“How does it work, then?” She switched the crossing of her legs and her sweatshirt fell off her shoulder, revealing a tattoo on her chest: a peach, with a bright green leaf hanging from its stem, Peaches written in complicated, scrolling cursive above it. She noticed me staring. “A nickname,” she said. “No one’s used my real name for years.” I waited for her to say more. She sighed. “Fine, you wanna know about me? I left home three years ago,” she said, huffing at her bangs again. “I never thought it would be permanent. I told myself I was in love. So much for that. Or I was in love, him … well. If he was, he had a weird way of showing it. Like leaving me on the side of a highway after we got in a fight. Didn’t even have my shoes on.” I let her talk. The more she told me, the more I’d have to work with when I read her cards, in case a vision didn’t come through clearly, and I didn’t trust that one would. All of those other images and sounds were still spilling into my brain, interfering like radio static. Another fly tickled down my spine.

“I guess I never really thought about the future before at all. I don’t even know what I want to know. I’ve never really believed in anything before … but now … now I think about the future keeping up like this and I can’t picture it. Can’t stand it—is more like it. I want to know if things will change. When. How.”

I thought of telling her that I felt the same way. That if I didn’t have my dreams of California, the thought of staying here, with Des, stealing, doing readings, meeting men, would kill me.

I turned the first card over: the Fool. The next was the Five of Wands, and the third was the Tower. My breath caught in my chest. All of the readings I had done lately—this one, Julie Zale’s uncle with the bandana, the woman with the locket, the one I had given Lily—were full of darkness, warnings, bad omens. But this was the worst one yet.

“What?” she said. “What does it mean?” I took a breath and tried to think about how I could spin things, how I could approach the cards and not feel afraid.

“This is the Fool.”

“What, is that me? Shit, man.”