Love Fortunes and Other Disasters

by Kimberly Karalius

  Her phone rang and she nearly jumped out of her chair. She answered without thinking. “Hello?”

  “There you are,” her mother said. “We thought we’d try calling you again. Eating dinner?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you make?”

  She knew the real answer. “I bought potatoes and green beans from the market. They still had soil on them. Very fresh.”

  “Good, good.”

  Mr. Dupree spoke next, asking her briefly about her classes, but then the conversation turned sour as her parents started making assumptions about her fortune. “We found a nice bakery that would be a superb place to order your wedding cake from. It’s called Sweet Crumblier,” Mr. Dupree said. “They passed our inspection with flying colors. A hard thing to do, as you know. Their specialty is violet macarons, which might actually make a good alternative if some of our guests don’t like chocolate cake.”

  “Finding a dress will be much harder,” Mrs. Dupree said. “We’ll need Robbie’s help. We don’t want you walking down the aisle in polyester, do we?”

  “What are you going on about? I haven’t even told you my fortune yet.”

  Fallon felt choked by their expectations as they planned the imaginary wedding they expected Fallon to have. Like her brother. Like the rest of the family, who consistently married young.

  “Well, go on then,” Mrs. Dupree said with a sniff. “It will be easier to talk about cake and dresses when we have something tangible to work with.”

  “I agree. Tell us. What did your fortune say?” Mr. Dupree said.

  Fallon’s jaw worked. The truth wouldn’t come out. It was stuck in her throat, digging its heels into her bones.

  “Fallon? Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” she croaked. “Zita’s fortune said I had to be patient.”

  “You’re kidding,” Mrs. Dupree said.

  “I guess I won’t be meeting my future boyfriend this year,” she said, trying to joke.

  “There must be something wrong with the machine,” Mrs. Dupree said. Her words spun faster as worry and annoyance interlaced. “How could my little girl be denied our family tradition?”

  “Maybe she’s not our child,” Mr. Dupree said. A bad joke. It only upset Mrs. Dupree more.

  “It’s okay,” Fallon insisted. “There’s always next year. It’s not a bad fortune, after all. There are worse.” Like the fortune she really got.

  “It’s a stale fortune,” Mrs. Dupree said. The sound of her blowing her nose rattled through the phone. “It means you’re stuck, Fallon. You shouldn’t be stuck.”

  “I know, Mom. I know.”

  “I worry about you. Next thing I know, you’ll be back for winter break with a suitcase full of prepackaged sandwiches.”

  Fallon snorted. “Not going to happen. I’m following your rules. Always quality.”

  “Always quality,” Mr. Dupree repeated with a proud voice. “There now, dear. Nothing to concern yourself over. We’ll have to be patient, just as Zita says.”

  Just as Zita says. Fallon gripped the receiver tighter.

  By the time she got off the phone with her parents, Fallon felt achy all over. A shower would solve the problem, she thought, so she quickly grabbed her nightclothes and let the hot water melt the knots in her shoulders. Gradually, her sweet lemon body wash distracted her from thoughts of her parents’ premature wedding plans. Suds hid her skin. Her eyes burned from soap, not tears, and she had to stand under the showerhead for a few minutes before she could open her eyes again.

  An idea came.

  She emerged from the shower in a hurry, her short hair clumped and dripping, and threw on the first thing at hand. Her pajamas were boyish, with pink-and-purple stripes shot through with silver. Fallon took the velvet bathrobe her mother had bought her for her birthday last year and slipped it on. She tied the sash snuggly at her waist. Even though the bathrobe had set her mother back a paycheck due to its authentic crushed velvet material, Fallon didn’t think anything of the fact that it dragged in the dirt on her way to Anais’s.

  chapter 5

  READING MATERIAL

  Anais’s father received a lot of strange deliveries as a drugstore owner. “Look at it this way,” Anais had explained, “a drugstore is a weird and wonderful place. You never know what we’re selling. And yet, we always sell what you need. How do you think that happens? It’s not magic. It’s persistence.”

  Persistence in the form of small-time inventors and companies plaguing Mr. Jacobs with shipments of their products. Every Monday morning, a truck would park outside the store with a new set of boxes and manila envelopes. Mr. Jacobs carefully opened everything, considered the products, and usually wrote back brisk rejections in the same day. Mondays were slow.

  Sometimes Mr. Jacobs liked what he’d been sent. Last year, he had decided to carry tweezers shaped like Zodiac animals. He sold ready-made sandwiches from down-on-their-luck chefs and shower caps patterned with monster trucks (those hadn’t sold very well). Yet, much to Anais’s annoyance, her father kept every sample he ever received. The stockroom was hopelessly cluttered.

  Mr. Jacobs might have saved love-charm contraband, whether he knew it or not. Since Fallon had no other leads at this point, it was worth trying out. The night was surprisingly warm, or maybe it was the insulated weight of the bathrobe. She checked the clock hanging in the window of an antiques store and was startled to find that it was almost 11:00 P.M. People still roamed the streets; some gave her strange looks as she passed, but she understood the attention. If this had been any other night, she would have already been asleep in her bed. She tightened her sash and entered the store.

  The drugstore’s atmosphere was oddly sleepy for a weeknight. Her shoes stuck to the tile floor. A fluorescent light above the freezer section flickered like a twitching eye. Voices from Anais’s portable radio whispered through the aisles. She found Anais with her head bent toward the little radio.

  “Is your father asleep?” she asked.

  Anais nodded. “If he wasn’t, I’d be blasting this station. Hard-boiled Hal’s talk show is coming up in a few minutes. I hate having to listen like this. Makes me feel like I’m doing something covert.”

  Fallon wanted to laugh at that. Just yesterday, she’d joined a rebellion.

  Anais peeled her eyes away from the radio long enough to take in Fallon’s clothes. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Uh-huh. Then how do you explain the bathrobe? And are those pajamas underneath? The Fallon I know would rather eat the cafeteria’s frozen chicken nuggets than show up in public with her jammies on.”

  “I have a favor to ask.”

  Anais’s lips curled. “I’m intrigued.”

  “If you have time,” she started, noticing that no one else was in the store, “please let me into the storeroom. I want to see if your father saved any old magazines or books sent to him.”

  “The storeroom is a mess, but Dad’s got his own system. He might get upset if you move things around.”

  “If I find what I’m looking for, I’d be happy to pay for it.”

  “Of course you would. I’m just not sure if…” Anais’s thought strayed when a three-note tune announced the beginning of the talk show. She inched the dial up further and Hard-boiled Hal’s amiable voice filled the store:

  You won’t find anything sappy on our show. Stick around, grab a beer, and we’ll talk about the other things that matter in life. Yes, other things do matter.

  “He says that every night,” Anais explained, chuckling. “I wish you’d stay up sometimes. You don’t know what you’re missing. I may be happily dating someone, but even I can appreciate Hard-boiled Hal’s no-romance policy. It’s awfully refreshing.”

  Fallon knew she wouldn’t get anywhere with Anais glued to Hard-boiled Hal’s voice. They listened for a few minutes. Grimbaud’s high schoolers loved his radio show, ironically titled Hard-boiled Hal’s Practical Guide to Love. His show had
nothing to do with love except for the avoidance of it; he urged his listeners to embrace their unromantic sides. Words like “pink” and “hearts” and “pet names” were banned from vocabulary. He even had a monthly segment where he talked about the merits of farting and burping in front of the opposite sex. “Zita would powder me in glitter and candy if she knew who I was,” he said, chuckling. “Too bad for her. I choose to remain happily unwashed and unappealing, a constant thorn in her side. Just the way I like it.”

  Fallon knew the appeal of such a show. Hard-boiled Hal served as a shrewd, pragmatic conscience in a town practically dotty with thoughts of love. He offered the townspeople relief from the pressures of Zita’s love fortunes—as long as his identity remained secret.

  As Hard-boiled Hal divulged his opinion on why giving lace as romantic gifts was a terrible idea, the front door jingled.

  Anais, a smidge taller behind the counter, turned a deathly shade of white. “I’m not here,” she said, ducking underneath the counter.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s Bear,” she hissed. “Don’t let him see me!”

  Fallon stood on her toes and saw Bear enter the drugstore. Sweat darkened his muscle shirt. He wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand and headed straight for the fridges. Headphones covered his ears, keeping him insulated in his own world—he hadn’t even turned his head to look at the counter when he came in. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Pretend you work here.”

  “In my bathrobe?”

  “Make something up!”

  Fallon sighed and turned down the volume on Hard-boiled Hal’s show.

  Bear grabbed a drink from the fridge and made his way to the counter. His eyes widened when he saw Fallon, as if waking from a long sleep. “Hey, Fallon, right? Anais’s friend?”

  “That’s me,” Fallon said as cheerfully as she could.

  “I didn’t think you’d work in a place like this,” he said, taking a second look at the sticky floors and flickering lights.

  Fallon’s cheeks burned, and for once, she was thankful that the lighting was unreliable. If Bear was surprised, her parents would have been mortified. “I know what you mean, but I’m trying some jobs out. I can already tell that I’m not cut out for being a drugstore cashier. It’s kind of scary to be working by myself in the middle of the night.”

  “Oh. How long is your shift? I can wait for you.”

  Fallon felt Anais’s hand squeeze her ankle from under the counter. “Thank you, but that’s okay. I have to grow up sometime.”

  “But not from doing this job,” he said, smiling.

  “Right.”

  Bear slid the blue drink across the counter toward her; it was one of those energy drinks that left you wide-eyed and ready for another round of grueling training in the sport of your choice. Before she could fumble with the cash register, he eyed a display on the shelf behind her and pointed. “Wait. Can I get one of those biscuit tins too?”

  Anais let out a whine.

  “Sure,” Fallon said loudly. She stomped a little for extra coverage and stood on her toes to get the tin. “Chocolate-covered or plain?”

  “Chocolate,” Bear said.

  Fallon hid her smirk. The rectangular tin fit in the palms of her hands, holding only about a dozen chocolate-covered biscuits baked by Peak & Brown’s. Situated just outside of town, the factory gave off the scents of crumbly biscuits and bittersweet chocolate. Thankfully, the student housing complex was nowhere near the factory, so Fallon didn’t have to be tortured daily by mass-produced temptations. Peak & Brown’s tins were collectibles. The tin she took off the shelf was decorated with gold-and-turquoise filigree; in the center, a charming little girl with blond curls beamed.

  “My mom collects them,” Bear said, pulling money from his pockets. “I don’t think she has that one yet.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  “You don’t understand. Our dining room walls are covered in Peak & Brown’s tins. I broke one of the shelves when I was kid while wrestling with my little brothers. When my mom discovered the bent tins all over the floor, she refused to speak to me for six months.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I hate them.” Bear looked away, embarrassed. “But I keep buying them because they make my mom happy.”

  Anais whimpered. Fallon tapped her fingers on the tin to mask the sound. “So not even the little girl can make you think kindly on the biscuits?”

  “That face haunts me.” He shuddered. “Can you bag that?”

  Fallon tried recalling whatever memories she had of Anais and her father operating the cash register, but it was no use. “Sorry, I still can’t get this thing to work,” she said. Grabbing a piece of scrap paper and a pencil, she added up the prices, plus tax, and had Bear look it over. “I hope you don’t need a receipt.”

  “Nah. It’s okay.” He took the bag and dug some coins out of his pocket for exact change. “I’ve got five more miles to run before heading home, so I better go.”

  Fallon waved and watched him leave. At the sound of the door closing, Anais popped back up. Her cheeks were smeared with tears.

  “Did you hear that?” Anais blubbered. “He hates her. He hates me!”

  “Don’t overreact. It’s just a tin.”

  “Peak and Brown’s has ruined my life, I tell you.” She plucked a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose.

  “Didn’t Zita’s love fortune insist that you be yourself? You need to share everything with Bear if you want to keep him.” Fallon gestured at the store and then the tins. “Everything.”

  “No way. I can handle this, Fallon.” Anais mopped up her face and fixed her hair. She still looked endearing, even with the splotchy red skin. “No one I date ever has to know my horrible secrets. I am simply Anais Jacobs, a normal girl whose face is not printed on biscuit tins.”

  Fallon shrugged. When Anais was stubborn, as she was most of the time, it was hard to get through to her. And it wasn’t as if this was the first time they’d had a conversation about Anais’s “horrible secrets.” The first secret was, of course, her grubby father and the drugstore—no boyfriend of hers should ever know she was associated with it. But the bigger secret was that Anais was, in fact, the little girl on the Peak & Brown’s tin.

  When Anais was a toddler, she had been spotted by a marketing representative from Peak & Brown’s. In the middle of the supermarket, the Peak & Brown’s representative knelt down on one knee, examined the giggling toddler with a magnifying glass, and offered Anais’s father a substantial amount of money if he’d allow Anais to become their mascot. She had been photographed and painted at least a hundred times over the course of a week so that her likeness could be preserved for the future history of the bakery. Anais’s toddler-self haunted her over the years, a source of misery rather than pride. “I don’t have such rosy cheeks,” she’d say, stabbing at the tin with her index finger, “and I can’t make my eyes twinkle like that anymore.”

  “I know you’re upset,” Fallon said, catching the last drop of mucus with her own tissue, “but your secret is still safe, thanks to me. Will you open the storeroom?”

  Anais glared at the tins on the wall and nodded. “Remember what I said. Don’t touch anything unless you’re taking it with you.”

  * * *

  Fallon woke with a paper cut on her cheek. Uncurling herself from her sheets, still tucked neatly at the corners, she sat up and scratched off the dried blood. The culprit lay on the pillow next to her: an ancient teenage girls’ magazine boasting tips on how to dress for a first date.

  She switched off her alarm and groaned, tired from hours of sifting through Mr. Jacobs’s storeroom. Anais had been telling the truth about the storeroom: it was a mess, covered in cobwebs and piles that only just made sense if you looked closely at how items were grouped. Fallon had pinched her nose as she rounded corners, avoiding the cheese samples that reeked despite still being wrapped in plastic. Mr. Jacobs had
a section for books, but the only ones he had been sent were humorous or useful like a turnip cookbook or a guide on five ways to mow your lawn with your eyes closed.

  Fallon had taken magazines aimed toward girls and women. The magazines, full of advice, would surely contain charms to attract crushes or deal with exes. She had looked at a few men’s magazines too, but they seemed focused more on hobbies than on doling out love advice. She had promised Anais that she would give back the magazines she didn’t use, and pay for the ones she did. So far, Fallon feared that she’d have to give back the entire stack. No charms in sight.

  After returning to the complex with her arms full of magazines, Fallon had washed her hands and face thoroughly and set to work, moving through the pile. She made it through three fat magazines before falling asleep. Her dreams had swarmed with designer shoes, exercise routines, and quizzes.

  School would start with or without her. Fallon took a shower, prepared and ate breakfast, and barely made it out the door in time.

  * * *

  “How’s the charm-hunting?” Mirthe asked.

  Fallon pressed against the lockers, avoiding a flock of students newly released from gym class. “I was able to find some old magazines shipped from out of town. They’ve been decaying in someone’s storeroom.”

  “Have you searched them yet?”

  “Not all of them.”

  Mirthe pursed her lips. “Femke and I are going to start our own hunt tomorrow night, but we’re going to need your help for that to work.”

  “How?”

  “Well, our parents will be out all night. Thursdays are date nights for them. Tradition.” She rolled her eyes but grinned. “Anyway, it’s the perfect chance for Femke and me to ride our moped out of here and peruse Lambrechts’s shops. There’s just one problem. Student government starts up on Thursday night.”

  “Are you an officer?”

  “You’ve never been to a meeting?” Mirthe cocked her head. “I would have sworn that someone like you would be in many clubs.”