Chapter Twelve
“I must have left my wallet over here, but it’s cash only anyway, so it doesn’t matter,” Nico mutters, sitting down across from me.
Then he notices my ashen, confounded face and startles.
“Whoa. What happened to you? Did EGC discontinue the series in the five minutes I was waiting in line to buy stale chips?”
I shake my head. “There was a woman.”
“A real one?!”
“Very funny.” I roll my eyes. “She was a mystic. A psychic.”
“So not real, then.”
“She shared a prophecy with me. It was for both of us, actually.”
Nico throws his head back and laughs. “Now I know you’re fucking with me.”
I glare at him, scanning the other passengers, looking for a glimpse of the woman with golden bangles and cunning eyes. But the fortune-teller has seemingly evaporated into thin air. Maybe she’s hiding in the bathroom a la New York Minute or something.
“I swear on Teymoor’s life.”
Nico cocks his head. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“Fine.” We lock eyes, the stale air around us growing charged. “Then I swear on Ryke.”
Nico’s eyebrows fly up. “Shit. What was the prophecy?”
I rehash the prophecy to the best of my ability, trying my best to repeat it word for word. When I’m done, Nico’s forehead practically folds in half.
“The red maiden? A goat dressed as a lamb? Squatting birds? What the hell does any of that mean?”
“Zero idea. Prophecies don’t typically spell things out for you.”
“Well, you’re the fantasy expert,” he says, scratching his chin. “Surely you have the tools to decode this bad boy.”
I blow out a frustrated breath and wish for the millionth time that I had access to my fanfic group.
They would have this prophecy annotated in seconds.
A heroine like me isn’t supposed to go through a story arc like this without her inner circle.
At least I’ll be with my love interest sooner rather than later.
But what role does Nico play in this narrative?
“I’ll think on it,” I tell him, pulling my notebook from the back pocket of my purse. “Let me play around with it a little bit while I put off writing this advertising copy.”
“She was probably just nuts anyway,” he says. “What are you working on now? Another diaper rash ad?”
I shake my head. “Better. Anal fissure cream.”
He groans dramatically, banging his head on the table like a cartoon character. “How is this even your life?”
I shrug. “Easy. I want to pay my rent with my words. That doesn’t always mean writing the next great American screenplay. For me, it’s raising awareness about foot fungus by day and writing viral fanfic at night.”
“Have you ever thought about writing totally original stuff?” he asks. “A novel, perhaps?”
Maybe. It’s not that I haven’t thought about it—Tey is always bugging me about pushing myself, putting my original work out there more.
“I guess it scares me,” I admit. “Being exposed like that. As a fanfic writer, I get to hide behind characters and a world that aren’t my own.
Plus, I use a pen name. What if I create a universe and no one wants to live in it?
Then it isn’t just StepOnMeRyke432 who fails. It’s Joonie.”
Nico uses his nails to tap against my notebook as if he’s knocking on a door.
Asking permission to be let in. “Trying and not getting it right the first time wouldn’t make you a failure, Joon,” he says gently.
“Do me a favor, okay? If you really don’t want to write anything but fanfiction, don’t do it.
But make sure you aren’t holding yourself back because you’re afraid of not doing it perfectly and being rejected.
Because the people who love you? They’re going to stick by you no matter what. ”
I stare up at him, searching his face for a sign of sarcasm. For any indication that he’s teasing, pulling my leg. I wait for him to say, Gotcha! or follow up his speech with a backhanded compliment. But instead, he just blinks back at me, allowing me to process his words in my own time.
Is Nico right?
Have I been holding myself back from trying to write something else all this time because I’m afraid of people abandoning or turning on me? Like my parents?
Or Sam?
Kyle?
Nico himself?
Holy hell, I need a new therapist.
“The thing is,” I whisper, “I haven’t let anyone read my original writing since her.”
“Her?”
“Sam.”
Nico looks at me for a long second, his forehead scrunched in pain.
I’m unable to bear the weighted silence for even another millisecond.
“Joon—”
“What are we going to do about Kabobs ’n’ Bits?” I blurt out, desperate to change the subject. “If the bank forecloses on the property, what’s going to happen to Tey?”
Nico opens his mouth to answer, then closes it.
My heart starts to hammer.
An hour and a half later, I’m still attempting to come up with the best-case scenario to soothe myself when the conductor announces that we’re about to arrive at New York’s Penn Station.
I wait for my heart to flutter.
For my pulse to race.
I’m hours away from meeting Ryan Mare. From looking the real-life Ryke dead in the eye, right into his very soul. After years of waiting for my happily ever after, I’m about to grab it by the balls.
But all that’s on my mind are the words of the blond-haired boy who broke my heart when I was fifteen.
Nico clears his throat. “So I guess this is where we part ways, huh?”
Right. I’d totally forgotten that we only made plans to road trip into the city together. “You’re staying in Harlem, right? With your lady of the night?”
He wrinkles his nose. “She’s not, you know, a sex worker. Not there’s anything wrong with sex work. But yeah, she lives in West Harlem. And your hotel is in Brooklyn?”
I nod. “Near the botanical gardens. They’re supposed to be beautiful this time of year. Maybe if we both have time before we head back to Mystic, we can…”
I trail off as I feel around in my purse and come up empty.
“Wait a second.” I attempt to steady the panic in my voice. “Nico, my wallet is missing.”
“Okay, let’s not freak out,” he says, swinging his backpack off his shoulder. “You probably just left it in the taxi. Once we get new phones, we can call the motel and ask for the name of the cab company they called.”
Nico yanks open the zipper of his Jansport and begins to throw objects onto the table in front of him, cursing under his breath.
“Shit. Mine’s gone, too.”
I suck in my cheeks. “How is that even possible?”
If neither of us have our wallets, that means we don’t have a photo ID or credit card between us. We won’t be able to check into our hotels, let alone buy new phones. Not to mention that we won’t be able to buy any food or tickets back to Connecticut.
This is a category-four disaster.
“Are we cursed or something?” I wonder out loud.
Then something clicks in the back of my head.
“Holy shit. It was her. The psychic.”
“No way,” Nico counters. “You were across from her the entire time, right? How could she have stolen both our wallets when you were looking at her?”
“Well…” I bite my lip, guilty. “There is a teeny-tiny chance that, um, I closed my eyes for, like, a millisecond. To, you know, focus. On the prophecy. And committing it to memory…”
Nico gawks at me, dumbfounded. “For once, I literally don’t know what to say.”
The train pulls into the station. All at once, passengers get out of their seats, shoving each other aside to grab their overhead luggage and line up by the exit signs.
Nico and I remain seated amidst the chaos, both of us in shock.
I keep an eye out for a splash of color, the jangle of bangles, in the madness.
But Veda the fortune-teller is gone, and with her, my chance of completing my mission. Of meeting Ryan Mare. Of making it to New York and back safe and sound.
“How is it that two crazy kidnappers weren’t able to take us down, but one crappy con artist was?” Nico asks with a dry laugh. “I have no idea what Nadia’s number or address is. We’re going to have to sleep on this train tonight.”
Nadia.
I try not to let the sound of her name falling from his lips bother me.
Wait. Wasn’t it Hannah before?
“Unless…”
“Unless?” Nico’s eyes bug out as he waits for me to finish my sentence.
“How much do you trust me?”
“About as far as I can throw you.”
“Well, that tells me nothing. You’re very strong.”
“I trust you, Joon.”
“In that case, there is one address in New York that I have memorized. The apartment of a good friend. I’ve actually always wanted to visit but could never work up the nerve. In fact, I sent a framed fan art print of Rykiah there just last month! But there’s, um, a catch.”
Nico stands up and grabs his backpack, preparing to get off the train. Without asking, he grabs my duffel and throws it over his defined shoulder. The oxygen evacuates my lungs at the show of chivalry, and I attempt to get my feminism in check before it flies out of my body completely.
“Please don’t tell me it’s the home of one of the men you ghosted or something,” he says as I follow him off the train and onto the platform.
A rat runs across the yellow line, barely missing my feet.
“Nope,” I say. “It’s just that we’ve never actually met.”