Chapter 7 Clara
CLARA
I TOOK THE brACELET BECAUSE I could, but also because I wanted to make sure that girl Lily came to see me.
I had a feeling about her, something about the way she looked at me, the way what I told her changed her posture, the way she flinched and then relaxed when I leaned close to touch her hand.
I could use her. She could be our way in at the spa, if I played things right.
She would probably be angry about the bracelet at first, but I was sure I could work on her, get her on our side.
That guy she worked with noticed me take it—the janitor.
I had seen him in town enough to know there was something off about him, too.
Always skulking around on his own. I didn’t usually slip up like that, leave a witness, but I could spot someone with secrets and I figured he’d keep mine.
The next morning, Des clunked down the stairs, and I could tell she was going to see her dealer. She had her shirt tied up above her belly button, knotted at the narrowest part of her waist, and her hair was brushed to a glossy sheen.
“Do we have any readings scheduled for today?” I asked.
“I think you probably already know the answer to that. But hey, take those business cards and hand them out, drum up a bit of publicity. Only don’t do it in Bally’s.
I think security has flagged us over there.
” Sooner or later I would lose track of all the places we weren’t allowed to go.
“Why do you look so sullen? You don’t want to hand out the business cards?
Fine by me. Besides, things are looking up for us. I think I’ve lined up your first date.”
I ignored her. I didn’t want to know anything about this date.
“I’ll hand out the cards,” I said, and grabbed the stack from the counter.
Des ruffled my hair. “This color looks so hot on you, babes.”
When she walked away, I felt again for the spiky hair at the base of my skull. I was still confused about the visions, but it felt good to have a secret, a piece of my life that she had no hand in.
I shoved the business cards in my purse but stopped in the arcade before handing them out.
I played a round of Skee-Ball, rolling the scarred wooden balls up the ramp, arching them into the targets, stopping to listen to the dumb trill of the music that played when you hit the ten-thousand-point mark.
The machine spit out a strip of pale pink tickets, which I carried to the counter in the back.
The woman who worked there knew me, though she and I never talked much.
She looked like she was in her sixties, with brown hair that was white at the temples and skin pale and doughy from all the time she spent inside.
Once, I’d had a vision as I stood in front of her, a quick flash: an old woman embroidering a design into a piece of cloth stretched taut in a hoop.
A lot of the things I saw were violent, or sad, but sometimes they were straightforward.
Sometimes what I saw was even comforting.
I didn’t know how it worked, exactly—what bits of a life came to me, how certain memories sifted to the top and opened up to me.
It was another thing I wanted my mother to teach me.
How to see what I wanted to, and how to keep out or let go of what I didn’t want—or was afraid—to know.
My “gift” still felt bigger than me, a force that moved through and around me like weather.
Maybe one day it would make me feel powerful—if I could ever get it under control.
I pushed my tickets toward the woman, and she produced a bin of flimsy metal rings with plastic jewels at the center and a box of chocolate poker chips from the glass prize case.
I pointed to the candy and she counted out four of them, paused, then reached in and added one more piece to the pile.
I unwrapped one and let the chocolate melt slowly on my tongue.
On my way out I tucked a business card into the screen of a Mortal Kombat console.
I held out cards to anyone I passed, chanting Tarot cards palm reading, tarot cards palm reading until the words lost their meaning, my mouth just making the same shapes over and over again.
I watched people take cards then drop them on the ground a few steps later.
At first, I tried to look people in the eye, tried to show them something about myself: That I was, like Des said, the real deal.
That they could trust me. That I wanted to help.
Some people took them, thinking it was an offer for a free drink or free Italian ice, like the other shops handed out, and then crumpled the cards in their palms.
After an hour of walking I still had more than half of the cards to give away.
I stopped in front of the darkened doors of the Taj Mahal, where signs warned against trespassing.
Des and I had gone to the liquidation sale, before they closed their doors for good.
Men loaded the chandeliers into moving trucks and workers pried light fixtures off the walls.
In every room, tables were stacked with empty cocktail glasses and giant serving platters, shelves full of clothing irons and telephones, piles of Bibles shucked from the drawers of bedside tables, and towers of metal champagne buckets.
In another room, a cluster of disco balls sparkled in a corner.
An entire hallway was lined with mattresses from the hotel, most of them covered in stains.
It made me realize how easily the casinos, places I thought were fixed and permanent, could be reduced to debris.
I turned around to walk south again. A drunk man slurred at me—Heyyy, baby—and a pair of women shook their heads as I approached, as though I was holding out a spider or a mouse.
I thought I had imagined it when I heard a girlish voice calling my name.
“Ava? Ava?” After the jitney ride yesterday, I second-guessed everything I heard.
They were leaning along the rails, passing a bottle of pink lemonade between them.
Lucy Ellison, Noelle Cohen, and Nina Wright.
We had gone to middle school together, until their parents sent them to private schools inland.
We hadn’t been friends, exactly—Noelle and Nina lived in Margate, in large houses with fountains in the front yards and high iron fences, and they always hung out together after school.
Lucy lived in Marvin Gardens, in a pink Spanish-style house with her parents and two standard poodles—her life looked like something from a storybook.
Des never wanted to give me bus fare, so I never met up with them on the weekends or after school, and after a while they stopped inviting me.
“I almost didn’t recognize you. Your hair,” Noelle said. She passed the bottle to Lucy, who grimaced when she took a sip—not just lemonade.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s different.”
“How’s Atlantic City High?” Lucy asked. “Do girls really throw bleach at each other when they fight?”
“I heard there’s a day care in the building, because so many girls have had babies,” Noelle said.
“I—it’s okay.” It wasn’t true, about the day care or about the bleach.
But I didn’t want to explain that I had dropped out.
I’d had visions more frequently in school than anywhere else.
It made me anxious, unable to concentrate.
Des told me she wanted me to help out more in the shop, but it had been my idea to quit, once my sixteenth birthday came around and no one could report me to the state.
I told myself it would just be easier that way.
“Want some?” Nina asked, holding out the bottle.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Some of my mom’s vodka, with a packet of Crystal Light stirred in. Down here none of the cops even care, so we came to pregame.”
I took the drink from her. It smelled like nail polish remover and SweeTarts. A ring of lip gloss shimmered around the mouth of the bottle. I took a sip, which made me cough. I had never had a drink before, but I hoped maybe it’d make me feel different—calmer or braver, or just less myself.
“What are those?” Lucy asked, reaching for my wrist. At first I thought she meant the pearls, but then she turned my palm over into hers, slid a business card out of my grip. My face got hot, and I could feel the mottled rash creep across my neck, the way it always did when I was embarrassed.
“Clara Voyant, Seer and Fortune Teller! Oh my god. Stop.”
“It’s just a … a project,” I said. I thought of what Des had said the other day. My mother and I made the same face when we lied.
“What kind of project?” Her eyes gleamed with mean joy.
“Hard to explain.”
“So you, like, tell people about their futures and stuff?” Nina asked.
“Oh! Do Noelle. Noelle, see if Ava knows whether Nick will finally ask you out.”
“Shut up.” Noelle elbowed Lucy in the ribs. “Nick Hart. You know him, Ava.”
“Ava used to like Nick Hart!”
“No, I mean, maybe. He’s fine. But I don’t like him anymore, obviously.
” If only they knew what my life was like now—that in a few days I’d probably go out on a date with a strange, grown-up man.
But for a second I let myself picture how Nick would look in the prep uniform, the navy blazer with brass buttons, a crisp blue button-down shirt the same color as his eyes.
“You and Ava have to duke it out, Noelle,” Nina said.
Noelle’s smile was small, catlike. “We’ll probably see him at the party tonight. Actually, we should get going. I gotta do my hair.”
“Yeah, I need to get home, too,” I said.
Around these girls, I felt like a sliver of myself.
Maybe because they had known a different version of me: quiet, mousy brown hair, good at math.
They could see the ways I’d changed, the versions of myself that I had left behind.
That itchy, tingling feeling crept up my stomach, and I rubbed at my shirt, hoping they wouldn’t see.