Vacations from Hell
“We don’t have any money,” I said quickly.
“Who said anything about money?” Mrs. Smith snapped. “I forgot my book and I’m bored. Don’t be such an ass**le.”
“Isn’t this what happens in the movies a lot? There’s some old dude or woman who tells your fortune and is all, ‘Oh, you’re gonna die or make a boatload of money or meet a girl. Now give me all your cash’?” Baz yammered.
Mrs. Smith bristled. “I can tell your fortune right now without even consulting your palm.”
“You can?”
“Yes. You are an idiot. You will always be an idiot.”
Baz’s smirk disappeared. “’kay. In the movies it’s usually more complicated. And less abusive.”
Mrs. Smith was staring at my face, and I automatically felt my armor coming on. Like it was the first day of seventh grade all over again: Yo, slant eyes. Gook. Sushi roll. Hey, you’re Asian—can you help me with my math homework?
“Something wrong?” I said with a lot of edge.
“You have one blue eye and one brown,” she said.
I folded my arms over my chest like I was daring her to get into it. “Yeah. Genetic fluke. My dad’s Japanese. My mom’s American.”
“And totally hot,” Baz interrupted. “I mean your mom, not your dad. I mean your dad’s a good-looking dude and all, but your mom—”
“Baz. Stop.”
“’kay.”
“There is a legend about the man with eyes that see the earth and the sky. One brown, one blue,” Mrs. Smith said. Her voice had changed, gotten softer, a little wary.
“What legend is that?”
“He is cursed to walk in two worlds, the living and the dead. May I?” She took my hand and stared at it a long time, frowning. “It is as I thought. You move hand-in-hand with the unseen forces, the dark spirits, the unquiet and vengeful. It is your fate to bump asses with evil, Poe Yamamoto, and very soon you will be tested.”
“Dude,” Baz whispered in my ear, his white-boy dreads tickling the side of my face. “Did the creepy old lady just say ‘bump asses with evil’?”
She slapped his arm. “I am not deaf, you know.”
“Ow! Was that necessary?”
“You were being fresh,” Mrs. Smith said emphatically.
Baz shut up then. Anybody who could shut Baz up was a force to be reckoned with, as far as I was concerned.
“Beware the easy answer, Poe Yamamoto. Look beyond the surface to what lies underneath. There is always more. Another explanation. A deeper, more frightening truth. But without truth there is no resolution. And without that the dead do not rest.”
“Okaaaay. Anything else I should know?” I asked.
“Yes. Don’t eat the pastry in the café car. That’s not fortune-telling. That’s experience—it’s always three days past stale and hard as brick.” She handed me her card. It read: MRS. SMITH. FORTUNE-TELLER. There was a phone number in raised print. “In case.”
“In case what?”
“You make it back.” She gathered her things and shoved them into her handbag. “Okay. Now I move to another cabin. To be honest, you give me the willies. Good luck, Poe Yamamoto.”
The door closed with a bang behind Mrs. Smith. Isabel woke up and stretched. She looked pretty all sleepy, the sunlight dappled across her ebony cheekbones. “What did I miss?”
“Forest. Mountains. More forest. Oh, and some bizarro fortune-teller lady just told Poe he’s got a destiny with evil.”
Isabel blew into her hand, made a face. “Yeah, well, I think it may be my breath. I’m going to the café car for gum.”
It was well after dinnertime the next day when we reached the station closest to Necuratul, and everyone was suffering from tight muscles and hungry bellies. We showed the station agent our guidebook, and he pointed us toward a driver in a festive hat with a feather stuck into the band. He was sitting beside a horse-drawn wagon and eating a sandwich. Isabel pointed to the word Necuratul in the book, and the guy stopped chewing and gave us all funny looks.
“You should go to Bucharest or Prague. Very beautiful,” he said.
“We really want to see the festival,” Isabel said. She smiled her I-will-make-you-like-me smile, but it didn’t work on this guy. He didn’t crack so much as a grimace.
The driver picked at his sandwich. “They say they used to worship the devil. Some say they still do.”
Baz made a vampire face, hooking his teeth over his bottom lip and opening his eyes wide. Isabel slapped his arm.