Kiss the Morning Star (21 page)

Renata laughs, a surprisingly deep and mirthful laugh, and her whole face crinkles up. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about, hon.” She takes my hand, smoothing out my fingers and looking seriously at my palm. “Hmm,” she says, and lets go. “Time for my cheaters, sorry. Be right back.” She crosses the room, her heels clicking on the tile floor, and disappears into a doorway behind the glass counter.

“This is lame,” says Kat. Her face is dark and moody, her eyes glaring after the retreating psychic. “She’s not really reading your palm. She’s just saying stupid things based on how you look and how you act. That’s not palmistry.” Kat leans back, tipping the chair until her back rests against the front window of the shop. “Ask her some questions, Anna babe. Ask her why you have like seven billion islands on your line of intellect. Ask her why your Fate line splits in half on your right hand and into three directions on your left.” She leans forward, jabbing a finger into my palm.

I hear the sound of Renata’s shoes returning and look up to see her emerge from the back room. There is a bead curtain in the doorway, the only thing in the entire shop that looks like you’d expect from a fortune-telling shop, but it’s almost comical when the well-dressed and coifed Renata slips through it, now with a pair of red-framed reading glasses perched on her nose.

“All right, then, hon, where was I?” She takes my hand once more, peers down at it briefly through her glasses, and then looks back up. “I see that you are going to take a journey with someone very close to you.” She pauses, checking in with my eyes for some signal that she is correct. I keep my face as neutral as I can. “Across water,” adds Renata.

“Well,
obviously
!” Kat says, the words exploding out of her. “I mean, it’s pretty clear we’re Americans, and of course we care about each other; Anna just basically told you we’ve known each other half our lives. How else are we going to get off this island without taking a journey across water?” Kat grabs my hand and jerks it open.

“What do you think about this, huh? What do you say about these islands? Sorrows, right? Are they in the past or the present? Why does her Fate line split like this? And why does she have like a thousand crazy lines wandering all over the place right there?” Kat speaks quickly, urgently. “Will she ever be happy again, Renata? Answer me that and I’ll believe you know what you’re talking about.”

Renata blinks, removes her glasses, and sets them carefully on the table. She folds her hands in front of her. “All right,” she says, and the smile she has been holding on her face slips away. She nods, looking thoughtful. “All right,” she says again. “I’m still getting the hang of when to tell it like I see it.” She puts her glasses back on and beckons to Kat. “Let me see your hand.”

“Another fifteen bucks?” says Kat. “I don’t think so.”

Renata shakes her head. “No charge, just let me see your hand. A special—two for the price of one.”

Kat is silent as she extends her hand.

“Well, now,” Renata says, peering closely at Kat’s palm, examining each of her fingers. “Creative. Willful. A sort of fiery passion that sometimes gets you into trouble.”

“All of which I’ve shown you since walking in here,” says Kat, her tone flat.

Renata nods, bites her lip, and sits back in her chair. “Anna?”

I nod, extending my hand again.

“And…?”

“Katherine,” says Kat.

“Anna and Katherine.” She studies our hands, side by side, for a long time. “So, okay,” she says at last. “This is what I see.”

We lean in, our heads bent over our palms.

“Both of you are strong—
intense
might be the right word for it.”

Kat listens, her face guarded.

Renata looks at me first. “Obviously I can’t tell exactly what happened, but I know something awful is in your past, something that causes you tremendous sorrow, and especially today, for some reason. The pain gets in the way of your trust.” She runs her fingers lightly across several lines in my palm.

“I can see by these little feathery marks here, by the way this line splits into two at the end, that you’re artistic—maybe a writer, an actor, or a dancer. Looking carefully, this split could almost be divided into three, which denotes brilliance, genius. So I would guess that you are very talented.

“However, the way this line falters—can you see it? How it splits into so many directions?”

I nod. “Wandering, like Kat said.”

“You’re at a very interesting point right now, Anna. It’s not like your whole life is going to come down to a single decision—one way leading to good and the other to ruin—life isn’t generally that dramatic.” Renata tucks several renegade curls back into her bun, but they escape again the moment she removes her hand.

“I see this as more of a…road map. You have any number of paths ahead of you.” She folds my hand tightly closed around the crazy lines on my palm. “I suppose you want to know about love?”

Do I? I look at Katy, who is staring at her own palm. What good would it do me to know? And what harm? I shake my head no.

“I do,” says Kat. “Tell me.”

Renata nods. “You, Katherine, are a beacon for love. You
exude
love; you bleed passion and desire and a sort of earnest hope in the goodness of people around you. This you strive to hide beneath a veneer of cynicism.” She frowns, biting her lip again. “Of course, with this comes potential for pain, as well. For rejection and loss.” Her voice softens even more. “You know this. You’re familiar with this. You will always be the one who loves more, the one who shares more of herself.”

Kat makes a face. “Well, doesn’t that just sound delightful?”

Renata inclines her head. “It’s not all bad. One thing about loving so completely is that you will experience a great deal of happiness in your life. Sometimes those who are more reserved miss out on that kind of joy.”

I squirm.

Renata studies the two of us closely, her hands fluttering around her ears, fidgeting with the curls. “I don’t…I don’t usually claim to be a psychic. Not exactly,” she says. “I mean, not in the typical way.” She glances around her as though someone might overhear her secrets. “I’m a scholar, a gatherer of mystic knowledge, with a bit of intuition and a lot of reading.” She pauses; her brows knit in concentration. “But I feel…intuitively I sense…and your auras maybe…” She trails off, biting her lip, as if we will allow her to leave it at that.

“You sense
what
?” My patience for this whole thing is wearing thin.

“I feel like the two of you should be very…
cautious
in the next few days. There’s a strong bond between the two of you, and I sense that there is something, perhaps something outside of you, but also maybe within you? Something that threatens this bond.”

The door of the shop opens, the little bell jangling, and Renata starts, sits up straighter, tucking in several tendrils of her hair and removing the red glasses. She smiles brightly at the small group of tourists who enter, all curious and nervous whispers. “I’ll be right with you!” she says.

We stand, but Kat is pensive, her eyes narrowed. “You should stop fighting it,” she says to Renata. “Your hair. Let it go free. I think I might actually believe you if you did.”

Kat slides a tiny card underneath the edge of a sign on the wall near the door, a skeleton key with an intricate border of vines twining along the edge. I take one last glance at the shop, at Renata smiling at her new customers, and then we exit and wander along the crowded sidewalks, working our way back to the ferry docks in an uncomfortable silence.

I think even Katy regrets coming here. We board the ferry back to Port Angeles with heavy steps. I can’t believe we’re spending four times as long on the ship as we did on the island. And all we get out of it is this heavy awkward feeling hanging between us. We have to wrestle Renata’s words aside just to catch a glimpse of each other.

“Well?” I break the silence at last. We’ve been on the ferry for an hour without really speaking beyond the utilitarian necessities, and now we’ve stepped outside for some fresh air and to take a look at the ocean. It’s still cold, but the sky has finally cleared. A few stars are even visible. “Thanks for taking me out for my birthday.”

She snorts. “Some present.”

“Katy, I don’t know how to make things better, make things the way they were. I feel like nothing is ever going to be right between us again. Like what Renata said was true, and it’s already happened.”

“Well, it
has
happened, Anna.” I have to lean in close to hear her. “It happens and it happens and it happens.”

What is she talking about? Does she know about Seth? Should I try to explain it? Is there even an explanation? “I’m sorry,” I say.

Katy looks at me for a moment, and her face is hard to read. “It’s not something you can apologize for,” she says. “It’s the way you are. Renata was right; I’m always going to be the one who loves more.” Her eyes shift away, looking out over the channel, squinting into the mist. She leans against the rail. “You have no clue what I need from you.”

I open my mouth, but it’s hard to find the words. “So tell me,” I say at last.

“Tell you. You think I don’t tell you? You’re all locked up tight, Anna, and what am I supposed to say? Your mom died. How can I be mad at you when you’re dealing with that?” She keeps focusing on the water, on the slightly darker gray line far across the water that is Port Angeles.

I move a step closer and hang my arms over the rail, too, so that our elbows are just touching. “So is this about the palm reading?” I know it isn’t, but I think we could get over it, if we pretend it is.

“No. Well, yes. Sort of.” A bitter laugh, and then Kat sighs. “Look, Anna, what do you want from this—from
us
?”

“From
us
?”

“
Is
there an us? Or are we just some kind of fucked-up friendship that includes occasional sex?” She glares at me, her dark eyes shining with tears. “I need to know, Anna, what you actually feel. Not what you think you should feel, and not what your dad says you feel.
You
, Anna. You’re like a door slamming in my face. I don’t need to know everything; I don’t need a lifelong commitment or anything, but still, I’d like to know if you think of me as a friend or…as
more.
Because if this is just…experimenting, well then, okay. But I need to figure it out for myself. In my head.” She looks away. “In my heart.”

My stomach flops. I open my mouth, totally prepared to promise myself to Katy forever, to pledge my love—to say yes, “
Hell yes!
There is an “us”! There’s so much “us” it makes my heart skip beats just thinking about it.” The words won’t hop the fence, though; they slouch on the other side with downcast eyes, kicking stones. I’m left wordless, openmouthed, at a loss.

“Fuck it, Anna. I know how it is. You’re…it’s like you’re broken or something. I get it, but I mean, it’s getting old, you know?”

I don’t know. I
do
know. I shake my head. Renata’s words spiral through my brain.
Something that threatens this bond
…. I know what that something is, and I have to confess. I open my mouth, but she speaks first, and my words hang there, on the brink.

“You can’t spend the rest of your life running away from any kind of real emotional connection. So your mom died, Anna. I’m sorry, okay? But you have to
get over it.
”

What?
I try to make sense of what Katy just said, to make it line up with the words that are poised on my tongue—the words that slip out now, in my stupor.

“It didn’t mean anything,” I say. “The thing with Seth, I’m so sorry.”

Her head snaps up. “The
thing
? With Seth?”

A tsunami of pain. My chest splits open, my lungs collapse into ruins, avalanches of oxygen spill out into the sea.

Oh, god. “I’m sorry, Katy, so so sorry.”

“You know what?
I give up
.” She could have shouted the words out to sea and had them echo off the distant shore, and they would not have resonated as loudly as they do right now, a mere whisper. “Forget this.”

I feel the force of the words like a physical blow, like when I was a little kid and I jumped off the peak of the hen-house at my grandparents’ farm, the way the impact of the ground against my chest knocked the wind from me and left me unable even to gasp, to cry out. Just emptiness inside me, and the inability to draw in a breath to fill that space.

This is what it means to be stricken,
I think, stupidly.

Katy’s eyes hold mine for just a moment longer, but it feels like eons—her bleak gaze of accusation. Of condemnation. Of loss. And then she walks away.

“No!” My voice stops her. “We’re not going to forget this.” I flounder. I need words, but really, what is there to say? She’s right.

She doesn’t turn back, doesn’t look at me, but she stops leaving. This is my chance.

“You’re right, okay? I know I’m everything you said. Broken.” I draw a shaky breath. “But how am I supposed to get over it without you? You’re what holds me together, Katy. You’re the only one. Not Seth. That…it didn’t mean anything.”

But it’s not enough. Kat whirls around to face me, but it’s not like on television, not like in a romance novel. She does not run into my arms while the music swells. She does not cry and tell me she forgives me. She spits on the deck of the ship.

“Shut up,” she says, in a voice I’ve never heard—a bitter voice, jagged like broken glass. “I can’t believe I kissed that mouth, the same mouth…” She doesn’t finish. “Do you even realize how easy it would have been to fix this? Do you even know what I wanted from you?”

I’m crying. I open my mouth to speak, but there’s nothing there.

“I’ll tell you what I didn’t want, Anna. I didn’t want some messed-up confession, some pathetic revelation about how you lied to me, how you held my hand and told me I was more important to you than those stupid boys and then ran off with one and…” She laughs. It scares me. “Your big confession? It doesn’t make anything better. It doesn’t make
you
any better. All it does is prove my point once and for all. You’ll do
anything
to escape your feelings. I thought maybe this trip would help you. I wanted my best friend back, you know? But you’re too afraid to let her out.”