I follow her gaze to a sign that doesn't look any different from all of the other Tarot signs we've passed. The only thing different about this one is it just completely ruined my moment. And dammit, it was a good moment. A great one. One I know Charlie was also feeling, and I don't know how long it'll take me to get back to that.
She's walking in the direction of the shop now. I follow behind her like a lovesick puppy.
The building is unmarked and it makes me wonder what it was about the unreliable, asshole-lighting that drew her away from my mouth. The only words indicating this is even a store are the "No Cameras" signs plastered on every blackened window.
Charlie puts her hands on the door and pushes it open. I follow her inside and we're soon standing in what looks like the center of a touristy voodoo gift shop. There's a man standing behind a register and a few people browsing the aisles.
I try to take everything in as I follow Charlie through the store. She fingers everything, touching the stones, the bones, the jars of miniature voodoo dolls. We silently make our way down each aisle until we reach the back wall. Charlie stops short, grabs my hand and points at a picture on the wall. "That gate," she says. "You took a picture of that gate. It's the one hanging on my wall."
"Can I help you?"
We both spin around and a large--really large--man with gauged ears and a lip ring is staring down at us.
I kind of want to apologize to him and leave as fast as we can, but Charlie has other plans. "Do you know what this gate is guarding? The one in the picture?" Charlie asks him, pointing over her shoulder. The man's eyes lift to the picture frame. He shrugs.
"Must be new," he says. "I've never noticed it before." He looks at me, arching an eyebrow adorned with multiple piercings. One being a small...bone? Is that a bone sticking through his eyebrow? "You two looking for anything in particular?"
I shake my head and begin to respond, but my words are cut off by someone else's.
"They're here to see me." A hand reaches through a beaded curtain to our right. A woman steps out, and Charlie immediately sidles against me. I wrap my arm around her. I don't know why she's allowing this place to freak her out. She doesn't seem like the type to believe in this sort of thing, but I'm not complaining. A frightened Charlie means a very lucky Silas.
"This way," the woman says, motioning for us to follow her. I start to object, but then remind myself that places like this...they're all about theatrics. It's Halloween 365 days a year. She's just playing a part. She's no different than Charlie and me, pretending to be two people we aren't.
Charlie glances up at me, silently asking for permission to follow her. I nod and we follow the woman through the curtain of--I touch one of the beads and take a closer look--plastic skulls. Nice touch.
The room is small and every wall is covered with thick, velvet black curtains. There are candles lit around the room, flickers of light licking the walls, the floor, us. The woman takes a seat at a small table in the center of the room for us to sit in the two chairs across from her. I keep Charlie's hand wrapped tightly in mine as we both sit.
The woman begins to slowly shuffle a deck of tarot cards. "A joint reading, I assume?" she asks.
We both nod. She hands Charlie the deck and asks her to hold them. Charlie takes them from her and clasps her hands around them. The woman nudges her head toward me. "Both of you. Hold them."
I want to roll my eyes, but instead I reach my hand across Charlie and place it on the deck with her.
"You need to want the same thing out of this reading. Multiple readings can sometimes overlap when there isn't cohesiveness. It's important your goal is the same."
Charlie nods. "They are. It is."
I hate the desperation in her voice, like we're actually going to get an answer. Surely she doesn't believe this.
The woman reaches across to take the cards from our hands. Her fingers brush mine and they're ice cold. I pull my hand back and grab Charlie's, moving it onto my lap.
She begins laying cards out on the table, one by one. They're all facedown. When she's finished, she asks me to pull a card from the deck. When I hand her the card, she sets it apart from the others. She points at it. "This card will give you your answer, but the other cards explain the path to your question."
She puts her fingers on the card in the middle. "This position represents your current situation." She flips it over.
"Death?" Charlie whispers. Her hand tightens around mine.
The woman looks at Charlie and tilts her head. "It isn't necessarily a bad thing," she says. "The death card represents a major change. A reformation. The two of you have experienced a loss of sorts."
She touches another card. "This position represents the immediate past." She flips it over and before I look down at the card, I can see the woman's eyes narrow. My eyes fall to the card. The Devil.
"This indicates something or someone was enslaving you in the past. It could represent a number of things close to you. Parental influence. An unhealthy relationship." Her eyes meet mine. "Inverted cards reflect a negative influence, and although it represents the past, it can also signify something you're currently transitioning through."
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 facade.
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.
"Charlie!" he calls.
I run after him until we're walking side by side again. We can see our breath as we walk. When did it get this cold? I rub my hands together.
"I'm hungry," I say.
"You're always hungry. I've never seen someone so small eat so much."
He doesn't offer to feed me this time, so I continue to walk beside him. "What just happened back there?" I ask. I'm trying to make a joke of it, but my stomach feels funny.
"Someone tried to scare us. That's it."
I look up at Silas. Mostly everything together except those shoulders, which are tense. "But what if she's right? What if there weren't any blank cards in her tarot deck?"
"No," he says. "Just no."
I bite my lip and sidestep a man dancing backward down the sidewalk.
"I don't understand how you can dismiss something so easily, considering our circumstances," I say from between my teeth. "Don't you think--"
"Why don't we talk about something else," Silas says.
"Right, like what we're going to do next weekend? Or how about we talk about what we did last weekend? Or maybe we talk about..." I smack my hand against my forehead. "The Electric Crush Diner." How could I forget about that?
"What?" Silas asks. "What's that?"
"We were there. You and me, last weekend. I found a receipt in my jeans pocket." Silas is watching me recount all of this with a look of mild annoyance on his face. "I took Janette there for dinner last night. A server recognized me."
"Hey!" he yells over my shoulder. "If you touch her with that I'll break you in half!"
I glance behind me and see a man pointing a foam finger at my butt. He backs off when he sees the look on Silas's face.
"Why didn't you tell me that?" Silas says under his breath, directing his attention back to me. "That's not like tarot readers, that's something important."
"I really don't know. I meant to..."
He grabs my hand, but this time it's not for the pleasure of our palms pressing together. He drags me down the street with one hand while typing something into his phone with the other. I'm both impressed and mildly annoyed at being spoken to like that. We may have been something in our other life, but in this life I don't even know his middle name.
"It's on North Rampart Street," I say, helpfully.
"Yeah."
He's pissed. I kind of like the emo-ness of it. We pass through a park with a fountain. Street vendors have set up their artwork along the fence; they stare at us as we pass by. Silas is taking one step to my three. I trot to keep up. We walk so far until my feet hurt and finally I yank my hand free of his.
He stops and turns around.
I don't know what to say, or what I'm mad at, so I place my hands on my hips and glare at him.
"What's wrong with you?" he says.
"I don't know!" I shout. "But you can't just drag me around the city! I can't walk as fast as you and my feet hurt."
This feels familiar. Why does this feel familiar?
He looks away and I can see the muscles working in his jaw. He turns back to me and everything happens quickly. He takes two steps and scoops me off my feet. Then he resumes his pace with my bouncing ever so slightly in his arms. After my initial squeal, I settle down and clasp my arms around his neck. I like it up here where I can smell his cologne and touch his skin. I don't recall seeing perfume among Charlie's things, and I doubt I would have thought to put any on. What does that say about Silas? That in the midst of all of this, he thought to pick up a bottle and spray cologne on his neck before he left the house this morning. Was he always the type of person who cared about the little things--like smelling good?
As I think these thoughts, Silas stops to ask a woman who has fallen in the street if she's all right. She's drunk and sloppy. When she tries to stand up, she steps on the hem of her dress and falls back down. Silas sets me down on the sidewalk and goes to help her.
"Are you bleeding? Did you hurt yourself?" he asks. He helps her stand, leads her back to where I'm waiting. She slurs her words and pats him on the cheek, and I wonder if he knew when he went to help her that she was homeless. I wouldn't touch her. She smells. I step away from both of them, and watch him watch her. He's concerned. He keeps his eyes on her until she's stumbled off down the next street, and then he swings his head around to find me.
In this moment--right now--it's so clear to me who Charlie is. She's not as good as Silas. She loves him because he's so different from her. Maybe that's why she went to Brian, because she couldn't live up to Silas.
Like I can't.
He half smiles at me, and I think he's embarrassed to be caught caring. "Ready?"
I want to tell him that what he did was nice, but nice is such a silly word for kindness. Anyone could pretend to be nice. What Silas did was innate. Boldfaced kindness. I haven't had any thoughts like that. I think about the girl in class the first morning who dropped her books at my feet. She'd looked at me with fear. She expected me not to help. And more. What else?
Silas and I walk in silence. He checks his phone every few minutes to make sure we're headed in the right direction and I check his face. I wonder if this is what a crush feels like. If watching a man help a woman is supposed to illicit these types of feelings. And then we're here. He points across the street and I nod.
"Yeah, that's it."
But it's almost not. The diner has transformed since I was here with Janette. It's loud and pumping. There are men lined up on the sidewalk smoking; they part for us as we walk by. I can feel the bass in my ankles as we stand outside the doors. They open for us as a group leaves. A girl walks past me laughing, her pink fur jacket brushing against my face. Inside, people are defending their space with widened elbows and jutted hips. People glare at us as we walk by. This is my space, back off. I'm waiting for the rest of my group--keep moving. We bypass the few empty seats in favor of walking deeper into the building. We press through the crowd, walking sideways, and flinching when raucous laughter erupts next to us. A drink spills on my shoes, someone says sorry. I don't even know who, because it's so dark. And then someone calls our names.
"Silas! Charlie! Over here!"
A boy and...who was that girl who picked me up this morning? Annie...Amy?
br /> "Hey," she says, as we draw close. "I can't believe you actually came back here after last weekend."
"Why wouldn't we?" Silas asks.
I take the seat I am offered and stare up at the three of them.
"You punch a guy, throw over a couple of tables and wonder why you shouldn't come back?" the boy says, along with a laugh. I think he's Annie/Amy's boyfriend by the way he looks at her--like they're in on something together. Life, maybe.
It's how Silas and I look at each other. Except we really are in on something together.
"You acted like an ass," she says.
"Amy," the spare boy says. "Don't."
Amy!
I want to know more about this person Silas punched.
"He deserved it," I say. Amy raises her eyebrows and shakes her head. Whatever she's thinking, she's too afraid to say it, because she turns away. I try her boyfriend next. "Don't you think so?" I ask innocent-like. He shrugs. Goes to sit next to Amy. They're all scared of me, I think, but why?
I order a Coke. Amy's head snaps around to look at me when she hears.
"Regular Coke? Not Diet?"
"Do I look like I need to drink diet?" I snap. She shrinks back. I don't know where that came from--honest to god. I don't even know how much I weigh. I decide to shut up and let Silas do the detective work before I offend someone again. He drops down next to Amy's boyfriend and they begin to talk. The music makes it impossible to eavesdrop, and Amy is doing her best not to look at me, so I people-watch. People...they all have memories...know who they are. I'm jealous.
"Let's go, Charlie." Silas is standing above me, waiting. Amy and her boyfriend are watching us from across the table. It's a big table, I wonder who else is coming to join them and how many of those people hate me.
Out of the restaurant and back onto the street. Silas clears his throat.
"I got into a fight."
"I heard," I say. "Did they tell you who it was?"
"Yeah."
I wait and, when he doesn't offer the information, I say, "Well...?"
"I punched the owner in the face. Brian's father."
My head snaps around. "What the hell?"
"Yeah," he says. He rubs the scruff on his chin thoughtfully. "Because he said something about you..."
"Me?" I get a sick feeling in my stomach. I know what's coming, but I don't know what's coming.