Chapter Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWO
IT’S FRIDAY, AND DAISY, SAM, and I are grabbing lunch in the cafeteria. The sun shines through the large wrought iron windows as we share a giant plate of cheesy fries.
Daisy is taking out her tarot cards.
“Okay, like I said, this is practice, so some divination that seems like it may not apply to you is to be expected.” She’s wearing a cropped, black graphic T-shirt over her school-issued button-down, the points of the collar laid over the ribbed hemming.
A long-sleeve fishnet shirt peeks out from the wrists of her blazer.
Sam and I nod our heads.
“Awesome. I’m just going to shuffle the deck…
” Daisy draws out the sentence as she closes her eyes, the stack of colorful cards in her hands.
A low humming sound emanates from her chest, and her eyelids flutter.
We watch her, enraptured by her process as, slowly, she passes the cards into her left hand and bends them—just barely—so that they cascade into her right.
She stops midway and splits the deck, working quickly to combine it once again before repeating the process.
When she seems satisfied, she spreads the cards out onto the table and opens her eyes. Her hands hover over them, scattered across the oak surface.
Her irises are coal as she lifts her gaze and gestures to the cards. “It’s time.”
Sam and I look at each other.
They nod at me.
I widen my eyes.
They point to the cards.
I raise an eyebrow.
Sam huffs, “You do it!”
“Me?” I laugh. “Are you scared or something?”
Sam’s face turns ruddy. “No! I’m not scared!” They run their hands through their messy black/blond hair. “I just figure it’s probably more of your kind of thing.”
I glance down at my phone. I’m supposed to be meeting Missy in the library at two, but I’ve got time.
I shrug.
Daisy smiles at me. “I’ll pick them for you, but you need to place your hands over the cards and give them your intention.”
“Intention?” I ask, anxiously wiping nonexistent sweat from my brow.
I reach toward the cards but hesitate.
Sam’s voice wavers beside me. “Is this bad juju?”
“Seriously?” I squeak. “Let’s not talk about what kind of juju this is while my hands are hovering over the cards. I’m trying to set my intention.”
Daisy instructs me to think really hard about what I want to ask the cards. I close my eyes briefly and picture my grandmother, her smiling face in her garden, surrounded by an infinite spectrum of colorful flowers, and on her lips are the answers she took with her.
Find me.
The words grate down my spine, and I push them away on instinct, an icky feeling of invasion souring at the back of my throat. I’d thought the voice from the café was a fluke or exhaustion, but it hasn’t left.
I open my eyes. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Daisy’s chipped maroon nail polish wiggles with her fingers as she moves her hands above the cards, reaching toward one and then giving a slight shake of her head before deciding against it and roaming to another.
Finally she flips a card over. It features a zombie princess holding three daggers to her decaying chest, piercing through a melting heart, a triangle of pain.
Daisy’s lips press together. “Three of Swords.” Some of the color leaks out of her face. “An ominous sign.”
I place my hands in my lap and pinch the soft flesh between my thumb and forefinger.
“So, this card can represent a lot of things, but what I’m seeing for you has to do with heartbreak.
Betrayal.” She closes her eyes, head dipping slightly before she opens them again.
“Maybe it’s because of your grandmother and the pain there…
but I’m not sure. It feels like there’s something else. ”
She glances toward the back of the room, but I don’t have to turn around to know who she sees. I’ve felt the sparks across my back from him watching me this entire time.
I mean, she’s not wrong. If anyone has broken my heart, it’s Malachi. At least on my end, the damage has already been done. It’s not like the situation with him could get much worse.
I shake my shoulders to release the tension that’s gathering.
“Okay,” I say, ready for something a bit happier. “What’s next?”
Her breath releases in a slow stream before her hand hovers above the cards once more. She draws one out.
A ghostly man, levitating, legs folded beneath him as he is surrounded by ten splintered, jagged guitar necks.
Her eyes are depthless as she regards me. “Ten of Wands.”
Silence.
Why isn’t she explaining what the card means?
“Daisy?”
When she speaks, her voice is distant. “The worst is yet to come.”
Sam’s hand covers mine, and they squeeze. “W-what does that mean?”
“You’ve felt the grief of heartbreak and betrayal, but it will not be the end. There is more to come. Your destiny does not belong to you, and you will pay the price for that.” She adjusts in her chair. Taps the cards against the table anxiously.
“When the end comes, only you will be able to make it right.”
We’re silent as her words take shape. As apprehension blooms in my chest.
Her eyes glitter with fear. Or hope? “But that’s good, right? Because once you hit bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.”
An unnatural breeze sweeps through the room, and the cards flutter almost imperceptibly. I shiver, turning to meet the gaze that’s been lingering on me, but he isn’t there.
Facing the cards, I rub the engraving on my necklace until it grows warm. “I—” I can appreciate her optimism, but I’m overwhelmed. “So, two bad cards so far. This next one better be good.”
Once again Daisy’s hands hover. But this time she waits, her head tipping to the side as if she can hear something we can’t.
Her eyes drift closed, and it’s like all the noise around us fades away.
Sam and I are still, breath paused, as we watch Daisy slide a card from the edge of the table.
It’s deliberate, like she was called to it.
Her eyes open, and slowly she turns it over.
Bones. Crisscrossed beneath a skull. Worms climbing from hollow eye sockets, rotted fruit and wilted flowers collaged in the background. At the bottom of the card is one word.
Death.
Sam’s hand slips from mine, a chill creeping beneath my skin in the absence of their warmth. My stomach is made of lead.
I’ve heard before that the Death card doesn’t mean you’re going to die. It usually just means the end of something significant. It signals great change. I try to ask Daisy what she thinks, but my words are buried beneath a booming voice.
“Ladies!” Lucas says, pulling a chair from the table and flipping it around. “And Sam,” he nods, before taking a seat.
My eyes slide back to Daisy as I ignore him and repeat my question. “What does it mean?”
Her hands work diligently to gather the cards. She smooths them out, a slight tremble in her fingers. She taps them against the table before wrapping them in a black velvet ribbon and placing them into her bag.
“You know what, I think I still need practice.” She doesn’t meet my eyes as she drops the bag underneath the table, giving it a light kick. “Because that reading was totally off. Forget everything I’ve said, honestly.”
When she raises her gaze to mine, there’s something there, beneath the oak and honey, something swirling. Something secret.
“Okayyy…,” I draw the word out.
“What are y’all talking about?” Lucas asks, oblivious to the tension. With the semester in full swing, we haven’t spoken much outside of class and the occasional shared treat from the café. “Oh, uh, nothing.” Daisy’s tone is a pitch too high. “I was practicing reading tarot.”
“Oh, cool,” Lucas says, an easy smile tilting up the corners of his mouth. “I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“See?” Sam says. “Finally someone reasonable.”
Lucas bumps his shoulder with mine. “Not surprised at all to see that you still believe in that kind of thing, though!” he laughs.
“You guys should have seen Harper growing up! She and Kai, they had all these crazy ideas about magic and dragons and stuff. Harper was always telling us these stories her grandmother used to tell her…,” he trails off, his face taking on a sort of reverence that makes my stomach knot.
My fingers graze the edge of my golden pendant. “Yeah.” I force a chuckle. “It’s a lot easier to believe in that kind of thing as a kid. But still… don’t you want magic to be real, even just a little? Don’t you want anything to be possible?”
Lucas cocks his head as he considers me, his eyes searching mine for something, and I search his back, trying to parse out the expression on his face. He doesn’t say anything, just reaches over to wrap my hand in his.
He turns to Sam. “Can you believe these two?” He gestures to Daisy and me, shaking his head conspiratorially before turning back to me.
“You know what, I take it back. I do hope magic is real. I mean, who wouldn’t want a piece of that?” The smile on his face is soft and genuine, the scar above his lip shining in the beam of sunlight that floats over our table.
Daisy and Sam clear their throats dramatically, ripping us from each other’s eyes.
Lucas turns back to the group. “Anyway.” He shifts in his seat.
“I came over here to ask y’all if you were planning on coming to my party down at Hanging Rock?
Banks, my campaign manager, is throwing it in honor of my presidential inauguration after the homecoming game.
” He clarifies for me, “I was elected at the end of last year.”
Sam asks, “When’s the game?” At the same time, I say, “Hanging Rock…”
“Two weeks. Homecoming is always the first Friday of October,” Lucas answers Sam.
“Hanging Rock is this beautiful spot down past the chapel and into the forest. It has amazing views, and the teachers never bother to trek all the way out there to catch us,” Daisy says.
“I mean, they have to know we party out there. But they obviously don’t care,” Sam adds.
I nod. “I remember it from when I was a kid. Got in trouble once for trying to climb the rock.” I laugh at their concerned faces. “It’s not like I was by myself!” I say, holding up my hands. “Kai was there too! I made him help me.”
Lucas shakes his head. “Oh yeah! That was the summer we met, right? Wait, that’s kind of crazy.”
Daisy, who had seemed to be feeling much better a few moments ago, now looks a little drained, like she’s ready to take a nap. Rubbing her eyes as she takes a couple swigs of ginger-lemon Olipop to perk herself up, she says, “We should totally go!”
I push down my nostalgia and lean in to the voice of reason. I think about what happened to Fiona. “I don’t know…”
Sam shrugs, mouth full of cold fries. “We’ve gone to Hanging Rock plenty of times and never had any issues.”
“What do you say?” Lucas asks, sliding his arm around my shoulders.
I roll my eyes. “I guess we could go for a little bit.”
His teeth graze his bottom lip, his mouth quirking to the side. “Good.”
Turning my face away from his, I press my fingers to the corner of my twitching mouth as I try to hide the warmth in my cheeks. Daisy pretends to gag.
Lucas’s hand slides down my back as his lips hover at the shell of my ear. “It’ll be just like old times.”