It was my third time driving Jaclyn anywhere. We were about five feet into the intersection, and I was still inching forward. Jaclyn pretended everything was normal. She wore an acid-washed denim jacket over a tank top and some cargo pants. “I’m sorry, I know I look crazy,” she’d said as she flipped the passenger-side visor closed and deflated into the passenger seat with a sigh. She’d just gotten off of work at a store that sold things like cargo pants and acid-washed denim jackets. “You do look a little off. I wasn’t gonna say anything, though,” I’d said with a stupid chuckle. I knew she knew she looked fine. “Watch it,” she said through a real smile. The car behind me honked. We ended up at a Chinese spot close to my place.
After we put our orders in, the man at the counter asked, “Separate or together?” Jaclyn shot out a “Together” before I had a chance to be awkward. I looked at her, and she laughed the laugh she does when she’s about to win at something or is caught in a lie. “I deserve something for not mentioning the less-than-road-worthy car you got me riding in,” she’d said.
“Your mom’s a cool lady, I guess,” I said to the twins. “We’ve been together for almost a year. But we’ll probably go to different colleges in the fall.”
“Oh no,” said Jamie Lou, heartbroken.
“Oh no,” said Jackie Gunner, mockingly. He used his arm to conk his sister over the head.
“Chill,” I said.
“It’s okay,” Jamie Lou said. She wrapped Jackie Gunner in a big hug and kissed the side of his head.
Jackie Gunner did not look impressed. He turned his attention back to me. “So what?” he asked. “What about me?”
“We aren’t gonna be people,” Jamie Lou reminded him. Jackie Gunner ignored her.
“Me and Jaclyn—that’s her name—well, me and Jaclyn did—she missed her period. We weren’t very careful as far as methods,” I continued. They’re far too young to hear about this kind of thing, I thought. Jackie Gunner looked at me in his weird closed-eye kind of way, like he had no idea what I was talking about. Jamie Lou nodded silently. “She took a test,” I said.
I spared them these details: Jaclyn and me in the drugstore. Her wiping her eyes and saying, “I look crazy” before we stepped in. The fact that the store was packed, which felt like a mean joke. How we were afraid of getting to the register. How we went to the register. How we were quietly connected, as close as we had ever been, as we averted our eyes from those of the strangers around us. How, if I had to pick, I’d say the hero of this whole thing was the young woman behind the store counter. How her brown eyes melted wide, then cooled to a thin, sharp, yet gentle seriousness when Jaclyn pointed behind her to the purple box, hung not far from the cigarettes and iPhone chargers, 99 PERCENT ACCURACY emblazoned on its top right corner. How she nodded and tossed the test into a bag so quickly I would have missed it if I hadn’t been watching the whole thing with an unblinking, morbid interest.
“It was positive. The test. We talked about what to do and decided we couldn’t handle it, I mean you—I mean a child, children.”
Jackie Gunner responded with a grunt. Jamie Lou didn’t say anything.
The blood that was slowly secreting from the twins’ skin was staining my pillowcase, which they were now sitting on.
“After the test, we went to a clinic. She took the pills here. It was better that way. My mom works nights. It wasn’t fun. It was hard for us,” I said. It was hard for her. And me, too. “That’s it basically,” I said. Somewhere in the middle of it, I’d gotten scared that something was wrong and considered calling 911. It seemed impossible that anyone in the medical field would allow a human being to experience what Jaclyn went through. But I did not call 911. I drove her home in the Volvo. My mother left it home most days because she didn’t think it was safe.
“Whatever,” Jackie Gunner said. “I don’t got all day. I wanna know what woulda happened.”
“The psychic, the psychic!” said Jamie Lou.
“That’s where we gotta go,” said Jackie Gunner.
I was afraid they’d ask to go there. Their mother loved those kinds of places. “Okay,” I said, smiling through my guilt. “Okay.”
I threw on some jeans, some Chucks, a light jacket. The twins were losing their pink shine and becoming a grayish red. I understood their time was limited.
“Let’s go, Dad, hurry up,” Jackie Gunner said as he raised his tiny arms toward me like a toddler waiting to be scooped up. I tried not to look repulsed. I lowered my hand so they could climb up. Jamie Lou tried to hop up onto my hand in one great leap. She tripped and fell face-first into my clammy skin. “Whoops,” she said. When she was settled and upright, I practiced moving while holding them. Cradling them like puddles in my cupped palm. They were cool and slimy.
“You guys gonna be okay?”
“No,” they said together.
I walked, taking long, quick steps, with my left palm and the twins close to my chest. I used my right hand to shield them the way you’d guard a flame from the wind. If Jackie Gunner was afraid he’d fall out of my hand onto the concrete, he didn’t show it. I felt kind of proud about that. But Jamie Lou curled into a small ball and was shaking with fear. Jackie Gunner kicked at her and said, “Baby! Baby, what a baby!” I stopped walking.
“Hey,” I said. “Can’t you be nice for one second? You going to be a jerk all day?”
“It’s in my genes,” Jackie Gunner replied.
“Very funny,” I said, trying to make my voice bigger than it was. “It isn’t cool. Do better.
“And you,” I said, shifting my attention to Jamie Lou, who was peeking out from the ball she’d rolled herself into. “You need to stand up for yourself. Don’t let anybody push you around like that. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jamie Lou squeaked.
“Whatever,” said Jackie Gunner.
I stared at him and tried to project a sense of disappointment. He stared back at me, and I felt the disappointment I wanted him to feel rain back all over me. I continued walking toward the psychic’s place without looking back into my hand.
Jaclyn had gone to see the psychic two days before our appointment at the clinic.
I’d asked her not to go. She wouldn’t listen. Then I’d asked her which psychic she was going to and when. “I’m going to that guy on Lark tomorrow afternoon—you want to come with me?” I’d told her I didn’t believe in that kind of stuff. “You don’t believe in anything,” she’d said.
The next night she’d called me. I’d been waiting. “It was crazy!” she’d said. “He knew so much. He was, like, ‘Even though you’re feeling stuck, you need to do what you think is best for you,’” she’d said. “I didn’t say anything about it. He just knew.” I’d sighed heavy, heavy relief and felt guilty about how little guilt I’d felt in that moment. Jaclyn also said the psychic had told her that she and her significant other “didn’t have a healthy channel of communication.”
The psychic’s place was a few minutes away. There was a sign that said LARK STREET READINGS on a door that had peeling green paint and a gold-colored knob. I reached for the door with my right hand, exposing Jackie Gunner and Jamie Lou to the wind and cold. I grabbed the knob, felt its icy cool in one hand and the twins shivering in the other. I let go of the knob, opened up my jacket, and slid Jackie Gunner and Jamie Lou into the inner chest pocket.
“Thanks, Pops.”
“Thanks, Daddy.”
“Once we’re in there, you have to keep quiet. Okay? I’ll do the talking,” I said.
“Whatever,” Jackie Gunner said. He didn’t seem worried about being in the dark of my inner jacket. He was a pretty brave little guy. Staring up at me, Jamie Lou closed her mouth and puffed her cheeks like she was holding her breath before a big dive.
There was a tiny spot of blood in my palm. I wiped it on my jeans.
Again, I reached for the doorknob. The door opened with a dry scrape, and together we stepped into the entryway, letting cold air rattle a wind chime above us.
“Come in,” a voice said. “Would you like some tea?”
“That’s okay,” I called up a carpeted set of stairs that led to the psychic’s reading area.
“How did you—” another voice began.
I was embarrassed before anything else. Then I felt like I was sinking into the floor. The twins, tucked into my jacket pocket, moved slowly against my chest.
“Jac?” I said.
She appeared at the top of the steps in gray sweats tucked into these tall green rain boots and a black windbreaker that used to be mine but was now definitively hers. I worked my way up the stairs. We kind of stared at each other until she spoke.
“Hey,” she said. “This is weird.”
“Yeah.” I walked the rest of the way up the carpeted stairs. I thought that maybe I should have given her a hug or a kiss or something, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to risk crushing Jamie and Jackie. “I guess you wanted another reading?”
“I felt so much better after last time. And then I couldn’t sleep last night. I still don’t feel great,” she said, staring into my eyes, watching me.
I took a deep breath. “That’s what these guys are here for, I guess,” I said, looking away. We stepped into a beaded curtain that sounded like rain as we walked through. It led to the psychic’s living room, which was where he saw clients. There was an old brown table with strange images carved into the wood: an eye that was also the sun, a body that crouched holding a hammer, a bear with wings. There was an entertainment system on one side of the room opposite a gray couch. The television at the center of the console was covered with a purple silk cloth. Another cloth of the exact same color was in the psychic’s hands when he emerged from his kitchen, a space adjacent to the living/divining room. He used the cloth to hold a steaming pot by the rim because it had no handle. He had dark black hair and a nose ring.
He poured the tea into two cups that were already on a counter near the couch.
“Couple’s session?” he asked.
Jaclyn shot me a look that said, See? “You knew we were a couple,” she said. The twins wiggled.
“Please, have a seat, guys,” the psychic said. We sat on the couch.
“So what will it be?” the psychic began. “Tarot? I’m doing a special deal on crystal readings if you want to try something different. And, of course, I can read your palms for five dollars,” he said as he settled into a wicker chair across from us. He crossed one leg over the other and sipped his tea. He was so comfortable.
“What do you want to do?” Jaclyn said, looking at me. I kept my eyes on the psychic.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just watch?”
“You came to the psychic this early in the morning, and now you’re just gonna watch?”
“I didn’t really plan on—”
“Me being here? So now you’re gonna just sit there?”
Her voice was doing that thing it does. The psychic sipped his tea.
“I’ll do the cheapest one, I guess,” I said. Though what I thought was there is nothing he can say to help me.
“Fine,” she said with a sigh. She sank farther into the couch.
“Great,” the psychic said. “Is this your first consultation?”
“Yes,” I said. He moved his wicker chair around to our side of the room and sat close to me.
“Okay, palms are a good place to start, I think.” I offered him my left hand, still slightly red with the blood of Jackie Gunner and Jamie Lou. He rubbed it with the purple silk cloth; it was still warm from the tea’s heat. He scrutinized my hand. Jaclyn hovered near my shoulder so she could see what was happening.
“Well, generally,” the psychic said as he traced a rectangle around the outside of my palm, “the shape of your hand suggests that you tend to be pretty skeptical.”
“Hmm,” said Jaclyn.
“You’re the type of dude who has a plan, and you value security,” the psychic continued. I looked up at him; his eyes were still locked on my hand.
“Also, see these long fingers you’ve got,” the psychic said as he traced the length of my middle finger. “That means you’re sensitive to details and need things to be a certain way.”
“Yup,” Jaclyn muttered from over my shoulder.
“And this,” the psychic said. There was a tumbling in my jacket. Jackie Gunner was probably bullying his sister again. “This is your life line,” the psychic said. He pointed to the deep brown line closest to my thumb. I realized I was wasting everyone’s time. I was worried about Jamie Lou. “The way your life line sweeps out to the center of your hand, it favors the Plain of Mars, you see, so that means—”
“Stop, please,” I said. I pulled a five-dollar bill from my jeans and dropped it on the table. “I don’t really feel well.” It was true. “I think I’m going home.” It felt like the twins were doing jumping jacks. I was worried. I brought my hand to my chest and pressed it there to still them. I tried to be careful.
“Are you serious?” Jaclyn said. “That’s so rude.”
“No worries. It’s been a pleasure—good luck with everything,” the psychic said, flattening himself into his chair.
“No. I’m so sorry; he’s just stressed right now,” Jaclyn said.
“Absolutely no problem, it’s cool, it’s cool, it’s all cool,” said the psychic. He sipped his tea.
“It is not cool, but thank you. He’s been this way for a while,” she said, trying to stab me with her eyes.
“This place is a joke, Jaclyn,” I said. I stared at the psychic. “Tell her it’s a joke.”
“Man, I have nothing to do with you and yours,” the psychic said. He put his mug down.
“Just admit it. Tell her,” I said. “Tell her.”
“Listen, I’m just the guy who gets up early in the morning and packs the trunk up. I help you get where you’re already going,” the psychic said calmly.
“What are you talking about?” Jaclyn asked.
I could feel the twins listening, wanting to be a part of this. It felt like they were trying and failing to pull themselves free. A muffled voice was coming out of my pocket, so I started shouting over it.
“I’m talking about how this psychic will say whatever you want him to say to anyone if you pay him twenty dollars in advance. This isn’t the first time he’s taken my money.” I hoped I wouldn’t have to say much more. The day before Jaclyn went to see the psychic, I’d called him and asked him to tell her everything was going to be okay if she’d just follow the plan she already had in place. I thought telling her the truth about what I’d done would make me feel like a giant. Instead, once I said it, I felt weak, stupid, scared. “I’m sorry, Jaclyn, I’m really sorry,” I said. She was sitting there. I reached for her hand. She recoiled from me in a way I can’t remember her ever doing before.
“You think I’m some kind of idiot?” Jaclyn said. “You think he’s the reason I did it? He didn’t make any decision for me. Neither did you. I’m not—I don’t understand how you could think this had anything to do with that. Are you insane?”
“No, I—” I began, but from the look on her face I could see there wasn’t going to be any more discussion.
I heard a muffled “Wait” coming from my jacket pocket.
I left.
Once I was outside the psychic’s place, I stopped walking and took off my jacket.
“You guys okay?” I asked. There was no answer. “Hey,” I said. I put my hand at the pocket seam so they could crawl out. Jamie Lou appeared in my hand. She was gray and dry now.
“Where’s Jackie Gunner?” I asked.
“He was bullying me,” Jamie Lou said, her voice hoarse. She reminded me of a plucked leaf. “So I killed him,” she finished.
“What?” I said. I felt the fear you feel when you’ve done something, anything, that you can’t take back. I bent over and shook the jacket a little. A tiny gray body of ash fell out. “How could you?” I yelled.
“You did,” Jamie Lou said.
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“What?” I said.
“He wasn’t going to be a person,” Jamie Lou reminded me.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You can’t just—” I lowered Jamie Lou and Jackie Gunner’s tiny body to the concrete.
“You said not to be a pushover,” Jamie Lou squealed in her now coarse, broken voice. I could see she was almost out of time. “I did it for you, Daddy.” She was a tiny speck on the ground near her tiny brother. Both were almost invisible against the gray of the sidewalk.
At the clinic, just before Jaclyn disappeared behind a white door to get her ultrasound, she looked back at me sitting in the waiting-room chair. She gave me this brave little half smile. Her eyes were bright from hiding tears. She wanted to make this whole thing a little less terrible if she could. And she did. And no matter how hard I tried, I’d probably never know exactly how she felt. But she made me feel like, as she looked back at me, maybe it was all just what it was and not the apocalypse.
“Do you hate me?” Jamie Lou said.
“No,” I said.
“So you loved us, Daddy?” Jamie Lou said, hugging my shoelace.
“No,” I said. I raised my foot, shook her off, and started to walk away, hoping she would not follow me.
“What are you doing?”
I turned and saw Jaclyn. She ran up to where I’d left Jamie Lou and picked her up along with the body of her brother.
“Hey,” I said, walking toward her, feeling trapped and wondering if I would ever escape any of this. I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, but I was reminded by everything I felt. “I’m sorry. I feel like, like there’s only wrong answers.”
“You don’t care, Daddy,” Jamie Lou said. Jackie Gunner, who’d been limp, was now moving very slowly in Jaclyn’s hand. “Thanks, Mommy,” Jamie Lou said, snuggling against Jaclyn’s thumb.
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