The Sea Marble's Treasure

“Yes… Yes, ma’am, I hear you. If you’ve already got a decent premium, I wouldn’t think switching was a good idea, either… Yes, ma’am, I understand. Thank you for considering—” The line went dead before Adrieanne could finish her closing. She sank into her chair and sighed, shaking off the day’s fifteenth rejection. Fifteen cold calls to folks who needed nothing less than insurance agents pestering them to switch their health plan to something that’ll cost twice their current premium at a fraction of the coverage. Sometimes they were sweet about their declinations, offering a “Not today, dear,” or a “Bless your heart, but no.” More often, Adrieanne was met with expletives about her mother. 

It was the job that paid the bills, but her heart wasn’t in it. Though who could honestly say their dream was to swindle the elderly?

As if by some instinct to comfort the downtrodden, Mila hopped onto the desk, the jet-black tabby head bumping Adrieanne’s shoulder on the way up. “Well, it could’ve been worse,” she smiled. “It could be a Monday.” She glanced at the right-hand corner of her laptop: 5:32 p.m. Quitting time. 

Adrieanne almost broke the screen while shutting down the computer, shoving her phone and keys into her bag already packed with sunscreen, snacks, and a periwinkle pail. She scooped up Mila and attached her harness. “Come on, babes, you know what day it is,” she cooed. “It’s searching day.”

#

Adrieanne loved the smell of salt on the wind whenever she’d walk along the sandbar, the taste of it on her lips. She felt that the mists traveled miles across the ocean, just to greet her personally. A “Hello, dear, nice to see you again,” sort of way. 

She adored the blinding afternoon sun refracting off the ocean’s surface, bathing her entire being in a warm glow. When she was young, Adrieanne would close one eye and squint the other, making the beams dance across her cornea and her vision more than a little spotty (she’d suffer the consequences about a decade or so later).

Most of all, the young woman was enraptured by the possibility of so many secrets waiting to be discovered just below the soles of her feet. The life and treasures offered to any unsuspecting wanderer were abundant, especially on days like this. 

Adrieanne had lost count of how many times her Gamms had taken her down to this very beach and told her the story while they searched. “Look carefully now, Addie,” Gamms would say. “Today’s the day we find a Magenta Marble.”

Every year, people would come from around the globe for a chance to find a Magenta Sea Marble. They said when one was found, the finder’s deepest desire would come true. One time, a boy whose family drove down all the way from Idaho found a Marble. He said he wanted to be rich like the movie stars. That year, his father played a Powerball ticket and won $85 million. Another individual who found a Marble said their late partner’s wedding band was wrapped around it—something that had been lost for nearly twenty years prior.

No one knew where they came from, whether it was magic or miracles that caused the wonders. All anyone knew was that one month out of the year, “when the days were hottest and the sun shone brightest,” as Gamms would recall, a Magenta Marble would wash up onto the shores of Huntington Beach and give its finder the thing they wanted most.

Some twenty years later, Adrieanne made sure to keep up the tradition of searching every year, even after Gamms had passed. This, she promised herself, would be the year she’d find one.

With Mila on leash and plastic pail in hand, Adrieanne searched the little section of coastline. She looked under globs of seaweed and in between jutting rocks. She walked not just alongside the waters, but in them, tracing her feet back and forth, feeling where her eyes could not see. Anything Adrieanne came across was plucked, appraised, and frustratingly disposed of. The more appealing baubles she found were placed in her bucket to be added to her collection of others back home.

Yet Adrieanne was nowhere closer to her main prize. As the sun began to kiss the horizon, Mila grew restless. She tugged towards the stairs that led up to Main Street, and Adrieanne steered her back towards the sand. “Hold on, loves, we’ll get going soon. Just a little while longer.” She was anxious to stay; it was the warmest it had been all August, and Adrieanne felt that after today, the Marble might not turn up again until next year. That fear pushed her forward in a frenzy.

Adrieanne and Mila circled the beach one last time, the former furiously digging through the sand and the latter lounging idly by. In a wave of frustration, the woman threw her things to the ground, her pail of knick-knacks sprawling outward towards the sea. “This is hopeless!” she yelled, willfully ignorant of the stares the few lingering beachgoers were tossing her way. “You can’t give me what I want, anyway…” Hot tears stung her eyes and streamed down her face, and for a moment she felt like a little girl again.

Mila came to her side and purred, rubbing against her sandy ankles. She chuckled, sucked in a deep breath, and wiped her eyes. “Alright, my girl, let’s go home.”

Adrieanne bent forward and began recollecting her belongings. “Here, let me help you,” one of the onlookers offered, picking up some of the further escaped items.

“Thank you, that’s kind,” Adrieanne murmured, too ashamed to meet the helper’s gaze.

“You’re one of the ones looking for the Marble, aren’t you?”

“Not anymore. I think it’s time I head home again.”

The passerby picked up the last of the fallen treasures and placed it in Adrieanne’s hand. The young woman could only stare at what was lying in her palm: a beautiful, weathered Magenta Sea Marble.

Astonished, Adrieanne looked up. She was met with a view she hadn’t seen in a lifetime.

Gamms smiled. “Now, Addie, didn’t I always tell you to look carefully?”