by Isobel Bird
“Come on,” said Kate. “Look at you. You’re a new woman. Are you going to let that makeover go to waste?”
“Who would I go out with?” Annie asked. She couldn’t think of a single guy at school she really wanted to go out with.
“Let me work on it,” Kate said thoughtfully. “What kind of guy do you want?”
“What are you, the J.Crew catalog?” Cooper said. “The girl can’t just order a guy like a pair of shoes.”
“I need to have a basic idea of what we’re going for here,” Kate said patiently. “She must have some idea of what she likes.”
“I don’t know,” Annie said nervously. “What about that guy over there? He’s sort of cute.”
Kate looked to where Annie was pointing.
“The redhead?” she said thoughtfully. “Good choice. You’d look cute together.”
“This isn’t like rearranging furniture,” Cooper said. “Besides, I think she’d look better with that guy in the green shorts.”
“Or what about the one with the tattoo?” Sasha suggested. “I can see Annie with a bad boy. How do you feel about motorcycles?”
Annie was trying to think of some way to distract her friends from matchmaking. Then she noticed that Tara was coming their way with a group of girls in tow. Their plan was beginning, and none too soon.
“We have company,” she said, opening her backpack and taking out her deck of cards.
Tara and the girls came over. Annie looked up, pretending to be surprised to see them.
“Hey,” Tara said, winking at Annie. “Is this where they’re reading Tarot cards? I’ve got some customers.”
“Have a seat,” Annie said. “I was just about to get started.”
The girls knelt in the sand around the blanket. Cooper and Kate scooted over, making room for some of them, and watched as Annie began to play out the scene she’d been rehearsing in her head.
“Who wants to be first?” Annie asked, and several hands shot up in the air.
She picked a girl at random. “Ask away,” she said.
“I want to know how I’ll do in college this fall,” the girl said.
Annie shuffled and dealt the cards. For the next ten minutes she told the girl what she saw. Everyone listened intently to the reading, and once more Annie felt the thrill of having people hanging on her every word.
After that she did a reading for a girl who wanted to find out whether or not her parents were going to get divorced. That was a harder one to do, but Annie made her way through it, and the girl seemed satisfied with the results.
Her goal had been to lure Sherrie over to where she was doing readings. Every so often, she looked up to see if the plan had worked. For a long time there was no sign of Sherrie’s smug face, and Annie began to worry that she wasn’t going to get her chance. But after she’d done five or six readings, she glanced up and saw Sherrie pushing her way through the crowd of girls.
“Trying to fool the unsuspecting public again, are you?” Sherrie asked.
Annie looked up, pretending to notice her for the first time. “Did you want a reading, Sherrie?” she asked.
Sherrie laughed. “Right,” she said. “Why? So you can make some more wild guesses and try to pass yourself off as something special?” she said. “I don’t think so.”
Annie remained calm as she shuffled the cards. “What are you afraid of?” she asked. “Think I might see something bad?”
Sherrie tossed her hair. “You couldn’t see anything if it was written there in black and white,” she said.
“Then why don’t you let her try?” one of the girls said.
The others murmured their assent. Annie could tell that Sherrie was both enjoying her little scene and also worried that she might look stupid if she said no. That’s what Annie had been counting on. She held her breath, waiting for Sherrie’s response.
“Fine,” Sherrie said. “I’ll show you what a fake she is. Let her do a reading for me. I guarantee you she won’t be able to.”
Sherrie sat down in the sand across from Annie. Fixing Annie with a malevolent stare, she said, “Go ahead.”
Annie cut the deck one final time, with Sherrie watching her every move. What Sherrie didn’t know, however, was that Annie had already arranged five particular cards in order and hidden them in the center of the deck. She’d carefully noted where they were, and now those five cards were the ones she turned over.
She pretended to study the draw intently, looking from the cards to Sherrie and back again.
“What do you see?” Sherrie asked mockingly. “Let me guess, a long vacation. Oh, wait, how about a meeting with a stranger.”
“No,” Annie said. “I don’t see any of those things. But let me ask you this—do the other girls on the cheerleading squad know that you’re planning on becoming captain next year?”
Annie saw Sherrie’s confident expression waver. “What are you talking about?” she said.
“This card suggests that you’re planning some kind of takeover of a group you’re involved in,” Annie said, pointing to one of the cards. “But this one says that the others don’t know anything about it. In fact, it looks like maybe you’ve told other people a different story. Did you make some promises to people?”
“She said she was going to make me co-captain if I voted for her,” one of the girls beside Annie said.
“What?” said another. “She said she was making me co-captain.”
“Wait a minute,” Sherrie said to Annie. “Who told you this stuff? You can’t see that in those stupid cards.”
“I’m just telling you what I see,” Annie said sweetly. “The cards don’t lie.”
“But apparently you do, Sherrie,” one of the girls said angrily. “What were you going to do, promise to make all of us co-captains just so we’d vote for you?”
“I didn’t—” Sherrie said, clearly flustered. She pointed at Annie. “You’re a liar!” she said. “A little liar!”
“You can’t hide from the cards, Sherrie,” Annie said.
Sherrie stood up, shaking with rage. “I don’t know how you did that,” she said. “But you’re going to regret it.”
She turned and stormed off, leaving Annie and the others looking after her.
“Some people just can’t handle the truth,” Annie said.
After doing a few more readings, Annie announced that she needed to take a break. As the girls left, she turned to Cooper and Sasha, who were still sitting on the blanket watching her.
“So? What did you think?”
“Very nice,” Cooper said. “But you didn’t see that in the cards. What gives?”
“Tara told me,” Annie said. “I’m sure Sherrie will figure that out, but it doesn’t matter. Now that the other girls know what she was planning, she’ll never be captain.”
She looked around. “Where’d Kate go?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Cooper said. “She said she was going to get a hot dog. But that was a while ago.”
They looked around for their friend.
“Uh-oh,” Sasha said. “I think she made a detour.”
Annie looked where Sasha was pointing and spotted Kate. She was halfway down the beach, walking away from them. And she was walking with Scott.
CHAPTER 13
“The look on Sherrie’s face was priceless,” Annie said.
She, Kate, and Cooper were sitting in Annie’s bedroom. The Skip Day cookout had ended a few hours earlier, and they were recovering from all of the hot dogs, sodas, and sunshine. Sasha had gone home to do something with Thea, so it was just the three of them. Annie had managed to get a little bit of a tan, and she was enjoying the warm sensation on her shoulders and the back of her neck.
“That’s what she gets for planning a takeover,” Cooper remarked. “She’s lucky she still has her pom-poms. I hear those cheerleaders are vicious.”
Annie laughed. She’d had a great day. It had felt wonderful to show Sherrie up, especially in front of her frie
nds. Everything had worked out exactly as she’d hoped. But she was still curious about one thing.
“What did Scott have to say?” she asked Kate.
Kate looked startled. “You guys saw that?” she asked nervously.
Annie and Cooper nodded.
“Did you tell him everything?” Cooper asked.
“Not everything,” Kate answered. “He doesn’t know about the spell or anything. And I didn’t tell him about Tyler.”
“Well then, what did you talk about?” asked Annie. “There isn’t much more to the story than those things.”
Kate shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said irritably. “We just talked.”
“What about?” Cooper pressed.
“About stuff!” Kate said, sounding annoyed.
Cooper looked at Annie and raised an eyebrow questioningly. “Sounds like we hit a nerve,” she said.
“Why do you guys have to know everything?” Kate demanded. “Can’t I talk to someone without having to explain myself?”
“Scott isn’t just someone,” Annie replied. “He’s your ex-boyfriend. He gave up a college scholarship to stay near you, and then you dumped him so that you could go out with a boy who’s a witch.”
“Thank you for that lovely summary of my romantic life,” Kate said.
“Well,” said Annie, “I’m just trying to point out that this isn’t just some guy. Can you blame us for being curious?”
Kate was silent for a minute. “Okay,” she said. “So we went for a walk. And maybe I kissed him a little.”
“What?” Annie and Cooper yelled in unison.
“Repeat that last part,” Cooper said, stunned. “You know, about you kissing him.”
“A little,” Annie corrected her. “She just kissed him a little.”
Kate groaned. “I should never have said anything.”
“But you did,” Annie pointed out. “So talk.”
“I don’t know how it happened,” Kate said. “I asked him if we could talk, and he said okay. I was only going to tell him that he hadn’t done anything wrong. That’s it. But then we ended up sitting behind the dunes, and he looked at me, and then we were just sort of kissing.”
She gave her friends a helpless look, as if asking for their approval.
“Was there tongue?” asked Cooper.
Kate nodded, then threw herself backward on the bed as if she’d fainted. “Does this make me a horrible person?”
“Officially?” Cooper said. “I think that would be a big yes.”
Kate sat up again. “But I didn’t mean to do it,” she wailed. “It just happened.”
“Nothing just happens,” Cooper argued. “You didn’t have to do it.”
“It’s all her fault,” Kate said, pointing at Annie.
“Me?” Annie said. “What did I do?”
“You told me an old flame was going to come back into my life.”
“And you said you didn’t believe it,” Annie countered.
“I didn’t,” Kate said. “But the more I thought about it the more I thought it must be true. Otherwise why would you see it in the cards?”
“So you decided to go kiss your old boyfriend?” Annie asked.
“Not exactly,” said Kate. “But it was going to happen one way or another, right? I mean, the cards said so.”
“Well, yes. I guess they did,” Annie said.
“You guess?” said Kate.
“I mean, I know they did,” Annie said, correcting herself. “But I didn’t tell you to go sticking your tongue down Scott’s throat at Skip Day.”
“Are you going to tell Tyler?” Cooper asked.
“No!” Kate said. “And don’t you guys say anything either. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“And what about Scott?” asked Annie.
“What about him?” Kate answered.
“Will there be more kissing?” Annie said.
“No,” Kate said. “Definitely no more kissing. This was a one-time thing. I think.”
Cooper threw a cushion at her. “What do you mean, you think?” she said. “Are you out of your mind?”
Kate squirmed uncomfortably. “I can’t help it,” she said. “Yesterday I would have said there was no way I could ever be with Scott again. But he’s just so—”
“Stupid?” Cooper suggested.
“Not like Tyler?” Annie offered.
“I can’t talk about this,” Kate said. “I can’t explain it to you guys. You’ve never been in this situation before, so you can’t be objective.”
“What’s to be objective about?” Cooper said. “You cheated on your boyfriend with your ex-boyfriend.”
“But Annie said it was going to happen!” Kate said defensively. “How come you aren’t blaming her?”
“It sounds like you are,” said Annie.
“Well, maybe I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t done that reading,” Kate said.
“You’re blaming your actions on a Tarot reading?” Annie said.
“Why not?” Kate responded. “It’s fate, right? What you see in the cards is going to happen, so how can I stop it?”
Annie was about to argue with her. Then she started thinking. The things she’d told people were going to happen had happened. Cheryl had broken her arm. Tara had stood up to Sherrie. Jenna’s boyfriend had been fooling around with someone else.
But why were any of these things her fault? It was like blaming television anchorpeople for the bad news they had to report. She was just giving information to those who asked for it. What they did with it wasn’t her responsibility.
“I can’t help it if I have a gift,” Annie said.
“I didn’t say you could,” Kate told her. “I just said that maybe sometimes it’s better not to know what’s going to happen. Maybe knowing it makes it come true.”
Was Kate right? Did what Annie told people have some kind of effect on what happened in their lives? Did things happen just because she suggested that they might happen? All this time she’d believed that she was doing a good thing by telling people what she saw in their futures. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“What do you think, Cooper?” Annie asked. “Do you think that what I say makes things happen to people?”
“I don’t want to believe that,” Cooper said. “It makes me feel like a puppet to think that just because someone says something will happen, it does. That’s why I never read my horoscope. I don’t even like fortune cookies. I want to think that what’s going to happen to me will happen because of the choices I make and the things I do, not because there’s some big plan I have to follow.”
“But how do we know?” Annie asked. “How do we know whether or not our lives are already figured out? Maybe Kate’s right. Maybe if I had never suggested that Scott was going to come back into her life she would never have decided she needed to talk to him and she would never have kissed him.”
“Right,” said Kate. “Maybe when Annie told me that, it started a chain of events that I couldn’t stop.”
“Or maybe you just did something stupid,” Cooper said. “I think you’re just looking for an excuse, and this is the best one you have.”
“That doesn’t explain what happened to Cheryl,” Annie said.
“You don’t think Cheryl would have fallen off her bike whether you told her she would or not?” Cooper responded.
“That’s the point,” Annie said. “How do we know? Maybe she would have. But maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe the cards do have some effect on people.”
“There’s one way to find out,” Kate said.
“How?” Annie asked.
“Make a prediction and don’t tell anyone,” said Kate. “Do a reading for someone, but don’t tell them you’re doing it. Just write down what you see, then see if it comes true.”
“That still doesn’t really prove anything,” Annie said. “It only solves half the problem. We’d be able to see if what I predict comes true, but it wouldn’t tell us whether or not telling the per
son would have changed anything. It’s like those experiments they do with medications. They give some of the people a real drug and the other people sugar pills. But everyone thinks they’re getting the real drug. That way they can tell who gets better because of the medication and who gets better because they’re being told that they’ll get better.”
“So what if you do a reading for someone, tell her you did it, but tell her that the results were different from what they really were,” Cooper said. “Then you wait to see what happens.”
Annie thought about that idea for a minute. “I guess it could work,” she said. “Scientifically speaking, anyway. But who would we try it out on?”
“We need someone who will believe it,” Cooper said. “If we use someone skeptical, it might throw things off.”
“What about your aunt?” suggested Kate.
Annie shook her head. “I don’t want to do any readings about her,” she said. “Not with the whole house thing going on. I’m sort of afraid of what I might see.”
“Tara?” Cooper said.
“I already did one for her,” Annie said. “And it came out perfectly.”
She could tell that Kate wanted to ask her what Tara’s reading had been, so she came up with an idea of her own to distract her. “What about Sasha?” she suggested.
Cooper and Kate looked thoughtful. Sasha wasn’t a bad idea. She was into Wicca, so she would be into the idea of Tarot cards. She was tough enough that she wouldn’t believe everything just because they told her it was true, but she knew enough about magical things that she would take a reading seriously.
“She’s perfect,” Cooper said.
“How are we going to do it?” asked Kate.
Annie thought about it for a minute. “We can do the reading tonight,” she said. “Then we’ll call and see if Sasha wants to do something with us tomorrow. If she does, we’ll tell her we were playing around with the cards and did a reading for her just for fun. That sounds good, right?”
“As good as an insane plan can sound,” Cooper said.
“Look,” Annie said, “I admit this isn’t the perfect experiment. But it could work. And admit it, Cooper, you’re curious about all of this stuff, too. Why else won’t you let me do a reading for you?”
