Hex-Ed

by Sarina Dorie

  The rain soaked through my tank top and made my skirt stick to my legs. I scouted out somewhere dry to stand—somewhere far from the hellhound. I found another tree across the street. During the worst part of the downpour, Daisy waved me into her booth.

  She smiled at me dreamily, eyes distant. “So, how’s it going with the ex?”

  “He isn’t an ex-boyfriend,” I said. “Just a creepy guy I keep running into.”

  She took my palm and examined it. “You watch out for him or else he’s going to be your future ex-boyfriend.”

  I laughed at her joke, but I took everything she said with a grain of salt. It wasn’t like her magical advice had saved me from doom last time.

  She nodded to my wrist. “Where’s your citrine bracelet?”

  “I lost it,” I said. “In any case, it didn’t work. It was supposed to help with problems associated with my second chakra, right? I’m pretty sure my second chakra exploded.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “How do you know it didn’t work, honey? Maybe things could have been worse without it.”

  It was true there hadn’t been any dancing banana penises, but Joel’s heart not beating wasn’t much better. More than anything at that moment, I wanted someone to confide in. I’d once had my sister—before she’d decided she was afraid of me. I’d had Derrick—until the tornado had torn him from my arms. Everyone else in my life thought I was delusional and psychotic when I talked about the things I’d seen and done.

  “Do you believe in witchcraft?” I asked. “Not psychic readings and auras and esoteric stuff, but I mean, magic. The ability to shoot lightning out your fingers and make objects change from one thing into another.”

  She rubbed at the mole on her chin. “I’ve read stories about Buddhist monks being able to stop their hearts and do incredible things like that. Is that magic or is it science? I’m open to either possibility.”

  I swallowed, trying to find the words. “I wore the bracelet and meditated with it. I went out on a date, but things went wrong anyway.”

  She seated herself at her table and shuffled a deck of Tarot cards as I spoke. “Wrong in what way, hon?”

  “First it was the electricity. Sometimes that happens when I’m around men. Then the clock started running backwards and Mr. Darcy didn’t have clothes on—but he does in the movie. You know, the one with Colin Firth. I wasn’t hallucinating.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. I realized I must have sounded like a crazy person. Great, the one person who was nice to me at the market thought I was looney.

  She laid the cards out facedown front of her. The first five she arranged like a plus sign. The next ones she set out in a vertical line.

  “At some point the bracelet must have fallen off that night,” I said. “All the signs were showing I shouldn’t sleep with Joel, but I wanted to. I felt compelled to. And it wasn’t just hormones. It was like, well, like a spell.” The more I thought about it, the more I thought that was what it had to be.

  She flipped over four cards. She studied the pictures. “I can see what you’re saying is true. Go on.”

  “Joel’s heart stopped beating, and I had to call an ambulance. Or someone called an ambulance, anyway. As if having my date almost die wasn’t bad enough, then I found out he was married.”

  She flipped over a card. It was the Death card. She looked to me.

  “It doesn’t mean death,” I said. “It means a transition or transformation. Right?”

  Her eyes narrowed, studying the card. “Sometimes.” She flipped over another card. A man in a tweed suit with long dark hair held his hand over his face. He reminded me of the school district psychologist.

  “A tall, dark and mysterious stranger. He was there that night, wasn’t he? The one you’re avoiding?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  She flipped over two more cards. “He saved your life. Only, he doesn’t come across as someone altruistic, does he? He’s lurking for a reason. He wants something from you. I sense danger.”

  She reshuffled the deck. She took my hand, using her other hand to lay the cards face down. This wasn’t the same arrangement as the first time. These she laid out in seven rows of five, the cards so close they almost touched.

  “I can feel him near,” Daisy whispered. “He wants to destroy you. Your destiny is intertwined with his.” She closed her eyes, swaying in her seat as she spoke. When she opened her eyes, the pupils and irises were milky white. I sucked in a breath and jerked back, but she didn’t let go of my hand. She looked pretty freaky.

  She flipped over the first card. It was blank. She turned over another. This one also lacked an image. She turned them, one by one. I held my breath.

  The air shimmered. It looked like waves of heat rose from the grid of cards.

  “What does it mean?” I whispered.

  “Touch a card,” she said.

  Tentatively, I did so. The surface rippled like water. Waves rolled across the surface, spreading to the other cards so that the table resembled sunlight reflecting across water. The white light blurred and spread, becoming the dull sheen of a large piece of paper. Lines sketched themselves across the surface, appearing in dots and dashes similar to what I used for placing proportions in caricatures before darkening the pen or pencil. The quality of the sketch reminded me of Copic Markers, what Derrick used to use.

  A face slowly took form, coming together like a stop motion animation video. I watched in fascination. The sharp nose and brooding frown of the school district psychologist solidified before me. He sat at a desk, reading a paper and crossing something off with a quill pen. His collar was high with a cravat underneath his jacket. He might have resembled a more Gothic Mr. Darcy in his dark ensemble, but there was something about him that was decidedly not reminiscent of a happy Jane Austen novel.

  He looked up from his work, eyes narrowing. He stood. He spoke, but there was no sound. His eyes locked onto mine. He waved his hand and the cards became blank again.

  A man’s voice made me start. Someone from outside Daisy’s tent said, “Hey, do you do aura cleansings?” He wore his dreadlocks back in a ponytail and was dressed in baggy, hemp clothing.

  The rain had let up, but the trees along the park dripped. He stepped into the tent.

  Daisy sat there, unmoving and unblinking. I tried to yank my hand out of hers, but her fingers remained clamped around mine. The man tilted his head to the side, watching her curiously.

  “Yes, she does aura cleansings,” I said for her, waving my free hand at the sign that advertised her services. I shook her shoulder.

  She still said nothing.

  “Whoa, are those, like, contacts?” the man asked.

  Daisy’s eyes were still white.

  “I think she’s in a trance,” I said.

  “Cool. This chick is for real, then?” he asked. “She isn’t going to tell me her services are free, but I have to buy some kind of New Age trinket to ward off my evil ex-girlfriend or something?”

  “Um… .” I said. “She doesn’t sell any amulets.” Though, she had directed me to buy them from a vendor she was friends with. If Daisy’s services were free, I suddenly wondered how she made enough money to cover her booth fee. Maybe the other vendors gave her a commission for referrals. Was this a common con artist scheme I hadn’t known about?

  I shook Daisy’s shoulder harder. That having no effect, I pried her fingers from mine. Only when I was no longer touching her did she move.

  She blinked the white from her eyes and focused on the man. “Hello. How can I help you?”

  “Dude, you’re the psychic. You tell me!” The man laughed.

  I slipped out of the tent. I chose a different corner to stand on this time, trying to avoid the dripping leaves of trees. I took out my easel with my advertisements for two-dollar balloon animals and ten-dollar caricatures. The market was far from crowded. I needed to draw in potential customers.

  I juggled three mandarin or
anges I’d packed for part of my lunch. A man in a pink feather boa and sunglasses strutted by, placing a dollar in my hat on the ground as he passed. I kept thinking about Daisy. I wondered if the trance during fortune telling was normal for her. I hadn’t seen her do that before. She’d only snapped out of it when I’d stopped touching her.

  Her psychic abilities had risen to a whole new level the moment she grasped my hand. I had to be a conduit for weirdville.

  I took a break from juggling and removed the kale-strawberry smoothie my mom had made me from my backpack. A creeping sensation of someone watching me wiggled up my spine. I stiffened. I glanced over my shoulder and scanned the vendors. If it had been a sunny day, the market might have been crowded with too many people to see easily. As it was, there were only a dozen shoppers along the walkway of tents. Nothing seemed out of place. There weren’t any tall, dark and handsome figures lurking.

  I unscrewed the metal lid of the quart-sized canning jar, about to take a sip of my energy drink when a man cleared his throat, the sound of his voice a little too close. “Excuse me,” he said in thick accent.

  I jumped and whirled. My smoothie sloshed out of the canning jar onto my fingers, making my grip slippery on the glass jar. It slid onto the ground and shattered.

  The man jumped back, avoiding green smoothie splatter. It was the man with the pink feather boa who had tipped me earlier.

  “Clean up on aisle four,” he said with a thick Spanish accent.

  I gave a nervous laugh as I looked down at the mess of shattered glass. I crouched to pick up the larger shards and set them in a pile.

  “Didn’t mean to startle you, honey,” the man said with a flamboyant gesture of his hand. “I just wanted to ask you about your juggling.” He crouched and helped me clear the cement sidewalk of glass.

  Pigeons swooped down and pecked at the splatter of smoothie. I waved them off, hoping none of them would get any glass.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. “I can be such a klutz sometimes. People would have no idea I can juggle knives from the way I drop things the rest of the time.”

  He used a tissue from his pocket to pick up the smaller shards of glass. “Must be the zone—like what some performers experience—an altered state of consciousness and ability while practicing their craft.”

  The word craft made me think of witchcraft. I pushed the thought from my mind.

  “Maybe it’s the zone, like you said. Or mindfulness,” I said. “When I’m performing, it’s the only time I’m paying attention enough not to trip over my own feet.”

  He chuckled. “You’re funny in a self-deprecating way. I like it.” He looked me up and down as if he was appraising me. “I can see this working on a stage.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked the way he was eying me. I piled more fragments of glass onto the metal lid.

  “Can you do anything else besides juggle?” he asked.

  I waved a hand at my sandwich board advertising my abilities to make balloon animals and draw caricatures. He scratched his chin. “Ah. Kiddie stuff. I’m not interested in that. What about real entertainment?”

  “Chinese linking rings. Some stage magic. I can’t do that here at the Saturday market, though. They want music on their stage. They don’t want magic acts.” By this point I was starting to feel uncomfortable with the way he kept scrutinizing me. If I’d thought he might be a customer or hire me for a party, I would have given him my business card. But his next words gave me pause.

  “The Saturday market wouldn’t recognize talent if it smacked them in the face. You say they don’t want magic? Well, I want magic. What sane person doesn’t want magic?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure if he was talking about stage magic or real magic. Immediately, I distrusted him.

  I picked up the rest of the glass, not offering any more comments to the man. I knew I was being antisocial, but I didn’t care. I’d just lost my smoothie, and I was crabby. I wanted him to go away so I could go back to juggling and draw in someone who might buy a caricature or a balloon animal for their child. I hadn’t made much money before it had started to rain.

  I scouted out a garbage can and dumped the glass inside. When I returned to the scene of the crime—a.k.a. my smoothie-dropping area—a Rottweiler lapped at the puddle. Not just any Rottweiler. It was Brutus. Mrs. Peters stood a few feet away, not watching her dog as she shouted at someone. Brutus was too preoccupied eating my smoothie to lunge and growl at me like he usually did. At least one of us was enjoying my lunch.

  The man I’d been talking to earlier stood off to the side texting.

  “Um, Mrs. Peters.” I waved to get her attention as she berated some old man in a walker for taking up too much room on the sidewalk. “There’s glass in that puddle. Your dog shouldn’t be eating that.”

  The hunched over woman turned her anger on me. “Did you drop that mess?” she demanded. “I’ll report you to the market committee. It’s always you damned ‘wandering artists’ leaving your trash all over the place. If you paid for a booth like everyone else, this place wouldn’t get like this.” Mrs. Peters made no attempt to stop her dog from lapping up the smoothie.

  I didn’t like her dog, but I didn’t want him to choke on a shard of glass and die either. He happily drank the puddle alongside the pigeons, for once ignoring them. My mom’s smoothies usually put me in a good mood too, but this was unbelievable.

  “How long have you been on this corner?” Mrs. Peters demanded. “You know you aren’t supposed to stay in the same place for more than fifteen minutes. That’s the rule for vagrant venders. I would know. I’m on the board of directors.”

  Mrs. Peters was a liar. Her late husband had been on the board, not her. Rumor had it everyone tolerated her presence at the market because of how much money she had donated back in the day.

  Her son shouted from his booth. “Ma, stop terrorizing the market or else they’re going to make you go home.”

  “In my day, we didn’t leave messes like this at the market,” Mrs. Peters said. “We would have kicked you to the curb that first day when your balloon animals started popping all over the place. You left latex all over the sidewalks. Brutus is allergic to latex. I hope those are nitrile balloons you’re using today.”

  “Um,” I said, feeling awkward. “Yes, nitrile.”

  The man I’d been talking to earlier somehow managed to shove his cellphone into his far too tight jeans. Most people shrank away from Mrs. Peters. He crossed his arms, snorting in derision.

  “Actually,” the man said, removing his sunglasses and tossing his feather boa over his shoulder. “I caused the unfortunate accident.”

  “Oh, Yamil! I didn’t realize it was you.” Mrs. Peters’ face turned red.

  Well, that was something. I wondered who Yamil was now.

  “So nice to see you today. Ahem. Did you approve my son’s application?” she asked.

  Lance came out of his booth, waving his arms at his mother. “Ma! Get back here, and stop pestering people. You’re going to get me kicked out of the market.”

  Yamil’s smile was tight. “As I told you before, I’m not on the committee for vendors. I’m only friends with Steve. Your son can call him to find out his place on the waitlist.”

  Brutus sauntered closer to me, his tail wagging. I scooted back, but not fast enough. The dog licked my hand. Was this the same dog? He must have had a personality transplant. Dog training? Could it have been my mom’s smoothie?

  Yamil replaced his sunglasses over his eyes and lifted his chin in a snooty, superior way I knew too well from my sister’s days of cheerleading. “I book entertainment.”

  “Oh,” I said, as if that explained it all.

  Brutus nuzzled my hand until I petted him on the head. Mrs. Peters grabbed her dog and yanked him toward Lance’s booth.

  “You have heard of me, haven’t you?” Yamil asked.

  “Um… .” I said. “Did you introduce yourself?”

>   “Yamil Pharaoh, talent scout.” He flicked his feather boa over his shoulder again. “I’m manager for the Morningwood Odditorium Stage.”

  Ah, he was talking about the Oregon Country Fair.

  “Nice,” I said. “Well, it was, um, nice meeting you.” I struggled for words. The people who ran the bohemian music festival were the equivalent of gods amongst the mortals of Eugene and Skinnersville. No wonder Mrs. Peters had been polite to him. My self-consciousness multiplied.

  I waved to him. “Have a nice day.” Why couldn’t I have been more articulate? I lifted my bag.

  “You aren’t leaving yet,” he said, snagging my arm. “I want your magic for my stage.”

  “Heh,” I said. Was he for real? “That’s kind of you.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fair after all that had happened there years before. My mom would freak out if she knew I was even thinking about it. I tried to think of an excuse. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t know… .”

  “How can you not know? Everyone wants to be part of the fair.” He said it in a superior sort of way.

  I had loved the Oregon Country Fair as a teenager. It was like a circus, Renaissance fair, and music festival all rolled into one. Yet after what had happened to Missy, I’d been apprehensive about going back. I’d travelled for two hours to secretly return with friends in high school. All of us had loved the art, music and costumes. But my brain grew fuzzy, and I felt unsettled when I tried to think about why I didn’t want to return.

  After moving to Skinnersville, I had attended once and nothing bad happened. I might have gone again last year, but I’d been too busy with summer school. I would have gone this summer if all the weirdness hadn’t been happening. It seemed like now wasn’t the time to put myself in that kind of environment. Too many unexplained things were already happening. The fair was the kind of place where anything could happen.

  “Thanks,” I said, “But I don’t think the Oregon Country Fair is my kind of thing.”

  “How can it not be your kind of thing? You have pink hair, honey. You need the fair. It’s your calling. Your people await.”