“Honestly, I do worry about that,” she says with a sigh. “Logically, in my brain, I know superstitions are a way of dealing with uncertainty. Unpredictability. A lack of control. But what if there’s really something to it? Did you know the psychic market is over two billion dollars in the United States? People want answers. Maybe they’re really getting them.” She shrugs. “It’s more likely people are profiting off our fears, though.”
“You’ve really looked into this.”
She twirls her umbrella back and forth. “Going to see Wendy was a lapse in judgment. I wanted answers, especially when everything felt so… unknown. But now I can never unhear what she said. What she said about what was on my cards, that’s now officially lodged deep in my brain, so that’s fun.”
“Or onmycards,” I say.
“Maybe the cards you got were supposed to be mine. Maybe they weren’t. I only wanted to hear something good.” She steps closer to me, lowering her voice. “The day I—we—had our fortunes read… I got laid off.”
“Shit. That’s a lot.” No wonder she was having a bad day. I don’t want to bring her even lower. She’s stressed enough as it is. “But then you won the lottery!” I try as an attempt to lift her spirits.
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry for how I acted that day,” she says.
“It’s fine. Really. Bad days remind us to be grateful for the good ones. I do think we need to understand what’s going on, though. If I get a good fortune here, then I can confirm I’m overreacting and let it go.”
Hazel stands a little straighter at this.
“You don’t even have to do it,” I tell her. “We just need to know mine. I volunteer my future.”
“For both of you, I’ll give a discount,” the older man says behind me. His black hair is gelled into a comb-over, and he wears spectacles on the tip of his nose. “Fifteen dollars for two readings.”
“It’ll just be him,” Hazel says as we take seats next to each other.
The man writes something down on a notepad. “Ten for one reading.”
“You’re not going to negotiate?” Hazel asks when I agree.
“We have lottery money,” I whisper to her. “We can afford to pay full price.”
“We technically don’t have any of that money yet,” she says. “Ohhh, right. You want a good fortune. I got you. Make sure to add a generous tip.”
The man won’t give me a good fortune just because I overpay him. At least, I don’t think he’d do that.
I hand the man a twenty-dollar bill just in case and tell him to keep the change.
The fortune teller, who tells us his name is Bo, instructs me to choose which tea I want from the glass jars containing loose leaves. I select lavender mint tea, but when I go to scoop a teaspoon into my cup, I drop the spoon. Tea leaves scatter all over his table.
I try again, this time with success. Bo pours hot water from a kettle into a small, white, rounded cup with an equally tiny handle. He explains that I’ll drink the tea once it steeps, leaving just a little bit of liquid left in the cup. I blow the steam away as Hazel watches eagerly from her seat.
My gaze drifts back toward the fair. Wendy doesn’t appear to be here, and on a holiday, probably one of the busiest days for business.
“Do you know where that fortune teller with the birds went?” I ask Bo.
He shakes his head. “For a few days now, she’s had restless birds. They refused to leave the cage,” Bo replies. “I haven’t seen her since.”
Hazel gives me a pointed look.
Great. I’ve rattled Doc and Marty. I read somewhere that crows hold grudges for up to seventeen years. I hope sparrows aren’t like that.
“Do you know when she’ll be back?” I ask.
Bo shakes his head, his sparse, gelled hair staying firmly in place. “She didn’t say. Good for my business, though!”
I busy myself with the tea. It’s still hot and burns the tip of my tongue. I’m flustered enough that I swallow a few tea leaves.
“Is there a specific question you’d like answered for this reading?” Bo asks.
I cough into my sleeve. “What does my future look like?” I say, going with the same question we asked Wendy.
