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in one eye.
     
    What’s a gold starburst? I wonder.
    I push the notebook back to where it was when I found it. And then I get the hell out of there before Dad comes back.

13
    JUNEAU
    IF I HAVE TO TAKE A BOAT, I WILL NEED MONEY. Currency. “The root of all evil,” Dennis called it in our history class. He claimed that it was the cause of World War III. That capitalism and greed set the whole thing off, beginning with a war over oil and ending with the destruction of the environment. Although he was wrong about the war, everything I have read and heard about the world confirmed that money has always caused corruption. Now I have to find some money of my own. Just the thought of it makes me feel compromised.
    I consider stowing away on a boat for about a second, like a character in one of our books. Then I realize that’s way too eighteenth century. What am I going to do—hide in an empty ale keg? No, there’s no way around it. I’m going to have to buy a ticket. I saw something on the way into town that may prove useful: a sign in a shop window.
    I have to turn toward the harbor to remember which direction to go in. The buildings are confusing me. If I were standing in the middle of a mountain field, I could find my way. But with glass buildings reflecting one another every way I turn, I have to concentrate. I glance at the sun and then the water, and head north-northwest.
    In ten minutes we are there. CA$H FOR GOLD , the sign reads. The window display holds a treasure trove of fragile-looking rings and necklaces. I swallow my fear and stare at the door for a moment. There is no handle. But there is a small sign on one side that reads PUSH . I push, and with a whoosh of warm air, the dogs and I are inside the building and blinking in the artificial light.
    “How can you help me?” comes a voice from the far side of the room. I blink again, and then focus on a small man standing behind a cupboard made of glass. His eyebrows are gray, but his hair is raven black and looks strangely crooked. He is wearing a pelt on his head, I realize, and try not to stare. He rubs his hands together and plasters on a large smile.
    I walk forward and force myself to speak to this stranger. “I saw the sign. Cash for gold.”
    “That’s right, young lady,” he says, looking me up and down.
    My buckskin trousers and fur-lined parka are very different from his clothing, which is made of shiny woven material. I push my hood back and sweep my long hair out of the back of my coat to fall around my face, using it as a curtain between us.
    He stares oddly at my eyes and clears his throat. “What can I do you for?” he asks, with a joking smile.
    I am having a hard time understanding him—both from his strange expressions and the fact that he speaks through his nose—so instead of talking, I lay my pack on the floor and crouch to dig inside. My fingers find the bag holding my brigand insurance. The objects I was told to use if I needed to negotiate with them.
    I pull it out and, after opening the drawstrings, choose carefully and set a stone on the glass in front of the man. I watch his face attentively as he flinches in surprise and then draws a blank expression over his features. A term my father uses when we play cards pops into my mind: he is using a “poker face.”
    “Well, now, what do we have here?” the man asks. He picks up the stone and fits a black spyglass type of lens to one eye. “A gold nugget”—he pulls a measuring stick out from beneath the counter—“measuring almost two inches.” He weighs it in his hand and then places it on a metal contraption, squinting as he reads numbers off a little screen. “Weighs a hundred twenty-five grams.” He peers at it again through the lens. “Low to medium quality, I would say. Well, little missy, today’s your lucky day, because I have just the buyer for this sort of nugget, and I can offer you the top-notch price of five hundred dollars.”
    There is something wrong