Foretold Page 7

  “You want to fly? Have you ever driven anywhere outside the city? Ever seen how many bugs end up squashed on the windshield? Picture that, only on your face,” I counter.

  “Ever heard of a helmet?”

  “Yes, you’d look like the sickest superhero ever in your safety helmet,” I say. Colin laughs. “Plus, what about breathing? You can’t fly too high or you won’t be able to breathe. Which means you’ve got to stick to lower altitudes and duck birds and power lines and buildings or whatever. The logistics are a nightmare.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But seeing the future is lame unless you can actually do something about it,” he counters.

  Please let there be something I can do to help him. Save him. Save him. Save him. Save him. Save him.

  A ball rolls in front of us with a mop of a dog in hot pursuit. The dog notices us and pauses, forgetting the ball entirely. It trots over to investigate and sniffs my leg, brushing up against me, tongue lolling in its mouth and tail wagging. Colin picks up the ball and buries his hand in the dog’s off-white gnarls of fur, giving it a little scratch behind the ears. He throws the ball back toward the dog’s owner, and it darts off in chase.

  It looked dirty. Fleas. Colin has… we’re…

  Stop it.

  The fleas are…

  Stop it.

  Colin glances at me, unaware I have diagnosed us both as terminally ill with bubonic plague in the space it took him to throw a ball. He slaps at his arm. “I can’t believe I let you drag me out here. The mosquitos are no joke. Where’s this Spite House?”

  “Almost there.” I take a breath, talking myself off the ledge. You’re okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I’ve been happy, yes, but mental illness isn’t a spigot you can turn off just because things are going your way for once. “And you’re the one who demanded I take you as punishment for skulking, remember?”

  “Lurking, not skulking. And that was before I knew it meant being eaten alive.”

  “Right.” I force a smile and point ahead of us. “Thar she blows.”

  A tiny slice of a house juts pugnaciously out of its tree-covered surroundings a little up the path, its optimistic butterscotch color completely at odds with its confrontational origins. It’s two stories tall, but so narrow a person with a decent wingspan standing with arms outstretched in front of it could reach almost end-to-end.

  “Ha! The little window has shutters!” Colin says, picking up his pace as we approach. “This is insane! Some dude really built this for spite?”

  “Yep, Jacob Hollingsworth built it in the early 1800s. There aren’t any windows along the sides of it because it was wedged between the neighboring houses. Those houses are long gone, but this thing is still around.” I lean down and pluck the pant leg that brushed the dog away from my skin. You’re okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

  “So good ol’ Jacob won. Last man standing,” Colin muses.

  “Wait until you see the back.”

  I bite at my thumb until it bleeds. Enough. You’re not contaminated. This is false control. We circle the house. Colin laughs out loud. “A balcony on the second floor. This guy wasn’t messing around. Can we go in?”

  I hold up a key. “Not usually, but my dad helped restore this place.” Having a history professor for a father comes in handy sometimes.

  We walk back around to the front, and I open the door. It’s like walking into a wall of heat. The stale air, humidity, and dust create a nasal cocktail that sets me off on a coughing fit. I wave my hand to clear the air in front of me and only make it worse. I’m going to die. This dust—

  Colin follows me in and pats me on the back. “You okay?”

  I nod weakly, and he seems to accept that answer, looking around gleefully.

  “It’s like a real little house! Did the guy actually live here?”

  “Yeah,” I croak. “He had to. It was the only way he could build it.”

  He puts a foot on the first step of a tight staircase hugging a wall. “Why didn’t the city take it? They can do that, right?”

  I pause, the sour taste in my mouth not entirely due to dust and coughing. “Eminent domain. Yeah, they can take stuff. I’m not sure why they didn’t. Maybe it was grandfathered in or something. And the guy lived so long that the house became a curiosity after he died, so then they couldn’t get rid of it.”

  “You coming?” Colin asks, looking back as he climbs up the stairs.

  I follow him up, the stairs creaking ominously with each of our footfalls. I worry about the integrity of the wood and picture myself falling through, but Colin doesn’t seem at all bothered. At the top is a small room with a window behind us and a narrow bed, a small chest of drawers, and an opening to the balcony in front of us. Colin looks around, his hands on his hips.

  “Okay, so… I love this place. Let’s move in.”

  I laugh, which dissolves into a coughing fit again. “I’m going to hack up a lung. Can you love it from the balcony? There’s like twenty inches of dust in here.”

  Colin lifts the latch to the balcony door, the hinges shockingly silent and well oiled. I knock on the door frame on my way out, five light taps, soothing the beat inside my head. We step out on the slight platform, and I gratefully gulp the fresh air as we look out at the park. The scenery is a little different from this vantage point, and the balcony looks sound enough that I can actually enjoy our surroundings.

  “Not a bad view. It’s so pretty out here,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Colin responds.

  I glance up at him. He’s looking at me, his mouth open like he wants to say something.He turns toward me, his chest brushing my arm, his warm breath caressing my cheek. “Hey, Cass?”

  “Yep?” I’m suddenly super aware every inch of my body. Of his.

  “I’m…” He leans closer, gently pressing me to turn toward him.

  A full body flush moves through me. I part my lips.

  It’s only a small creak, but it’s enough to turbocharge my anxiety.

  “We need to get inside. This balcony isn’t safe.” I rush into the dusty bedroom, breathing heavily, my emotions a jumble of fear and mortification and disappointment.

  Colin follows me in, looking sheepish.

  I’m so dumb. I try to crowd out the images of collapsing wood, broken limbs, jagged impalements.

  Count your steps. Five hundred fifty-five sounds right. Walk, doesn’t matter where, walk until you count off five hundred fifty-five steps. It’ll feel better.

  Counting steps won’t help.

  “What were you saying out there?” I ask, seventy percent sure I interrupted a kiss. I swallow, trying to claw myself back to that moment.

  “Oh. Nothing… I’m just glad I met you. Happy we’re… friends, or whatever. We moved around so much, I haven’t had a ton.”

  “Oh.” Friends. It’s such a nice thing to say. I don’t have many—any. It’s really sweet. So nice. So bland. So…awful. Did I just friend-zone myself? Or did I misread what happened out on the balcony? I want the Spite House to collapse and swallow me whole. I choke it all down, ashamed by my selfish reaction and semi-grimace, hoping it passes for a smile. “Me too. Happy that we’re friends, I mean.” I give him a soft punch to the arm. “Pal.”

  “Hey! Violence is not cool! Be civilized and retaliate by building a spite house or something.”

  I force a laugh.

  I'd promised to introduce Colin to Mrs. O after the Spite House, so instead of getting to wallow in my misery at home, I lead my pal out of the park and toward her bodega. I look down and notice one of those free psychic reading coupons at our feet. Then another. Then more. I look ahead. It looks like they were dropped out of a plane like WWII propaganda. I swallow a whimper and look across the street, then back at Colin. Something feels wrong.

  Colin notices the coupons, too. “Ooooh! Fortune teller?” He leans down and pops up clutching two coupons. “Come on! The place is over there. Let’s go!” He tugs at my arm.

  “No! I don’t want… that place is
… let’s just go to Mrs. O’s,” I say, pulling back.

  “It’ll be fun!” he says. He drops my arm and jogs across the street, daring cars to hit him and sending my heart shooting up my throat on a geyser of fear. He’s at the door and pulling it open by the time I reach him.

  The bell jangles as we step inside, and I scan the room while moving closer to Colin. Our blood splatter would match the color scheme perfectly. The window is covered by heavy red curtains, and the shabby furniture, illuminated by ruby Christmas lights and fake flickering candles, looks like something out of my nana’s old house. Every seatback is covered by a crocheted brown, red, and orange throw blanket. A deck of tarot cards is fanned out on a round table in the center of the space.

  The walls are covered in clichéd mystical symbols “borrowed” from other cultures. A prominent sign hangs by the door releasing Madame Grey and her associates from any liability and advising that fortunes read are strictly for entertainment. I count to calm myself.

  A woman enters the room through a bead curtain hanging in a doorway. She’s a pocket-sized lioness in a leotard, her thick waist ringed by a colorful sash and her mussed hair piled high on her head like the morning after prom. A hunger for business or money or something else claws its way past her thick layer of cosmetics as she spots us, until her elated grin melts away everything except the kindness in her dark-rimmed eyes. I straighten a bit, breathing again.

  “Hi! We have these things that say the first reading is free?” Colin asks, holding up the coupons.

  “That’s right,” the lioness says, in this breathy train-whistle voice. She clasps her hands and blinks up at us. “I’m so happy you came. So happy!”

  “Are you Madame Grey?” I ask, instead of asking what I really want: are you going to kill us?

  “No, no, I’m Narisa. Please! Sit, sit.” She ushers us to the table, pulling on our arms until we drop down onto the chairs. “We’ll start with you,” she says to Colin, grabbing his hand, studying it. She leans over it close and then bends back, peering at it from as far as her seat will allow. “Okay. Confirmed, then. Confirmed.”

  “What’s confirmed?” I ask.

  “You don’t know?” she asks with a look of puzzlement.

  “I—” I look at Colin.

  “No, we don’t know. What do you see?” Colin asks, a wry expression on his face. I think he thinks this is just theatrics. I’m not at all sure that it is.

  We’re okay. We’re okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

  “Better the cards tell you. The cards will tell,” Narisa says, scooping up the tarot cards in one smooth move. She shuffles them with casino dealer flare and then holds the cards out for Colin to cut.

  “So, is there, like, a special school you go to, to learn all this?” Colin asks as he watches the woman.

  She looks up at me while she answers him, a small smile on her lips. “There is. But this…” She shuffles again, drawing her hands apart, the cards flying from one palm to the other. “This, I learned on the internet. Lots to learn on the internet.”

  Colin laughs, but the woman has her eyes closed, her hands hovering over the deck of cards as she concentrates and silently mouths some words. She fans out the deck and then asks Colin to select three cards.

  She flips the first over. A man crawls over a dune. “Eight of Sands in the past position… you’ve been searching, seeking, never finding. A journeyman, that’s you.”

  “Well, my dad is a diplomat, so…”

  Narisa flips over the second card. “Three of Spirals, present position. Pain and grief. Oh, so heartsick.” She rests her hand on her bosom and gives Colin a pained look.

  She flips over the last card, a disturbing one of a man lying in a pool of blood, a number of sharp hook-like things jutting from his back. “Dear, dear… Ten of Thorns in the future position,” the woman breathes. “Confirmed. Disaster baked into the path you’re on. You’re in danger."

  Colin beams. “Oh, yeah? Awesome.”

  The woman pulls a crystal ball out from under the table and sets it down in front of her. “This is serious, young man. I can’t tell exactly, but…” The woman gazes into the crystal ball, her eyelids growing heavier and heavier until they’re barely open. “I see movement, but not a trip… This is… activity. You moving. Movement all around you. Rushing. Blurs. Crossing—”

  “Crossing the street,” I blurt. Colin and the woman start and stare at me. I add, “I mean, I’m guessing. You jaywalked like a suicidal stuntman before. You need to be careful.”

  Colin rolls his eyes.

  “Come. Come. The last part of your reading is through here.” The woman stands and reaches out a hand to Colin. I start to stand, but she says, “You wait there. I’ll be right back. Right back.”

  “No, we need to stay togeth—”

  “It’s cool, Cass,” Colin says with a devilish grin. “Don’t you care I’m in danger? I need to get a karma tune-up or whatever.” He pauses and whispers, “Scared?”

  “No reason to be scared. No reason at all,” the woman tuts. “All friends here. That’s the truth. All friends.”

  The woman stabs me. My hands press to my gut. Blood spills over them. I scream. She leaves me there to bleed out. Dad finds my body. He cries. He’s alone now. Coupons for free psychic readings are stuffed into my mouth.

  I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.

  But now there’s a new thought playing around in my head: Compulsion or vision?

  I concentrate on counting and breathing, so much so it takes me a second to realize there’s someone standing near the beaded doorway. The woman is about my mother’s age when she passed away and looks like someone who’d try to sell you on a regimen of granola and sunshine to treat a broken leg… except for her unnerving pale blue eyes. She pulls off the blue scarf covering her white hair.

  My blood screams through my veins. I push my chair back, launching to my feet, keeping my eyes on hers. “You were at the school! That day when I saw Colin die! Who are you? What do you… why—” All the questions I want to ask tumble over one another like a stampeding crowd.

  She holds up a hand. “Narisa told you we mean no harm. It’s the truth. There’s no reason to be scared, Cassandra.”

  “How do you know my—”

  “You’d be surprised at how much we know,” she says. “I’ll explain. Please sit, and I’ll answer all of your questions.” She sits at the table, and when I remain standing, she adds again, “Please.”

  I ease back into the seat across from her, though my feet tingle with the urge to run. I press my hands down onto my thighs to keep from knocking on the table.

  The woman reaches for the cards Narisa abandoned and shuffles. “I’m Madame Grey. And what I want is to help you. Cut the cards.” She places the deck in front of me.

  I try to force whatever scrying abilities I have into telling me something, anything, about this woman, but I get no flashes or impressions beyond the violent imagery my OCD is whipping up. I fight to keep the images from implanting themselves in my brain. From germinating and growing. I count.

  “I don’t want a reading. I want to know what’s going on.” I’m proud of the false steadiness of my voice, even as I glance at the beaded curtain, picturing the little lioness drugging Colin, chopping him up.

  “Theban Group is not what you think.” Madame Grey sets the cards aside and leans in, a strand of white blonde hair falling in front of one ice chip eye. “You don’t know what they’re doing. What they’re capable of.”

  I swallow my surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “The less you know, the better. For now. For your own safety,” she says. She pulls a small glass oval from her pocket and pushes it across the table. It’s a translucent eye with a piercing blue iris. “Please, Cassandra, we need you to take this. Bring it with you to Theban Group. Carry it at all times.”

  “But what do you think Theban Group is doing?”

  “I am telling you, for your own—”
>
  I stand. “Colin! We need to go!”

  “I can help you save that boy’s life. I saw what happens to him, too. He’s not the only one in danger. You need to tread carefully.”

  “I don’t need you to save Colin. Or me.”

  She stands and sets the glass eye on my side of the table. “Please take that with you. It’s a powerful protective amulet. Evil eye.”

  “Colin!”

  Colin appears in the doorway, followed by Narisa.

  “You know where to find me when you change your mind,” Madame Grey says, a weary cast to her features.

  I back away from the table, leaving the eye where Madame Grey set it, and practically drag Colin out the door.

  “You look shook. Your reading tell you your cat is gonna die or something?” Colin teases.

  I ignore his jokes and press the anxiety down deep inside me, along with the Spite House disappointment and all the rest of life’s upsets. Colin jogs off when we get to Mrs. O’s, saying he needs to grab something before he goes in.

  “There’s my girl! Find a job yet, little one?” Mrs. O asks from behind the counter as the door chime announces my entrance. I’ll never know how she knows it’s me who’s done the entering, though.

  “Yeah. Figured I’d give being a senator a try. I leave for D.C. next week.”

  “Senator Morai does have a nice ring to it.” Mrs. O busies herself with counting the money in her register with the help of a currency reading device. It vibrates with the introduction of each new bill. “Seriously, though.”

  “Yeah, I’m…” Learning how to hopefully save you and Colin, and take control of my life, and not to be afraid anymore, and… lie, apparently. “Going to a summer camp instead.”

  “That’s wonderful! You’ll have so much fun. I’m happy to see you putting yourself out there.”

  “Yeah.” I shuffle nervously.

  “Out with it, little ostrich,” Mrs. O says.

  “I told you, ostriches don’t—”

  “Yes, eggs. I know. Don’t try and change the subject.”

  “There’s a boy I want to introduce you to. He’ll be here any second and… Oh my God, stop smiling like that! Don’t smile like that when he’s here. He’ll know…”