“What’s wrong?” Luke said.

Semelee didn’t answer him. Instead she lifted the uniform and pawed through one pocket then the other.

“Oh, no! It’s gone!”

“What’s gone?”

“One of my eye-shells is missin!”

“Check around your feet. Maybe it fell out when you was gettin changed.”

She checked, running her fingers along the slimy bottom through the inch or so of water.

“It’s gone!” she cried, feeling panic rising like a tide. “Oh, Luke, what am I gonna do? I need them!”

She’d had the eye-shells ever since she was twelve. She’d never forget that moment. Her mother’d taken her to her daddy’s funeral. That was the first time she’d ever seen him…or at least remembered seein him. He’d up and left Momma when Semelee was just a baby, soon after they moved to Tallahassee. He was Miccosukee Indian, banished from the tribe for somethin Momma never knew. She’d hooked up with him at the lagoon—lots a people livin round the lagoon back then was on the run from somethin or other—and the three of them moved outta there along with everyone else shortly after Semelee was born.

Her daddy—or rather the man who’d knocked up her momma—had been killed in a bar fight. Some of his Miccosukee kin had decided to give him a proper Indian send-off and his wife and child was invited.

She’d been scared of the whole idea of lookin at a dead man, so she’d hung back, as far away from the body as she could. Just getting her first period the day before and feelin sick and tired didn’t help none. That was when she spotted the old Indian woman in a beaded one-piece dress starin at her from across the room. She had eyes black as a bird’s and hair like Semelee’s, but also the wrinkles to go with it. She remembered how the old lady’d come close and sniffed her. Semelee’d shrunk back, scared, embarrassed. Did her period smell?

The old woman’d nodded and showed her gums in a toothless smile. “You wait right here, child,” she’d whispered. “I’ve got something for you.”

And then she’d gone away. Semelee’d hoped she wouldn’t come back but she did. And when she did she came carryin two black freshwater clam shells. They’d been drilled through near their hinges and was strung on a leather thong.

She took Semelee’s hand, pried open her tight-clenched fingers, and pressed the shells into her palms. “You got the sight, child. But it’s no good without these. You take them and keep them close. Always keep them close. You’ll need them when you’re ready, and you’ll be ready soon.”

Then she’d walked away.

Semelee’s first thought had been to throw them away, but she changed her mind. Nobody hardly ever gave her anything, so she kept them. She didn’t know what the old lady had been talkin about—“You got the sight,” and all that—but it made her feel special. Till that time in her life she’d never run into nothin that had made her feel special. As for “the sight”…maybe someday she’d find out what that meant.

And one day she did find out. And it had changed her life.

“Now just relax, Semelee,” Luke was sayin. “It’s got to be somewheres. Probably fell out while you was sittin in the truck. We’ll find it.”

“We got to!”

She needed those eye-shells to do her magic. She’d kept them slung around her neck so’s they’d never be away from her. But now…

Those eye-shells’d saved her life…or rather, stopped her from killing herself.

It had been a day, a Tuesday in May in her sixteenth year, when everything that could go wrong did. She’d tried new hair dye the night before. Every other one she’d ever tried in the past—and she’d tried them all—didn’t take. The dye just ran off her hair like water off wax. This one was touted as different, and promised to turn her hair a luxurious chestnut brown. And it looked like it might work. It didn’t run off like the others.

But when Semelee looked in the bathroom mirror that morning she saw that instead of chestnut brown her hair had turned fire-engine red. Worse, it wouldn’t wash out.

Maybe the color woulda been okay for the dopers and weirdoes who just wanted attention or wanted to show how they were rejecting their parents or society or whatever, but it was awful for Semelee. She’d spent her whole life bein rejected. She wanted tobelong .

After crying for a few minutes—she would have liked to scream but Momma and her new boyfriend Freddy were in the bedroom down the other end of the trailer—she tried to figure what to do. She would’ve liked to call out sick and spend the day washin her hair, but that would leave her alone with Freddy, and the way she kept catchin him lookin at her gave her the creeps. Not that she was a virgin or nothin—she was havin plenty of sex—but Freddy…yuck.

So she dried her bright red hair, jammed a cap over it, and headed for school. Not a good start to the day but it got worse as soon as Suzie Lefferts spotted her. She’d had it in for Semelee since grammar school and never passed up a chance to torment her. She yanked off Semelee’s cap just for sport, but when she saw the color of her hair she raised a holler and called all the other girls over, sayin look who’s here: Lucy Ricardo!

Their laughter and cries of “Luuuuceeeeee!” chased her down the hall, right into the arms of Jesse Buckler. She was Jesse’s latest squeeze—or rather, he was hers. Depended on how you looked at it. Semelee had discovered that the way to a boy’s heart was through his fly. Dates for her had been as few as turtle teeth until she turned fifteen and started puttin out. After that it was a different story. She knew she had a rep but so what? She liked screwin, and durin sex was the only time she was sure she had a boy’s undivided attention.

Jesse pulled her into the boy’s room and for a minute she thought they was gonna have sex there—screw in school, how cool. But when she saw Joey Santos and Lee Rivers standin there with their flies open and their peckers at attention, she got scared. She tried to run but Lee grabbed her and said Jesse told them how she gave the best blow job in school and they wanted a sample. She said no and how she’d report them and they laughed and said who’d believe the school slut? They called her “Granny” and Jesse said how he got off doin it to an old lady.

The words shocked Semelee. She’d thought of herself as somethin of a goodtime gal, of easy virtue maybe, but not the school slut. And it wasn’t like Semelee loved Jesse or nothin, or ever even entertained the idea that he loved her, but…he’d been talkin about her like she was a pull of chewin tobacco that he was gonna pass around between his friends.

With some kickin and clawin she broke free and ran out—not just out of the boys room, but out of the school as well. She could’ve gone to the principal, but it would be the word of three of the football stars against the school slut, and besides, nothin had happened.

So she’d run home. And there was Freddy. Alone. Drinkin a beer. And horny. He offered her a brew, then started touchin her. Semelee just snapped. She started screamin and throwin things and the next thing she knew Freddy was out the door and headin for his car.

He musta called Momma because half an hour later she came stormin in, started slappin at Semelee, callin her a little whore for playin hooky so she could come on to Freddy. Now look what she’d done! Freddy was gone, sayin he wasn’t stayin in no house with a freaky piece of jailbait tryin to get him in trouble.

Momma wouldn’t listen to her, and Semelee’d been hurt that her own momma was takin Freddy’s side over hers. But then Momma crushed her, sayin she wished Semelee’d never been born, wished she’d died like all the other girls been born to the lagoon folk round that time, that she’d been a weight around her neck ever since, draggin her down, her white hair scarin off the men interested in Momma.

That did it. Semelee busted out through the door with no direction in mind and kept goin. She wound up on the beach where she collapsed on the sand. Her momma, who she’d thought of as her best friend, her only true friend, hated her, had always hated her. She wanted to die.