by Tara Taylor
“I hate to say it, but yes.” She eyed me. “You just quit recently?”
I nodded.
She winked at me. “Okay, I won’t tempt you. Watch the store for a few more minutes. I’ll be right back.”
She rushed to the back, and I heard a door slam. It took all my energy not to run after her and beg for a drag off her cigarette. But I didn’t. I stayed put, and not much more than a minute later, I heard the door creak and footsteps and a horrible cough; a definite smoker’s cough.
Annabelle’s face was red and sweaty when she came back.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. It is what it is.” She attempted to smile. “Don’t you go worrying about me. I’m here to worry about you. And since you’re finished eating, we should get started.”
Annabelle went to the front door, locked it, and turned her OPEN sign around to read CLOSED.
“You’re closing up already?”
“Just for an hour.” She went over to the cards, obviously with a mission, and pulled a box off the shelf, the same box I had reached for earlier, before the customers had arrived.
“We don’t need distractions,” she said. “Let’s go to the back.” She winked at me. “To the pink room.”
I followed her and sat in one of the fluffy pink chairs, sinking low into it, wishing I could take a nap instead of learn about cards. I glanced around the small room, something I really hadn’t done the last time I had come in, because we had been in the room for only moments, and I had been extremely hungover. Now I noticed the framed photo sitting on her small table. It was of Annabelle with a huge, fluffy white Persian cat. I couldn’t help grinning, because even from a distance, I could tell the cat was trouble. He would give poor little Henry a scare.
“You have a cat?”
She rolled her eyes. “More like a monster.” She shook her head. “I love him, but he is a nasty creature.”
She turned back to me and opened up the box she had taken from the shelf. She pulled out a book—one that looked like a textbook—and another box, which had the same cover as the original box but was thinner. She placed the book on the small round table between the pink chairs and proceeded to open the slimmer box, pulling out a deck of cards. “This is the hardest deck to use,” she stated without emotion.
“They are the Angelic Messenger Cards,” she continued. “The angels will talk to you through the flowers that are on the cards.”
I stared at the long, skinny turquoise cards. Each one had a drawing of a flying angel on it. I guessed the flowers were on the other side of the cards.
“Knock them three times,” she said.
“Knock them?”
She made a fist with her hand. “Pound them hard. You need to get all the energy out of them if you want to make them yours. Always knock your cards when you start. Always. And when you begin readings with people, get them to knock the cards.”
I made a fist with my hand and did what she said.
“Now shuffle them.”
Again, I did what I was told, and, because I was so nervous and the cards were so long and skinny, so stiff and waxy—not at all like the cards my dad and I played with—I ended up sending a bunch of them flying to the floor. Embarrassed, I bent over and picked them up. That’s when I saw that each card had a flower and one word on it; most had numbers, too. I hadn’t been expecting actual photos of flowers. I guess I was thinking they would be just drawings.
“I like the photos,” I said. “How many are in this deck?” I continued to awkwardly shuffle because the cards were almost too long for my hands.
“There are 42 numbered cards, plus four wild cards for divine guidance and two wild cards for abundance.”
“Wild cards, eh? Those are the ones I want to pick.” I said this and laughed, the echo ringing off the walls of the small room. My nerves were getting the best of me.
Annabelle cracked a smile, which made me calm down a little bit, anyway.
After three tries shuffling, I finally decided they were okay, and even though Annabelle didn’t tell me to stop, I put them down on the table.
“That’s good,” she said. “You will always know when to stop shuffling. The cards are just messengers for you, and with this deck, it’s the flowers and the words on the cards that will speak to you. When you read for someone, you want to open up your senses so you allow the messages to come through. For the first little while, I just want you to do readings on yourself. Fan the cards out in front of you.”
I fanned the cards and sat back.
“Pick three cards. Any three, but allow your hands to move over the cards and let the cards speak to you. If you feel heat coming from a card or you just know you have to touch it, then pick that card. The three cards will represent your past, present, and future. This is a very basic way to learn how to read.”
My hands drifted about an inch above the cards. Back and forth. I think I was waiting for something magical to happen, but it didn’t.
“Close your eyes,” said Annabelle in a soft voice.
I closed my eyes and kept moving my hands. Suddenly, I felt tingling. I placed my hand down and picked a card.
“What did you feel there?” she asked.
“My fingers tingled.”
I flattened my hands again and, palms down, ran them over the cards. When I felt a surge of heat coming from the cards, I picked another one. Before Annabelle could ask, I said, “That one was hot.”
“Good girl,” she answered.
For the third card, I again felt the tingling in my fingers. I picked it and opened my eyes.
“The more you read, the more you will figure out the feelings. Now, I’m going to have you flip the cards over.” She held up the book. “There are explanations for every card in this book. You will need to study it backward and forward to be able to read these cards properly. I want you to read the book at home because today I want you to really focus on your senses. The cards are a tool.”
I carefully flipped the first card. It read Emergence and had the number 21. The second card was Acknowledgment, number 26, and the third card had Divine Guidance scrolled on it. I presumed it was a wild card, because it had no number.
“Indie,” said Annabelle in a soothing voice, “look at the first card and give me the first image or sound or smell or feeling you experience. Firsts are so important. Don’t ever edit your firsts.”
I stared at the blurry photo of a flower as it opened. Suddenly, I felt cold, and I wrapped my arms around my body. I could feel the cold petals over my head covering me, and I was in the dark. I looked up and saw the hole above my head. I reached up, and the petals started to open and a waft of warm air rushed through me. The room lightened. I stared at Annabelle.
“What just happened?” she asked.
My throat dried. “I felt cold. Like I was stuck in the flower, and it hadn’t opened. Suddenly it opened, and I was warmed.”
“Good,” she said. “Now, what do you think it means?”
“I’m opening to something.” I tapped the card. “Emerging, I guess.” That was pretty basic; anyone could have figured it out. I still wasn’t sure that these cards had any value.
“What about the second card?” Annabelle asked.
The Acknowledgment card had these pretty sunny yellow flowers on it, and I smiled. They were light and fresh, and I saw them dancing and laughing. A string of them circled my head like a wreath. Instead of looking at Annabelle for reassurance this time, I continued staring at the card. Suddenly I saw an O and then I saw a K.
“I’m okay,” I blurted out. “This is all okay.”
“What is all okay?”
Electricity flowed through me, and my body felt alive. “What’s happening to me. My meeting you. You helping me. It’s all okay. It’s sunny and bright, and I want to dance.”
“What about the third card? Your future?”
I stared at the Divine Guidance wild card, at what looked like the fuzzy seed part on the inside
of a flower. The photo got all blurry, and I wanted to take my eyes off it, but I couldn’t. Suddenly, I saw angels flying, and I heard them singing. And I saw Papa’s face, and I heard my friend Nathan, who had died recently, playing the violin.
I kept staring at the card. It swirled around and around. I saw Annabelle. And I saw my great-grandmother, the hatmaker. She smiled at me and winked.
Then I heard Isaiah’s voice.
I’m in there, too, you know. There’s a big divine team waiting to help you.
Chapter Eight
The hour with Annabelle passed by in a blur. Once I had done my reading, she made me pull card after card, and she explained each one to me, what they meant, how I was supposed to read them. The cards were fascinating, and I liked the pictures of flowers.
At the end of the session, she boxed up the cards and handed them to me. “This is your own set of cards to practice with.”
“Practice?” I asked.
“I want you to go home and ask the cards questions. For each question, you can pull up to three cards to get an answer.”
“How do I know if the answer is right?”
“Don’t worry about that now.”
“Okay. So in other words, I’m kind of doing homework, but I don’t have to find the right answer. I like that.” I laughed.
“I hated school, too.” Annabelle laughed with me for a few seconds before she turned serious again. “All I want you to do is let your mind go and let your visions just come; allow sounds, feelings, tactile responses, and tastes on your tongues. Don’t judge anything that comes to you; just let it flow. Like, how you felt with the warm and cold and tingles, that kind of thing should all be acknowledged. I think you know that you have the ability to see and hear, but now you need to develop your feeling and touch abilities. Oh, and make sure you read the book. It is important for you to know everything about the cards.”
The back of my neck ached, and suddenly I was really tired. “Okay.” I sighed.
“Indie, it is perfectly okay to feel tired. In the next few days, I’m going to teach you about protection. Make sure you get lots of rest. This takes energy.”
She stood. “But you’ve had more than enough for today. Now, my sweetie, we have a store to open.” She winked at me, and her brown almond eyes sparkled.
I walked back into the front of the store. Light from outside streamed through the windows, shining on the floor, creating a sparkle to the room. The air conditioner hummed in the background, so the sun didn’t make it stifling hot.
Annabelle unlocked the door and switched the sign back to OPEN. “I have some paperwork to do in the back,” she said. “You man the front.”
Annabelle disappeared around the corner, and when I heard the door slam, I figured she was out for another smoke. I bit my nails. Customers came and went for the next few hours, and I rang up goods and set up readings for Annabelle. It amazed me how popular she was; I was booking appointments two months in advance.
At just after three, Annabelle gathered her purse and slipped on funky tortoiseshell sunglasses. “I have to go. I have an appointment,” she said. “I want you to lock up. You have the keys I gave you the other day?”
My first day on the job, and this woman trusted me to lock up? “Yeah,” I said.
She instructed me to just lock the front door, because she had already locked the back door. As she was leaving, she turned to me with a puzzled expression on her face.
“My divine team is telling me to tell you something.”
“Okay,” I said.
She closed her eyes and stood still for a few seconds. When she opened them, she shrugged and said, “Have fun with … Paul. I hope that makes sense to you.”
At exactly four o’clock, just when I was ready to call it a day, the bell chimed and Paul strolled in. He had changed from his deli uniform to board shorts, a royal blue T-shirt, and flip-flops.
“Perfect timing,” I said.
“Cool,” he said. “How was your first day on the job?”
“Good,” I replied. My purse was heavier, but not because of money; my cards and book were stashed in it. Thankfully, I loved big purses that were like huge satchels. The one I had with me today was cloth, and I had bought it at a flea market.
As soon as I stepped outside, the hot summer sun beat down on my skin. I took a breath of fresh air and tilted my face to the sky.
“Feels good to be outside,” said Paul.
“Amazing.” I locked up the store and tucked the key in my purse. And it was amazing, after the day I’d had at my new job. My head was bursting with so much information. I needed to relax, come down almost, from the high of the reading. Is that what Annabelle meant when she said she could do only three a day now? Did it just take too much of her energy?
Lost in my own thoughts, I meandered down the sidewalk beside Paul, keeping at least a foot between us. Unlike John, I had no desire to touch Paul, reach out and hold his hand, have our shoulders rub together. Instead, we just fell into an easy pace, like brother and sister.
Neither of us said anything, and that was just as well. I breathed in and out, trying to take in as much air as I could to clean out my lungs. One block ran into two as we walked in silence, and I couldn’t help but think that perhaps I had made a mistake agreeing to this coffee. What would we talk about? I didn’t know him at all.
I lowered my head and let my hair fall in front of my face so I could try to steal little peeks at Paul. Since I’d last seen him at Britannia Beach, he looked to have a little more of a tan. Not much, but a little. More than mine, I guessed.
After another block, when we were almost at the coffee shop, I was feeling a little more relaxed, and I figured I should try to strike up some sort of conversation. “So how was your first day at work?”
“It’s a job,” he said, shrugging casually. “But the owner’s nice, and that’s a biggie.”
“Oh, yeah, for sure,” I said. Without even thinking or editing, I launched into a description of my last job, telling Paul about Miles. I left out the part about the almost assault.
“That sounds nasty,” he said. “Good thing you got out of there. That store you’re in now must be a huge difference. It seemed so calm when I was in there today.”
“That’s a good word to describe it.” I smiled and nodded.
“If I worked there, I’d probably just want to sleep all day.”
I laughed. And it felt good.
We reached the coffee shop, and he insisted on paying. “Someone gave me a tip,” he said, giving me his lopsided grin. “I might as well spend it.”
I ordered an herbal tea, and he ordered an iced coffee, and we took our drinks outside. We nabbed a table with an umbrella, which was great because the sun was still really hot. Our conversation veered to school and people we were mutual friends with and who was doing what this summer and next year.
“What about you?” he asked, sipping from his straw. “Any fall plans?”
I spun my paper cup around, staring at the logo. “I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t apply to any schools. What about you?”
“Carleton. I’m going into their journalism program.”
I looked up at him. “Are you a writer?”
He shrugged. “I like writing, but I want to work in radio or television and be some kind of reporter or maybe even work behind the scenes as a producer.” He rolled his shoulders again. “But it’s all a crapshoot, really. I’ll go to school and figure out which type of journalism turns my crank, I guess. I worked for the high-school newspaper and really enjoyed it. So who knows.”
I smiled. “Honestly, that sounds so interesting. Maybe I should look into something like that.”
Here I go again, I thought, coming up with yet another thing I could go to school for. I really had no idea what to do.
We finished our drinks, finding lots to talk about, which surprised me, and when I looked at my watch, I was shocked to see that we had been at the coffee shop for more than a
n hour. “I should go,” I said. “I’ve got to catch the bus home.”
“I can drive you if you want,” he said.
“That’s okay,” I said.
“I don’t have anything to do tonight. Let me take you.”
The thought of sitting on a bus for 30-plus minutes was enough to make my head ache. A ride would be so much easier. “Okay,” I said. “Sure.”
His car was a little, blue, crap-box Honda, and the seats were littered with fast food wrappers. He wiped the front seat off for me, throwing junk into the back.
“Sorry for the mess.”
“Hey, no worries,” I said.
I got in, and he started the engine. The car rumbled like a truck, and I burst out laughing.
“Gotta get the muffler fixed.” He put the car into gear and backed out of his parking spot. “Where to?”
I gave him the address, then slapped my hand on the dashboard. “Does this car have a name?”
“No name.”
“It needs a name. Let’s think of one.” I bounced in my seat.
He laughed, and when I glanced at him, I also started laughing. “Seriously,” I said. “Let’s name this baby.”
For the entire ride home, we came up with names, and the sillier they were, the more we laughed. My sides were sore when Paul pulled up in front of the apartment.
“So,” I said, “did we decide on Mable?”
“You decided on Mable,” he answered.
“I like Mable.” I opened the car door before I turned and smiled at him. “Thanks,” I said. “This was fun.”
“Let’s do it again.”
“Sure,” I replied. “I’d like that.”
I bounded up the stairs, full of some kind of weird energy, and when I heard Natalie playing her guitar from the hallway, I went even faster. I slipped out of my sandals and immediately headed to my bedroom to get my guitar.
I entered the living room where she was sitting on the sofa, legs curled up under her, strumming away, and plopped down beside her.
She stopped playing. “How yah gettin’ on, girl?”
“Great,” I replied. A part of me wanted to tell her everything about the store and the cards and my coffee with Paul, but for some reason I didn’t say more.
