“Confession time is my favorite,” I mutter.
He gives me a flat look. “That’s because so far I’m doing all the confessing. But that’s fine, you came and spoke to me first.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He shrugs. “You’re…much more than anything I’ve experienced. It was a little scary to want the girl next door so bad when you’ve never spoken to her.” He winces as though the confession is actually hurting him. “I really like you, Quinn. And I like all of your faces. They’re all beautiful.”
My heart thuds in my chest so fast I’m seeing stars. It’s the best feeling in the world, kind of like flying without lifting an inch off the floor. My fingers curl into the bark. All I want to do is climb closer.
“I like you too, Archer.”
His chin dips in a nod and his smile widens. “Yeah, I know. You’re not subtle.”
Oh, great. “I don’t even know how you get eyes that color. It’s insane and unfair.”
When he looks at me, I almost melt into a puddle. Those. Damn. Eyes.
“Hold this for me a sec,” he says, flicking something at me.
My eyes bulge; I lift my hands and snap them together. I caught it. Opening my palms, I see his coin. “Archer?”
“It’s a test. No one has held that since my grandpa gave it to me. I punched a kid at my last school for trying to take it. It doesn’t feel wrong handing it to you. Keep it safe for now.”
I curl my hand shut and hold it against my racing heart. He’s trusting me with his grandpa’s coin.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Be patient.”
I can’t. I’m slowly going crazy, wondering what you’re up to with that bag.
“Do you have supplies? Are we running away?” I ask.
He smirks, taking out his iPad. It’s in a case with a handle. Attached to the handle is a loop of string.
This is getting a bit weird.
“Archer?”
“Patience, Ace.”
“Why do you call me that? It was on your chalkboard.” Today ours read: No virus will keep us down.
His eyes flit to me. “I’m not confessing that one yet.”
“Unfair.”
While hanging the iPad off two small broken branches so it faces us and doesn’t swing, he glances my way. “You tell me how long you’ve been watching me for, and I’ll tell you what it means. It was day one for me.”
Well, there’s no point in pretending now, not when he’s admitting the same. “Since the day you moved in. I thought people who look like you were only on TV.”
He nods. “Ace is ranked the highest in a deck of cards.”
My mouth pops open audibly.
I’m his ace?
“You’ve gone silent again.”
“Uh-huh,” I mutter like a fool.
“Seriously, confession time is very one-sided.”
“I’m obsessed with you. Are we even now?”
His smile does stupid things to me. “We’re even.”
“Good.”
He taps the screen and brings up Twilight on Amazon Video.
“Get comfortable,” he says.
Wait, we’re not talking more about this ace thing?
“Twilight?” I ask.
He grunts, and I have no doubt that this isn’t his first choice. Or his hundredth.
Digging in his bag, he balances a can of Coke and a bag of Haribo on a branch between us. Then puts the same on his lap. He hangs the bag on another branch and sits back.
Bella’s voice floats from the iPad.
“We’re watching a movie,” I say, smiling while my heart does its racing Arch-er beat.
His eyes connect with mine. “No, Ace, we’re having our first date.”
“I’m sorry to tell you this, mèimei, but this is not your year.”
Auntie Xin tsks as she glances down at the weathered pages of her trusted notebook. Wearing a pastel pink tracksuit and framed by a generic picture of a field hanging crookedly on the wall behind her, she looks like anything but the world-renowned fortune-teller she claims to be. Even the grainy photographs of her with vaguely familiar “celebrities” does little to distract from the fact that we’re crammed into the back office of her Asian snack shop in Houston’s Chinatown.
For as long as I can remember, Mom has been one of Auntie Xin’s most loyal clients. Since the day she came across the ad offering an introductory session nearly twenty years ago, Mom has consulted the elderly woman on everything from which stocks to buy to when and where we should go on vacation. As if that’s not enough, every year around my birthday, Mom drags me to see Auntie Xin for a fortune reading of my own.
Mom calls it a valuable gift.
I call it a waste of a perfectly good hour of my life.
Now that I am days from turning seventeen, we’re seated across from Auntie Xin, separated by a wooden desk so large I’m convinced they knocked down a wall to move in. Despite this, we still barely meet the six-foot rule for social distancing. Of course, with Auntie Xin barely able to operate a smart phone, a virtual session was out of the question. Instead, we made the trip to see her in person, overheating from the double masks Mom insisted on using for the occasion.
“Are you sure?” Mom whispers.
The unnaturally black strands of Auntie Xin’s bangs fall into her eyes as she squints at incomprehensible—to me, at least—lines of characters and numbers that combine to reveal my fortune. Auntie Xin leans back against her equally ancient chair, the wooden legs squeaking despite its featherlight occupant.
“I’m afraid so, Chan tàitài,” she tells Mom. “I even read it against the Daymaster. I am certain. Your daughter will face great challenges this year.”
Besides the
