by Isobel Bird
“I’m just afraid they might take it too seriously,” said Annie. “I meant for it to be fun.”
“That’s not your problem,” Kate said. “You can’t be responsible for everyone.”
“I know,” Annie agreed. “But I do feel sort of responsible. I mean, isn’t it sort of like doing a spell? You put this stuff out there and it has some kind of effect.”
“You just did a few readings,” Kate said, closing the pizza box. “It’s done. Over. No one got hurt. Now let me see your nails.”
Annie held out her hands for Kate’s appraisal.
“This is a good color for you,” Kate said. “Summer’s coming, so let’s do your toes.”
Annie began to protest, but Kate had already retrieved the nail polish from her bag and was shaking it vigorously. Annie knew that it wouldn’t do any good to put up a fight, so she tugged her socks off and let Kate take one of her feet in her hands, put toilet paper between her toes, and begin painting.
“I guess you’re right,” Annie said, leaning back against the pillows on her bed as Kate worked on her feet. “I didn’t tell anyone anything that might cause any trouble.”
“That you know of,” Cooper said, looking at Annie’s nails doubtfully.
“That’s enough out of you,” Kate said to Cooper, pointing the fingernail polish brush at her. “One more word and we’re doing your toes in bubble-gum pink.”
Cooper feigned a look of horror and tucked her feet underneath her while Annie laughed. Kate’s right, Annie thought. I’m taking this too seriously. It was just a game. She was glad that, as usual, her friends were around to remind her when she was getting too uptight about things. The Tarot readings were just harmless fun.
Probably, she told herself as Kate made her toes sparkle, everyone has forgotten all about them already.
CHAPTER 2
“How did you know?”
Annie was trying to find her chem notebook in the jumbled mess that was her locker and couldn’t see who was speaking to her.
“Know what?” she asked, finding the notebook and turning to see Sherrie standing behind her, her arms crossed over her chest and a perplexed expression on her face. Annie pushed her glasses up her nose and said again, “How did I know what?”
“About the trip,” Sherrie said. She didn’t sound angry, but Annie was wary anyway. With Sherrie you always had to assume you’d done something she didn’t like.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Annie truthfully.
Sherrie rolled her eyes. “Hello? Miss Fortune? On Saturday? You told me that I was going to take a trip, remember?”
Annie nodded. “Right,” she said. Of course she remembered Sherrie’s reading. She’d wondered all weekend what Sherrie had told her friends about it.
“Last night my parents told me that the trip to Grandma’s house is off,” Sherrie said.
Annie suddenly felt sick. Had something happened to Sherrie’s grandmother? Was Sherrie going to blame her for it? She opened her mouth to say something, but Sherrie cut her off.
“Instead, we’re going to Paris,” she announced.
Annie shut her mouth. Paris? She stood there, staring at Sherrie and not knowing what to think or say.
“I don’t see how you could have known about it,” Sherrie said. “They didn’t even buy the tickets until yesterday morning. So what gives?”
Annie shook her head. “I didn’t know anything about it,” she said. “All I did was tell you what the cards showed me.”
Sherrie narrowed her eyes as if she suspected that Annie was lying to her. She pursed her lips, put her hands on her hips, and raised one eyebrow. “You’re telling me you saw this trip-to-Paris thing before my parents even knew for sure about it?” she said.
“I didn’t,” Annie said. “The cards did.”
Sherrie looked thoughtful. “You also said I was going to meet a guy,” she said. “Is that still true?”
Annie shrugged. “I said you might meet someone,” she said. “And it might be a guy. And there might be romance. That’s all.”
Sherrie pushed her hair back. “You were right about this whole trip thing,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll be right about that, too.”
She seemed to be thinking about something and didn’t say anything for a minute. Annie figured the conversation was over, closed her locker, and started to walk away.
“Wait,” Sherrie said, following her. “I’m not done yet.”
What else did she want? Annie was relieved that her prediction had somehow turned out to be right. At least Sherrie wouldn’t bad-mouth her all over school. Probably. But now she seemed to want something else.
“This Tarot card thing,” Sherrie said softly. “Can you do it for anyone?”
“You mean, can I read the cards for anybody?” Annie asked. Sherrie nodded.
“Yeah,” said Annie. “Why?”
“I was just wondering,” Sherrie said, smiling sweetly. “Thanks. Oh, and by the way, that’s a great shirt.”
Sherrie walked away, leaving Annie standing confused in the hallway. Why was she being so nice all of a sudden? Annie looked at her shirt; she had barely even glanced at it before putting it on that morning. It wasn’t anything special. In fact, it was one of her less-inspired fashion options. Why had Sherrie gone out of her way to compliment her on it?
“Class is this way,” Kate said, coming up to Annie and waving a hand in front of her face.
“Oh, hi,” said Annie.
“You look lost,” Kate remarked.
“Just confused,” responded Annie. “You’ll never guess who just talked to me. The head Grace herself.”
“Sherrie?” said Kate incredulously. “What did you do to her?”
“That’s just it,” Annie told her. “Nothing. I did a reading for her on Saturday, and I guess it sort of came true.”
“You read Sherrie’s cards?” Kate said. “You didn’t tell us that.”
“I kind of wanted to forget about it,” explained Annie. “I didn’t think it went that well. But I guess it did.”
Kate didn’t say anything. Annie knew that Kate was thinking about Sherrie and about how they were no longer friends. Annie knew that it was still hard for Kate sometimes. Even though Sherrie could be a total pain, Kate had been friends with her for a long time. Now they barely even said hello to each other.
“What did her reading say?” Kate asked, unable to resist.
“I told her she was going on a trip,” Annie said, “and that she might meet a guy. I guess yesterday her parents told her they were taking her to Paris, and now she’s acting like I made it happen.”
“Sherrie in Paris,” Kate said. “Alert the media.”
Annie laughed. “Now she wants to know who this guy is she’s supposed to meet. I think she has this idea that it’s going to be the love of her life.”
“She probably hopes it’s Ben Affleck,” said Kate. “Couldn’t you tell her it was more along the lines of Marilyn Manson? I don’t see why she should get a trip to Paris and a great guy when we’re stuck here all summer.”
“Anyway, I’m just glad things turned out okay,” Annie said as they walked into class. “The last thing I need is her blaming me for some disaster.”
Annie forgot about Sherrie as the day went on. With only three weeks of school left, she was busy studying for finals. Every chance she got she went to the library and settled at a table in the quietest part, poring over her books and notes. Her head was filling up fast with dates, formulas, and figures, and there wasn’t much room for thoughts about Sherrie and her Tarot reading.
That afternoon, as she was trying to memorize the different royal families of England, she suddenly got the sense that she was being watched. Looking up from her notes about the Plantagenet line, she saw two girls at another table staring at her. One of them she didn’t know, but the other was Loren Nichols, a senior Annie recognized because she was always surrounded by a crowd of boys vying for her attention. Tall, blond
, and gorgeous, Loren was the kind of girl who normally didn’t give people like Annie a second glance. But now Loren was looking right at Annie and pointing. A minute later she was standing in front of Annie while her friend remained at the other table but kept looking over.
“Hi,” Loren said. “You’re Annie Crandall, right?”
“Yeah,” said Annie. “Why?”
“Sherrie Adams told me what you did,” Loren said.
Annie groaned. So Sherrie had been talking about her.
“Look,” Annie said, “all I did was tell her what I saw. I didn’t know her parents were planning a trip.”
“Could you do it for me?” Loren asked, seemingly uninterested in hearing what Annie was trying to say about Sherrie.
Annie looked at her blankly.
“Could you?” Loren repeated. “The thing with the cards?”
“You want me to read your Tarot cards?” Annie asked.
Loren pulled out a chair and sat down. “You can use them to see the future, right?” she said. “Well, I really need to know something, and I was wondering if you could find out the answer for me.”
“What is it you need to know?” Annie asked, still a little confused.
Loren looked around. “You promise you won’t tell anyone?” she asked. “If anyone finds out, I’ll be really embarrassed.”
Annie had been about to tell Loren that she couldn’t do a Tarot reading for her, but now she was intrigued. What was Loren’s big secret? “I won’t say anything,” she said.
“Okay,” Loren said. “Here’s the thing. My parents really want me to go to college in the fall. But I don’t want to. I want to try to break into modeling. I sent my pictures to an agency in New York, and I’m waiting to hear from them. I didn’t tell my parents I was doing it, and I need to know if it’s going to work out. Can you tell me that?”
“I don’t know,” Annie told her truthfully. She’d never attempted answering such a specific question before.
“Can you try?” Loren pleaded. “I really need to know. And Sherrie said you told her stuff that hadn’t even happened yet.”
“I think that was sort of an accident,” Annie said. She wasn’t at all sure that she could do what Loren was asking her to do. Even if she could, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Telling fortunes at a school carnival was one thing. This was something totally different.
“Just give it a shot,” Loren coaxed. “See what you can find out. I’m not asking for details or anything. I just want to know if it looks good.”
Annie looked at Loren’s anxious face. She seemed nice enough, and part of Annie wanted to help her out. But it still seemed weird. Or was it? After all, Archer and some of the other women at Crones’ Circle did readings for people who came to them. They even charged money for them. So maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with Annie’s trying to answer Loren’s questions.
“Maybe I could try,” she said.
“Good,” Loren exclaimed. “Do you have the cards on you?”
“Here?” Annie said. “I can’t do a reading here.”
“Why not?” asked Loren. “Do you need to be in a special place?”
Annie shook her head. “No,” she said. “I guess not. But in the library?”
“Nobody else is here right now,” Loren said. “And my friend will keep an eye open. If anyone comes in, she can tell us. So do you have the cards?”
As it happened, Annie did have the cards with her. They were in her backpack. She’d had them in there ever since the carnival and had been meaning to take them out and put them back on the altar in her room, where she normally kept them. Reluctantly, she unzipped the pack and took out the cards. When Loren saw them, she smiled.
“Now, I’m not promising anything,” Annie told her as she began to shuffle the cards.
Loren nodded, watching Annie as she cut the cards several times and then began to turn them over one at a time until there were five in a row on the table.
“Well?” Loren said expectantly. “What do you see? Am I going to make it as a model or not?”
“Hang on,” Annie said. She was looking at the cards and trying to get some kind of an answer. But nothing definite was coming to her. She knew what the individual cards meant, but she couldn’t sense any kind of pattern in the group as a whole. Some of the cards made sense to her, but others were just confusing.
She knew that Loren was getting impatient as she sat waiting for an answer. Annie tried to clear her head and let a message come to her from the cards. But the harder she tried, the more confused she became.
“What do they mean?” asked Loren. “Are they good?”
“Some of them are,” Annie replied. She pointed to the first one, which showed a woman holding a bright light in her hands. “This one, for instance. It’s the Star.”
“Does it mean I’ll be famous?” Loren said hopefully. “She looks like she’s a movie star or something.”
“Not exactly,” said Annie. “It means realizing something important.”
“That’s good though, right?” said Loren. “It doesn’t mean that the modeling thing isn’t going to work out, right?”
Annie ignored the question, pointing to another card. “This is the Four of Pentacles. It can mean success and riches.”
“So I am going to make it!” Loren said. “I knew it.”
“I can’t say that for sure,” said Annie, trying to get the other girl to listen to her. “There’s no clear answer here.”
“But it could mean that, right?” Loren pressed.
“Yes,” said Annie. “You could read it that way. But you should look at all the cards before—”
“Sherrie was right,” Loren said, interrupting. “You are good. Thanks a lot, Annie. You really helped me out.”
Loren stood up to go. Annie tried to stop her, but Loren walked away quickly and didn’t look back, picking up her books and leaving with her friend.
When they were gone, Annie sat and looked at the cards some more. Did they really say what Loren wanted them to say? Annie wasn’t sure. There had been some cards that seemed to contradict the ones that suggested that Loren was going to make it. But Loren had appeared so happy thinking that the cards had been in her favor that maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe what was really important was what she believed. Annie picked up the five cards and put them back in the deck, mixing them up a little before returning the cards to their box. She’d tried to tell Loren that things weren’t definite. It wasn’t her fault the girl hadn’t wanted to stick around to hear the whole story.
The bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. Annie packed up her bag and went to meet Cooper and Kate. She found them at their lockers, and the three of them walked out together. As they went down the front steps of the school Loren passed them.
“Bye, Annie,” she said. “Thanks a lot for this afternoon.”
Annie waved, then noticed that Kate and Cooper were looking at her oddly.
“Since when did Loren Nichols start talking to you?” Kate asked.
“I helped her out with some review stuff for her AP chem final this afternoon in the library,” Annie covered. She didn’t want her friends to know that she had done a Tarot reading for Loren. For one thing, she’d promised that she wouldn’t tell anyone about Loren’s modeling plans. For another, she still felt a little weird about having done it. The three of them had made a pact not to discuss their Wicca studies with anyone at school, and even though Annie hadn’t said a word about witchcraft to Loren, she knew she was cutting it close. Doing readings at the carnival—where people could think it was all an act—was one thing. Doing them on demand was another. The less Kate and Cooper knew about it, the better.
They didn’t seem to think there was anything strange about Annie’s helping Loren, and Annie didn’t elaborate. Instead, she listened to her friends talk about the upcoming summer holidays and their plans for celebrating the next big Wiccan holiday, Litha, which would take place on Midsummer, only a few days after scho
ol was out for the year.
“My parents said that we can use the cabin if we want to,” Kate said. “I didn’t tell them why we wanted to use it, of course. I just said we wanted to have a weekend away to celebrate the end of the school year.”
“And now that I have a car, we don’t have to have anyone else drive us,” Cooper said happily. She had recently turned sixteen, and her parents’ gift had been a classic 1957 Nash Metropolitan convertible.
“Your aunt will let you go, won’t she?” Cooper asked, turning to Annie.
“Sure,” Annie said. “I think she’s just about gotten over the fact that I was kidnapped by a psycho a few weeks ago. I don’t see why she wouldn’t let me go spend a weekend in the woods with the two people who got me involved in that little mishap.”
“Hey,” said Cooper. “That wasn’t my fault. And who saved you from that psycho?”
“A dead girl,” Annie answered.
“And me,” Cooper added. “Let’s not forget that.”
They were approaching Annie’s house as they talked. As they got closer, the front door to the house opened and a woman Annie had never seen before walked out. The woman was wearing a crisp blue business suit and carrying a briefcase. Annie’s aunt Sarah followed her out of the house, and the two of them stood on the path to the front door, talking.
“Who’s that?” Kate asked.
“Beats me,” Annie answered. “It’s no one I know.”
The girls said good-bye, and Kate and Cooper headed for their houses. Annie continued up the path. When she reached her aunt and the woman, the woman turned around and smiled.
“Annie, this is Marcia Reeves,” her aunt said.
“Nice to meet you,” Annie said to the woman as she shook her outstretched hand.
The woman turned back to Annie’s aunt. “The house is beautiful,” she said, taking a card from her pocket and handing it to Sarah. “When your plans are more definite, give me a call and we’ll talk.”
She turned and walked down the path, getting into a car that was parked in front of the house. As she drove away, Annie looked at her aunt.
