The audience is on its feet, clapping and cheering. Sylvie shyly smiles, motions for them to sit. As they do, Moose joins them and she rests a hand on his head. “I never planned to be a psychic-medium,” she begins. “Tonight my goal is to provide answers, but I can’t promise if this will happen. I understand that you need me to connect with your loved ones, answer questions that hurt your hearts. I’ll try. Truly. But first, I need to tell you a secret . . .”

The urge to stop Sylvie before she says something that might hurt her is hard to quell. My hands grip the armrests. She scans my row, finds me, and gives a little smile. I sit back . . . and trust her.

FIFTY-TWO

Sylvie

I see Thomas in the audience. He never ran his story, but that could mean anything. Maybe he only came for closure. Regardless, I wanted him here for this show, to see me.

“Every psychic has an origin story,” I begin. “But I’ve never told my real one, until now. When I moved to San Francisco at eighteen, I met a kid named Danny at a youth hostel. He had brown curls, sparkling eyes, and a thousand-watt smile. We decided to share a basement apartment. For the first few months I didn’t have enough money for my part of the rent. Danny floated me. He was a kid who’d never been given a break but was still incredibly generous and kind. His dream was to make enough to move to LA, become a famous actor, and I was trying to find myself, uncertain if I could even survive in the city.

“Danny decided to read tarot to make some extra cash, and he’s the one who convinced me to do my first psychic reading. It was for Bethany, the pregnant woman I’ve talked about in the past whose baby was in danger. When I touched her belly, wrote I can’t breathe on my arm, Bethany left, furious. But Danny encouraged me to do more readings. He said everyone knew it was just for entertainment, and if I made enough money, we could move to LA together. We made a deal. The first one who got an acting break would help the other. I didn’t have a dream then, so I borrowed his.”

The audience has gone very quiet and I wonder if this will be my last performance but push on. “In the beginning, being a psychic-medium was a scam—a way to support myself after my parents disowned me. But strange things happened. At first, I wrote them off, figured they were the result of my enthusiasm, the desire to meet the paying customer’s needs. Deep down, though, I nurtured the hope that I was more than a fraud. I really wasn’t sure. But the people who lined up in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury believed I had a gift, and slowly I started to believe them, too.”

The crowd rustles. “That’s an important point. I believed in myself because people told me I was a psychic-medium. Not because I trusted in my abilities. Then one day Bethany and her husband, Matthew, came to thank me for saving their daughter’s life. Matthew connected me with a talent agent in LA, Lucas Haughter, who flew Danny and me down to meet with him.”