In the Stars

by Stacia Deutsch

  We channel-surf for a while, when Adam suddenly cheers, “My favorite movie!” He sets down the remote and settles back into the sofa.

  The movie is a horror flick that came out last year. I didn’t see it, well, because I’d never pick a horror movie. Ever. I saw one once when I was younger and still sleep with a night-light because of it (that’s a secret, okay?). Adam’s been so great about doing things I like to do, even spending most of his lunch period with me and not the swim team, I suppose that watching this film is the least I can do.

  It’s not so bad. Adam holds me during the scary parts and when the film ends, we make out on the couch, until my father interrupts by stomping down the hall. I was grateful that he warned us of his presence since Adam’s hand was creeping up my shirt. We jumped back into our own seats and when my father started puttering about in the kitchen, taking his own sweet time to make a snack, Adam decides to take off.

  Oh, well. It was past time for me to get to sewing anyway.

  After Adam leaves, I’m wound up and a tiny bit scared. Another twenty minutes is spent checking in my closet and under the bed for spooky things and when I finally start to sew, my heart isn’t in it. I end up falling asleep over Jennifer’s nymph wing, my head on a folding table I’d set up for cutting material. I wake up at three a.m. with a lacy imprint embedded in my right cheek. All in all, even though the schedule failed, it was another good evening. I even think the kissing is getting better. And I definitely would have let him go up my shirt if my father hadn’t come into the room.

  Wednesday’s right on schedule until nine p.m., when my sewing machine dies. I’d barely started working when the thing conked out. Now I’m at a place where there’s nothing more I can do on the costumes, unless I want to sew by hand, (which I don’t) so I surf the Web and talk to Cherise by Instant Messenger instead. Then, at exactly 12:01 a.m., I go to bed.

  Thursday morning I wake up, more determined than ever to stick to my schedule. What’s the use of making a schedule if you can’t stick to it? Even for one day! I’m going to get back on track and maintain my scholarship focus by adhering to the timetable I’ve so meticulously prepared. Those counselors at Yale will be extra impressed when they see my stellar grades, especially if they hear that that I kept those grades up and had a boyfriend at the same time. The science scholarship will soon be mine!

  Thursday’s the day I’m going to prove to myself that the schedule works … and it does. I’m on track, right up until the moment that Cherise coerces me into getting my palm read by some wacky psychic.

  Twelve

  You are stuck in the mud. Grab a shovel and start to dig.

  www.astrology4stars.com

  “Forget about your schedule.” That’s the first thing the psychic says to me when we enter her billowing tent. All right, so it isn’t really a tent. It’s a converted storefront with a whole lot of fabric draped around. From the outside it looks like any other store on Twelfth Avenue. Just like any other store, except for the neon placard reading: MADAME JAKARTA, PSYCHIC and the flashing image of a hand.

  On the inside, however, the shop looks nothing like any other store on the street, or anywhere else in America, as far as I know. The place is decorated like an Arabian tent from the classic film, Lawrence of Arabia. There’s so much fabric hanging from the ceiling and tacked up against the walls that Jennifer and Tanisha could have saved themselves the trip to Cleveland to buy material for our costumes if Madame Jakarta would have parted with even an eighth of what she has flung around her shop.

  To make a short story long, I’d dropped off my mom’s sewing machine at the Sewing Emporium on the way to school. When I called Wednesday night in a tizzy, just as they were closing, Wanda Feines, store owner and repairwoman, offered to open early to take a look at it for me.

  The tuxedo shop does a lot of business with Wanda. We only do rentals, but Wanda makes custom tuxes on the side. Most of her clients are referrals from us. When my mom was alive, Wanda was her closest friend.

  Over the phone, Wanda diagnosed the problem. “The 212v belt is busted,” she informed me. She made that assessment without astrology or palm reading. Wanda simply listened to my reenactment of the noise the machine made right before it shut off.

  Wanda had to get the part from her second store out in the suburbs. She said I could come pick the machine up after six. They were closing at eight so I had a two-hour window.

  Checking my typed schedule, I figured if I dropped off the machine before school, Adam and I could take a brief study break after school, get the machine, and be back before the nightly nine p.m. sew-a-thon. Wanda’s sewing machine repairs would fit smoothly into my schedule. I’d barely notice the blip.

  So, after I finished reviewing my English notes for Friday’s quiz and Adam completed his European History reading, we headed out. Once again, Adam was absolutely willing to support my fixation with staying on task: fifteen minutes to go get the sewing machine, ten minutes to return home. That left us with another hour and thirty-five minutes to go over our chem lab results.

  Adam really is the ideal boyfriend. His acceptance of me at my nuttiest makes me like him even more than I already do. I’m hoping like mad that sometime soon, he’ll finally ask me to the dance.

  It was precisely seven o’clock when Adam and I were on our way to the sewing store.

  Which, happens to be next door to Madame Jakarta’s Psychic Shop.

  Madame Jakarta has been reading palms on Twelfth Avenue for as long as I can remember. When I was young, she was old. Now she’s even older. She usually wears some sort of floral-patterned muumuu with a matching turban, but once I saw her in jeans and a T-shirt at the supermarket. That was just plain freaky.

  We were holding hands and casually walking to the sewing shop when who did we see coming at us from the other direction?

  Cherise. She was with Nathan Feldman and like us, they were holding hands, too!

  To say I was shocked would be an understatement.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but there were no words. I didn’t know where to begin. Luckily, Adam took over.

  “Hey, Cherise.” He gave her a little hug. “Nathan.” He pushed out his knuckles and Nathan butted his own fist against them.

  As if seeing Cherise and Nathan together wasn’t enough of a stunner, the fact that, of the two of them, it was Nathan who spoke first, confounded me further.

  “Hey, Adam. How’s it going?” Nathan said.

  Nathan’s actually a pretty good-looking guy. Wavy brownish-red hair. Freckles. Glasses. Straight teeth. And to my utmost surprise, he also has a nice voice. Deep. Soothing. Mellow.

  “Hi, Sylvie.” Nathan opened his arms and gave me a half hug. The kind you give when you aren’t sure whether to hug or not.

  I know it’s rude, but I couldn’t help myself. “Excuse me,” I said when at last I found my speaking voice. “I need a minute with Cherise.”

  Thing is, I hadn’t actually programmed an extra minute into my plan. To Wanda’s and back. That was the deal. No additional time to find out what in the world was going on between Cherise and Nathan. (And definitely no contingency plan for what to do when that one minute with Cherise morphs into half an hour with Madame Jakarta.) Once again, my schedule was out the window.

  Cherise and I moved into the doorway of Madame Jakarta’s. I was practically dragging her by the arm. I’m certain she’d have come willingly, but I was asserting my “best friend’s right-to-know” clause by pulling her along.

  “How?!” That one word got the ball rolling.

  “Well …” Cherise had a sheepish smile on her face. She glanced over her shoulder to where Adam and Nathan were sitting on a bus stop bench. They were in a heated discussion about something. Maybe sports. Maybe Darfur. Nathan was waving his arms as he talked. And talked. And talked some more.

  Once Nathan gets started, apparently he can’t be stopped.

  “You and Nathan?” I prodded her attention away from Nathan and back to me.
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  She shrugged. “I was interested in that Jewish group working against the genocide in Darfur. So I called Mrs. Feldman to see if I could go to a meeting, even though I’m not Jewish. She said she thought it was fine and gave me the address of the temple.”

  Cherise stole another glance at Nathan. There was a certain look in her eye; I think it was pride.

  “Turned out, their next meeting was that same Sunday night. So I went and laid low in the back of the room. Nathan was leading a discussion of how to start an Internet petition to send to members of Congress.” She rotated on her heel to face me more fully. “A woman named Rachel introduced herself to me and within minutes, she’d dragged me to the front of the room, volunteering the two of us to put up ‘Stop the Genocide’ posters in local coffee shops. I went with her on Monday afternoon.” Which explained why she couldn’t stay at the doctor’s to drive me home after I had my stitches out.

  “Are you getting to the Nathan part?” I asked impatiently. “I’m your best friend. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about him!” I felt a bit angry that she hadn’t been open with me. Cherise should have told me why she couldn’t have driven me home from the doctor. She could have mentioned something at lunch or at the café after school or on the phone or by stopping by the apartment.…

  When I thought about it, I vaguely recalled seeing her standing with Nathan in the hallway at school a few times this past week. But since that was hardly unusual, I didn’t connect the dots. I just assumed he was muttering and lending her stuff her like normal.

  “I didn’t want to take the focus off of you and Adam,” Cherise explained. “I figured I’d have plenty of time to catch you up after Adam asks you to prom. This is your special time, Sylvie. The stars are aligned for you to be falling in love, not me.”

  I know Cherise was speaking from her heart. It was so like her to think of another’s happiness before her own. How could I be mad about that? My anger slipped away on the cool night breeze.

  I asked her if she checked her own star signs regarding Nathan. She told me she did, but nothing indicated she’d meet someone special. In her case, unlike mine, it was pure coincidence.

  “Go on,” I pressed. “I want to hear the rest.”

  “At the meeting, I went up to Nathan to tell him I was going to help out with the posters.” Cherise brushed a loose hair back over her ear. “At first he clammed up like usual, but pretty soon he began to loosen up. After the meeting, he asked me if I wanted to grab a bite. We went to the Corner Café for chocolate cake.”

  Cherise’s face suddenly broke into a full-fledged grin. “He walked me home and we kissed goodnight,” she told me. “It was magic.” Cherise paused as if recalling the kiss. “Pure magic.” With a toss of her head, she floated back to Earth. “Nathan asked me right then and there to go with him to the Spring Fling Prom.”

  Being totally selfish, my first thought was, How come Cherise gets magical kisses and a date to the prom without astrology? I get okay kisses and no date, though the stars are supposedly “in my favor.” It seems grossly unfair.

  “I’m happy for you,” I told her, burying my selfishness to discover a warmth growing in my stomach. It’s that joyful energy surge you feel when a friend shares really great news. Cherise hasn’t been on the same no-boy scholarship diet as me, and yet she hasn’t had a date in the same number of years. And everyone knows Nathan absolutely worships the ground she walks on, and has for practically forever.

  “If you’re going to the dance, you’ll need a costume,” I said. Not that I wanted to squeeze in sewing another costume, but I couldn’t make them for Jennifer and Tanisha and not for my best friend.

  “Taken care of,” she told me. “We’re going as doctors from Doctors Without Borders. Nathan’s dad is giving us scrubs. We only need a couple of stethoscopes.”

  “Now that you’re going to the Spring Fling,” I declared, “I’m definitely going to ask Adam. As a future astronomer, I promise the universe will be perfectly fine. We can double date!” Jennifer and Tanisha thought that I was triple dating with them, but if Cherise was going, I’d rather go with her and Nathan.

  The happy look on Cherise’s face turned to sudden fear. “You can’t ask Adam!” she exclaimed with a shiver. Then softer, “It would be mocking the stars.”

  “I’m not mocking them, I’m giving them a swift kick in the—”

  “No!” Cherise was practically begging. “Look,” she said, raising her eyes to Madame Jakarta’s neon sign. “I haven’t had time to check the Mercury table to find out exactly when Adam will be asking you to the dance. Let’s go in and ask Madame Jakarta.” Cherise pulled on the shop door. “She might read palms instead of stars, but Madame Jakarta’s definitely in tune with what’s going on in the cosmos. I’ll pay.”

  As Cherise stepped inside, I told her I didn’t have enough time or energy for more woo-woo.

  “It’ll be painless,” she promised. “And it’ll only take a minute. We’ll pop in and ask the one question: When is Adam going to ask Sylvie to prom?” She shouted over to the boys to meet us in fifteen minutes at a nearby tea house. “Come on, Sylvie. It can’t hurt to ask.”

  “It can’t hurt.…” Those are some famous last words.

  Thirteen

  Look out for love. If you don’t see it coming, it might pass you by.

  www.astrology4stars.com

  “Forget about your schedule,” Madame Jakarta tells me.

  Weird, huh?

  Believe me, when she says it, my immediate response is, “That’s creepy.” How does Madame Jakarta know I enjoy a clearly defined schedule? Then again, she might have seen me looking at my watch and calculating how far off timetable I’ll be in my sewing regimen with this little side trip to the freak show. I still need to pick up my machine from Wanda next door.

  Those aren’t actually the first words that Madame Jakarta said. Immediately upon entering the place she remarked, “Ahh. Nice to see you again, Cherise.”

  I had no clue Cherise had even been here before. But like the thing with Nathan, I can’t be mad that she hasn’t told me. I’ve never been interested in her metaphysical pursuits. Similar to astrology, palmistry would be on the same list of things we usually don’t discuss. If she’d brought it up, I’d have made fun.

  Cherise introduces me and gives Madame Jakarta ten dollars. Waving her hands wildly, Madame Jakarta flutters around the room, offering tea and candy-coated fennel seeds, and when we decline, she instructs us to each sit down on a huge square pillow. Good thing my ankle is healed. If we’d have come here last week when I was on crutches, I’d have dropped down and never been able to get up again.

  The pillows are covered in soft purple velvet, but the inside feels bumpy, like they’re full of those little beanbag foam balls. I try to relax, but it isn’t happening. Cherise, on the other hand, looks completely in her element. She leans back on her elbows, comfy on her beanbag square.

  Madame Jakarta lights a red candle and places it on the table. I recognize the candle immediately. It’s the same type of “candle of love” that Cherise put in my bag at her first astrology reading in the back of my father’s store. Cherise and Madame Jakarta must shop at the same psychic gift store. Personally, I’ve no idea where you can buy “love candles” in Cincinnati. It’s a pretty conservative city.

  The scent of the candle wafts through the air, casting a pungent sweet smell over the already eerie atmosphere. The flickering flame reflects on Madame Jakarta’s bulbous nose, highlighting the dark circles under her eyes. Her turban dances as she chants in a foreign (probably made-up) language.

  When she finishes her prayer/song, Madame Jakarta drops down in front of me, reaches out, and without warning, grabs both my hands. She pulls me toward her by my wrists. I nearly fall off my pillow. Only my feet remain on the soft velvet. My knees are pressed into the hard, linoleum floor.

  Tracing her thumb over the pulse point on my left wrist, Madame Jakarta says in a smoky voice, full of conf
idence, “I feel the presence of a boy and hear the music of a dance.”

  Cherise hasn’t even posed our question yet, making another oddly psychic thing that Madame Jakarta had said since we entered her shop. Of course, being a student of science, I’m wondering how she knows about the schedule, the boy, and the dance. There must be a logical explanation. I bet the last time Cherise came in here wasn’t very long ago. She probably told Madame Jakarta about my situation. Yeah, I reason, that must be it.

  Cherise quickly explains what’s going on. “I read her star signs and have concluded that this boy, whose essence you feel, will ask Sylvie to the high school prom.” Cherise speaks in the same weird cadence as Madame Jakarta. They’re two peas in a pod.

  Madame Jakarta agrees that the music she “hears” must be from the Spring Fling band.

  “I simply haven’t had time to consult the Mercury table to determine precisely when Adam will ask her. That’s why we came here. Can you tell us when he’ll pop the question?” Cherise is clearly pleased at her engagement metaphor.

  “Aha.” Madame Jakarta nods vigorously. “I will focus on uncovering the truth behind your quest.” Madame Jakarta releases my left wrist and snags my right palm with both her hands.

  “The left hand is the hand we are born with,” she explains. “The right hand indicates how circumstances have changed the path we travel.” She bends low over my palm, so low I feel her breath on my fingers. All I can think about is when I’ll get a chance to wash my hands.

  Madame Jakarta looks at my right hand for a while, then unceremoniously drops it, snatching up my left hand again. She repeats this back-and-forth pattern a few times before declaring: “You have two love lines. One tapers off to friendship and another picks up where the first left off.” She shows me the wrinkle in my palm that she claims is my second love line.