The Fortune Flip

Chapter 1 Hazel

HAZEL

It’s the fortune teller’s bird that first catches my eye.

It looks like a sparrow, its coloring so white it practically glows. A second bird sits behind the first as they wait in their wooden cage.

“I need my fortune read, please,” I say to the fortune teller sitting behind her table.

As soon as the words come out, the dark sky cracks open, releasing a heavy sheet of rain. With a newly burst pipe in my apartment building, I should take advantage of the free water. This rainstorm is probably my only chance for a shower for the night. Or the week.

Instead of walking the fifteen minutes home from Chinatown to the Lower East Side, I duck under the fortune teller’s tent illuminated by bistro string lights. I sit in one of the chairs opposite her and place my purse, leftovers, and folder on the table.

The fortune teller introduces herself as Wendy. She has curly, chin-length gray hair, bright red lips, and a calm demeanor. She points to the sign behind her. “Fluent English. Fortune Reading. $10/reading. Cash only.”

Conveniently, I carry cash. Credit cards aren’t always reliable, and paying with cash sometimes means discounts. I give her my last twenty-dollar bill. Wendy hands ten dollars back and redirects me to the birds.

This close, I notice the faint red rings around their eyes. I’m both intrigued and intimidated by the alleged power they hold. They’re like small, bird-shaped snowballs, their bodies measuring no more than five inches in length.

They remind me of the time a bird flew into our house when I was in first grade. It was round and soft-looking, with light brown on its feathers and a splash of yellow right between its eyes. I only remember because then, just like now, the bird looked right at me.

“A sparrow,” Dad had said excitedly to Mom. “How auspicious. We should keep going. Happiness is just around the corner. This is our sign.”

“Keep going” didn’t apply to all of us. Mom died later that year. The “happiness” that was supposed to be around the corner? Well. It was less of a corner and more of a wall.

So much for auspicious.

“Do I look at you, or…?” I ask Wendy, wanting to make sure I don’t mess up my first-ever fortune reading.

“Everything should pass through the sparrows,” Wendy says, confirming my assumption.

She explains that I’m supposed to ask the birds a question and that they’ll pull three cards from the two boxes on the table.

She’ll interpret what the cards mean. “The first card represents our past, which influences our present. The second represents your current state. The third card gives us an idea of what lies ahead.”

What my future holds.

Instinctively, I reach for Mom’s charm bracelet on my left arm.

The one I never intentionally remove. The one that somehow broke off without me realizing.

Gone is the bracelet with the strawberry charm (her favorite fruit), her July birthstone (ruby), a dove (Dad’s nickname for her), and a croissant (her childhood dog’s name).

I swallow thickly at having lost what feels like a piece of her. At least there’s still the lake house.

I eye the red and orange cards tucked away neatly in their individual boxes.

“What are you wondering about right now?” Wendy asks.

“I’d like to know my future.”

She eyes me. “Anything in particular you want to know?”

“Everything. I want to know all of it.” I fold up the sleeves of my sweater just so I can give my hands something to do.

Wendy simply nods and points to each bird. “This one’s Doc, and that’s Marty, if you’d like to personalize your ask. Make sure to include your name and birthdate.”

“My birthday? Why?” I ask, knowing this personally identifiable information isn’t for these two innocent-looking, warm-blooded vertebrates but for Wendy, who will use the information to guide her fortunes. Or who knows what else.

“It helps me calculate your future,” she states plainly. “I want to give you the most accurate reading.”

Today was already bad enough. Do I really need to know how tomorrow and the next day—and every day after that—are going to be worse?

This impromptu reading was probably a mistake. And impulses have gotten me nothing but regret.

I glance around nervously, looking for an out from being yet another Yen family member about to make a reckless decision.

The slick street is lit up by glowing store signs and food stall lights.

Round red, pink, and orange lanterns dangle from one side of the street to the other.

Through the downpour just outside the tent, I spot others huddled under stalls with signs advertising dumplings and mooncakes and with gold-painted trinkets for sale.

Above all that, a large sign reads in blocky font “Good Fortune Fair.”

Oh, right. Mid-Autumn Festival is next Friday. How is it already almost the end of September?

The sign looks more like an invitation instead of the warning that it is. But that’s exactly what I want. No, need. Good fortune.

This is what happens when very bad days strike.

It’s impossible to resist anything that might make me feel better.

After a quick, soul-crushing trip to the New York City Clerk’s Office, I went to Sweet Escape, my favorite candy store.

Then I went to dim sum to satisfy my sudden cravings for BBQ pork steamed buns.

The restaurant had just sold out of char siu bao, the only thing I wanted in the first place.

I overcompensated by ordering ten dishes off the cart.

After all, I did wait two hours for a table, so I was getting my money’s worth.

I paid sixty-five dollars for an assortment of fried, steamed, boiled, and baked dishes and treats—taking most of it to go—not worrying about it until after.

I haven’t splurged on dining out in, well, who knows how long.

The good news is that I now have leftovers. Red bean sesame balls and shrimp rice noodle rolls may just be my saving grace later.

I take a steadying breath. I’m already here, and the birds are waiting. “Okay. Sure. Doc and Marty, I’m Hazel Yen. I was born on October 13, 1996, and I’d like to know… what does my future look like? Please. And thank you.”

I don’t know how to talk to birds, exactly, but I figure good manners couldn’t hurt.

Under the orange glow of the lights, Wendy lifts both cage doors open.

Doc, the bird in front of the box with the red cards, hops out first. Marty steps forward onto the box with the orange cards. Doc moves his beak along several of the cards, taking his time with each one. My heart beats in anxious response.

Please pick good fortunes, please pick good fortunes.

I catch myself as a flicker of hesitation pulses through me. This is self-sabotaging at its finest. In an instant, this all becomes too real.

I pick up my stuff and wait for the right time to make my escape. But then Doc makes his selection from the back of the box. A few cards are dragged up together, but Wendy picks the highest one before giving Doc a grain of rice as a reward for a job well done.

My heart lurches. There, lying right in front of me, is an actual card with a prediction about what my life might look like.

Who knows? Maybe that card will be calming instead of cautionary.

Maybe the cards will shed light on why, just hours ago, I was laid off without any explanation.

And maybe, on the day of signing my divorce papers, I’ll get reassurance that there’s love—a lasting love that I can count on—out there for me.

Maybe I’ll learn that today wasn’t actually a very bad day, but instead a very lucky day.

Oh god. I sound like Dad.

Worst-case scenario, it’s all bad, and life will be exactly as it has been.

Doc repeats his steps as Marty takes a couple of hops forward and lifts a card from the front. This time, only two cards are dragged up. The most prominent one in the stack is what Wendy begins to reach for.

I lean in closer, 100 percent of my attention on the cards and what they’ll reveal.

Possibilities swirl around my mind. Like a life buoy, I cling to potential answers about my future like maybe these cards just might save me. Like maybe—

“Toffee!” someone shouts behind me.

What happens next is a blur.

There’s a smear of white, black, and red, the sounds of bird wings flapping, paper shuffling, and… meowing?

In reaction, I hold my arms up over my face and shut my eyes. My bag of leftovers swings out of my hand.

A few seconds later, it’s quiet.

“Are you okay? I’m so, so sorry,” a man’s voice says.

I slowly lower my arms and open one eye to find a frazzled Wendy, with Doc and Marty back in their cage with slightly ruffled feathers, and a white guy in a tie-dye, long-sleeve Henley holding a black-and-white cat in a harness. He and his cat are drenched.

I blink, my eyes adjusting to the neon tie-dye like I’m seeing sunshine after stepping out of a dark movie theater.

It’s as though a pack of highlighters leaked all over his clothes.

The man—who looks slightly older than me, thirty maybe?

—comes into clearer focus. As he steps toward me, I have to tilt my head back because he takes up so much vertical space, his blue baseball cap a shade darker from the rain.

The man apologizes profusely. To his credit, he does look sorry. Under the bistro lights, the cat’s tea-green eyes seem to match his. On second glance, this guy’s pupils are rimmed in teal, warmed by the outline of thick brown lashes.

I follow his mesmerizing blue-green gaze as it drifts from me to the ground.

All my stuff has been knocked over, my bag of leftovers split open. Now the siu mai and lo bak gao are covered in… street. There goes my midnight snack.

Tie-Dye Guy steps under our tent and bends down just as I do, our foreheads knocking against each other. We both grunt.

He kneels beside me and sets his cat down next to him.

“It’s fine. I got this,” I say, shooing him away.

The man lifts my now-empty folder. Beside it are my divorce papers, the ink practically still wet.

Well, now it’s literally wet. And smudged.

Which doesn’t matter, really, now that it’s all over and done with.

Even with it being a straightforward, no-fault divorce, it still cost hundreds of dollars.

It was my most expensive mistake to date.

“Uh, here,” the man says, stuffing the papers back into the folder and handing it to me. There’s a micro lift in his eyebrows, telling me all I need to know. “Please, let me help.”

I let out a pathetic laugh. “Nothing about this”—I gesture to myself while holding a piece of turnip cake—“can be helped.”

He lifts one of the fallen-apart dumplings, the shrimp dangling precariously. “I don’t think it’s our fault. They don’t make dim sum like they used to.” As he says this, the shrimp gives up and falls.

The cat comes up and licks it. At least one of us gets to enjoy it.

All of this makes me laugh because it’s exactly how I feel. Like shrimp that’s fallen on the dirty ground, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

My reaction surprises us both. Tie-Dye Guy joins in, and for a second, it’s nice to be laughing with someone, our sounds blending into one. His laugh feels like being covered in a dry, warm towel after coming in from the rain. It seemed impossible, but I think a fraction of my stress melts away.

Our eyes lock as I’m catching my breath. Up close, he’s even more beautiful than any person has a right to be. It’s a weird thought to be having while sitting on the street in the middle of Chinatown.

Then I remember the fortune teller. The reading.

Any gains from our nice moment disappear when Tie-Dye Guy’s smile falls, and he says, “You’re bleeding.”

I press the back of my hand to my forehead, the turnip cake wobbling between my fingers.

“No, your arm,” he says.

Spanning the underside of my right forearm are long scratches. As soon as I notice it, the area begins to sting.

“Perfect,” I mumble, tossing the food back into its container.

“We need to get you cleaned up,” Tie-Dye Guy says, helping me up.

“We don’t need to do anything.”

He holds his arm out. “At least wipe your hands on my shirt. I have to wash it anyway.”

I eye him. “Your shirt’s bad enough. I don’t want to make it worse.”

Tie-Dye Guy laughs. “Wow. Haven’t heard that one before.” He straightens his arm. “Come on.”

It’s tempting. I hate the feeling of having dirty hands. But also, he’s a stranger. “Absolutely not.”

“Really, it’s fine,” he insists. “Of all my bad shirts, this one’s my least favorite.”

I don’t want sticky fingers or for my clothes to smell like dim sum. Especially when there’s no water for laundry.

I give in and use his arm sleeve as my napkin. “Thanks.”

It’s not like I’m embarrassed about taking him up on his offer. I just can’t look at him directly as I do it. The fact that his gesture seems chivalrous says a lot about my day.

My attention drifts back to Wendy, who’s been busy tending to her birds. I look down at the table. It takes me a second to process what’s happened.

Once I do, I feel my heart drop to my stomach. My hands fall from Tie-Dye Guy’s sleeve, grazing his knuckles on the way down. I inhale sharply, choosing to believe that this sudden intake of air is a reaction not to the short-lived skin-on-skin contact, but because of what I’m witnessing.

I was wrong about my worst-case scenario.

A bad fortune is better than a fortune that was never supposed to be yours.

Because after all that commotion, I now find myself with not three fortunes, but six.