Across the table from me, Evan stared, his eyes huge.
We sat in silence for a long, tense moment.
When he finally spoke, his voice was perfectly flat. “What does all of that mean?”
“The cards…” My voice trailed off, and my fingers fluttered over the reading layout again. “The Wheel of Fortune, the Sun, Death…”
I stop speaking and shook my head. Naming the cards would mean nothing to this townie—he’d come in here to flirt. I was certain of it.
Instead, something supernatural had occurred. I was equally sure of that.
This wasn’t dukkering for the rubes.
Rather than a standard, generic reading, Evan had ended up with the kind of gypsy divination I’d only heard about from Granna.
And somehow, the foretelling had come through me.
A chill crawled down my spine. I hoped the feeling wasn’t prophetic, too.
I feared it was.
Evan didn’t stay long after my failed attempt to explain to him a prediction I didn’t understand myself.
“I guess I’d better go?” he asked, frowning slightly. I knew he wanted me to say no, to invite him to stay.
When I didn’t, he stood up. “Okay, then. I guess…thanks for the fortune. Or something.”
“Yeah. Sure,” I said, still distracted.
“Bye.” With a roll of his eyes, he ducked through the curtain that separated my table from the rest of the tent.
I, on the other hand, continued to sit at the table, staring at the cards in front of me. Especially the final ten I set out when I spelled our names. I had no idea what had prompted me to spell out my own name as well as Evan’s.
Although I didn’t know what the prediction I had spoken meant, I saw the other cards it referenced—The Lovers in Evan’s name, The Moon and The Star in mine.
Whatever else it might foretell, this tarot reading and my spoken prophecy connected me in some arcane way to the beautiful townie boy I had only just met.
5
I didn’t do any more readings that night.
Shaking off the chill that had settled deep into my bones despite the warmth of the evening, I turned off the blinking lights that circled our “Fortune Teller” sign and gathered the cards. Most of the decorations inside our reading tent were locked away at night in a giant trunk in the corner, too big for anyone to drag through the midway without being noticed. But the cards always went back to the RV.
Granna still had some superstitions.
Then again, given what I had experienced that night, I was beginning to think perhaps they weren’t superstitions, at all.
Besides, I wanted to get back home before she went to sleep and talk to my grandmother about what all of this might mean.
The townie boy and I couldn’t really be connected, could we? I would be leaving in just a few days, and he would stay here—that’s the way it always was in my world.
Carnies go, townies stay.
Even as the thought ran through my mind, the words I hadn’t meant to say earlier ran through my mind: the moon has no light without the sun.
Granna.
She would know what to make of it all.
I tucked the cards into their wooden box and closed the lid, then shoved the box into my messenger bag. Looping the strap over my head so that I carried the bag diagonally across my body, I did a quick check of the tent to make sure nothing else remained behind. Then I ducked out and headed toward the back yard.
Usually if I closed up on my own, I strolled back to the RV, alternating between reading the midway for more loose change and greeting the agents running the games. I was too distracted now to do either, too much in a hurry to offer more than a quick wave to the people I passed. The smell of hot dogs wafting from Corbett’s grease joint set my stomach to rumbling, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.
Away from the confines of the tents—back out in the world that I knew so well and loved so much—the strange loss of control, of my own volition as I spoke my unintended prophecy, seemed less frightening.
Maybe I didn’t have to hurry quite so much.
Corbett would give me a hot dog—he might even be willing to trade me a whole meal if I offered to take over his joint for an hour sometime.
I slowed and cut across in front of the Ferris wheel toward Corbett’s.
That’s when I saw Evan.
He and one of the other boys he’d come in with earlier—the one named Steve—were just settling into one of the Ferris wheel seats. Sandy had strapped them in and was pulling the lever to turn the wheel.
Beware the wheel and the light.
My own voice echoed inside my head, and once again the air around me grew too thick to breathe. Everything seemed to slow down until all around me people moved as if swimming through something viscous, like syrup.
The bright lights of the Ferris wheel shimmered and flashed, their bright cheer suddenly turned ominous in this extended moment.
No, I tried to call out, but my voice hung in my throat, pressed down by the syrup-air that wouldn’t be drawn into my lungs.
In agonizing slow motion, the seat holding Evan and his friend climbed toward the top of the Ferris wheel. Like other teenagers did every night, the two townie boys rocked the chair back and forth, setting it swinging wildly, and I watched as the thickening air on the ground held me like a bug trapped in amber—unmoving and terrified.
Petrified.
In fact, only their seat on the Ferris wheel seem to move freely, swinging out farther and farther until, with a high, metallic screech, a bolt gave way just as they reached the apex of the wheel’s turning.
Around me, everything snapped back into normal time, the air thinning again enough for my scream to break free.
Too late.
With a thudding clank, the seat twisted sideways and one side dropped down, swinging toward the ground.
6
Until the carnival noise came rushing back in, I didn’t realize how little had been getting through—only the sounds of the Ferris wheel breaking down had made their way to me. Now, however, it all hit me at once: children’s screams matching the high-pitched screech of metal scraping on metal, the shouts of the barkers and ride jockeys calling for help as they shut down their own rides and rushed to the Ferris wheel.
“Big Eli is down,” I heard echoing through the lot. Some of the old-timers passed the word the old-fashioned way, calling out to the agent one ride or booth over, sending it up the midway from the back lot to Manny in the front office, but the younger agents were already calling it in on their walkie-talkies and phones.
We’d all had training for emergencies, and enough of us were second- and third-generation carnies to have had it drilled into us, down to the marrow of our bones, what to do in a situation like this, even though a serious ride malfunction hadn’t happened in my lifetime, and maybe not in my parents’ lifetimes, either.
I knew what I was supposed to do. Get out of the way, let the more experienced ride operators take care of the trouble. They’d been trained to deal with mechanical breakdowns. I hadn’t.
I wasn’t even the closest person to the ride.
I had no business joining the gathering crowd staring up at the dangling Ferris wheel seat.
But when I heard the metallic shriek of another bolt giving away, I found myself shoving past people before I even knew precisely what I planned to do. As I looked up, I made eye contact with Evan. He glanced down for just a second before turning back to urge Steve, who was closer to the point where the seat attached to the wheel, to climb out of the chair and onto the crossbeams of the wheel.
In that instant that our gazes held, I saw both Evan’s sheer terror, and his determination to survive this terrifying moment.
And I knew, beyond a doubt, that he wouldn’t make it.
He twisted in the seat, moving as quickly as he could without jostling the precarious balance, and began unbuckling the seatbelt that held Steve st
rapped into the deathtrap. Once the other boy was free, Evan pushed him with one hand while pointing at the cross bars with the other, talking constantly and seriously as he urged his seatmate to climb out.
The crowd at the bottom of the wheel grew larger every second, pushing those of us at the front ever closer to the Ferris wheel, while the ride operators worked to move us in the opposite direction. A collective gasp went up when Evan’s friend finally reached up and began pulling himself out of the chair and onto the frame of the Ferris wheel. The noisy, terrified group suddenly went silent, and the groans of the stressed metal echoed around us.
“Move back!” Crazy Jimmy stepped in front of me and turned to face the crowd, his spindly arms held wide as he used his body to push us farther away. I took another step backward, fighting down rising nausea at my certainty that this would end badly, even as I sent up prayers that I was wrong.
Steve swung one leg up onto the frame of the Ferris wheel, then used his arms to shimmy along a cross bar. With a final push of his sneakered foot, he dragged himself all the way out of the seat.
The process shoved the dangling chair too hard. Even as Evan reached to grab the metal bar and follow his friend, the final bolt gave way with a horrible rending noise, and the seat hurtled toward the ground with Evan still in it.
7
For the third time in an hour, the entire world around me changed, slowed as I continued moving at normal speeds. Or maybe the rest of the world kept moving at its normal pace and I sped up. In any case, I was already getting used to the way the air became the consistency of peanut butter, as if the very molecules had grown too glutinous—or perhaps too large—to even pass into my lungs.
Even the Ferris wheel chair became sluggish, its midair flip changing to a slow revolution, as Evan was ejected and slung toward the ground in horrifying slow-motion.
I forced my frozen muscles to move, ducking under Crazy Jimmy’s crowd-restraining arm and flinging myself through the molasses air to try to catch Evan —I don’t know what I would’ve done had I gotten under him. He easily outweighed me by thirty pounds, maybe even more.
But I didn’t get to him in time.
Instead, I watched helplessly as he landed and bounced, like a doll dashed to the ground by a petulant child.
A broken doll.
A few feet away, the Ferris wheel seat crashed into the earth, metal parts scattering in all directions.
As Evan’s body hit the ground and lay still, time resumed its normal speed, and again, my shrill scream cut through the cotton-wadding silence that had enveloped me. Without consciously realizing what I was doing, I launched myself across the distance separating us and landed next to Evan’s splayed figure.
I shouldn’t touch him.
The thought came too late to stop my fingers from fluttering against his cheek.
It didn’t matter. His open eyes stared sightlessly at the overcast, dark sky above.
There aren’t even any stars to see.
That odd, passing thought prompted another memory of my prophecy: “lovers’ days fade under night’s bright star…”
I barked out a mirthless laugh. The Lovers card had been in Evan’s name in the reading, the Star in mine, and now his days were more than faded—they were gone entirely.
A hot tear slid down my cheek, leaving a burning trail behind it that was suddenly echoed by scorching sensation against my hip. I jerked upright, shoving at what felt like a fiery ember sinking through my jeans—but turned out to be my messenger bag.
I tugged the strap over my head and dropped the bag to the ground, dropping to my knees and pulling open the flap to figure out what was causing me such horrific pain.
My tarot cards.
A white-hot glow poured out of the box I kept them in, shining through the crack where the top met the bottom.
Just as I reached into the bag to pull them out, Crazy Jimmy’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Come on, Kizzie. There’s an ambulance on the way. Nothing else we can do here.”
I glanced up and around. Only a few seconds could have passed—as far as I could tell, Jimmy and I were the only ones who had moved. The rest of the crowd stood, mouths agape, hands clasped in useless prayer.
“Not yet, Jimmy,” I hissed, almost frantic. “I have an idea.”
“It’s too late, sugar.” His voice was kind, his hand firm as he tugged at my shoulder in an attempt to convince me to stand.
I put every ounce of intensity I had into my stare as I captured his gaze with mine, drawing the glowing wooden box of cards toward the top of the bag and holding it open to show him. “Then I can’t hurt anything. You have to let me try. Please?”
Crazy Jimmy’s eyes grew wide as he took in the glow. “That’s real?”
“Yes.” I paused and lowered my voice. “You’re not crazy, Jimmy. And I don’t think I am, either. Give me until the ambulance gets here. Let me see what I can do.”
Nodding, Jimmy let go of my shoulder and took a step back. “I’ll hold the rubes back. You work that magic, girl.”
“Death is not death,” I whispered to myself as I drew in a deep breath and prepared to try to use whatever this strange power might be to save the townie boy I had only just met.
I was going to need something huge to bring him back—some kind of truly big magic.
“This is definitely Major Arcana stuff,” I whispered to myself.
8
I knelt beside Evan’s body and spent a few seconds trying to calm and center myself, despite the pounding thump of my heart. Then I reached into my bag and drew out the box, placed it in my lap, and pushed the lid open on its hinges. The light that had been shining through the cracks spilled out, almost blinding me for a second.
My gaze flickered back and forth between Evan’s perfectly still body and my shining cards. Neither was as it should be—both were outside the natural order of things, at least as I understood them.
Balance.
That was what was needed here.
I glanced up at the Ferris wheel. Steve had managed to scoot along the metal bar to another crossbeam near the center, and was hanging on for dear life, sobbing wildly as the roustabouts responsible for setting up the wheel bustled around the base of the ride, preparing to rescue him before they began turning the wheel to clear all the other riders.
Jimmy wouldn’t be able to keep everyone at bay for more than a couple of minutes, and as soon as Evan’s friend was brought down, it would be too late.
I had to work fast, even if I didn’t know exactly what it was I was about to do.
However, I knew how to read the cards.
Closing my eyes, I gathered the entire deck in my hands and shuffled, focusing on the heat of them, the energy I could feel pouring from them and into me. I inhaled deeply, breathing in the sheer power emanating from the cards. White-hot energy shot through me, moving from my fingertips up to my arms, pausing in my shoulders for an instant before racing to fill the rest of me. It spilled out of my body, crackling around me in a light blue nimbus that lifted my hair up, leaving it floating a few inches away from my head.
“This is it, Evan,” I whispered as I cut the deck, then fanned it out on his prone torso. Moving steadily, I drew out ten cards, one after the other, trusting this magic.
When I had the cards I needed, I gathered up the remainder of the deck and placed it back in the wooden box.
Those cards no longer glowed, but the ones I had chosen were almost too bright to look at.
One at a time, I turned over the cards and placed them on Evan’s body in a straight line from the middle of his forehead down to his groin. I hesitated before placing the last card, blushing at the strangely intimate gesture. Then I shook it off, reminding myself that no carnie had any reason to be embarrassed in front of a townie.
Not even a dead one.
I didn’t know what to do after that, so I paused and stared down at the layout I had created. By this point, the cards had ceased to surprise me. I wasn’t used
to feeling helpless, though, and I didn’t like it.
“Read the cards.” Granna’s voice came from behind me at the same time her supportive hand landed on my shoulder.
I glanced up at her wrinkled, calm face. “But they’re the same cards he drew earlier.”
“Read them. Quickly.”
I nodded, drawing strength from her certainty.
As I turned back to read the cards, I realized they weren’t exactly the same as they had been earlier. This time, they started with Death at the top and ended with the Sun, and there were some other differences in their order, too.
“Death is not death,” I said. “Clearing the old to make way for the new. The Devil, temptation. The Wheel of Fortune, karma and change. The Tower, upheaval and change.”
The power inside me began building, and the air began to thicken around me, threatening to cut off my voice.
I forced the words out. “The Fool, new beginnings. The Hanged Man, waiting and introspection. The Moon, anxiety and illusion. The Magician, skills and achievements. The World, completion or travel. The Sun, vitality and life.”
“Vitality and life,” Granna said after me, her hand squeezing my shoulder tightly.
“Life,” I whispered yet again, as the energy the cards had poured into me began to circulate, whipping through my veins so quickly that my head spun.
I touched my palms together, feeling magic pouring from one hand to the other. I imagined all my strength gathering in my hands, and when they had grown so hot that I could barely stand it, I reached out and placed my palms on Evan’s body—one on his forehead, displacing the Death card, and the other on his abdomen, brushing away The Moon card. Then I concentrated on pouring every molecule of magic I had through my hands, and into him.
Not Just Voodoo Page 3
