A bad fortune is better than a fortune that was never supposed to be yours.
Because after all that commotion, I now find myself with not three fortunes, but six.
Chapter 2
HAZEL
No one move!” I say, holding my arms out.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to remember where Wendy placed the first card. It’s too hard to know now that there are six cards on the table.
“It was that one, right?” I ask Wendy. “I remember Doc picking that one and you flipping it over there. Or was it Marty?” I lean closer to the birds. “Do you remember what fortunes you picked?”
“Fortunes?” Tie-Dye Guy asks, looking over at Wendy’s booth sign. “Tell me I did not just mess up your future.”
“There’s a very good chance you did.” I hate how panicked my voice sounds. I’m not freaking out over a fortune-telling reading, am I? It all becomes too overwhelming. I feel myself detach a little.
“Let’s look for little beak marks,” Tie-Dye Guy proposes.
The three of us scan along the sides of the cards, looking for evidence of having been freshly plucked.
According to Dad, bad things happen in fours. In Chinese culture, the number itself is considered unlucky. It sounds too much like “death.”
I think the same logic applies to mistakes.
Mistake #1 was not making myself indispensable at work. I spent practically the entirety of my twenties at that place. I wasloyal. That’s rare these days. Was I the muscle behind their best reports? Yes. Did I have the most historical context, having been at the company for nearly eight years? Also, yes. But clearly, I was not essential enough to keep when my company merged with a bigger one.
Now I no longer have a job. The same job that not just supported me but also Dad and my brother. Plus, I liked being a data analyst. It suited me. And I worked hard for it.
It took my manager no more than a minute to sledgehammer the foundation of my life.It isn’t personal, he had said at the end of a full day of work. And he’s right. It isn’t. Because that would mean I’m more than just a cog in a machine, a line item on a spreadsheet.
Mistake #2 was coming to a fortune teller. How, exactly, was this supposed to make me feel better?
Which brings me to Mistake #3: running into Tie-Dye Guy. Or no. Him running intome.
“Again, I’m really sorry. Toffee wasn’t trying to hurt the birds,” he says once we find that, unfortunately, there are small indents on every card. “Toffee just—he has this stuffed toy that he loves… it’s a bird.” He grimaces. “I can see where this all went wrong.”
Wendy looks unamused by this.
The cards are a mess. A physical representation of my life, it seems. Money, a job, love, my future. It was all too much to hope for, clearly.
“Can we get the birds back out here? Do they have muscle memory or something?” I ask Wendy.
“The fortunes have been selected,” she says definitively.
I shake my head. “They picked two very specific cards for me before this guy and Coffee even got here.” I try very hard to suppress the fact that a black cat has crossed my path. I do not need any more bad luck today.
“His name is Toffee, and technically, he isn’t my cat,” Tie-Dye Guy says, like this might absolve him.
Toffee sniffs the air and lies down like this entire ordeal has exhausted him. Now that the damage has been done, he couldn’t care less about the birds.
I stretch my neck up to look at Tie-Dye Guy. It’s hard not to notice his height. He’s got to be at least a foot taller than my five foot three.
“You’re the one walking him,” I press, the edge in my voice sharper than necessary. I rub my temples. “That makes you responsible for this.”
“Well, yes,” he says guiltily. “Toffee’s muscle strength usually isn’t that… forceful. Or sudden. He requires his daily walk or else he gets grouchy and tired. He’ll keep Mrs. Walker up all night, so I need to maintain his routine.” He tilts his head. “Though the rain didn’t help.”
“You,” Wendy says, pointing from Tie-Dye Guy to the empty seat next to mine. “There.”
