by Linda Gerber
No. I turned away. Even if I did find it, how would I get Kyra to talk to me? I’d been slapped down enough. I grabbed my backpack and walked out the front door.
I didn’t plan on going to the mall so early. It just seemed like the natural place to be, even though I wasn’t scheduled to work until five. I hoped Gina would be working. I wanted to talk to her some more about the numbers.
When I got to ShutterBugz, the Be Back sign was sitting on the counter. I figured maybe Gina was on break, so I wandered over to the food court, hoping I would find her there. Sure enough, I found her sitting at one of the back tables with her feet propped up, eating bourbon chicken.
“Hey!” she called when she saw me. “What are you doing here so early?”
I shrugged. “I have some . . . shopping to do and I saw you sitting here, so . . .”
She pushed a chair toward me with her foot. “Join me. Take a load off.”
I dropped my backpack onto an empty chair and sat on the one she offered me.
“Don’t you want to get something to eat?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No. I ate before I came.”
“So,” she said, smoothing her shirt over her belly. “What’s up?”
I hesitated for a moment. Suddenly, I felt foolish for what I was about to ask her. She watched me expectantly, waiting, and I let it tumble out. “I . . . I was curious about that numerology system you were telling me about.”
Her smile was instantaneous. “Sure. What do you need to know?”
“What was it called again?”
“Chaldean. It’s not as common as the Pythagorean System, but it’s been around the longest, except for maybe Ki and Kabbalah, but those are based on different alphabets.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I thought you said you just dabbled.”
“What can I say?” She smiled wryly. “It’s a hobby.”
“Isn’t it kind of weird that there are so many systems?” I asked.
She toyed with her bracelets and they jangled softly. “Oh, I don’t know. They’re all attempts to understand the vibrations of the universe, I suppose.”
“Vibrations?” I thought of the way my head buzzed whenever I was pulled into a trance. I would definitely describe that as vibration. “What does that mean?”
Gina blew her black hair from her eyes and looked up to the ceiling as if trying to divine the answer. “It’s like . . . there’s energy all around us, right? Lots of different kinds of energy, but it all occupies the same space. The thing that distinguishes the one from the other is a different wavelength.”
“Okay,” I said cautiously.
“Those wavelengths—the vibrations—are on what you might call different frequencies,” she continued. “So it’s possible to tune into, for instance, the energy vibrations of numbers if you hit the right frequency.”
“Like a radio?” I asked.
“Exactly! Your brain is a receptor with electrical impulses running through it, right? So, theoretically, if you set your brain to the same vibratory wavelength as the energy you want to tune into, you draw that energy to you in the form of thoughts or impressions.”
“By tuning into it.”
She gave me a triumphant smile. “You’ve got it.”
I almost couldn’t believe it. Was she saying that I could actually control the vibrations? I was trying to figure out how to ask her when she suddenly pushed back from the table.
“Yikes. Break’s over already.” She pushed to her feet. “That was much too short. We’re going to have to talk to Carole about that.”
“Yeah,” I murmured. I was vaguely aware of her leaving. I think I waved good-bye, but I’m not sure. I was too preoccupied considering the possibilities of what Gina had just said. If I had the power to control the vibrations, it might be possible to draw the trances to me. I might even be able to determine what it was I saw in them. If Kyra wouldn’t help me to see whatever was in the vision, maybe I could do it myself.
If I could jump-start a trance, I’d have more control. I could choose when. I could choose where. Jumping up from the table, I tried to think of a secluded place in the mall where I could go to try it out. I glanced at my watch. I’d have to hurry—I had to be to work by five. There wasn’t much time.
The great thing about the Nordstrom in the Westland Mall is that they have a lounge in the third-floor restroom. I assume it’s meant for moms who want a discreet place to breast-feed their babies or something, because I can’t imagine why else anyone would want to go hang out in a bathroom. Whatever the purpose, it was the perfect room to hide away and try my hand at “tuning in.”
Just in case anyone walked in while I was experimenting, I turned one of the nursing chairs toward the wall before pulling out my notebook and pen. I sat and stared at the textured pattern of the wallpaper and, for the first time, challenged the trance to come to me.
I didn’t have to wait long before a buzz started at the base of my skull and then exploded in my head. I heard my own gasp before I slipped away.
I’m back on the road. Numbers fill the space above my head. Colors running, dripping in the rain. I turn in a circle, watching in the darkness for the headlights. There they are—distant pinpricks of light growing bigger with every heartbeat. And then I see him. The light’s behind him, so all I can make out is a dark silhouette, but there’s something familiar about him. I feel his panic as the headlights close in and I try to call to him, but he doesn’t hear me. I can’t see his face.
“Over here!” I yell, and he starts to turn.
With a strong whoosh! I was back in the lounge, the notebook paper covered in a string of numbers.
My mouth had gone completely dry and my heart was racing so fast it made my chest ache, but I had done it! I was in control. And then it hit me: if I could call on the trances, maybe I could learn to avoid them as well. Maybe I could make them stop. For the first time in months, I felt hope.
When I got back to ShutterBugz, Jake was leaning on the counter, talking to Gina. They must have been having some conversation, because neither one of them even noticed I had walked up beside them.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Gina about jumped off the stool. One hand flew to her throat and the other to her stomach. “Don’t do that! Do you want to see this baby drop out right at your feet?”
“Um, I don’t think it works that way.”
“Never mind.” She grabbed her bag out from under the counter. “I didn’t have this with me when we were talking in the food court. I brought something to show you.” She started digging through the bag. I’d never seen her so animated.
I looked to Jake, questioning, but he just shrugged and gave me the universal “beats me” palms up.
She finally found what she was looking for—a carved wooden box. She held it up reverently, like we were supposed to be impressed.
“It’s . . . really nice,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Not the box, genius. I want to show you what’s in the box.” She dropped her bag to the floor and set the box on the counter. Both Jake and I leaned forward as she pulled off the top lid.
“I was thinking,” she said, “about our conversation the other day and then I started wondering if I still had these and it turns out I did!”
I reached out to pick one up at the same time as Jake asked, “What are they?”
Gina smiled proudly. “My tarot cards.”
I yanked my hand back like my fingers had been scorched and she laughed.
“They’re not going to bite you or curse you, or whatever it is you’re thinking.”
“I’m not . . .” I started, but I couldn’t put it into words. Everything I knew about tarot cards was associated with the occult. It had been drilled into me forever to be afraid of anything having to do with the occult. My trances included.
Gina tilted the box and let the cards fall out into her hand. “Remember how I was telling you how the Chaldean number vibrations have tarot a
ssociations? Well, I thought you might be interested in seeing what they are.”
“Am I missing something?” Jake asked. “What is all this?”
Gina glanced at me quickly and then shrugged. “Just something Ashlyn and I were talking about.” She pulled the top card from the deck and placed it faceup on the counter. It showed a man, hanging upside down from a tree. “Remember I told you about the victim number? This is the corresponding tarot image. And this”—she laid the next card down by the first—“is the Shattered Citadel.” The card showed a man with a crown, falling headfirst from a tower that was being struck by lightning.
I remembered how Gina had said that number and symbol had something to do with strange fatalities. I shifted uncomfortably.
“But this one,” she said, laying down the next card, “is one of my favorites. It’s ‘The Awakening.’ Here’s the angel with the trumpet.” She pointed to the illustration at the top of the card. “But this is the only deck I have with the little angel girls rising to meet him.”
Suddenly, the light around me narrowed until it felt like I was looking through a long, dark tunnel. The only image I could see was the illustration on the card—two little angels, dressed in white. My throat closed and my breath became shallow and tight. I wanted to look away, but my eyes were pulled toward it.
“That’s cool,” Jake said, “But what’s it for?”
The pull was broken. I blinked and the light returned. Gina was gathering her cards, tapping the deck on the counter to straighten them.
“Some people,” she said matter-of-factly, “believe you can use the cards, or numbers, or other metaphysical signals to predict the future.”
“Do you believe in it?” I asked.
Jake laughed. “She believes in everything.”
She shot him a look and laid the cards gently back in their case. “Hey, watch your tone. You’re talking about someone’s mom here. And I don’t believe in everything, thank you. I don’t believe in bigotry. I don’t believe in small-mindedness, I don’t believe—”
Laughing, he threw up his hands in surrender. “You win, as always.”
Gina dipped her head regally. “Thank you for acknowledging it.”
“I know when I’ve been beat.” He backed away from the kiosk. “I better get to work.”
Gina waved him off and then turned to me, her eyes alight. “You’re going to love this. Just for giggles, while you were off shopping, I decided to do all our numbers. What do you think?”
“Yeah, that would be fun,” I said cautiously.
She grinned and pulled out a paper from her purse. “It was fun. So check out what I found for you.” She pointed to the paper. “I didn’t have your birth date, so I just ran your number vibrations based on your name.”
On the paper, my name was written across the top, with the corresponding numbers below. She added the numbers in a string that looked exactly like the way Kyra and I wrote when we were in a trance.
“Your compound vibration numbers are these,” she said, and circled the numbers eighteen, forty-one, and fourteen. “What I get from them is that you are powerful and mysterious. Eighteen is a tough one to read because it can point to so many things. It talks about the world trying to destroy the spiritual power. We’ll leave that one alone for a minute. ’Cause we’ve got this bad boy right here.” She pointed to the number forty-one. “This number is supposed to have magical power and deals with future events and so does this one.” She pointed to the fourteen. “This also talks about danger from natural forces like water, fire, air, that sort of thing.”
I stared at the paper. The equations looked the same as what I was used to, but something was off. “I don’t understand,” I said. “How are you getting these numbers?”
Gina glanced up, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve had my numbers done before and these aren’t them.”
She thought for a moment and then the understanding lit her face. “Oh, right. I see where you’re confused. Remember how I told you about the Chaldeans?”
Not really, but I nodded hesitantly anyway. “Yeah?”
“The number values they assigned to each letter were different than what the Pythagoreans did.” She flipped the paper over and grabbed a pen. “The Chaldeans didn’t assign any letters to the number nine because nine is considered sacred. That’s why their number-to-letter calculations are different than what you get with the Pythagorean System. Look, I’ll show you.” She listed the numbers one through nine across the top of one half of the paper, and the numbers one through eight on the other. “Now watch,” she said, and began scribbling letters in columns beneath the numbers.
“See? This is how the numbers come out differently.”
“I see.” I stared at the different number associations and shook my head. It made sense in a tragic kind of way. All those years, Kyra and I had been trying to decipher the messages we wrote by using the Pythagorean values for number vibrations. We never even considered another system.
Gina didn’t seem to sense my change of mood but rattled on, grinning like we were sharing some cosmic joke. “Now, what’s cool,” she said, flipping the paper back over, “is when we reduce the numbers. So with your first name, we take the one and eight and you have nine. You see, the sacred number. And the four and one from your last name gives us five, which is supposed to be a perfect number. It means ‘stops the power of poisons.’ Both of those numbers have very powerful vibrations. So you, my dear, are a magical, powerful soothsayer with the ability to stop poisons!”
She laughed and I tried to laugh with her. It was stupid, really. I wasn’t even sure I believed in numerology, so I shouldn’t have been so shaken. But the two angels on the tarot card, the different numbering systems, the mention of the future from the compound numbers in Gina’s reading . . . it all hit too close to home.
Gina handed me the paper. “Here. You keep it.” She was about to sling the strap of her bag up over her shoulder when she stopped. “Oh, do you want to know something really fun? You and Jake have the exact same first name, last name, and final number vibrations. How wild is that?” She elbowed me in the side.
I was so thrown by the Chaldean connection that I didn’t recognize the tease. “What does that mean?” I asked, completely serious.
Gina threw back her head and laughed. “I tell you what,” she said. “I’m going to let you figure that out.”
14
It took a little time for the information Gina had given me to sink in. After the initial pang of realizing how Kyra and I could have missed the mark for all those years, the thought occurred to me that understanding the new numbers could change everything. We had never been able to make sense of the messages we wrote, but maybe now we could. It wouldn’t be easy—we’d still be working the numbers to letters backward with a huge range of possibilities, but at least we might come closer than we had before. Pair that with my success in the Nordstrom lounge and I wasn’t helpless anymore.
My mood took such an upswing that the ShutterBugz kiosk was much too small to contain my new infusion of energy and enthusiasm. I wanted to run, to shout, to hug everyone I met. I knew I was being too smiley, too bouncy. People probably thought I was insane, but I didn’t care. If I could control the trances, there was nothing I couldn’t do.
I couldn’t wait to tell Kyra, to teach her how to “tune in.” She may not want to talk to me now, but she would change her mind once she knew what I had to say. Then she could come home. Then we could learn the power of the vibrations together.
I pulled out the numbers Gina had done for me and ran my fingers over the compound numbers she had circled. She said they meant I was powerful. I felt powerful.
And Jake. I peeked up at the Kinnear Music window, smiling at the idea that he and I had the same numbers. I added them in my head. J, A, K, E, 1, 1, 2, 5. He didn’t have a compound vibration, but the total added up to nine, just like mine. But then I started to do the last name and paused. Gina said
the numbers were exactly the same, but Kinnear’s compound number added up to twenty-one, which would be reduced to three. Greenfield was forty-one, which is how I got the perfect number of five.
She must have made a mistake. Or maybe I did, adding in my head. I was about to take out a pen and write it down when the phone rang. It was Carole, reminding me to prepare the deposit for the night, like this was a new task for me. I was in such a good mood, I didn’t even let it bother me.
I had just started dragging the gate around the kiosk that night when I noticed Nick sitting at a table in the food court, watching me. I’d made such a habit of feeling small around Nick that I almost lost some of my newly gained confidence, seeing him there. But then I remembered: there was nothing I couldn’t do.
I waved to him and he raised his chin to me in that I’m-so-cool way. I smiled to myself and continued locking up. When I turned around, he was standing right behind me.
“Oh!” I gasped. “You startled me.”
He took a step back, that cool aura gone. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. I was just—”
“No,” he said. He dug his hands into his pockets and stared at his feet. “I mean, I really am sorry. I just wanted you to know.”
He turned to walk away, but I grabbed his arm. “Wait.”
Nick looked back toward me, but he wouldn’t look at me. “I don’t blame you for hating me,” he said.
A hot knot tightened in my throat. Is that what he thought? “I don’t hate you, Nick,” I said softly.
He stared at his feet some more.
“Come on.” I led him to an empty bench near the center court. “Let’s talk.”
It’s interesting what a change in perspective can do. For the first time, I found myself looking at Nick not as a boy I’d had a crush on for four years, but as a person who was hurting inside, just like I was. I realized, as I looked at him with all the swagger stripped away, that the only power he’d ever held over me was the power I had given him.