I thought about throwing clothes and a passport into a plastic bag, walking to the train station, and heading north. I had the romantic notion to ride until the landscape became flat and verdant and the people looked tall and pale.
I could hide out at a ratty hotel like a criminal on the lam and eat gravy waffles alone in a diner, drifting after him, a shadow, looming like a cloud.
But I feared a land so full of hockey players might offer too many distractions, so instead of braving the Great White North, I turned to the mystical arts. I had no choice! I was in that half-breakup stage where my mind was consumed with obsessive thoughts. I needed respite, something to soothe my addled brain. And since I was out of Xanax, this seemed to be the next best thing.
The psychic my friend had seen was out of town, but as luck (or so it seemed at the time) would have it, a glimpse into the future was just a door away.
Above the pizza parlor next door to my apartment lived a middle-aged Puerto Rican woman whose window diplayed a neon sign advertising her psychic skills. I would often see her sitting in a lawn chair on the sidewalk, trying to entice people to come in for a reading while simultaneously hollering at her grubby grandchildren to stop playing in the garbage bags.
I probably should have looked around for a more reputable psychic, but after having checked my texts, e-mail, and Facebook 840 times that day hoping to hear from Luc, I realized beggars weren’t about to be choosers.
I should note that I am a huge believer in the supernatural, clairvoyance, and mysticism in general. My grandmother gives eerily accurate tarot readings, while I’m pretty sure my mother can remember her past lives.
As for me, I can manipulate the future with powerful spell work. I’m particularly adept at binding and neutralization spells, which are basically preambles to a curse. Sometimes I would put a little too much zeal into the spell and it’d backfire into a full-on hex. But whatever, screw ’em.
The point is, I’m very well versed with magic and divination and I didn’t go into this palm reading as a skeptic. But isn’t it fair to assume that if this person could spend money on neon signs and Manhattan rent, she could maybe invest a little time and money in learning palmistry? Maybe even a cool $12.95 for a book on the subject?
False.
I had settled on a palm reading as opposed to voodoo because 1) it was cheap and I’d already blown $30 that day on magazines and candy, and 2) I had more lines on my hands than anyone I’d ever met. In sixth grade my friend Dorit nicknamed me Callisto, after one of Jupiter’s heavily crevassed moons. (Nerd alert!)
I rang the bell and was buzzed into a dusty residential apartment building, where the psychic poked her head out of her door.
“Hello, hello,” the rotund woman said warmly as she waddled into the hallway and motioned me in. “Welcome to the Lair of Mystery!”
The heady scent of roasting pork chops and fried food assaulted me immediately—not exactly the nectar of the gods, but delightful in its own way.
“You’ll have to excuse me, I just made dinner for my grandchildren,” she said as I stepped into the Lair of Meat, which was cleverly disguised as a shabby one-bedroom apartment littered with knickknacks and sticky-looking children watching TV.
“Uh, hi,” I said awkwardly as the kids sniggered at me into their Mountain Dew.
She lumbered past me into the bedroom, where her white-haired husband was watching TV in his boxers.
“Henry! Out! I need the space.” She shooed him and instructed me to have a seat on the grimy bedspread. “Now, I want you to think of two questions you want answered.”
Is he the one? And Will I be famous? immediately sprang to mind.
Not exactly a peek into the mind of a Nobel laureate, but whatever. I am what I am.
For $20, she told me, I would receive an assessment of my past and present, as well as a “glimpse” into my future.
What was this, a psychic for friggin’ amnesiacs? I know my past and my present.
But what the hey, I thought, I’m already here and she could probably use the cash to buy her husband some pants; might as well give it a whirl.
The true mystery of this lair was how she could pour out such crap with a straight face. Who was I kidding? She wasn’t going to be able to tell me why Luc had disappeared, or whether I was doomed to a lifetime of heartbreak, or whether I would be able to stretch my fifteen minutes of fame into a full hour. She didn’t even know where my heart or head or life line—or any other line—was. She just looked at my hands, furrowed her brow, and spouted vague nonsense.
“I see you like to help people.”
True. Even sociopaths help people if it has some benefit for them.
“I see that you’re concerned about the people you love.”
If they give me candy/sex/money occasionally, and might perhaps give me more one day, then yes. True again.
“I see that you’re going to be busy next year.”
Ahh, her powers of divination told her that I am not of retirement age. Uncanny!
“What about my career?” I asked.
“Hmm, oooh, I see that you’re not very motivated right now …”
Actually I had just started working on this book and was in the middle of filming Downtown Girls, so … false. I began paying more attention to the smell of pork chops than what was happening in the Lair of Malarkey.
“I see that you aren’t where you want to be.”
“Yep, that’s for sure.” I nodded dimly and sniffed the air like a dog. Where I wanted to be was in her kitchen, eating butter-laden mashed potatoes.
“I see that there was trauma in your life.”
Duh. I didn’t need a psychic to tell me that one. My eyes had now glassed over. Gravy, was I smelling gravy too? Eventually, I just gave up and turned my hands over to indicate I’d heard enough nonsense, but that didn’t stop her from rambling on.
“Your chakras are blocked! But I can unblock them for you. I’ll need to give you a crystal and meditate on this and light some candles … would you be interested in accepting my help?”
Some people think that the term “Gypsy” is derogatory, but that’s because they’ve clearly never met one. Gypsies are indeed a shifty, deceitful bunch—all nomads are. There are just certain sectors of the population who are not to be trusted. Redheads, for example.
Maybe some Gypsies have “the gift,” but the rest of them try to dupe people into elaborate and expensive “candle rituals” to cleanse their cloudy auras, which was clearly happening now in the Lair of Moneygrubbery.
I tore my thoughts away from warm biscuits sopping up gravy and giblets and politely declined the candle therapy.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Twenty dollars.”
I suppressed a sigh and tried to stand up, but something held me back. Something strong and powerful. Something unnatural …
“I see you have sat in gum.”
Acknowledgments
Nothing worthwhile in my life would be possible without the following people:
Mama and Gigi, who have always made me feel like a success, even when I worked at a pest-control company. My best friends, Klo, Mars, Pfeiffy, and Holly, without whom I probably would’ve dated worse and eaten better. My NSLP, Hilary Lyle Mann, who I couldn’t love more if I’d given birth to her. Dorit, Christine, Ellen, Sam, Shelby, and Nasim, who have known and tolerated me since before I started lying about my age. And to Meg Thompson at LJK Literary and Random House’s Talia Krohn—thank you for encouraging and supporting me despite my shaky grammar and run-on sentences.
And of course, thank you to all of the boys who made these stories possible. I loved each one of you in my own frantic way. To those I left out, you can thank me later.
About the Author
Shallon Lester is the star of MTV’s reality series Downtown Girls and coauthor of the teen novel Hot Mess. A twenty-first century Carrie Bradshaw (only with a better nose and cheaper shoes), Shallon has written for Glamour magazine, the New York Daily
News, and Gossip Girl. She loves hockey and lip gloss and is fluent in French, Italian, and sexting. She lives in Manhattan, New York. You can find her on Twitter @DowntownShallon and keep up on her ongoing adventures at www.ShallonOnline.com.
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