear the idea of leaving them there. So I started a collection. Brian helped me with it, and together we found garnets and granite and obsidian and Mexican crazy lace, and more and more turquoise. Dad made necklaces for Mom out of all that turquoise. We discovered large sheets of mica that you could pound into powder and then rub all over your body so you'd shimmer under the Nevada sun as if you were coated with diamonds. Lots of times Brian and I thought we'd found gold, and we'd stagger home with an entire bucketful of sparkling nuggets, but it was always iron pyritefool's gold. Some of it Dad said we should keep because it was especially good-quality for fool's gold.
    My favorite rocks to find were geodes, which Mom said came from the volcanoes that had erupted to form the Tuscarora Mountains millions of years ago, during the Miocene period. From the outside, geodes looked like boring round rocks, but when you broke them open with a chisel and hammer, the insides were hollow, like a cave, and the walls were covered with glittering white quartz crystals or sparkling purple amethysts.
    I kept my rock collection behind the house, next to Mom's piano, which was getting a little weathered. Lori and Brian and I would use the rocks to decorate the graves of our pets that had died or of the dead animals we found and decided should get a proper burial. I also held rock sales. I didn't have that many customers, because I charged hundreds of dollars for a piece of flint. In fact, the only person who ever bought one of my rocks was Dad. He came out behind the house one day with a pocketful of change and was startled when he saw the price tags I'd taped to each rock.
    "Honey, your inventory might move a little faster if you dropped your prices," he said.
    I explained that all my rocks were incredibly valuable and I'd rather keep them than sell them for less than they were worth.
    Dad gave me his crooked smile. "Sounds like you've thought this through pretty well," he said. He told me he had his heart set on buying a particular piece of rose quartz but didn't have the six hundred dollars I was charging, so I cut the price to five hundred and let him have it on credit.
    Brian and I loved to go to the dump. We looked for treasures among the discarded stoves and refrigerators, the broken furniture and stacks of bald tires. We chased after the desert rats that lived in the wrecked cars, or caught tadpoles and frogs in the scum-topped pond. Buzzards circled overhead, and the air was filled with dragonflies the size of small birds. There were no trees to speak of in Battle Mountain, but one corner of the dump had huge piles of railroad ties and rotting lumber that were great for climbing and carving your initials on. We called it the Woods.
    Toxic and hazardous wastes were stored in another corner of the dump, where you could find old batteries, oil drums, paint cans, and bottles with skulls and crossbones. Brian and I decided