Touched (10 page)

Since it was six hours until her shift ended, I could have biked back home. I should have. Nan was disabled and could have used my help. Instead, I spent a good chunk of the time aimlessly meandering down the boardwalk, taking in all the sights. Sure, I was a local, but the truth was I hadn’t been to the Heights since the idea of cotton candy sounded good, which was years ago. The farthest I ever ventured up there was to the Seaside Park Beach Patrol headquarters, which was right on the border between the two towns. Here, though, the crazy people and steady clicking of the big wheels and the whir of rides combined with the scent of saltwater taffy and pizza to make it virtually impossible to hear the You Wills.

Now I worked extra hard to hear them. Something was making me cling to them. Of course it was Taryn. I strained to hear the You Wills, which led me to a stand in the corner of the boardwalk that was raffling off ugly dollar-store stuffed dogs. I blew eight dollars trying to win one by throwing darts before I realized I was a sucker, since I already knew what was going to happen. What the hell would I do with a stuffed dog, anyway?

By the time I returned it was 4:05. I’d timed it perfectly. I didn’t want to appear too overeager by showing up early or right on time. So I figured five minutes late was good, even though I spent those five minutes staring at the clock on the boardwalk and watching the seconds tick away. When I got there, she was sitting outside the stand, hat removed, tapping her foot and looking anxious. “You’re late,” she said.

“Sorry.”

She grabbed me by the wrist and immediately the You Wills stopped. A gust of air flooded my lungs at that second because I gasped and choked a little. She led me toward her grandmother’s booth. “You don’t get it. My grandmother starts working at five, but she always arrives early. And she can’t know we’re here.”

With my mind calm, I could really concentrate on her for the first time. She had little crinkles around her eyes and freckles over the bridge of her nose. I realized I’d already had the map of those freckles committed to memory—a dark one under her left eye, a constellation of three at the side of her nose. She didn’t wear any makeup and her hair was in a ponytail, but she still managed to look beautiful. She always would, even when she was older.

“Why are you staring?” she asked, sounding annoyed. I probably would be, too, if someone was studying me as closely as I was looking at her.

“Nothing. Um, why? I thought your grandmother and I really hit it off that last time.”

She smirked, then jabbed her finger at the tiny sign that said: ABSOLUTELY NO REVERSALS. “That’s why.”

“But what does it mean?” I asked again, as she lifted the velvet curtain and pulled me inside. This was right from my vision. The room was barely the size of a closet, with a small table in the center, a crystal ball atop it. Everything was dark velvet, hot and cramped, like the inside of a coffin. The stench of incense was so strong I had to swallow again and again to keep from gagging.

Taryn reached under the table and pulled out an old book. “This,” she said, “is the Book of Touch.”

I stared at it. It wasn’t anything remarkable. It was small with a simple black leather cover, kind of like one of the ancient Bibles Nan kept by her bedside. “What is it for?”

“I’ll show you.”

At first I thought it was a how-to manual for massage or something, but I wasn’t lucky enough to have Taryn wanting me to give her a backrub. Not yet, anyway. She hurried to a small dusty bookshelf and slid her hand behind a picture of a man who looked about a thousand years old. She pulled out a key. “That’s my grandfather,” she said, motioning with her chin as she turned the book on its side, revealing a half-rusted lock. “He’s dead.”

“Nice.”

She shrugged. “He didn’t speak English.”

She put the key in the lock and it clicked open. For a moment I could have sworn the temperature in the tent dropped, but that was probably just the result of watching too many episodes of
Scooby-Doo
. Taryn opened the book to the first thick, yellowing page and motioned me over. “Each page is a Touch.”

I watched her flip through. The book must have been crazy old, because it smelled moldy and almost every page was mostly blank, with just a few foreign words in bold print and a signature on it. The ones that were full had an ornate, slanting gold script that was somewhat faded or smudged. But I couldn’t make a thing out. “That’s not English.”

“Duh. Hungarian.”

“What does it say?”

“It tells you what to say to perform the Touch. First you have to sign on the page. It’s like a contract. And then once the Touch is performed, the words of the spell fade—look.” She opened to a page that was blank except for a heading and a signature, Ernesto Pugilini, at the very bottom. “This Touch has already been performed.”

“What the hell is a Touch?”

“Oh. Sorry. It’s like a spell.” She stared at the page. “And this one is … Paws of the Bear. Ernesto received unnatural strength.”

My jaw just hung there. “Wait. You can read Hungarian?”

“Duh. Isn’t that what I just did?”

“Okay. So you’re telling me that this book can make someone—strong? Or whatever? Give me a break.” I studied her face. It was completely serious. “You don’t believe in that crap, do you?”

“Um, of course.” She stared at me. “Wow. Didn’t think I’d have to convince you.”

“Okay. Prove it.”

I was already getting that feeling, as if the You Wills were saying,
Great thing to ask, Captain Obvious
. She flipped through a few pages and turned the book around to face me. It was an almost blank page, I guessed from a Touch that had already been performed, or whatever. Under the heading I saw a very familiar signature. A name I’d seen signed on every absentee excuse I’d ever brought to school, usually after a bad bout of cycling. Moira Cross.

Taryn pointed at the heading in Hungarian. “This one says Sight of the Eagle,” she said. “Three guesses what that will do.”

Outside, a balloon popped, making me jump so high I hit the cobwebbed chandelier above us. A child’s cries echoed in the background as I stared at the name on the page until my vision blurred.

Of course. Of course.

It was like the vital missing puzzle piece, and as soon as I fit it in, everything else became clear. I wondered why I didn’t think of it before. It seemed so like her. Always wanting to know her future, always being tied up in superstitions. I’d bet before this, she’d visited every fortune-teller in the Heights.

“So you’re saying …,” I sputtered, collapsing in a black pleather armchair and ignoring the farting noise it let out. I knew what she was saying. I just couldn’t form the right words.

Taryn crouched beside me. “This book has been in my family for hundreds of years. There aren’t very many Touches left.”

“Wait. She let your grandmother …” I tried to say more, moved my mouth in a thousand different ways, but the words didn’t come out.

“She paid to do it. Probably a thousand dollars or more.”

“Paid? Your grandmother ruined her life, my life, and charged her for it?” When Taryn nodded, I realized I couldn’t breathe anymore. I doubled over, feeling like I had been kicked in the gut.

Taryn pointed to the date, which was in July, eighteen years ago, a month after my mom’s graduation and a few months before I was born. Eighteen years ago. I stared at that date until my eyes burned. The exact date our nightmares began.

“And it transferred to me, because my mother was pregnant with me,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes.

“That’s where the ‘No Reversals’ comes in.”

I dropped my hands. “You mean, she could reverse a Touch if she wanted to?”

Taryn shook her head. “No. I just told you, that’s not possible.”

“You didn’t say it wasn’t possible. You just said she wouldn’t do it.”

“It’s not possible,” she said firmly. She took the book and closed it, then locked it with the key. “But Grandma warns people. She doesn’t just take all their money and give them a Touch. She has seen that, while some of these Touches perform miracles, some of them destroy people’s lives. She tells them that sometimes a person’s greatest desire can be the most terrible curse.”

Of course we would have the luck to fall into the “curse” category. “So let me get this straight. My mother paid so that she could be this way?”

She nodded. “Every one of these Touches is something really cool. Something people would kill for. And long ago my ancestors realized that certain people would not only risk their lives to be Touched but they’d also fork over huge sums of money. Charging a lot also helps to ensure a person is serious about it. Grandma doesn’t want just anyone waltzing in and getting a Touch. When people put together that much money, they’re usually serious. Plus it pays her bills.”

I leaned my head against the table and muttered my mom’s name. “Why?” I whispered, and no sooner had I done that then I saw the answer. I saw my mom, explaining, tears running down her face. I was so scared when I found out I was pregnant. And there was so much uncertainty with your father. He said he loved me, but I couldn’t be sure. When he asked me to marry him, I was so afraid that one day he would leave me, like my father left your grandmother. So I pulled together my life’s savings—a thousand dollars—and went to her. The first thing I saw when I got the Touch was me, alone. Your father was gone. And then the worst thing—I saw I’d given this curse to you. I destroyed every chance of us having a normal—

At that point I started to green-elephant. I didn’t want to hear her whining anymore. She knew. All this time I was searching for answers, and she already knew. It was her fault. At that moment, I didn’t want to see her again.

“What is that?” Taryn asked. “The green elephant?”

I groaned through the pain, through the memory that came up at that moment. Really, anything would work, but I started saying that because when I was seven or eight, I bought my mom this necklace for Christmas that had a jade elephant pendant. I bought it for a buck at school, so it wasn’t real jade, but she wore it every day. On bad days, when my head really hurt, I’d sit with her and she’d hold me to her and I would see nothing but that green elephant, with its trunk in the air. It meant good fortune. Good fortune.

She didn’t wear it anymore. It was probably in a landfill somewhere. That was one of the few times I’d experienced cycling because of something she did. One day the cable had gone out, so she reached behind the set to jiggle the wires, and the necklace’s black cord, which had been fraying a bit, got caught on a screw and snapped. The jade elephant fell to the ground and the trunk broke off in a pile of green chalk dust. That day, it was as if every future memory I’d have of my mom changed just a bit and felt slightly strange, like new shoes that needed breaking in. In each of those visions, the elephant was gone from her neck.

I leaned back in the chair, feeling something close to the numbness I’d get after a night of bad cycling, when my head had been thrashed so much it couldn’t feel anything anymore. “It’s just a nonsense phrase. It doesn’t mean anything. I say it to keep the future memories from invading. To calm my mind. If my brain is concentrating on something else, it doesn’t have time to dwell on the future.”

Taryn nodded as if it wasn’t the stupidest thing in the world, and I loved her for that.

The picture of my mom sobbing kept invading, and I pushed it away. She was lucky we could carry on conversations in our minds, because if I’d been in the same room together, I didn’t know what I might have done or said. “So, what other Touches are in there? What else can this book do?”

She flipped through the pages. “Like I said, there’s only a handful of them left. Um, this one is Poison Arrow. Architect of Time. Small Army …” She kept flipping pages.

“Any Touches that will undo previous Touches?” I asked, hopeful.

She shook her head. “No such luck.”

“Well, can you, like, say the curse backward and—”

“Uh-uh. Absolutely no reversals.”

“But is that because it can’t be done, or because your grandmother doesn’t know how to do it?” I asked, getting desperate.

“It can’t be done. Touches are permanent,” she said, making my heart, which was suddenly twittering with all these new, thrilling sensations, turn to lead. She looked at her watch. “We’d better get out of here. Grandma will be here any minute and she does not want me talking to you about the Book of Touch.”

“Why not? Isn’t it good business for her?”

“Sure it is. Like I said, it pays her rent. But I don’t think local law enforcement would be too happy about it, so it’s very hush-hush.” She walked to the opening of the booth and stopped short. I didn’t have to look out; I immediately saw what was coming. Her grandmother plodding up the ramp, her thick sausage cankles visible under that same shapeless dress of dead brown flowers. I grabbed Taryn by the wrist and the vision dissolved in my head. We needed to hide. But when I turned, there was nothing, just mounds of red velvet on the walls. Sure, there was the little table, but it was too little to hide both of us, and did I really want to spend any length of time with Taryn’s grandmother’s cankles in my face?

Taryn led the way, pulling back one of the curtains. “In here,” she said. I climbed in. There was a cinder-block wall about three feet behind the curtains, but it was a good hiding spot.

“How’d you know this was here?” I whispered.

“I used to spend a lot of time back here when I was a kid,” she answered. “Grandma thought it would be good for me.”

“Good for you? You mean, she wanted you to see people get this … Touch?”

She nodded, then shrugged.

I laughed bitterly. Her grandmother was totally whacked. Letting a little girl see people curse themselves was the perfect playdate, right up there with Chuck E. Cheese’s. Taryn let the curtains fall behind us. From where we stood, I could look up and see neon lights from the arcade next door. The bells and chatter of the electronic games were loud enough to make me realize they were probably right on the other side of the wall. It only went up seven or eight feet. I could probably hoist myself up and escape that way. As I was looking for a way out, Taryn cursed. Really loudly.

“Shhh,” I said. “What?”

“Forget it. Grandma’s practically deaf,” she explained, and not in a whisper. She held out the key to the book.

I stared at it. “You forgot to …”

“I was in a hurry. It’s no big deal. She probably won’t perform any Touches tonight, anyway. I’ll just put it back tomorrow.” Then she put her hand on my knee, steadying it. I hadn’t realized it, but I was fidgeting, something I did all the time. “You are a jumpy one, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said, not really thinking. “Sue always says I’m so jumpy I make kangaroos jealous.”

“Sue?”

Oh, hell. Usually I was good about keeping my future under wraps, especially with complete strangers. But like I said, she put me at ease. Why else would I be bringing up my no-longer-wife-of-thirty-years? Sue, who was probably now going to marry some other guy and have a lot better future than she would have had with me. “Forget it,” I mumbled.

I watched as her grandmother lumbered into the tent, breathing heavily. She was nothing like Nan, who was barely sixty. This lady looked ancient. “How old is your grandmother?”

Taryn studied her from the slit in the curtain. “I have no idea. But I’m her twenty-ninth grandchild. Her last grandchild.” She exhaled slowly. “Lucky for me.”

“What does that mean?”

She motioned to the wall with her chin. “I’ll tell you later. Let’s go.”