Chapter 6 Logan
LOGAN
Wendy and her birds are nowhere to be found. Toffee really must’ve done a number on Doc and Marty.
We look everywhere, squeezing our way through the crowd.
It seems like everyone in New York City showed up here tonight.
In the middle of the street are costumed dancers and musicians.
When there’s a break in the rain, people trickle out from their hiding spots under store awnings, picking up where they left off at food and shop stalls.
“Today is the Moon Festival. It’s a Chinese holiday that takes place every fall. There’ll be lion dances and celebrations all night,” Hazel explains. “Hey, have you ever had a mooncake?”
“A what?”
“I’ll be right back,” she says, disappearing behind a family in color-coordinated shirts.
As I wait, I continue to look for Wendy. My search is interrupted by my phone buzzing in my pocket.
“Mom, hi. What’s up?” I ask, distracted.
“What’s wrong?”
My knee-jerk response is “Nothing’s wrong.” I adjust the phone between my ear and shoulder, along with my tone. “I’m just in the middle of something.”
“You’re still coming up next month, right?” she asks. “I’m figuring out how many potatoes I need.”
“Is Warren actually retiring this time, or is this another trial run?”
“He is, and it would mean a lot if you were there.”
“I’m planning on it, but some work stuff has popped up.”
“Issues?”
I set my jaw. “There are always bumps in the beginning. All good, I’m working through it!” My upbeat tone sounds forced. “It’s…” Disorganized. Behind schedule. Messy. “A busy time.”
I’m saying this more to myself, I realize, but Mom says, “Sounds like an opportunity in disguise. Be grateful for busy. That means you’ve got big things going on.”
“It just might be hard to get away. Can I keep you posted?”
“Okay. Sure. Of course,” she says, attempting to cover her disappointment. “Remember, Logan, life never gives you more than you can handle at once.”
“Right. Yeah. I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I say. “I’m looking forward to seeing everyone.”
“Keep your head up!” Mom says more peppily this time. “Good things happen for you. They always do.”
We hang up and I take a second. This show needs to go well. It’s my first big—and maybe only—shot. It’s like Mom said: Good things happen for me. I need for that not to change.
Hazel’s back with what must be a mooncake. “I got us a black sesame snow skin one,” she says, handing me half of a small, rounded pastry. It’s slightly cool to the touch, the translucent white exterior revealing black filling.
I bite into it. It tastes a little sweet and nutty, the snow skin smooth on my tongue. “Chewy.”
“These are going for double what they cost a few years ago,” she says. “Who knew mooncake inflation would hit so hard?”
“When we get our money, you’ll be able to buy all the mooncakes you want without worry.” I toss the rest of my half into my mouth.
Hazel looks at me uncertainly. “I don’t know what that’s like. To buy anything without worry.”
“I know you literally just agreed to the money, but have you thought about how you want to accept it? Because we’re splitting one ticket, we can’t take it two different ways,” I say.
“I’m thinking lump sum. Yes, we’d get less—we’d hit a higher income tax bracket and owe a ton of taxes—but we’d get it all at once.
That might be more useful, especially if you need it for hospital bills. ”
She shakes her head quickly. “We should take the annuity option.” She pulls up a spreadsheet on her phone. “See? We’ll get payments for the next thirty years until our amount is fully paid off. And we’d get graduated payments, so every year the annual amount increases.”
“True, but with the lump sum, we can invest more of it right away.”
“Annuity accounts for that.”
I consider this. “Sure, but if we grow the lump sum amount at a better rate than what’s estimated with the annuity, we can make more money in the future.”
“You sound like Wendy,” Hazel retorts, pushing her fingertip into the flower design of her mooncake half.
“And then we can go buy something totally unnecessary and lavish, like a yacht. It’s cliché, but hey. How often do you win the lottery?” I ask, half seriously.
“You’re hilarious,” she says, her face unchanging.
“After the win, I was curious, so I worked out what we could end up with.” She scrolls down her phone, showing me rows of numbers.
“The annuity gives us enough money every year to cover what we need without having to worry about…” She trails off. “Without having to worry.”
It’s less what Hazel’s saying and more how she’s saying it that gives me pause. I recall her short-lived enthusiasm after winning. How she finally accepted the money but is still seemingly tentative about it.
This then makes me think about how my father would warn my siblings and me that showing off money makes you more of a target. That we needed to be careful of being taken advantage of.
“On the other hand,” I say slowly, “having more money upfront means having more money for people to want.”
Hazel blinks up at me like she’s relieved she didn’t have to say the words herself.
“Yes, exactly. And I appreciate you considering the hospital bills, but the annuity payment we’d get this year would more than cover them.
Was there something you needed the lump sum for? I don’t want to mess up your plans.”
I don’t need to think about it. I shake my head no. “There isn’t. I’ve got what I need. Let’s do the annuity.”
Landing on this resolution was surprisingly painless.
When my parents had different ideas on how to invest or spend money, it was never this conflict-free.
My father would always get his way, and Mom would put on a smile and go with it.
This, though, feels more like an understanding than a surrendering.
Hazel takes a small bite of her mooncake. “You want the rest? I honestly don’t love these.”
“Why did you get it then?” I ask before finishing off her half.
“Well, it’s tradition. And because I’ve gifted it to you, that’s me expressing best wishes,” she says, smiling. “You know, for all the luck you apparently lost.”
I smirk. “That’s what we’re here to find out. Come on.”
We walk farther down the street and find a fortune teller not occupied with anyone. Signs around his booth tell me that this man specializes in tea leaf reading. My curiosity gets the best of me as I approach him.
“Logan, what are you doing?” Hazel reaches for my hand and pulls me toward her. “We are not getting our fortunes read again. And I’m definitely not drinking some random man’s tea.”
I look down at our hands and smile. “I’m sure it’ll all be fine, but I just want to know if our fortunes got mixed up that day. Maybe we did get each other’s cards. Or maybe Wendy read the cards wrong. I have to confirm I’m not imagining everything. Let’s just see.”
Hazel pulls her hand away, her eyebrows wrinkled in concern. “I can’t sit through another reading where I’m told how bad my future looks. I already spend my life waiting for bad things to happen.” Her arms are crossed firmly over her chest. “Even though it’s all nonsense anyway.”
“If it was nonsense, why were you doing it to begin with?”
“I shouldn’t have been. Now it’s written,” she says slightly sarcastically. “I could’ve lived in ignorant bliss.”
I dip my head. “You can tell me.”
She bites her lip. “Their methods sound charming at first, but I know how fortune tellers really work. They take your money. Tell you a mixture of what they think you want to hear, sprinkling in something ominous for effect. You know why fortunes only last for three to four months? To keep you coming back.”
“Or to help you in your immediate future,” I offer.
“Why do people even want to know the future?” Hazel asks. “It’s not like it’s some mystery.”
“You don’t think the future… is a mystery?” I ask, confused.
“Ultimately, things don’t work out. Even when they’re good, everything bottoms out at some point,” she says. There’s a deep layer of sadness in her statement. “Wendy probably took one look at me and thought I was helpless.”
As she says this, drummers and the lion dancers come twirling past.
“Hopeless?” I ask, cupping my hand behind my ear.
“That, too!” she shouts back.
We wait for the performers to move down the block. “What if there is truth to it, though? What then?” I ask.
“Honestly, I do worry about that,” she says with a sigh.
“Logically, in my brain, I know superstitions are a way of dealing with uncertainty. Unpredictability. A lack of control. But what if there’s really something to it?
Did you know the psychic market is over two billion dollars in the United States?
People want answers. Maybe they’re really getting them.
” She shrugs. “It’s more likely people are profiting off our fears, though. ”
“You’ve really looked into this.”
She twirls her umbrella back and forth. “Going to see Wendy was a lapse in judgment. I wanted answers, especially when everything felt so… unknown. But now I can never unhear what she said. What she said about what was on my cards, that’s now officially lodged deep in my brain, so that’s fun.”
“Or on my cards,” I say.
“Maybe the cards you got were supposed to be mine. Maybe they weren’t. I only wanted to hear something good.” She steps closer to me, lowering her voice. “The day I—we—had our fortunes read… I got laid off.”
“Shit. That’s a lot.” No wonder she was having a bad day. I don’t want to bring her even lower. She’s stressed enough as it is. “But then you won the lottery!” I try as an attempt to lift her spirits.
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry for how I acted that day,” she says.
“It’s fine. Really. Bad days remind us to be grateful for the good ones. I do think we need to understand what’s going on, though. If I get a good fortune here, then I can confirm I’m overreacting and let it go.”
Hazel stands a little straighter at this.