The woman has heavy eyeliner, emerald eye shadow, and tattooed eyebrows that have turned blue. Her thin lips are painted dark maroon, and her old skin looks unsettlingly soft and papery. Coiffed copper curls peek out from under her headpiece. Aimee’s mom has the perfect scarf for me to wrap around my head like that.

She has a deck of ornately designed cards neatly stacked on her small table, which is draped in a velvet fabric that matches her eye shadow. A small tea light emits a gentle light from inside a scarlet glass.

Aimee and I look at each other, and I’m surprised to see that my friend, usually the most relaxed girl in the world, has gone a little pale.

Aimee nods for me to go first.

“Okay,” I say to her. To the woman, I say, “Hi.”

“Hello. Sit.”

I do as I’m told. She’s so commanding, I’d probably tap-dance if she told me to.

Let’s be honest—if it seems like it’ll get me some positive attention, I’ll tap-dance for anyone. And I’m not even good at it.

The woman stares at me for a moment and then holds out her hands. “Your palm.”

Like the skin on her face, her hands are ivory and seem silkier than they should be.

She stares at the lines on my palm and smiles. “You’re going to do great things. Loved by many. Famous.”

“Oh! That’s nice.”

“For a while.”

“Oh. Okay, well.” I look to Aimee and roll my eyes.

The woman studies my palm more closely, lifting a pair of tethered glasses from one of those necklaces that only older women and some weird men seem to wear, resting them on her narrow nose. “This is strange.”

I don’t really believe in anything she’s saying—in fact, I don’t want to, because she said I’d be famous but only for a while—but when she inspects more closely, I still start to get nervous.

The woman laughs, shaking her head. “Your life goes in two different directions. It divides. It’s almost imperceptible, but undeniable. Look, you with your young eyes. Look for yourself.”

She points a long, unpainted fingernail along a line between my thumb and my forefinger, going toward my wrist. Diverging from it, there’s another.

“Okay…”

“Usually, there is only one line here. You have two.” She stares hard at me, as if I’m supposed to understand the significance of this. “Two lives, girl.”

I run my tongue along the braces at the back right of my mouth like I always do when I don’t know what to say. “Oh…”

She tuts and releases my hand. “Two destinies. Two lives. You will know when the time comes to choose which life is for you.”