Elizabeth
Joy Arnold 
Excerpt from Lainey Novel
(not its real name)
In high school I came up with fifty-eight ways in which Sydney might die. I wrote them in a spiral notebook, numbered them, even illustrated the possibilities that pleased me most.
§ Number 18: Stomach penetration by swallowed toothpick.
§ Number 24: Curling iron electrocution.
§ Number 37: Asphyxiation under sewage.
Etcetera, etcetera, all written manically, envisioning her pre-death agony. But soon after finishing the list I’d gotten embarrassed, stuffed the pages into a coffee can and then lit a match and watched them burn, my homicidal hatred up in blackish, tear-inducing smoke.
After which I’d tried not to think about her at all, dead or alive. I finished high school locked in my isolated, insulated silo, and then went on to lead a rather isolated, insulated life, in which Sydney was just an unfortunate chapter. Something I could look back on coolly, thinking only how we’d both had a lot of growing up to do.
Amazing really, how quickly things change.
* * *
I rubbed the soap from my eyes and reached my toes to the hot water tap, then dipped my hair back into the water. I was going to see Sydney today. I was going to see Sydney. “Well what a surprise,” I’d say. It would have to be spoken with the right mix of nonchalance and sarcasm, and her face would show shock. Maybe fear. Or maybe pleasure? Sydney was nothing if not unpredictable.
When I’d first met her we were seven years old. What would it be like to be seven again? Feel the magic of a nightly bath, of plastic cups and propeller boats and the honey-floral smell of Breck shampoo, hair that floated a halo at my shoulders, Like a mermaid! Star would say, and I’d picture myself like Esther Williams in her scaly bathing suit.
But I’d lost all sense of that seven-year-old body. The reality of baths is always a little disappointing, but you tend to forget the disappointment when you aren’t actually in one. Now my head swam in the heat, and even under the water I could feel a furry coat of sweat. You didn’t sweat at seven, or if you did you didn’t care. You could slide from one end of the tub to the other on your butt until the water drained to a slippery sheen. Seven was good and I should’ve appreciated it more. I should’ve learned how to cartwheel and climbed some trees, and chased boys around the playground while that was still socially acceptable. But too late now. You can’t go back again, not even in this little way.
I was going to see Sydney today.
* * *
Sydney and I
were best friends from the second grade when she moved from
Nobody else in school especially liked us or hated us, or paid much attention to us at all. Which was okay up until times changed because we had each other and having one best-best friend was all anyone needed. We did everything together up through junior high, got A’s in language arts and D’s in math, got braces and then whiteheads on our chins. But when we were fifteen, Sydney saw an optometrist, an orthodontist and a dermatologist all in three months, the same three months that I stopped growing and didn’t stop eating, and went from a scrawny dweebette to a chunky dweebette. That was the beginning of the worst year of my life. I lost Sydney and I made myself stop caring, turned off this internal caring switch in my head, a quick flick, just like that. Or maybe not quite that easy, but looking back on it I can imagine it was that easy. It helps.
I hadn’t seen Sydney for almost eighteen years now. But when I’d called the occult shop, last year to order candles and root powders and amulets for my mother, I’d recognized her voice immediately. I didn’t tell her who I was, pressing an old lady creak and crack into my voice to make me sound like an occult shopper, and then never called again. But last week, when the owner called me for a mural at Six of Swords, I’d made a conscious decision not to care. The job would be through in a month, and we needed the money. “Been awhile,” she’d say with an apologetic kind of smile and I’d shrug, “Guess it has,” and then turn away like I had better things to do.
I pulled myself from the tub, screwing my face against the groaning in my knees. I didn’t know why I even bothered to take baths any more, except that it seemed like it should be a good idea, like if I just knew how to do it right it would help.
I dressed in a black skirt, a little dressy but not too dressy, a little slimming, but not enough. I look better without clothes on. It’s an unfortunate fact, since people don’t usually see me without clothes. But the way I’m built, muscular and curvy smooth, like something sculpted out of clay that’s a little too wet for precise sculpting, the clothes manage to drape themselves in such a way that you’d think my belly starts where my breasts end, and my head looks too small for my shoulders. I’ve read lots of articles on vertical stripes and A-lines and bias cuts, but the conclusion I’ve come to is that for my body type, the only way to emphasize the good points would be to strip and show them in all their glory. Not acceptable in most situations, so usually I’ll just wear black, which is what the articles recommend for almost anybody anyway.
I combed my
hair back into a chignon, decided it was too much and combed it forward again, then
took out the ring I’d bought. A
gumball-machine sort of ring, gold painted with a plastic diamond the size of
“Lainey!” Star called.
I tilted my face to the ceiling. “What!”
There was no answer. I rolled my eyes and started for Star’s bedroom. “What?”
She was in bed with her incense dish, her head propped on pillows. She cupped her hand over the burning stick and blew, a patchouli cloud veiling her face, obscuring the smile lines so that with her rounded cheeks and wide eyes, she looked around twenty. My mother had been truly beautiful once but now she was sallow, gaunt, as if she’d spent the past decade trapped inside a dark box. Which, in effect, she had. “Mmmm, aren’t you pretty today,” she said. “Why you all dressed up?”
“I’m not.” I pulled up the blinds, waving away the smoke. “You want something?”
“You didn’t say good morning.”
“You were asleep.”
“You’re full of crap; I’ve been up since six. I know when I’m being avoided.” She smiled and nodded at the desk. “Bills’re done, you can take them out. Oh, and when you get a chance, next day or two, I could use a barber.” She pulled her hair into her face and wrinkled her nose. “I look like Cousin It.”
It had been over twenty years that I’d been cutting my mother’s hair. I wondered if she even realized women had long ago decided their hair was too precious for barbers. I pulled a brush from her nightstand and sat on her bed, began brushing the hair back from her forehead. “I’ll do it tonight. Actually, I’m on my way out to an occult shop if you wanted anything. They’re doing all their walls, I was thinking some kind of Druid theme.”
“An occult shop? How fun is that! Which one?”
I hesitated a second, then decided I’d tell her. She wouldn’t remember it was Sydney’s store. “It’s called Six of Swords.”
Star pulled away. “Six of Swords? You mean Sydney’s store?”
My shoulders stiffened. I focused on pulling loose hairs from her brush, holding them to the light to see whether there was any blonde left. Seemed like recently it had all gone to white. “It’s not Sydney’s, Ma, she just happens to work there. I’m bringing over my portfolio.”
Star nodded slowly. “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
I made a face. “I’m sure the Lord has better things to do. If I’m lucky they’ll have me painting at night and Sydney won’t even be there.”
She kept nodding. “Would you get me my cards?”
“I don’t want a reading.”
“And I don’t want wrinkles or drooping boobs. Don’t be difficult. At her best that girl is unpredictable. At her worst, she’s dangerous.” She said this last in a jovial whisper.
“I’m not sixteen anymore, Ma.”
She narrowed her eyes and got up, went to the dresser. “You are,” she said, thumping at her chest. “In here you’re like me, we’re both sixteen.”
She pulled a
red velvet cloth from the top drawer and unfolded it, handed the deck
forward. The cards were old and yellowed
with age, their edges smudged and worn.
I’d bought her three new packs before I finally gave up trying. It was Star’s belief that age and use had
made the cards more powerful, engrained their connection to the spirit
world. Before the pack had been Star’s
it had belonged to my grandmother, who’d used it in county fairs and then, once
she’d established a loyal customer base, in private readings at her parlor in
“Shuffle,” Star said. I knew the drill, had known it since childhood, shuffle, cut the deck and stack, shuffle, cut the deck and stack. She’d made a living from her readings, back when I was a kid; mostly women, all unsatisfied with marriage, job and children (or lack thereof), who’d confessed their problems while I listened from behind the cracked door.
Her clients had dwindled due to a number of faulty readings, down to a couple handfuls of women who treated the readings like therapy. So with nothing else to take her time, she’d turned all her attention onto me. With every new year in school, every trip to the doctor, every trek to the swimming pool or sledding hill, anywhere something might possibly go wrong, there was a reading. And as Star got more afraid of the outside world, the readings became an every day ordeal. As if laying the future out on the table could protect me from it, in the same way holing herself behind closed doors protected her from what might lie on the other side.
“So this here represents the central issue between you,” Star said laying a card face up. She raised her eyebrows and dealt three more cards on each side: the Relationship Spread. “Well,” she said. “Well.”
“So what is it?” I tried not to sound indulgent, but failed.
Star rolled her eyes meaningfully. “Very strange is all.” She traced her fingers over the center card. “Three of Swords represents betrayal, being cheated by someone you trust. And here’s the Tower card.” She pointed to the crumbling tower, animals leaping from its roof. “Which means a shakeup, unexpected change. This here is Sydney, the Magician, and it’s reversed which means she’s a manipulator, intoxicated with her own power.” She glanced at me, smiled crookedly. “Which I guess we already know. And this is you, the Eight of Cups, which means an injury to your heart. Which all sounds bad, but this here is the Ten of Cups which signifies bliss, things unfolding exactly the way they should.”
She laid another card on top of the center card, and her face froze. Death. I used to freak myself out with that card when I was a kid, the black-caped man with his scepter, dismembered limbs at his feet. I used to sneak into Star’s room and pull it out from the deck, then stare at it, my insides squirming, for as long as I could stand to look. “So I’m gonna kill her?” I said.
Star gathered the cards, slipping Death to the center of the deck before she raised her head and looked into my eyes. “Wouldn’t blame you if you did,” she said.
* * *
On my way, I stopped off at Pamela’s house, because I needed some affirmation and Pamela is the affirming type. We’d been friends for eight years, ever since we first met at the Newport News Memorial Day Parade. We were sharing a bench, watching little girls in leotards stumble their way through pirouettes, and she was breastfeeding the tiniest baby I’d ever seen. And it was while trying to avoid staring at her breast that I noticed she was eating a cheese-less pizza, which is how our conversation started.
Me: Is that a cheese-less pizza?
Pamela (dolefully): Yeah, it kind of sucks. But if I ate the cheese I’d end up spending the rest of the day in the bathroom.
Me: I guess I’d figure, what’s the point.
Pamela: Honestly, it’s better than not eating pizza at all. Only slightly better, but better.
Me: If I were you I’d eat jelly donuts instead. Which is why I’m fat.
Pamela: You’re so not fat!
. . .etcetera
And we’ve been friends ever since, which just goes to show the power of twists of fate and a big mouth.
I knocked on her door, then rang the bell. After a minute I opened the door and called, “You there, Pam? It’s me.”
“Hey,” Pamela called from upstairs. “Just got out of the shower. Come on in.”
I walked to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee, then sat at her table and waited. The table was sticky and toast-crumby, as was almost everything in Pamela’s home. She took a kind of pride in it, I think, in having three kids and a husband who was too manly to use a sponge. It was a sign of domesticity, being continually blanketed by the presence of mess.
When I was a kid, nine or ten, I’d fallen in love with a book I ended up stealing from the library. It was called The Ladies Guide to Keeping a Good Home, and it covered everything from the many uses of baking soda to the optimal frequency of running one’s vacuum cleaner, a precise calculation based on the number of kids and pets. Suitable dinnertime conversations, the importance of fresh flowers and the making of sun tea. It all ran so counter to my life experiences, and I lusted after all of it. Why couldn’t we eat dinner at six every night? With cloth napkins on our laps and a healthy selection of locally grown vegetables?
I’d pictured the lipsticked lady who might read this ladies guide, watched her cleaning in her apron, her manicured fingernails, her hot-curlered, hairsprayed flip. I’d sashayed myself into her slipcovered, sparkling home and spent all afternoon with her, only to emerge hours later to Star’s frozen dinners and clutter, feeling like I’d somehow been snatched from my real life.
But now I realized that the perfect home was actually this. These toys cluttering the living room, Pamela and Craig’s used wineglasses from last night still in the sink, the only art on the wall Matty’s potty-training sticker board. This was a “Good Home,” and it was what I longed for with all my heart.
Pamela breezed into the room, and glanced at the gurgling coffee pot. “Bless you,” she said.
“Yeah, I’m too good to you.”
She smiled and opened a cupboard. “You’re all dressed up. What’s the occasion?”
“Nothing really. I just have to make an impression today.”
Pamela poured coffee and brought it to the table. “Who’re you trying to impress?”
“It’s stupid. Just an old friend I haven’t seen in a trillion years.”
“Cool. And I guess within the past twenty-four hours you’ve gotten engaged?”
My face flushed and I twisted my ring to hide the diamond.
“It’s okay. When I went to my reunion I got botox and told people Craig was a neurosurgeon.”
“Don’t just assume I’m lying. We met last night and we fell in love and tonight we’re flying to Vegas. By tomorrow we’ll buy a house and conceive our first kid.”
Pamela widened her eyes. “Just like Brittney Spears! So who’s this friend?”
I shrugged. I’d never told Pamela about Sydney; it was embarrassing and there was no reason to contaminate the present with the past. “Just somebody I used to know. We had a falling out in high school, she got popular and I didn’t, and this is the first time I’ve seen her since graduation.”
“And you have to show how you’re popular now, I get it. You don’t think she’ll eventually realize you’re only married to your paintbrush?”
“No, why should she? She lives an hour away so I won’t see her anywhere except in the shop where she works, and we don’t have any mutual anythings, so I could tell her I have three husbands and she’d never find out the truth.”
Pamela hesitated, then said, “Here, take this.” She pulled at her wedding band, and handed it to me. “Now you’re actually married.”
This is why I was in love with Pamela. Talking to her was almost like having an interior monologue, minus the self-judgment. “Thanks,” I said, pushing the ring onto my finger. “I’ll bring it back tonight.” I held out my hand, tried to feel ownership, but with the rings and my newly painted nails the hand felt like a transplant from the type of lady who’d wear knee-high boots with miniskirts. “I’m so stupid,” I said.
“I’d pretend to disagree, but you wouldn’t believe me.” She nodded at my coffee. “Drink up. It’s a diuretic and an appetite suppressant, and it’ll give you a rosy glow.”
I grinned at her and finished the coffee in three quick swigs, then rose to pour another cup. Tempted as I was to check my reflection for a rosy glow, I managed to refrain.
* * *
Six of Swords was in a Branchbury neighborhood, streets flanked by Victorian duplexes and streetlamps still decorated with last winter’s Christmas bows. The way Branchbury is, you’d say it’s a quaint town if you were just passing through, a porch swinging, steepled churchy, barber poley kind of town. But the real truth of it, which you’d notice if you spent an hour at the Candlelight Diner over coffee and pie, is that there’s something shady over the town, a kind of aura of desperation. If you stayed an hour you’d probably hear some kind of spat between couples or neighbors in the low-rent apartments above. Or you’d see the crackpots who’d made it out of the state asylum down the street, who’d decided to stay because why not, and who had stopped their medication and now spent the vast majority of their time making death threats to their fingers. It wasn’t an evil place, it just seemed to hold too many memories of better days and better lives, and people who had been long lost.
Sydney’s shop had no character; it might just as easily have been a pizza parlor or corner grocery with its brick front and wide, blank window, the sign above it brown with silver print. I stood on the sidewalk, portfolio in hand, trying to pretend myself into someone else. It was a trick I’d learned years ago when I’d had my first interviews, that I could be strong and sparkling and self-assured if I imagined myself thin and lovely, put myself into the people I most wanted to be. Usually, I pretended I was Sydney. Which of course wouldn’t work in this particular circumstance. So I closed my eyes and made myself into another favorite choice, regal and slightly petulant, beautiful and saucy but ultimately good at heart. I was Diana Ross. I smiled and entered the shop.
It was dark inside and smelled strongly of cloves; chimes and stained glass hung from the wood-planked ceiling. The tables were dusty and buried in more odds and ends than you’d ever think could fit on a table. I restrained myself from dodging behind the first available shelf, which was not something Diana Ross would ever do. Instead I lifted my sculpted chin, curled my pouty lips into a smile, and strode to the front counter with the words already formed in my head. And found a baby.
“I’m looking for Ms. Gristler,” I told it.
The baby stared back solemnly from its carrier, rocked gently against the counter. I flushed and backed away.
“Can I help you?” said a voice from behind me.
Her voice. I turned. I not just turned, I turned with triumphant superiority, in an eighty-carat-engagement-ring-wearing sort of way. “Why Sydney Beaumont,” I said. And showed my teeth.
“Lainey? Lainey Carson? Wow, gosh. I mean gosh.”
The shock was perfect, exactly how anyone would react at the sight of Diana Ross in a dusty occult shop, and I felt my shoulders loosen. “This is such a weird coincidence. What’s it been, ten years? Fifteen?”
Sydney nodded, shook her head. “More than that I guess.” She smiled widely at me, then pulled me into her arms. And there I was, my chin on her shoulder, my face pressed against the side of her head. I just stood there. I couldn’t figure out what else to do.
Well it’s
amazing to see you!” she said, pulling away.
The happy surprise in her widened eyes had become something fake, like
the put-on surprise of the newly anointed Miss
“You either,” I said in a Diana-purr. I’d hoped she’d look awful, worn and wrinkled or pocked with adult acne, but she looked great, her hair in a strawberry-blond bob, her buttoned shirt tucked neatly into her jeans to emphasize her waist and strain just perfectly round her maybe-silicon chest. The age looked even better on her than youth had, the kind of woman you could picture in an Oil of Olay commercial, I’m thirty-six . . .
“You’re here browsing?” I said. “Pretty snazzy stuff. I love these earrings!” I lifted a card at random, a pair of pentacles, five-pointed stars, approximately the diameter of my palm.
“I work here, actually. I’ve been here for about a year, behind the counter and taking orders and inventory, all that.”
“Oh! Oh . . .” I made my voice trail off, letting Sydney hear the slight derision in my tone. The tone said loud and clear, Look at this! Who would’ve expected you’d end up as a cashier in a dusty shop whose only customers are witches! “Well good for you. So anyway, I’m here to see Ms. Gristler, if she’s around. She said to come by this morning.”
“You’re here to paint the mural?” At the counter the baby whimpered slightly, and Sydney glanced quickly at it, then turned back. “Wow, I always knew you’d become an artist; you were so damn talented. Lara told me there was somebody coming to show their work, but she’s not here.”
The baby’s voice rose to a full-fledged wail and Sydney said, “Sorry, just a sec,” waving distractedly at me as she turned. And there it was, the scar, a pale white indentation that looked almost like a vein line. I looked down at the scar on my own palm, then made a fist as Sydney walked past me to the counter. She plugged a pacifier into the baby’s mouth with the indifference of someone stuffing breadcrumbs into a turkey.
The baby was wearing green overalls printed with ducks, had orange hair and a tiny snot-filled nose. I tried to deduce its sex but came up blank. “It’s yours?”
“Her name’s Jacqueline and yeah, she’s mine.” Something unreadable flickered across her face. She traced a finger over the frilled cuff of the baby’s sleeper and gave a distant smile. “At least for now. David’s trying to say I’m unfit, but that’s just because it’s the only way he could think of to spite me for leaving him. You remember David? David McGrath?”
I nodded slowly. “He was cute. And rich, right?”
“His parents are rich, billionaires for all I know. Which in high school made him promising, but now it doesn’t mean shit. We got together after the fifteen year reunion, and we got married within five months which I now realize is not ever a good idea.” She glanced at me. “You got kids yet?”
“Kids? Well no, not yet.” I watched the baby suck furiously at the pacifier, her carrotty hair mashed crooked against one side of her head, making her look somewhat demented. So Sydney was divorced, beautiful Sydney, a divorcee with a baby, which really was worse than never having been married. Divorce tainted you, made you moldy around the edges. I smiled brightly. “But we’re trying for them, Keith and me.”
Keith was actually
a man I’d dated for six weeks, the longest-term relationship I’d ever had. I’d met him in
“He’s an architect,” I added, looking down at my rings, hoping her eyes would follow. Until I noticed a chip in the engagement ring, white plastic. I tucked my fists under my arms.
The baby began to cry around the pacifier, her lips thin and quivering. Sydney rooted behind the counter, pulled up a canvas bag. “Sorry, sorry, okay sweetie we’ll make it better.” Her hands were shaking, I noticed, her voice desperate. She routed out a bottle and pulled the pacifier from the baby’s clenched teeth, setting the bottle in her lap. “You’re hungry, right? Right?”
The baby followed the pacifier with teary eyes, looking betrayed. Sydney made no move to comfort her, so I found myself setting my portfolio on the counter and lifting the baby, pleased at my own audacity, holding the bottle to her mouth and tucking her against my shoulder.
“We’ve been
trying for about six months,” I said, “since we first got married. We both love kids so much. He’s an architect like I said, and he builds
houses and gets me to paint murals if people want them. All kinds of weird things people want,
African animals and manatees, and paintings of their dead cats. And he’s built us, Keith did, he built us a
pretty little ranch up in the farmland near
The conversation was so weird; not just the lies which were planned out, but the distracted look in Sydney’s eyes. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but I’d wanted some reaction, something, maybe admiration or even a little jealousy considering I had a fake husband and Sydney had nothing. Look who ended up with a happier life, I was trying to say. But instead it all sounded like giddy rambling.
Sydney watched the baby as I rocked it foot to foot. “So Ms. Gristler’s not going to be here, like I said. But she’s letting me look at your work and make a decision for her. ‘Specially because I’m the one who’s going to have to be working next to the thing all day, she wanted to make sure I could stand it.”
That was the problem, why it seemed so wrong, because Sydney didn’t care. Here I was trying to orchestrate every movement, every word, but to Sydney it all meant nothing. No apology, no discomfort at all. Those years we’d been friends were just some old-bad memory she’d left behind.
“Okay,” I said. “Go ahead and take a look. First’s the toy store.” I watched Sydney’s face as she scanned the photos, looking for at least some sign of admiration. “Cat in the Hat chasing after the Things. And then’s the kitchen store and the Sweet Shoppe, and I also put some sketches in back, of ideas for here. I was thinking a Druidic scene on one wall, fairies and smoke and people in dark hoods, and then another wall with a night scene, planets and stars and all that.”
“Sounds great,” Sydney said, scanning through the portfolio too quick, closing it and handing it forward.
“Thanks.” I tried to reach for it and almost dropped the baby. I grappled with her for a moment, feeling the damp on my shoulder, tears or drool, then handed her to Sydney. Sydney slung Jacqueline over her arm like she was a wet towel, and Jacqueline stopped crying, as if appalled. “So Ms. Gristler will give me a call?”
“Sure,” Sydney said nonchalantly, meaning, probably, that I wouldn’t get the job. When I always got the job, I was the best around at what I did, everyone saw it. Except Sydney must have other reasons for turning me down, which was kind of gratifying in its own way. “She has your number?” she said.
“I think so. It’s the same number I had when we were kids, my mother’s number. I’m staying there for awhile, me and Keith both, because Star’s been having a hard time. Keith’s so good about it all, though.”
“That’s great,” Sydney said. “Maybe we should get together sometime, drinks or something, reminisce about the good old days.”
She was lying, obviously. I rolled my eyes to the ceiling to show I wasn’t stupid. “That was a long time ago,” I said, then strode out the door, nearly tripping on a loose nail. It was only outside that I noticed how wildly my heart was pounding.
I drove home with my portfolio on my lap, trying not to replay every word. I’d always thought the idea of closure was just some psychological bull, but now I could feel the jarring of un-closure, like I was just hanging in midair from some marionette string still tied to those three awful years. I could pretend it wasn’t there, but it didn’t let me get off that easy, tugged and pulled at my chest pretty much always, even if nobody else could see. I could create a new life, grow past it, but every once in awhile something would happen to tug on that string, a whisper at a party that might or might not be about me, a man who didn’t call after a first date, my thighs chafing together when I walked, and that string pulled me right back into adolescence. I had the feeling that if I didn’t cut it off, and soon, I’d end up just like Star, locked away because everything outside the window could grab you and pull you back into the things you didn’t want to remember. By the time Star was my age she’d been married and widowed and had a kid, but still she couldn’t escape that pull of fear.
Back home, I brought the hair scissors into Star’s room. “Something pretty this time,” I said. “Layers maybe.”
Star watched me strangely. “Something happened.”
“Nothing happened, absolutely nothing. It was great seeing Sydney, she thought so too. She wants to get together for drinks.”
Star raised her eyebrows. “She wants something from you. Get me my cards.”
“Christ, Ma, what the hell? You think there’s no reason for her to want to spend time with me? You don’t think much of me, do you.”
“That’s not it, I just don’t think much of Sydney.” She reached for her deck and handed it forward. “Shuffle.”
I took the deck, stuck it into my back pocket. I should’ve done that a long time ago, crept in here while Star was asleep, stuck the deck into my pocket and sat on it, rubbed my butt hard against the floor. The cards were so old they’d have to crumble eventually. Well look at that, I’d say. How weird.
“Look,” Star said softly. “God has a plan for you, you know that, right? I made up a chart for you when you were born, and I’d never seen such a thing, your sun signs, your triads, I’ve never been so excited as when I made up your chart.”
“Guess I’ve been pretty disappointing so far.” I made my voice light, but I meant it. She knew I meant it.
She took both my hands. “You haven’t fulfilled your destiny yet is all. But I think soon, the universe’ll lay it on out for you. You don’t have to go out looking for your destiny, it’ll find you.”
I’d heard this before from her, many times. It used to make me feel special. I smiled and lifted my scissors. “Let’s cut your hair, okay?” What I’d do was I’d chop it all off. Not a nice exotic buzz-cut either. Choppy, sprigged-out baldness.
I thought again about Sydney’s smile, how it hadn’t touched her eyes. Maybe she did feel bad after all; maybe that’s what it meant. Or–less likely but still possible–maybe after I left she burst into sobs of shame that she hadn’t wanted to show me. We’d go out for drinks and she’d say, Look. She’d say, Look, I never meant to hurt you, I was just a kid. And I’d say, Sure, it wasn’t so bad, you didn’t hurt me. I’d say, It’s over now, I hardly even remember. And then maybe we’d rekindle a friendship or maybe not. It wouldn’t matter either way because when that string tugged me back into the past I’d see it with new eyes, a haze swept away to reveal its absurdity.
But I couldn’t stop the scenes from playing in my head, in the same agonizing slow-mo that it’d played when I was there. Alone at the cafeteria table watching her whisper behind a cupped hand, her table laughing, staring, bent in whispers that I pretend aren’t about me. I am an artist with great talent who will be famous someday, sold to rich people at auctions. In private I am funny and cool, have brilliant comebacks that regretfully surface hours too late for actual use, but that crack me up anyway. And I’m destined for greatness, I know it’s true. I’ve felt the heat of destiny ever since I first picked up a crayon, so the person they’re whispering about isn’t me, just the loser they imagine is under my skin.
Blimp! A boy calls, and I stand to throw away my lunch, pretending not to hear. The Hindenburg’s rising! Sydney shrieks and the girl beside her makes the sound of an explosion and I walk from the room amidst a cloud of laughter. Laughter echoing in me for eighteen years.