What the Cards Said

by Isobel Bird

  Finally she decided to go back to her room and go to bed. After all, she told herself as she climbed the stairs, things always seem better in the morning.

  CHAPTER 4

  “San Francisco?” Annie couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “You sound so surprised,” her aunt said as she spread strawberry jam on a piece of toast. “I’ve gone on trips like this before for work. And it’s just until Sunday night. You’ve stayed by yourself with Meg before. It will be fine.”

  “I know,” replied Annie, trying to calm the thoughts that were going through her head. “It’s not that. I guess I just wasn’t expecting it.”

  She pretended to be deeply interested in her scrambled eggs as she thought about what she’d just been told. Her aunt was going down to San Francisco on Friday morning. That had to be where the house she was looking at was. So they were moving away from Beecher Falls. Things hadn’t gotten better; they’d gotten worse.

  “Do you have to go?” Annie said suddenly.

  Her aunt looked at her with a puzzled expression. “Is something wrong?” she asked. “I don’t like the idea of leaving you alone so soon after what happened,” she added, referring to the recent kidnapping.

  Annie hesitated. She didn’t want to come out and tell her aunt that she was unhappy about moving. That would make it seem like she couldn’t handle it. But what she really wanted to do was beg her aunt not to sell the house.

  “No,” she said. “It’s okay. We’ll be fine. Really.”

  “I’d feel much better if Kate and Cooper would come over to keep you company,” her aunt suggested. “Meg would like that, too, I bet. Speaking of which, I’d better go see what’s keeping her. It’s almost time to take her to school.”

  After her aunt left the kitchen, Annie picked at her eggs sullenly. San Francisco. She definitely didn’t want to live there, for a lot of reasons. She wanted to stay right where she was. But how could she make her aunt see that they had to stay if she herself didn’t even know why they were moving in the first place? It was all too confusing.

  She got up and grabbed her backpack. She didn’t want to be there when her aunt came back with Meg. Finding a pen, she scribbled a note saying she had to leave early to study for a test, and left it on the table. Then she ran out the door and walked to school, her head filled with dark thoughts.

  She was slamming books around in her locker when Kate and Cooper showed up.

  “You got an early start this morning,” Cooper said. “We looked for you on the way here. What happened?”

  “Nothing,” Annie said, shutting her locker door with a bang.

  “That doesn’t sound like nothing,” Kate commented.

  “We’re moving to San Francisco,” Annie said shortly, turning and walking away from her friends.

  Cooper and Kate ran after her. “What do you mean you’re moving to San Francisco?” Cooper asked. “Since when?”

  “Since last week, apparently,” Annie said. She was angry, and she was walking quickly.

  “Whoa,” said Cooper, reaching out and grabbing her arm. “Slow down.”

  “Let go of me!” Annie said loudly, startling Cooper so much that she backed away and held her hands up as if surrendering.

  “Sorry,” Cooper said, shooting Kate a perplexed look.

  Annie leaned against the wall. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  “It’s okay,” Cooper told her. “I hear a lot of people have that reaction to San Francisco.”

  Annie smiled despite herself. Then she felt tears welling up in her eyes, and the next thing she knew she was crying. “It’s just that I don’t want to move,” she said, sniffling.

  Kate put her arm around Annie, and Annie let her friend pull her close. Cooper reached into her backpack and pulled out a tissue, which she held out. Annie took it and wiped her eyes. When she had calmed down a little bit she continued talking.

  “I don’t want to leave here,” she said. “I don’t want to leave you guys, or the class, or the bookstore. But I really don’t want to go to San Francisco.”

  “I don’t get it,” Kate said. “What’s with San Francisco? Apart from not being here? I always thought it was kind of pretty.”

  “It’s where we lived,” Annie said with a sigh. “With my parents, I mean.”

  Kate looked at Cooper. They knew that Annie’s parents were dead, but that’s about all they knew. She almost never talked about them, and she’d never said anything about her life before they died. The few times anyone had tried to get her to talk about it, she’d changed the subject.

  “I’m sorry,” Cooper said. “Now it makes more sense.”

  “I haven’t been back there since it happened,” Annie said. “I haven’t even really thought about it much. Not until I heard Aunt Sarah on the telephone last night.”

  “Why would she move you there if she knows how much it upsets you?” Kate asked.

  Annie shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe she thinks I should be over it by now. I can’t talk to her about it. Not yet.”

  “But why would she move there at all?” asked Cooper. “That’s the part I don’t get.”

  “A lot of Internet companies are based in San Francisco,” Annie said. “She already does some writing for them. I guess maybe one of them offered her a job. She hasn’t said anything about that. I just know that she’s going on Friday and she’s looking at a house. I heard her talking about getting the keys from someone.”

  “That does sound pretty final,” Kate said, her own eyes welling up. She hugged Annie again. “I don’t want you to go either.”

  “Don’t you start, too,” Cooper warned. “If everyone starts crying we’ll have to call the janitor to mop the place up.”

  “It’s time to get to class anyway,” Annie said. “Even if I am moving, I still have to get through finals first.”

  As the first bell rang, they walked to class. They were going toward the stairs when Annie saw Loren Nichols approaching her. She was surprised when Loren smiled and waved at her, and even more surprised when she stopped to talk.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” she asked Annie, then glanced at Kate and Cooper. “Alone?”

  Annie looked at her friends. “I’ll catch up,” she said, knowing that her friends were probably really confused about why one of the most popular girls in school was talking to her again.

  Kate and Cooper left, and Loren turned back to Annie. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “But I was wondering if you would mind doing another Tarot reading.”

  “For you?” Annie asked. “I thought we answered your question.”

  “It’s not for me,” Loren said. “It’s for a friend. A couple of friends, actually.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to tell anyone,” Annie said.

  “It’s just some of my friends,” Loren answered. “I told them how good you are, and they want you to read their cards, too.”

  “So how come they aren’t asking me themselves?” Annie asked her.

  “I thought it might be easier this way,” Loren explained. “I was hoping you’d meet us during lunch. In the choir rehearsal room. No one uses it then, and we won’t be bothered.”

  “How many friends is this exactly?” said Annie.

  “A couple,” Loren said. “Not too many. So will you do it?”

  “I guess so,” Annie said. Loren’s request had caught her off guard. “But just this once.”

  Loren beamed. “You’re the best,” she said. “The girls will be so excited. See you fifth period then.”

  Annie watched the other girl go. It felt strange to be talking to someone like Loren, someone she really had nothing in common with. It was even stranger knowing that Loren had mentioned her to her friends. What had she told them? What were they expecting? What kinds of questions were they going to ask her? She didn’t know, but at least thinking about it kept her mind off of the big problem in her life—her aunt an
d what was going to happen in San Francisco.

  “I thought you said a couple of your friends,” Annie said to Loren.

  The choir room was filled with what seemed to be a throng of people, although when Annie actually counted them it was more like eight or nine.

  “This is a couple,” Loren said. “I kept it to the bare minimum.”

  “I don’t know if I have time to do everyone,” Annie said doubtfully.

  An unhappy murmur went through the group of girls. Annie looked at their disappointed faces. She felt strange again. Every one of the girls standing around her was someone she’d never spoken to before. Like Loren, they were all popular girls who spent most of their time with one another or with their equally popular boyfriends. This was definitely not the crowd Annie was used to hanging around with.

  “Okay,” she said, anxious to get things over with. “Who’s first?”

  All the girls clamored to be the first one to go, and finally Annie had to pick one at random. “How about you?” she said, pointing to Jenna Albersmith, a red-haired senior who had once spilled a carton of milk on Annie in the cafeteria by accident.

  Jenna sat down at a desk next to the one Annie had taken a seat in. Annie took the Tarot cards out of her backpack and shuffled them as she spoke to Jenna.

  “Is there anything in particular you want to know?” she asked.

  “I was just wondering what would happen with my boyfriend and me,” Jenna said, turning red. “We’re going to different schools in the fall.”

  Annie turned over some cards and looked at them. Jenna watched her, her eyes following Annie as she examined each card in turn. When Annie frowned, Jenna looked concerned.

  “What?” she said. “Is it bad?”

  “I don’t think it’s going to last,” Annie said slowly. “In fact, I think he’s already moved on.”

  Jenna gasped. “Is he cheating on me?” she asked in disbelief. “With who?”

  “It would be someone you know,” Annie said carefully. “Someone close to you. I’d be very careful.”

  “Can you tell who it is?” Jenna asked, sounding hurt.

  “No,” Annie answered. “But she might have light-colored hair.”

  Jenna’s face drained of color. “I knew it,” she said. “He told me nothing was going on, but I knew they weren’t just friends.”

  She stood up. “Thanks a lot,” she said.

  “I’m sorry it wasn’t better news,” Annie told her as another girl took her place.

  “I have a relationship question, too,” the girl said. “There’s this guy I have a crush on, and I don’t know if he likes me.”

  They all want to know about guys, Annie thought as she shuffled the cards for the girl’s reading. Don’t they ever think about anything else?

  She turned the top five cards over and looked at them. Understanding what they said got easier every time she did a reading, and this time the signs were unmistakable to her.

  “He likes you,” she said to the girl. “Go for it.”

  “I knew it,” she said. “I just knew it.”

  “Then why did you need to ask me?” Annie asked her.

  The girl shrugged her shoulders. “It can’t hurt, can it?” she said.

  For the next forty minutes Annie did one reading after another, answering questions and giving advice to the string of girls who sat down at the desk and asked her to look into their futures. Even though most of them asked silly questions, she found herself enjoying doing the readings. The other girls really believed that she could see what was going to happen. They listened to her, and they looked at her in a way that made her feel really important. Annie was used to getting good grades in her classes, but no one really respected her for that. At least not the other students. They just thought she studied too much. But this was different. Now they were waiting to hear what she had to say. They didn’t think of her as the brain who got good grades; they thought of her as someone who could do something really special. And that felt good.

  “One more,” Annie said as she looked at the clock and noticed that the period was almost over.

  “Do me,” a girl said, sitting down.

  Annie looked at her. Unlike the others, this girl didn’t seem particularly excited about being there. She looked almost bored.

  “What do you want to know?” Annie asked her.

  The girl shook her head. “Nothing really,” she said. “You just tell me what you see.”

  “You don’t have a question?” said Annie.

  “I don’t really believe in all of this stuff,” the girl answered. “It seems too easy for you to just tell people what they want to hear. So why don’t you just tell me what you see instead, and we’ll see how you do.”

  Annie bristled a little at the girl’s attitude. Everyone else had been excited about talking to her, had treated her as if she was doing them a favor. But this girl was almost challenging her. Annie knew that she would have to do a good job to convince her that she really could read the Tarot cards accurately.

  She shuffled, concentrating very hard on what she was doing. She had no idea what to expect when she turned over the five cards and laid them out in front of her. Did the girl secretly have a question she was hoping Annie would answer? Or was she really just trying to test her? Either way, she would be expecting a lot, and Annie wanted to give it to her.

  She turned over the cards and looked at them for a minute without saying anything. When she finally spoke, she was a little hesitant.

  “Are you going on a trip soon?” she asked. “Somewhere outdoors?”

  “I could be,” the girl said. “Why?”

  Annie was reluctant to tell the girl what she saw, but she knew she had to. “Be careful,” she said. “You could have an accident if you’re not.”

  She looked up to see how the girl was reacting to her reading. She wanted some kind of response so she would know whether or not she had passed the test. But the girl didn’t say anything at all. She just nodded and stood up.

  The bell rang, and the girls filed out of the room, leaving Annie to pack up her cards. As she was zipping up her backpack, Cooper came into the room.

  “Hey,” she said. “I thought that was you. I saw you through the door on my way to the practice rooms. What’s going on? Kate and I thought you must be in the library since you weren’t at lunch.”

  Annie hadn’t told either of them that she was going to meet Loren. “I thought it might be quieter in here,” she said.

  Cooper gave her a look that said she didn’t believe that story for a second. “And that’s why the Barbie parade just streamed out of here?” she said.

  Annie sighed. “Okay, you caught me. I was doing some readings for them.”

  “Readings? As in Tarot?” Cooper said, surprised. “For the spritz-heads? Why?”

  “Don’t tell Kate,” Annie pleaded. “I didn’t want you guys to know. It just sort of happened. Sherrie told Loren about the reading I did for her, and Loren told some of her friends. It’s no big deal.”

  “So why don’t you want Kate to know?” Cooper asked.

  “You know,” said Annie. “Because those were sort of her people before you and I came along. I don’t want to make her think about that.”

  “Fair enough,” Cooper said. “But what do you get out of this?”

  “It’s just sort of fun,” Annie said. “Plus, I need the practice.”

  “Okay,” Cooper said. “I’ll keep this our little secret. But let’s get out of here. The smell of Tommy Girl is making me dizzy.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The moon looked huge, bigger than any moon Annie had ever seen. She felt as if she could reach up and touch it with her fingertips. She wondered if its surface would be cold, like ice, or rough, like rock.

  She was meditating in front of her altar. Her eyes were closed, and she was picturing herself standing in a place like the one depicted on the Moon card in her Tarot deck. All around her were trees, and behind her was a lake. She
stood on its shores, barefoot, and listened to the waves lapping on the beach.

  Somewhere in the woods a dog howled, its long, low cry piercing the night. It sounded lonely, but also happy in a strange sort of way, as if calling to the moon brought it comfort. Annie found herself wanting to cry out to the shining ball, too. Her meditation felt so real, as if she actually was standing there with the night wind blowing her hair and the moonlight falling all around her.

  She heard a sound and turned toward the woods. Something was moving in the trees. As Annie watched, a shadow detached itself from the darkness and moved toward her. Annie was surprised. She’d seen people in meditations before, but only when the sessions were being led by someone else. This time she was on her own. She hadn’t planned on imagining another person, and she didn’t have any idea who was walking along the edge of the lake.

  As the figure got closer, moving into the moonlight, Annie saw that whoever it was was wearing a long black robe with a hood. She peered into the place where a face should be, and she was startled by what she saw there. It was a woman’s face, but there was something unearthly about it. One moment it looked like the face of a young girl, the next it seemed to be that of a motherly figure, and then it changed again and became the face of an old woman. Each face had the same features, and it was as if she was seeing someone age before her eyes and then grow young again.

  “Who are you?” she asked the woman as she came nearer.

  “I am Hecate,” a voice answered. And again, it was as if Annie was hearing three voices speaking at once—one the soft lilt of a girl, one the reassuring sound of a mother, and the third the whispering of a crone. The three were wound around one another like a thread, and Annie couldn’t tell where one began and the others ended.

  “Why are you here?” she tried again. She wasn’t afraid of the woman, but there was something about her that made Annie uneasy. There was a coldness to her, a sternness that kept Annie from being entirely comfortable.

  “You have come into my world,” Hecate answered. “You have drawn the moon, and I am its mistress.”