Never Never(44)

Her fingers fall to another card. “This card represents your immediate future.” She slides the card toward her and flips it over. A quiet gasp falls from her mouth and I feel Charlie flinch. I glance down at her and she’s staring intently at the woman, waiting for an explanation. She looks terrified.

I don’t know what kind of game this woman is playing, but it’s beginning to piss me off…

“The Tower card?” Charlie says. “What does it mean?”

The woman flips the card back over as if it’s the worst card in the deck. She closes her eyes and blows out a long breath. Her eyes pop open again and she’s staring right at Charlie. “It means…destruction.”

I roll my eyes and push back from the table. “Charlie, let’s get out of here.”

Charlie looks at me pleadingly. “We’re almost finished,” she says.

I relent and scoot back toward the table.

The woman flips over two more cards, explaining them to Charlie, but I don’t hear a single word she says. My eyes wander around the room as I try to remain patient and let her finish, but I feel like we’re wasting time.

Charlie’s hand begins squeezing the life out of mine, so I return my attention to the reading. The woman’s eyes are closed tight and her lips are moving. She’s mumbling words I can’t decipher.

Charlie scoots closer to me, and I instinctively wrap my arm around her. “Charlie,” I whisper, making her look up at me. “It’s theatrics. She gets paid to do this. Don’t be scared.”

My voice must have broken the woman out of her conveniently timed trance. She’s tapping the table, trying to get our attention as if she wasn’t off in la-la land for the last minute and a half.

Her fingers fall to the card I pulled out of the deck. Her eyes meet mine, and then they move to Charlie’s. “This card,” she says slowly. “Is your outcome card. Combined with the other cards in the reading, this gives you the answer to why you are here.” She flips the card over.

The woman doesn’t move. Her eyes are locked on the card beneath her fingertips. The rooms grows eerily quiet, and as if on cue, one of the candles loses its flame. Another nice touch, I think.

I look down at the outcome card. There aren’t any words on it. No title. No picture.

The card is blank.

I can feel Charlie stiffen in my arms as she stares at the blank card on the table. I shove back from the table and pull Charlie up. “This is ridiculous,” I say loudly, accidentally knocking my chair over.

I’m not pissed that the woman is trying to scare us. It’s her job. I’m pissed because she’s actually scaring Charlie, yet she’s keeping up this ridiculous fa?ade.

I take Charlie’s face in my hands and look her in the eyes. “She planted that card to scare you, Charlie. This is all bullshit.” I take both her hands and begin to turn her toward the exit.

“There are no blank cards in my tarot deck,” the woman says.

I pause in my tracks and turn around to face her. Not because of what she said, but because of the way she said it. She sounded scared.

Scared for us?

I close my eyes and exhale. She’s an actress, Silas. Calm your shit.

I push open the door and pull Charlie outside. I don’t stop walking until we’re around the building and on another street. When we’re away from the store and away from the damn flickering of the sign, I stop walking and pull her against me. She wraps her arms around my waist and buries her head against my chest.

“Forget all of that,” I say, rubbing my hand in reassuring circles over her back. “Fortune-telling, tarot readings…it’s ridiculous, Charlie.”

She pulls her face from my shirt and looks up at me. “Yeah. Ridiculous like the both of us waking up at school with no memory of who we are?”

I close my eyes and pull away from her. I run my hands through my hair, the frustration from the day catching up to me. I can make light of it all with my jokes. I can dismiss her theories—from tarot readings to fairy tales—simply because it doesn’t make sense to me. But she’s right. None of this makes sense. And the more we try to uncover the mystery, the more I feel like we’re wasting our damn time.





His lips fold in and he shakes his head. He wants out of here. I can feel his edginess.

“Maybe we should go back and ask her more detailed questions,” I suggest.

“No way,” he says. “I’m not entertaining that again.” He starts to walk away, and I consider going back in there myself. I’m just about to take my first step toward the shop when the “Open” sign in the window turns off. The shop is in sudden darkness. I chew on the inside of my cheek. I could come back when Silas isn’t around. Maybe she’d talk to me more.