Nothing. Just cloudy blue water and that sad little gray rock. Chloe poked it with a chopstick. Liam banished her from the kitchen.
They weren’t counting down.
The kit arrived on a Tuesday, crammed into a mailbox that was already too small for it. Liam, age ten, ripped open the bubble-wrap sleeve with the single-minded focus only a budding geologist possesses. The box was a glorious shade of toxic purple, featuring a smiling child holding a geode the size of a grapefruit. 4m crystal growing kit
The kitchen table was cordoned off. His mother called it “an incident.” She had tried to move the kit to the garage, but when she touched the container, she yelped. “It’s hot, Liam. Not warm. Hot. ” She wore oven mitts to carry it. The crystals now resembled a miniature, frozen explosion. They had a fractal structure that made Liam’s eyes water if he stared too long—impossible angles, corners that seemed to fold inward on themselves, reflections that showed things that weren’t in the room. Nothing