by Box Set
The kind of girl who hasn’t played with dolls since she was eight.
That’s who.
Finally, I reached the back corner of the market. The way Moira always talked about JoAnna and her miraculous gifts, I would’ve thought celebrities and the like would be in attendance, waiting for her grand—or un-grand opening.
“We must get our fortunes read first,” Moira whispered to me as I moved to stand beside her.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to fight off the crowd.”
She stifled a giggle with her fist before elbowing me.
We were the first to get our fortunes read by JoAnne. She was dressed like a children’s carnival worker, complete with a headscarf, bangle earrings and she faked some kind of Eastern European accent. She told Moira she’d soon suffer a great loss but would feel immense peace about it.
She told me my options for life were wide open.
Which actually proved how full of crap she actually was.
We had tiny crystal ball cupcakes and sparkling apple juice to help her celebrate her grand opening. I passed on a further reading using the crystal ball, mostly because I could see the strings of hot glue around the base and it made me question the validity of a crystal ball that was stuck to its base using adherent I could buy at Hobby Lobby. Was the crystal ball so powerful that it would roll off the base by itself? Or was JoAnna afraid it would try to float away from her shabby fortune telling.
Either way, I kept my distance.
“Can I go look around again?” I asked Moira when she took a break from cupcake eating.
“Of course. The place closes in an hour. Meet me at the front.”
“Deal.” I thanked JoAnna and proceeded to walk around the opposite way I’d gone before.
I found a pair of crafted cameo earrings at one booth. I overpaid for them and the matching necklace was practically stuffed down my throat. Several of the other booths were closing up for the night, so I decided my shopping trip was over and proceeded to head for the door.
“Care to have your fortune read?” an older woman approached me from a corner booth I hadn’t remembered passing before. She wore a non-descript maroon witchy guise that reminded me of a production of Macbeth I’d seen when I was younger.
I smiled and she returned the smile, but in a much more toothless way.
Good thing I’d never had to draw her when I was a kid—nightmare central.
“I’ve already had my fortune read tonight. I doubt it has changed.”
She cackled, the sound scratched at my mind. “Ah, yes, by that Jeanine, such a clairvoyant she is.”
There was nothing but facetiousness in her tone.
“It’s JoAnna.” I peered into her tent. It was completely void inside, only two chairs. No hot glued crystal ball or twinkly lights to gypsy the place up. The simplicity of her business upped her legitimacy in my mind. Who needs props and costumes when you can read futures?
“Free of charge,” she provided with a wave of her fat knuckled fingers that reminded me of the wicked witch from the cartoon Snow White.
“Oh why not?” I shrugged and followed her lead into the tent.
Upon sitting down, she took my hand and flattened out my palm. She ‘hmm’ed but didn’t say anything for an uncomfortable amount of time.
“You don’t belong in this time. Then again, you don’t belong in any time. You travel like the devil himself is behind you.” Her voice changed to one of a mother as she ghosted her fingernail over the lines of my palm.
“I’m pretty sure I do—belong in this time.” I answered.
“No. You have been misplaced—or displaced. That’s why it’s taken so long for him to find you. Silly girl.”
All of the sudden, I liked JoAnna a lot better.
She held my hand tight. She was a tough bird. As much as I tried, I couldn’t get my hand free from hers. She was hanging on for life. After a few more moments she murmured something about ‘he’s coming soon’ and ‘be gentle with him.’
It was seriously creeping me out.
As she looked at me, her eyes swirled from blue to gray and then to green. I jolted to a stand to walk away and she spit on my shoes.
“What the hell, lady?”
“There is no future without the one. It was lost. Now, I have set everything straight. Now you have a future,” she tittered. “He’s on his way now. I’ve cleared the path.”
After making one final jerk of my hand release me, I freaked out and sprinted toward the entrance. Moira was still talking to JoAnn, only they were now waiting on me by the door. As soon as she saw me she widened her glare. I guessed JoAnne wasn’t so interesting after all.
“Sorry, I got hung up with—someone,” I said, not wanting to offend my foster mother’s friend.
“We really need to go, JoAnne. It is a school night,” Moira said, grabbing my hand and bee-lining for the door. When had Moira become so interested in me having a bedtime on a school night? I didn’t know what her deal was but I could hardly keep up. We got into the mini-van. Moira started it up, but it wasn’t until she got to the street and turned in the direction of her house that she began talking.
“She’s nuts. I went to be supportive but after you left she started trying to read my chi and my aura and some other crap. I mean, I’m as hippie as the next gal, but three readings is enough to last me the month. I need cookies now. You see what she’s done to me? I’ve been driven to cookies!”
She jerked the steering wheel to the right and before I knew it, she was yelling into the speaker of the drive-thru demanding a dozen cookies.
I didn’t even know you could order cookies from a drive-thru.
“Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.” She pointed at me, digging through her purse for cash.
I put my hands in the air as an act of surrender. I’d never seen Moira driven to cookies.
Oatmeal, cranberry, hemp cookies, sure—but I was sure the cookie gods frowned on those. Plus, they tasted like sweetened sawdust.
Driving home, Moira said nothing—mostly because her mouth was completely stuffed to the brim with chocolate chip cookies—chubby bunny style. I didn’t dare say anything to her. I was afraid to be on the receiving end of a cookie blast.
* * *
I slept that night for only a few hours. My head was filled with visions of the fortune telling hag and the same man with piercing eyes and of all things, an axe. I must’ve detailed out his axe at least fifteen times, each pass getting more and more intricate.
Hopefully he was carrying an axe for Rick Elkins and his gang of Fasta fury.
Maybe he was going to slay Rick Elkins with it through my drawings.
A girl can dream.
The next morning, I was a wreck—again. Downing enough coffee to stunt the growth of a small child, I read the newspaper to Ren. His live and let live mantra didn’t jive with the variety of negative news reports. This had become our morning ritual. I scoured the news for something uplifting while Ren looked at my drawings. I’d find a story—he’d comment on a drawing.
It was our thing.
Ren’s chair squawked across the linoleum floors. I glanced up to see that he’d pulled away from the table with a look of disgust on his face. Shoving the papers to the side, I craned to see what had caused that reaction—the woman from the night before.
“Who is that? She’s—she’s…”
I giggled, “She’s not the best looking, right? It was a woman at another fortune telling booth last night. She told me some crap and then spit on my shoes. It was weird to say the least.”
“Really?” Moira chimed in from the other side of the table. “JoAnna thought she was the only one of her kind at the flea market.”
“Apparently not,” I quipped back.
As I drove to school, my breakfast oatmeal rolled in my stomach. Would it kill us to have bacon once in a while? Moira thought so. School cafeteria meat didn’t count, though it was better than Moira’s soya meat. I blindly patted the s
eat next to me, looking for gum or a mint to ease my achy stomach. I touched a piece of cloth and remembered it as the cream handkerchief from my windshield the day before. Its texture was almost crepe in nature. I tucked it under my thigh for further inspection when I arrived at school.
I screeched to a stop at a corner after an older woman began to cross out of turn. I leaned over the steering wheel and looked at her. I really needed to get more sleep. I could’ve sworn it was the fortune teller from the night before.
I was losing it—officially.
Finally pulling into the parking lot, I threw the Bronco into park and fumbled with the paper. It was blank inside, but it smelled peculiar. There was something faintly familiar about the scent, but I couldn’t place it. The essence made me dizzy and it took me a few minutes to recuperate.
That day was ruthless in terms of Fasta jokes. The jokers who called themselves students had apparently expanded their minds to include the soda by the name that differed from mine by only one letter. So for the rest of the day, I got to hear the soda’s jingle, replaced with my name. It all ended, of course, when I giggled along with their singing when they got one of the lyrics completely wrong. Giggling along with them meant it wasn’t getting to me. Giggling along with them meant their bullying wasn’t quite cutting to the core like they’d hoped.
It didn’t always work out like that, but that day was a good day for bully-ees.
Too bad they didn’t know there were two sodas with names close to mine-Shasta and Fanta.
God, please let them never find out.
I’d gotten through most of day unscathed by my visions. Truth be told, I missed the little buggers. They were my entertainment and distraction in an otherwise unbearable world.
I had plenty stored up, though. I could draw visions of a cabin I’d never been to. Or a vineyard I’d never visited. Or a boy I’d never met but so desperately wanted to.
Friday nights were date nights for Moira and Ren. They left money on the counter and I squealed at seeing the bills spread out. It was an unspoken topic in the house. They knew good and well that I was going to order a meat lover’s pizza and I knew they didn’t want me to.
Well, I knew Moira didn’t want me to.
Ren had a warehouse club-sized bag of bacon jerky in his desk drawer. I saw him sneaking it like Napoleon Dynamite snuck tater tots at school. The man was addicted.
How he erased bacon jerky breath, I’d never know.
I drew most of the night, sitting on the couch coupled by a coffee table full of a carnivore’s delights. After a mundane landscape of a beach, I finally set the sketch pad down beside me. My unfinished novel called my name and I answered the call. Moira and Ren didn’t come back that night, which wasn’t abnormal.
I fell asleep sometime later, the book turned out more boring than interesting. Another being was conjuring images in my head. The voice was so loud and booming, it woke me from a dead sleep. I took my time, yawned and stretched just letting the obviously male voice throw his commands through images in my head all he wanted. If I was in a hurry to get them out, they would simply be replaced with more images.
As I rose to drag myself to my drawing table, I was hit by his voice again, but this time it was a far cry from booming—it slammed into my head and I had to grab onto the edge of the couch in order to steady myself.
What was happening? The force of the impact pushed me to rush to my table. The rest of the night, until dawn, was spent scribbling and shading as fast as I could, throwing one piece of paper to the ground, not even bothering to place it nicely in the basket.
I didn’t even recall most of what I was drawing. His voice through the images was more than a calling—it demanded my attention and kept it steady. Most of the time, after I finished a drawing, I could easily move to the next, the spirit or whatever spoke to me was appeased with one drawing. But this being, this resounding male presence never let me rest. One drawing seemed to fuel his commands. Sometime after the sun had risen, exhausted and mentally spent, I passed out right there on the drawing table.
Saint
I hated walking into a new school. I was an effing professional at it, but it didn’t make me detest the process any less. It never ended, this ever-moving. My father must’ve been some travelling gypsy in another life.
“Everything is ready. All of the preparations have been made. All you have to do is walk in there, show them your driver’s license and get your schedule. And stay out of trouble. That’s the main thing.”
My dad felt the need to remind me to stay out of trouble at every turn of the corner even though I’d managed to never get called into the Principal’s office unless I’d made straight A’s—again. Hell, I’d never even missed a day of school—ever.
“I know, Dad. I’ve only done this a hundred times.”
There wasn’t a particular reason that we moved around so much. We just did. My dad would find a job and then as soon as we got settled, he would begin the tiny complaints that would spiral and snowball into a full-blown wanderlust tirade.
And then we would move.
I complained about it, but at the same time, I was grateful.
I hadn’t found her yet. It was killing me this time around.
And if I didn’t find her by our eighteenth birthday—well, it would be a long time before I could see her again.
But those were things I couldn’t tell my father.
He had a really scientific way of choosing the next place to move. He’d close his eyes, choose a map from the collection we’d grown and then point to a place.
Once we’d moved to Spunky Puddle, Ohio. I kid you not.
I was born in Rayne, Louisiana. The only thing I knew about Rayne was that it was the frog capital of the world.
We moved away from Rayne when I was four and hadn’t returned since.
“Don’t give me any lip. You know the deal. We’re not roots people. We’re wings people.”
He drew his philosophies from garage sale framed cross-stitch patterns.
“I know, Dad. Maybe this time will be different.” I silently hoped, looking out at the white bricked building. It mirrored every other high school I’d ever been to. They must have some generalized architecture plan for these things. They make them look as much like prisons as they can until you get to the lockers. They paint those things like the 1980’s.
My chest warmed as I got out, bringing a grin to my face that only meant one thing—she was here.
Placing my fist over my sternum, I reveled in it. It seemed like centuries since I’d felt that feeling again.
It had been too long.
With one last look at my aging dad, who’d already put his Jeep into drive, I slung my Army green backpack over one shoulder. My feet had barely hit the curb before he’d slammed on the gas.
I was already late. That was nothing new to me. If left up to my father’s devices, I’d be late all the time. Good thing this school was a quick walk from the dump of an apartment we’d found to live in last minute.
He was great at getting me registered for school—not so great at finding a place to live.
Go figure.
“Hi, I’m Saint James.” I said to the heavy-set woman behind the counter who looked even more frazzled than I felt. Every school was the same—a heavy woman behind the counter.
“Oh, the new kid. Yeah, here.” She flailed some papers at me, not even bothering to look at my face or check my id.
“Is there a map of campus?” I asked.
“No. It’s not that big. You’ll figure it out.”
I would’ve taken a hand-drawn map over nothing at that point.
“Thanks.”
“Have a wonderful day.” She said with no sentiment whatsoever.
Outside the doors of the office, the bell had just rang. There weren’t very many students at Revolution High School. At least not very many in comparison to the other places I’d attended. We’d lived in Los Angeles for three months and there were three th
ousand freshman—only freshman.
My second class was Civics and from the looks of it, all of the non-elective courses were centered in the main building.
‘313, 313,’ I chanted, taking the stairs two at a time. The place smelled like fresh paint, but I could see no evidence of it on the smoke-colored walls.
“313 doesn’t exist.” A girl put a hand on my shoulder.
“This schedule says 313.”
“Yeah, they’re stupid. 313 is actually 314 because the administration is too dumb to change it and the teachers are too backwoods not to be superstitious. So, according to the principal there is a 313, but according to the students and teachers, it’s 314.”
“Wow, okay. Thanks. I’m Saint, by the way.”
She canted her head at me in disbelief. “Well, you look like one. I’ll see you in class.”
I almost asked her name, but as we approached the top of the stairs, a burly guy with a Brazil soccer jersey on smothered her under his armpit as she giggled and said he was ‘so funny’.
I didn’t understand girls for one minute.
Never had.
Then again, I didn’t have to—there was only one girl I had to understand.
I walked into the room that had been outfitted with American flags and pictures of the presidents hanging from the ceiling. They looked like more of a distraction than informational.
“You must be Mr. James.”
All Civics teachers looked like a version of Moby. Thin, with nerd glasses, and a smile. And they always wore neutral, natural colors.
I wondered if they all spun records at night.
Maybe it was just the ones I’d known.
I opened my mouth to respond when a gasp resounded from the back of the room. I couldn’t pinpoint the source, but after a hushed comment the class busted out in laughter.
