“Yeah,” Mark says. “I can see that.” His voice is shaking.
“Don’t be scared,” she says. “Or, okay, go ahead: Be scared. That’s okay, too. Give me a second. Let me think.”
She goes back to the beginning—our upside-down World—follows it to the Eight of Swords and then to the Tower again.
“I’m new at this,” she says. “And I can see how these cards look frightening. They are frightening. But look at you two. You look horrible. You look sad and scared. You don’t need the cards to tell you that. So if we follow the journey they are showing us, we can see that the tower is necessary. Something profound needs to happen. Something needs to change, and it is going to change soon. You may already know what’s coming. It’s going to shake you. It’s going to change your world. But after the tower burns to the ground, and you’ve picked yourselves up off the rocks, and the fire ends and the night passes, it’s going to be morning again.
“Mark,” she says. “You think you are alone, but someone is on the horizon. I see love, mutual love, in your near future. It’s not coming directly from the card, but it’s a feeling I’m getting. It’s someone you know but wouldn’t expect. She isn’t who you think she is. And Kate, that woman in the blindfold? She is you. But look at how her feet aren’t even touching the ground. You are so close to being free.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I say.
“I know,” she says. “I know. But change takes courage.”
She sits back, as though she’s finished, but then she leans forward again and stares at the cards.
“A thought is coming,” she says.
We wait.
And then her face lights up.
“He,” she says to Mark. “I’m sorry—I just assumed. I wasn’t hearing clearly enough. He isn’t who you think he is.”
Violet gives the woman fifteen bucks and Mark stands up, but it takes me a moment longer to gather myself. Finally, I do. I try to call back my skepticism, but I can’t muster it. Whatever this just was, it feels real, and when I turn around I can see that it’s real for Violet as well.
She’s staring at me, her sadness intensified.
“It sounds like you have some things to figure out,” she says. “I don’t want to get in the way of them.”
I should tell her she has it wrong. I should lie and claim I don’t believe in any of it. I should say, Even if I did believe it, you could never be in my way. I want to go back to her studio, to the moment when she said she thought something was waiting for her here. I was, I should be telling her. I still am.
But I take too long to say anything, and she gives my silence meaning. She nods. She forces the saddest smile.
“Let me know when you’ve figured it out,” she says, and then she turns from us and walks back toward home.
WEDNESDAY
15
MARK
“Do you think it’s him?” I ask, for the eleventh time in five minutes.
It’s before school the next morning. We’re sitting on the hood of Katie’s car, sipping coffee and watching the boys head into school.
“Mackenzie Whittaker?”
“I’ll bet behind that rough-and-tumble science-fair exterior, he’s a kitten. Not at all who I think he is.”
“What would the two of you talk about?”
“Science. We’d talk about science. Hot and heavy science. Earth science.”
“How about him?”
She’s nodding toward Ted Lee, a guy on my baseball team.
“Straight.”
“You sure?”
“Straight.”
“You’ve given this some thought, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I admit. “I’ve given this some thought. Some of the thoughts were pretty detailed. But the answer remains the same. He’s straight.”
“I hate that word. Straight. At the very least, those of us who are nonstraight should get to be called curvy. Or scenic. Actually, I like that: ‘Do you think she’s straight?’ ‘Oh no. She’s scenic.’”
“You know what I hate?”
“What?”
I glance at Ted, who’s looking really good. “I hate that we start everything with this qualifying round. Is he or isn’t he? If I was into girls, I wouldn’t have that. I’d just be able to go for it, since the odds would be in my favor. And if the girl happened to be scenic, it would just be, like, oops.”
“But what if the guy you think is straight is not who you think he is.” Katie says this as if she’s in fortune-teller-training school.
“You know,” I say, leaning back on her front windshield and taking a sip of coffee, “we need to have our own morning show. Just you and me on the hood of a car, talking about everyone who passes by. It could be massive.”
“How about Diego? He’s scenic.”
Even though I know who she’s talking about, I raise my eyes in his direction. Then I regret it, because he sees, and an awkward moment passes before he looks away.
“Oh,” Katie says. “Interesting.”
“He had a crush on me,” I explain. “Like, for a while. Most of this year. He asked me out. Three times.”