“Time has never been a deterrent for you before. Though now I guess that you’re cleaning up your image, you’re making healthier choices too.” A real groan escapes them. “Shall I call the medic?”
“No, just give me a minute.” I use that minute to dampen my forehead, ratchet up my breathing, and exacerbate my sickness. Not like my inner turmoil isn’t enough to give me a clammy sheen and perpetual cramps.
When I open the door, Jessalynn visibly cringes. “Jeez, I’ve seen you look better after a three-night bender.” Which inspires them to send me home for an early lunch and nap on the stringent condition that my assistant keep an eye on me. I need to be back—bright-eyed and bushy-tailed—for the second half of rehearsal later. A full-fledged dress rehearsal that has me nervous beyond anything.
By the time I’m back at the apartment, decked out in loungewear, I’ve already hatched an escape plan. I send my assistant out for a brand of stomach medication that doesn’t exist. A goose chase that will last just long enough to get me out of the apartment, downtown, and back in time to have made a miraculous recovery. VeryThe Lizzie McGuire Moviewithout the fake European pop-star part.
Lucille is surprised to see me again so soon when I arrive at her place, out of breath. She says her regular clients usually need more time between readings to really sit with what she’s told them. In her lap, an orange cat purrs before hopping down, circling my legs, and leaning its head into my shin. Its fur reminds me of Drew’s hair, and its affection sends a thrill through me.
Completing this hunt is for us. For a redo.
“She likes you,” Lucille says of the cat, impressed. “She hates grown men usually. It’s why I keep her in the bedroom when clients come through. It’s why you didn’t meet her when you were here last. Her name is Tigress, and she’s clawed more than her fair share of middle-aged men in the time I’ve had her.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m not a middle-aged man,” I say without thinking. Lucille’s office, for lack of a better word, has an ethereal hominess. It’s what makes people comfortable enough to ask her vulnerable questions during their readings and imagine futures that can be foretold through palm ridges. It’s what keeps them coming back…and what prompts me to explain my situation this time.
I don’t skimp on the details because I know she’ll believe me. I’mpaying her to believe me, essentially, and withholding information has been constricting my muscles, driving me wild.
Lucille appears completely unfazed by my admission. Or perhaps she’s deemed me unhinged, in which case she’s trying not to make any sudden movements for fear I might pounce on her. Tigress is no match for this CrossFit bod I’ve been lugging around on loan.
“Say something?” I ask meekly, dropping my shoulders. I’m treating her like a therapist with an on-call telephone line to the cosmos.
She rests her chin on her fist and appraises me. “Nothing I can say will change your truth. If you want me to say I believe you, I think you know I do.” She points to her rock collection, her crystal ball, her burning incense, and her tarot deck. The tools of her trade that supply her with a spiritual—if not concrete—tether to a universe of knowledge beyond the norm. “Crystals have healing powers, vibrations. I’ve never time traveled myself, but I’ve also never parachuted out of a plane or hiked through Greece or swam with sharks. Does that mean those life-changing experiences aren’t possible?”
“I think you’re overlooking the part where I said I went to bed seven years ago and woke up here.” My voice is a wavering scrape, worn out from rehearsals.
“And I think you’re conflating what’s perceived to be possible and what truly is,” she says. “Not everyone believes in ghosts, but there are plenty who’ve had interactions with the supernatural. How do we explain that? Who’s to say airplanes aren’t simulators that cover up the fact that teleportation is real and if the commoners knew, they’d use it for unsightly gain?”
“If ghosts are real, I bet the Wright brothers are in this room and flipping you off right about now.”
A witchy cackle echoes through the room. “Let them. The spiritual realm doesn’t scare me, just as time travel shouldn’t scare you.”
“That’s out of the question. I’ve been scared out of my wits ever since I woke up here. Scared of how I got here, how my life turned out like this, how I could’ve possibly hurt all these people I loved so dearly.” I sigh heavily. “If crystals are meant to be about freeing the self and making positive change, how come I turned out to be such a frivolous ass?”
Tigress leaps up onto my lap, snuggles against my chest, and stabilizes my heart rate while Lucille prepares some tea for the two of us. “Crystals are not powerful on their own. On a shelf or in a store, they are ornamental only. It’s not until someone charges them and sets their intentions that they’re able to become more than a beautiful, natural element.”
“Does that mean because my intentions were selfish, the crystals could only match that energy?” The thought had occurred to me before, but I didn’t put much merit to it. That night I said I wanted to prove people wrong, I was awash in negativity, convincing myself that I’d made the right choice regardless of cost, and maybe that distorted everything.
Her nod isn’t definitive either. “There are no exact rules or science. If there were, their magic and abilities would’ve been adopted by all, don’t you think?” While she has a point, I still wish there were a manual that I’d been handed when I woke up. At least I would’ve known I wasn’t alone in this peculiar experience. “Why are you stalling? What is it you really came here for?” she asks, and I’m slightly unnerved at her ability to break apart my intentions like a KitKat bar.
I show her the crystals on my phone. “These are the last two I need, but again—”
“You’re scared because you’re in love,” she says, finally sounding definitive. It leads me to wonder if she’s a mind reader among all her other otherworldly talents. “Don’t make that face. You don’t need a crystal ball to know the man you were in here with the last time loves you beyond measure.”
With that, I tell her the truth about my real timeline. About leaving the wedding and losing Drew. Just saying it how it happened, not how I painted it in my head, frees me of some of my guilty conscience. “What if I double back, make better choices, and we still don’t end up together? At least now I know I have him.”
Lucille wraps her shawl around her torso, eyes scanning the ceiling as if there really are ghosts up there whispering down celestial messages to her. Oh wait, that’s a medium, not a psychic. “What’s meant to be will always come to pass. Time does not dictate destiny.”
“It doesn’t?” I built my whole life plan around time, around meeting goals by certain ages so I could prove to those who doubted me that the pursuit of my dreams was not wasted. Had that all been for nothing?
Without a word, she walks out of the room with Tigress close behind.
As I sit there alone, swirls of steam rising off the mug of tea she placed before me, I consider, as she said, all the wonders in my original timeline that I’ve never encountered. Hot-air balloons. Hallucinogenics. Free soloing.
Any number of those things could’ve unlocked a part of me, led me to new discoveries, knocked me off the course my life was taking. Maybe there was always magic around me. It just took a lavish wedding, a wellness company, and some crystals to set me up to believe.
When Lucille returns, she sets small malachite and pyrite stones in my hand. I go to pay her, but she stops me. “When you get back to your true life, you come and see me. I may not remember, but somehow I’ll know, and that will be payment enough.”
Lucille seems entirely unsurprised when I hug her. She even hugs me back. Tigress, cuddler that she is, meows as she joins in as well. I scratch her between the ears before I go, bounding down the sidewalk with faith rolling around at the bottom of my bag.
