“This is just my side gig,” I tell Cinnamon. “I’m really an actress.” I don’t know why I am trying to impress Cinnamon. It is probably the chart reading, my explanation of our alikeness. It is bullshit, I know. The thing is, everyone is a thousand different people, and astrological descriptions account for this. There is always something to latch on to. And when you think about the various signs, they all stand for universal human traits. Maybe I could pitch this as an article to Vice. “Why Astrology Is Kind of Bullshit: From an Astrologer.” I worry for a second that it will compromise my ability to get readings, which I need to live. But I conclude it won’t. Everyone my age is a nihilist anyway. It might make me more famous. It could be my angle: the internet’s preeminent anti-astrology astrologer. I am starting to feel hyperconfident, like I really am Elon Musk’s astrologer and a budding alt-horror starlet. I don’t know who Nico Nadler is, but I honestly believe I will be in his next movie.

“Have you been in anything I’ve seen?” she asks.

I pause, thinking. “I have a few exciting projects coming up.” Method acting.

“That’s great,” she says. “It’s a rough career, I’m sure.”

I continue to read her chart and tell her she is special, that we are both special. I keep going until she hands me the cash. She seems thrilled with the reading. She introduces me to a few new dancers, ones I haven’t met, who need their charts read.

I leave with $700 in cash.

DAWN.

I wake up with the sense that I did something wrong last night, but I can’t exactly put my finger on what it was. At this point the feeling is so familiar, it could just be called “morning.”

The sun cuts my eyes and I grab my phone. I’m scared to look. I put it back down on the carpet.

My unfocused gaze rests on the teal Buddha statue at the foot of my bed. I got it in Long Beach when Bo was just a boy. I was just starting to fall in love with Jen—the first woman I ever loved—and everything felt so nice and safe and perfect. We were this happy little family, with Bo between us, holding each of our hands.

This was before things got chaotic with Jen, before she started to pull away, before I began to go through her phone and her email and come across things I didn’t want to see. It was before I noticed how men and women looked at her, and how she couldn’t speak to anyone without flirting with them. It was before my anger got out of hand, before the police became involved.