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E P I G R A P H: “You can be Han Solo and I'll be Boba Fett. I'll cross the sky for you.”
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I PUSH THE MACHINE trying to keep my hands steady. In it lie my fate, my future, the answers to uncertainty, and the eternal blue.
My name is Lily Rue. Last name’s Carter.
I know a name like that sounds strange and it would fit for someone who has blonde hair, bright blue eyes and pursed pink lips.
Someone as soft and calm as a lily road.
But I’m nothing like a lily road; I’m more of a firestorm.
My corkscrew curls are kissed by fire, my cheeks are burnt and pink while my face is filled with islands like the Caribbean. In simpler words, I am a redhead freckled face.
On addition to that, I am a redhead freckled face who likes words: words that are found in the Oxford Dictionary, colloquial words accepted by common street walkers, words that line up in Scrabble boards and words that construct sentences and translate into feelings. I feel empowered from them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m the best at saying them though. But I do enjoy a lovely conversation or two.
What I don’t enjoy are hard headed fortune telling machines.
“Someone tell me that this machine is broken.”
My friends Sadie and Camille are right behind me. We’re just off the block near Aroha, the cafe where our friendship started. We’ve managed to land ourselves in Madame Catarina’s Fortune Shop this morning. Madame Catarina mans the counter herself. She wears thick black eyeliner and has this mountain of curly black hair.
Aside from being a part time fortune teller, she pierces for five NZ dollars. Free if you buy one of her “sacred” gemstone rings. Sadie has one on her nose; it’s a sapphire and her birthstone. Camille calls it 'the blue zit', much to Sadie’s annoyance.
“It’s not broken, try turning the twisty thing over,” Camille says coming over to help me.
“Don’t touch it! You’ll jinx her fortune,” Madame Catarina warns us but her nose is still buried in a tabloid magazine with a gigantic picture of Hugh Jackman’s abs in front.
Camille rolls her eyes. “Why are we doing this again?”
Sadie turns to me, waiting for a reply.
“What? It wasn’t just my idea to pay a dollar for a fortune,” I tell her still attempting to turn the lock around. I hit the machine twice. It’s this ugly gray square box with a tacky picture of some Greek with fearful eyes. It works as weird as it looks actually.
One, you put a dollar in. Second, you stick your hand in the Greek dude’s mouth. 'PALMS FACING UPWARD', the instruction reads.
“Stop it Lily, you’ll jinx your fortune!” This time it's Sadie who is warning me.
I bang it softly this time, feeling a bit uneasy myself. “How do you know it isn’t already jinxed?”
“Oh come on, don’t say that! Don’t you ever say that! Tonight’s going to be amazing.” Sadie goes on. “You got your dress, your date.”
Okay, deep breaths. Inhale, exhale you know the drill. Breathe Lily Rue, breathe.
Leave it to Sadie to remind me of prom night. It’s nearing the end of Year 13. It marks the end of a chapter, the end of something important and the beginning of something new.
My aunt came from Canada; she says that Canadians do it differently. They have ceremonies. I’ve seen them in pictures and in television of course. They get to wear graduation dresses and togas with caps.
In New Zealand, all you get is a certificate.
And that’s why prom is everything. It’s just literally life.
Camille once said that when she was growing up in the Philippines, a student gets to wear a toga a lot because Filipinos love celebrations. You have to sit through long speeches but that only means more presents from endless counts of relatives. She was new by Year 9 and already she’s gotten two togas under her belt.
“Can’t we just get something to eat instead?” I ask the girls.
“Uh-uh, I haven’t gotten my fortune yet,” Sadie says.
“Well, this contraption is completely destroyed.” I bang the machine again while Madame Catarina continues to ignore me. “And I hate to break it to you; no one can tell the future.”
The machine makes a gurgling sound, and it is enough to remind me of that Stephen King movie where the laundry folding machine comes back to life. I take a step back, just in case. That thing loved virgins.
I blush at that thought, dammit, it’s the redhead disease. Symptoms include uncontrollable blushing over random embarrassing thoughts that occasionally chime in.
Amazingly, the fortune telling machine comes to life like it’s actually working this time. It still makes that awful machinery sounds like the demonic laundry folding machine though.
“Oh, here it comes!” Sadie claps her hands. I hate to admit it, but I’m holding my breath too. I’m nervous and excited. All of us are born superstitious until education makes us sceptics. But this time, my practicality is overweighed by my excitement and maybe a few years of wanting to hold on of what’s left of my reckless days. Being young is a ticking time bomb, I guess. I’m only waiting for the explosion.
The paper comes out from the Greek dude’s ear. It’s turned downward and coloured a bright shade of pink so it just adds to the surprise. I’m glad no one else has decided to come and get their fortune told today because this does seem like a tacky and embarrassing thing to do. Most of the kids at school are probably too busy preparing for prom that happens to be just a few hours away.
“So, what does it say?” Camille is over my shoulder. She’s about an inch taller than me. I’m the shortest amongst us three. Camille’s a work of art. She likes her liners long and her lips plum even on sunny days. I haven’t seen her prom dress neither do I know who she’s going with. She’s kept that secret long enough. Camille used to say that the build up is the most exciting part of falling in love. So when she gains enough momentum, she’d be ready to explode.
And I hate to admit it but I feel a tinge of jealousy at Camille.
Sadie’s going with her boyfriend James. He happens to be the resident hipster vet. Now I think I could be overreacting a bit, but James does look like he could be armed with a camera every day. He is also a whole lot shorter than Sadie. Physics and Biology would disagree on their pairing. Physics would reason out that Sadie is a little too tall for James, and Biology on the other hand would say that James is a little too skinny for Sadie. But Chemistry out rules them both, they’re perfect together.
Which leaves me.
Now, I’m not exactly dateless. I’m going with Hemingway Blue. My mind wonders off to his tiny little island in an instant. It must be filled with little mohawk men and an army of black shirts. I don’t know how I happened to ask him. I just did one day.
He was just, well, there.
Blue isn’t exactly my first choice. He was sort of like my only choice. I asked him. As an advocate for gender equality, I always thought that there’s nothing wrong with asking a boy out.
It happened out of, pardon the pun, blue.
Sadie had a fixed date. Camille had a secret date. So I wanted a date. I wouldn’t want to say needed. I just wanted to imagine a real person walking down with me in the auditorium stairs. A real person, not Johnny Depp. I asked Blue on the spur of the moment but now that it starts to sink in, it’s beginning to sound like a bad idea. Only, it’s kind of too late to back out now. Hemingway Blue Scott isn’t exactly John Cusack in Say Anything, neither is he Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre.
He’s well, he’s just bored.
As I’ve said, he’s the leader of the island of rock stars and mysteries. I know it sounds sexy but it isn’t. He always has this look on his face like he’s stopped looking for things. I’d like to say he’s got a talent in art like most guys who look bored all the time, but he can only draw stick figures and caricatures of our professors. Okay, maybe he does have a talent in drawing, but I don’t think he plans in putting it to good use. He drew Mr. Thompson over the Cartesian plane. Poor Mr. Thompson now had a triangle head and Blue had detention times infinity after that.
My thoughts of graphing paper and Hemingway Blue are disturbed by Sadie tugging my arm.
“Okay, on the count of three we reveal our fortunes,” she says holding her piece of paper.
I blink, feeling my heart pounding against my chest. “One.”
Camille smiles. “Two.”
“Three!”
“Um, mine says: 'Once you find the thing, it will sew you back together'.” Sadie shakes her head.
“Damn that’s creepy,” I say and Camille nods her head. “Isn’t that supposed to say set or something else?” I read her paper and it says sew alright.
“Go back to where you started, that way you’ll find what you’re looking for,” Camille reads the small piece of pink paper in her hand. I see a smile form on her lips but her brow furrows immediately. She tries so well not to show her excitement for tonight. But I’m actually happy for her amidst the jealousy. Besides, she and I have been in population kiss-less for a while now.
Not that I’ll be joining her in population Kiss Town anytime soon.
“I think it means we should meet in Aroha after tonight,” I tell her. I look down at my fortune and from the reflection I see Madame Catarina looking at me curiously.
I take a deep breath trying to hide the surprise at how much of coincidence this is. I read the words aloud: “Propose a toast for tonight, it’s going to be a long one.”
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