“Okay, tell me how many times I will get laid this year,” says the athletic one.
“Ha ha, boys, it doesn’t work like that, I cannot tell you your future to a T, I can just tell you what is suggested based on your current outlook.”
“What? I wanna know who gets more girls?” he replied. The reader sighed.
“Three and two,” She said pointing from the muscular one then to the thinner one.
“Oh, yeah?” he said, raising his hands above his head.
“Yes, isn’t that great . . . perhaps I should also inform you that there’s going to come a point in this next year when someone will need you to be there for them and if you are not . . . the consequences will be severe.”
“She’s going to need me like sexually,” he retorted sarcastically and began laughing.
“Abel, really dude?” said the other as he half pushed him off his seat, “Let’s get out of here. Thank you for your time, ma’am.”
He fumbled for his wallet and pulled out a twenty, “Please keep the change.”
They begin to leave, and she grabbed the arm of the boy wearing glasses. “Do be your brother’s keeper. His unborn child’s life depends on him being there when he is most needed.”
He turned around, clearly bewildered, while the other boy seemed to not hear what the woman had just said, and dragged his friend away, back into the crowd. I was quite entertained by the reader and thought there might be some more interesting things to see around the carnival. I started to leave then heard something behind me.
“You,” I turned around to see who the woman was talking to; she stepped out of the tent and was staring right at me.
“You’re here. Huh, that’s ironic, I wasn’t expecting you, not yet. Come inside.”
The woman beckoned me inside. I went in slowly. I was happy I had ten dollars because I think she was expecting me to get a reading. Inside, the tent was like a whole new world. The noise outside seemed to fade to insignificance. I wondered how I had ever heard the conversation that had just ensued. I sat across from her on a fluffy pillow, legs crossed, taking everything in. Smoke filled the tent from burning incense; the smell was intoxicating and relatively nice. It was comfortable inside. The woman seated herself on a small stool and stared across at me. I noticed she had several tattoos covering her arms; they were quite exquisite. In spite of being inside the tent, she lit a cigarette which filled the air with more smoke. She stared at me from the corner of her eye.
“Do I pay by the minute?” I asked, thinking my money would run out fast, at this rate, “’Cause, I only have five dollars. ”
“You come with many questions,” she said without looking at me.
“Is there something I’m supposed to know?” I played along with the charade.
“There are so many things I can tell you right now, but I fear what effect they will have on your perception of this life. I can tell you this: I know that you will suffer more than you already have. This will be the worst year of your life, and I don’t think you are prepared to deal with it emotionally. It is going to break you, and your recovery is undetermined.”
“Wow. I thought you were supposed to tell me that riches awaited me,” I said, feeling let down.
“I’m sure that’s not what your great-grandmother told you.”
I snapped my head up so fast I think I pulled a muscle.
“What?” I said rubbing the back of my neck.
“You know what I speak of. I fear just being in the same room with you. I felt the same way when I was around her, but I couldn’t resist. You guys are two of a kind, and a bane to the psychic community. You see, when you step into my world it’s a rush, your emotions run unbounded through this room, like a wildfire. They speak for themselves when you are silent.”
“Are you the same way?”
“Ha, heavens no, I mean I have my gift, for most, it’s like a whisper in your ear, and you just know what is coming. For you, your life is screaming at me,” she raised her hands to her temples, “it’s almost deafening.”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing yet. You’ve barely scratched the surface of this thing you have going on inside you. It’s strong and all-consuming. If you let it, it will take control of your life. You can hurt, you can heal, you can kill.”
“Kill?” I repeated, laughing to myself in disbelief. “I don’t think anything could make me go to that sort of extreme.”
“Have you ever been in love?” she asked, “Believe me, it will take you there. Hate is not the opposite of love, no. Hate is so much like love the two are basically two halves of a whole. The worst kinds of hatred come out of a place where there once was love.”
I was perplexed yet intrigued by this comment. My mind slowly processed it as I tried to remain present in the conversation.
“I just don’t want to hurt anyone,” I said trying to choose my words more carefully.
“Oh, I know you don’t want to, but if you can’t constrain it after it gets control of you, you’ll be helpless.”
“You sound a lot like my great-grandmother, you know that?”
“Well, we were friends. Although she might not agree with that definition,” she said, “Look in that address book you have for Jasmine Thine. I’m in there, page four third from the top. She came to me regularly, looking for answers, looking for a light that was never there.”
“I don’t think we’re all that alike,” I said decisively.
“Well, you hardly knew her. A visit once a year, that’s an acquaintance, not a relationship.”
“So, what’s coming next? What am I supposed to prepare for?” I was becoming irritated and impatient.
“Have you seen your shadow yet?”
“Uh yeah, I generally see it every day . . .”
“Oh my goodness, child, that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then no. Why are you asking me? Shouldn’t you know already?” I ask in faux concern. She laughed as she exhaled her cigarette smoke.
“Two of a kind, you know─ ” she shook her head, then stopped abruptly, “Oh, you lie.”
I felt myself grow tense.
“You have seen it . . . twice.” she looked at me in surprise.
“But you’re so young. The second one you felt an obligation for, but the first . . . the first you felt something else. A girl?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. I shrugged my shoulders, unwilling to elaborate. She smiled, stubbed out her cigarette while blowing out the smoke, and immediately lit another one.
“Must be some girl, what are the odds?” she said facing me directly and getting closer, “The day of the accident. Something unusual happened to you?”
“Yeah, it was so weird, like the world stopped and everything had this like purple tint to it.”
“You mean blue.”
“Blue? No, like purple.”
“Like purple, or was it purple?”
“It was purple,” I asserted, humored by her interest. She accidentally dropped her cigarette, but immediately retrieved it while brushing ash from her clothes.
“Why did you save her?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “I felt . . . something.”
I shook my head not really knowing how to explain it to her.
“A connection?”
“Yeah, she said she felt something too.”
“And right now you think that she doesn’t care about you,” she said and scrutinized my reaction. I was sure she didn’t care.
“You’re wrong, she cares and the awareness she sensed between you will always be there, for reasons I believe are not my responsibility to divulge. With you two, though it is different, there’s more. Your shadow . . . it’s so unusual,” she said, but offered no further explanation, “You think she doesn’t understand, but she does. She’s going to bring you a world of hope and a world of pain.”
“I don’t think I’ll be seeing her anytime soon,” I said.
“You will, but listen to me now
. That voice you hear in your head, whispering to you about that girl; whatever you do, don’t ever act upon it. It will get more persistent every day. Not that I have a problem with people’s lifestyle choices, I don’t. I can feel your energy toward her, it’s strong now, and as much good as you may want to do, you always have to understand you can cause that much pain to a person. Don’t take her down with you.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” I said, only half understanding what she was talking about.
“You’ll come across all kinds of people in your journey through life,” she said.
“People like me?”
“I suppose it’s possible but unlikely. I was referring to an assortment of different personalities. You have readers like me, not rare, but not common. Then you have the ‘intuitive,’ these people are unpredictable, I’m not even sure if their art is real. They are said to feel people’s energy; be able to tell how dark someone’s soul really is. Then there’re parasites, as I call them. These are the individuals that feed off of the goodness inside others. They are the worst, nearly impenetrable by your abilities; they can suck the life right out of you. I do not recommend using your ‘talents’ on these people. You have a lot more to lose than they do. See, everyone has some sort of gift, and in the presence of a dual soul it becomes magnified — ”
“Dual soul?” I repeated.
“Yes. Did your grandmother tell you anything?”
“Well she gave me her journals — ” I began.
“Oh, see that outlines a lot for you — ”
“But I didn’t actually get them,” I said.
“You mean you don’t have them?”
“Nope.”
“Unbelievable. Okay, well a dual soul, you, for example, has the ability to project their soul. I call it a mirrored spirit.”
“I’m confused,” I said.
“Have you ever heard the old wives’ tale that you should not let an infant see its own reflection?”
“I think so, or they’ll be conceited or something?”
“So they say now, but it stems from the belief that if an infant sees their reflection, a portion of their soul will remain in their reflection, thus splitting their soul into two parts. As a result, they would develop a fondness for their own reflection, leading to the assumption that they are conceited.”
“Okay,” I said struggling to keep up.
“This is obviously not true, although it will help me explain. You are like a mirrored soul, except there is no absolute divide. Your soul is split, but it can embody itself as one when necessary. It can escape the body when necessary. It can get up and leave when it desires, but it rarely acts as one vessel. Normally, the personalities of the two parts of your soul are night and day. Typically split into good and evil, love and hate, et cetera. See, with everyone else, the body cannot typically survive without the soul for a long time. It’s not impossible for one’s soul to leave the body temporarily. For example, when people have ‘out of body experiences,’ their soul leaves the body to protect itself, however, this does not keep the body from being damaged. You can. When your soul leaves the body, it is impervious to the environment. Such was the case with your ‘accident.’ Though your body should have been mutilated, you remained unharmed. People who meditate can train their soul to leave the body. They say it’s enlightening; I view it as dangerous. Then, there’re people who can do astral projection. I’m not too clear on the specifics of their gift, but fundamentally their soul leaves their body and wanders around, but remains tethered to their body. Their body cannot function without their soul. They claim to experience some quite literally ‘out of this world’ encounters.”
“Whoa, this is a lot,” I said feeling my imagination running wild, “So you’re saying I have special powers?”
“I guess you could use that terminology,” she replied.
“Well, what else can I do? And how do I use them?”
“It’s not like learning your ABCs or building a house.”
“But how do I deliberately make it happen when I want it to?”
“It’s something I cannot explain to you. Let me put it this way,” she took a long drag of her cigarette and exhaled. “Pretend for a second that this smoke is your emotions, it floats around, takes no specific shape, and is difficult to contain. Now, sometimes I can manipulate the smoke.”
As she spoke, she cut through the center of the smoke cloud. She then put the cigarette to her lips, inhaled once more, and blew three perfect smoke rings.
“Sometimes I can manipulate it very well, but what you’re basically asking me to show you, is how to turn this smoke into a flower. It’s impossible, yet somehow you have the ability to do it. All I know is that it is, in simple terms, a physical manifestation of your emotions. That’s why your biggest concern should be learning to control them. What are you capable of? Well, no two people feel things the same way, so no one really knows. For all I know, you could have the ability to fly. The only consistency is the ‘rules’ your great-grandmother came up with, and we see how well they served her. She imprisoned herself to protect the world.”
“So . . .” I began but trailed off, not being able to think of my next question.
“That is it. You have dual souls like you, you have parasites, readers like me, the ‘ intuitive,’ and of course ‘believers,’ an interesting species.”
“How do you mean?”
“They don’t necessarily have powers per se. Their faith is their power.”
“Faith?”
“Yes they believe relentlessly in God,” she said.
“Well, isn’t that a lot of people?”
She laughed out loud at this.
“Few and far between, actually. Believers, real believers, well, they are the ones with faith so strong they could walk on water if instructed to do so. The woman in the hospital, the color you saw was green, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Of course it was, see green is when you are being used as a catalyst for their power. They have the power, you have the machine that makes it work.”
“So what does purple mean?”
“I wish I knew. Your great-grandmother never spoke of this color. Just red, blue, green, orange, and yellow.”
“So, if there are believers does that mean God is real?” I asked curiously.
“Don’t be foolish child, of course she’s real,” she said. I was confused by her choice of words but didn’t care to question them at the time.
She gave me a wink and appeared to be done talking. I took this as a chance to leave and dropped my money on the small wooden table that lay between us.
Once outside the tent, I had to adjust to the surrounding sounds. Everything seemed much louder from before.
“Danielle!” I heard a voice call. I looked around and eventually saw Peyton and her crew hurrying toward me.
“Hey,” I responded.
“Where did you go? I’ve been looking for you,” she asked. I watched as Bailey rolled her eyes dramatically.
“I was just looking around,” I replied.
“Well, I came here to hang out with you, so don’t go running off again,” Peyton replied with a sound relief, “Unless, of course, you don’t want to hang out with me?”
“No, of course I do,” I said.
“Good,” Peyton said with a smirk.
“Hey, ladies,” interrupted the boy who had been talking with the psychic, accompanied by his friend.
“Abel!” said Bailey and Trish in unison.
“Hey, Abel,” said Peyton.
“What are you guys up to? Peyton, I haven’t seen you in forever, are you feeling okay,” he asked, seeming genuinely concerned.
“I’m okay, just got a little banged up.”
“Well, it’s really good to see you,” he said giving her one of those gorgeous model smiles.
“You too,” she said, returning his smile. “Danielle, this is Abel and his twin brother, Cain. Guys, this is
my friend Danielle.”
“What’s up,” said Abel.
“Nice to meet you,” Cain said, sticking out his hand to shake mine. He was obviously the ‘gentleman’ of the pair.
“Nice to meet you too,” I said.
“So, you guys going to come to the party tonight?” asked Abel.
“Yeah, of course, totally,” chorused the other three girls.
“Yeah, I don’t know. I’m kind of tired, I was just going to hang out here a while then head home,” said Peyton.
“Oh, come on! You gotta come. I’m throwing it just for you!” Abel joked.
“Nah, not tonight.”
“Well, at least you can go on a couple rides with me then,” said Abel, encompassing Peyton in another smile. Everyone was looking at her. “Yeah, of course.”
“Sweet,” Abel grabbed her hand, anxious to take her away, “We’ll catch up with y’all later.”
She pulled back for a second, “Danielle, meet me here in a half-hour?”
“Oh, sure,” I said.
We were all left standing around, unsure what to say.
“Sooo Cain, are you still with that girl?” Trish asked, eventually.
“Uh, what girl?” Cain appeared confused.
“Oh, no one. So you’re single?” She batted her eyelashes at him.
“Very,” was all he said, then changed the subject. “So Danielle, how do you know Peyton?”
He had switched his attention toward me, catching me off guard.
“Oh, uh, we met the day of the accident,” I had no idea how else to explain it.
“No way, are you the one who was with her?” he pressed.
“Yeah . . .” I said, not really wanting to get into details. Thankfully, he didn’t pry further.
“Wow, yeah, I bet you guys will be inseparable. I’ve seen you around school for years, I just didn’t know anything about you. We had geometry together sophomore year.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” I was surprised he would remember something like that.
Once again, Bailey began rolling her eyes. Trish appeared to be waiting for a moment to say something.
“I had geometry too.” clearly, this was the best she could contribute.
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