The 13th Sign

The 13th Sign.

Kristin O"Donnell Tubb.

Sagittarius: Your bubbly personality and effervescent style make you a shoo-in for "Most Likely to Be the Center of Attention at a Party. Straighten that tiara, flash those pearly whites, and dance for your admirers, superstar!""

Madame Beausoleil finished reading my horoscope from the ancient book in her lap. She raised her gaze to mine. Madame"s eyes were foggy with age, though she claimed her cloudy eyes helped her to "see." I didn"t know Madame well myself; I usually came here with my Nina. Madame called herself a voodoo priestess, and her milky eyes, her whole dark and dusty shop, gave me the chills. Armies of carved wooden masks stared from the walls with empty eye sockets. Dream catchers and incense burners and wind chimes hung from the ceiling like swarms of ghosts jangling their chains. Visitors were warned with scratchy, hand-printed signs: "ABSOLUTELY NO PHOTOS."

But I had to overlook the creepiness. Coming to Beausoleil/Fachenuit (Beautiful Sun/Angry Night) was my birthday tradition. Our birthday tradition-mine and Nina"s. I had to come, even if Nina couldn"t. Used to be-once upon a time-Daddy would come with us, too. He"d dig through the junky shelves, wide-eyed, for hours, asking thousands of questions about horoscopes and zodiacs and such. Madame Beausoleil would eventually get so fed up with him she"d kick him out, shooing him away and telling him to never come back. And Nina would laugh and say, "See you next birthday!"

I shook that thought off with a pang. "Honestly?" I asked now. "That"s what my horoscope says? I don"t even own a tiara." Ellie spat a laugh at my side. The salt-and-pepper snake in the gla.s.s box on the counter knotted into a tighter coil.

My horoscope always read like that, and it could not be more wrong. I didn"t act, think, feel, dance, dress, play, work, or love like a Sagittarian. I"d hoped a reading from Madame Beausoleil might be more accurate.

Maybe I had misunderstood. Madame Beausoleil spoke with a thick Creole accent, like her mouth was full of spicy peppers. So I asked again, "Is that really what it says about me?"

I looked to Ellie, who stood next to an overstuffed display of voodoo dolls, pins launching forth from their rag-doll bodies like shooting stars, their instruments of torture entangling them in a voodoo universe. Ellie placed a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle, but she was definitely smiling. Even Madame Beausoleil"s eyes twinkled with amus.e.m.e.nt at how inaccurate this picture of me was.

"Dat"s what it say, girl." Madame"s leather-brown skin pulled taut, showing her huge gap-toothed grin. "You don" tink Seventeen magazine got you pegged?" She reached between the pages of the huge tome on her lap, pulled out a tattered magazine, and tossed it toward me. There, on the cover, between gleaming-white movie star smiles, scrawled in neon green font: "Happy Birthday, Sagittarius!!! Read inside to see what the upcoming year holds for Y-O-U, superstar!!!"

I wanted to scream and shout at being duped like this. I wanted to demand my money back. Instead, I twiddled my fingers in the hot-pink streak dyed in my hair, pulling the lock across my face. I managed only to whisper in a shaky voice, "You said you"d give me a real horoscope reading."

But Madame had already moved on to picking the dirt from beneath her fingernails with a huge knife blade attached to an ivory handle. "Why should I?" she asked. "Girl don" believe dis hoo anyways, now do she? Every year she come here, every year she scoff. Now, go shop." She didn"t look up from her fingernail cleaning, just jerked her head at the rest of the store behind us. Her multicolored turban bobbed as she did.

I sighed. No, I didn"t believe this hoo. It seemed unlikely that my personality could be controlled by my zodiac sign, that my birthdate and a bunch of stars could define me. Horoscopes were nothing but words on paper. How could that possibly shape the future? No, it seemed much more likely that we humans were messing up all on our own.

But my Nina did believe in this hoo-just as my dad had-and she brought me to Beausoleil/Fachenuit every year on my birthday to have my tea leaves read, or my palm studied, or my tarot cards flipped. But this year, on my thirteenth birthday, Nina wasn"t with me. Breast cancer had my Nina trapped in a spiderweb of tubes and needles. And I wasn"t even allowed in the hospital room. My mom was by her side, but Mom hardened whenever tragedy clawed its way into our home. Which was far too often.

Ellie checked the clock on her cell phone. "We"d better hurry, Jalen. Brennan will be ticked if he has to park the car and come inside."

As if on cue, Brennan entered the tiny dark store, chiming the bells tied to the door. He ducked beneath a row of alligator teeth on a string. The image of Brennan getting swallowed whole made me grin.

"Aren"t y"all ready yet?" he grumbled. "It"s been five minutes!" Ellie shot him a wide-eyed look, but Brennan scowled back. "Look, Ellie. Don"t start with the sick-grandma stuff. I don"t want to hear it. And I"m not waiting long."

I rolled my eyes and cursed breast cancer once again. With Nina sick, Ellie and I had been forced to b.u.m a ride with her brother Brennan. He was only fifteen, but he"d been driving a ma.s.sive, rusting pickup truck around the streets of New Orleans since he was thirteen. Ellie and Brennan"s parents were quite lax about things like, oh, the law.

"Patience, Brennan," I cooed at him, knowing it"d drive him nuts. I reached into one of the hundreds of nearby jars. "Here. Suck on a peppermint-soaked bamboo stick. It"s supposed to calm you." Under my breath-way under, so no one could hear-I added, "And shut you up." I wanted to say stuff like that out loud, but I figured it wasn"t worth the trouble.

Brennan glared at me and looked like he was about to say something else, but Ellie stepped between us. I was glad she did; I wasn"t up for his teasing tonight. He spun and headed for the display of ceremonial drums. He smiled at one and tapped on it a bit-tap tap tippetty tap-but he stopped when he saw me watching him. He scowled and moved on to the glimmering crystal collection. I got a little teary at that. Crystals were Nina"s favorite.

Ellie must"ve sensed my already sour mood taking a nosedive, because she steered me to the other side of the store. "Let"s look at the books," she said. Ellie always knew how to cheer me up.

I looked at some of the t.i.tles of the books and couldn"t help but smirk at their spines. Your Many Past Lives and You Can: Realign your Chakras! and Healing through Meditation. Yes, if only it were that easy. I sighed and pulled that t.i.tle off the shelf, just to see if maybe Mom and I were missing something. Anything to heal my Nina, to pull her a little farther away from the edge of death.

Behind that t.i.tle, stuffed behind the other books, was a small brown leather book, hidden by the dusty collection in front of it. This book was crisscrossed with a metal chain, binding it both horizontally and vertically. Shut tight with a tiny bra.s.s lock.

I reached for it, this book tucked behind the others, hiding in the dark. It shocked me when I touched it. I jerked my finger back, and my ears popped with a whoosh.

Dusty metal, I thought. Madame Beausoleil really needs to clean this place.

Around the chain, I read the t.i.tle, branded into the leather cover in a scrolly, burnt script: The Keypers of the Zodiack.

A book about horoscopes! Maybe this could give me a real view of my future, not some pop-vomit version from a magazine.

Ellie looked over my shoulder, and I felt her nod. "That"s what we"re getting."

We took the book to the counter. "Madame, um, Beausoleil?" I asked. Addressing this woman directly made my heart race. "Where"s the key to this book?"

Madame looked up, and the clouds in her eyes turned thunderous. "Dat"s not fo sale. Where you find dat?"

"On the bookshelf," Ellie cut in. "There"s a price tag on it. Thirty dollars."

"Not fo sale," she said, waggling her fingers at us in a give-it-here motion. "You not ready."

Not ready? Why does no one think a thirteen-year-old is ready? Not the hospital, not my mom, not this con artist voodoo priestess. But I gave the book to her. Her hands felt like cool paper.

Madame tucked the book under the counter. "Keep looking, girls," she said. She stood and shuffled through a thick purple curtain into a back room. The snake in the gla.s.s box on the counter lifted its head and blinked a single black eye. Winked?

"Yeah, and make it quick," Brennan said over his shoulder. He"d moved on to the other rock displays and was palming a smooth geode, the kind of rock that was plain Jane on the outside, but you shattered it with the hope there would be spectacular crystals inside. It"s likely the only thing that gets better after being shattered.

Ellie hopped up on the counter, leaned over, snagged the book. After she grabbed it, she looked at the cover for a moment, like it might"ve shocked her, too. She shrugged and tossed $40 on the counter.

"Let"s go," she whispered.

"Ellie!" I snapped. My eyes darted to the curtain. Madame Beausoleil could likely feel what we were doing in here.

"What?" Ellie asked. "That crazy lady is asking for this. She ripped you off, making you pay for a horoscope reading from Seventeen magazine. And she calls herself a friend of your Nina."

Ellie punched all the right b.u.t.tons. She"s right, I thought. And it wasn"t like we were stealing the book. In fact, we were overpaying.

"Let"s go," I whispered back. I tucked the book into the front of my jeans. The chain scratched my stomach, and a little bead of blood appeared.

Brennan, Ellie, and I scooted out of Beausoleil/Fachenuit and into the dark, cool night. The streets of New Orleans"s French Quarter were eerily bare. Rain from earlier in the day glimmered under the streetlamps on the brick-inlaid sidewalks and made them look like they were made of nighttime sky, dark and light contrasted.

Like she were reading my mind, Ellie said, "Jalen, it"s your birthday. Wish on a star." I glanced her way, but Ellie"s face was upturned, not looking down like mine.

I shrugged. I felt very uncomfortable about this book. Not uncomfortable about it crammed in my jeans and scratching me, although, yes, that was awkward. Uncomfortable about taking something I"d been told I shouldn"t have. I realized my fingers were tangled in a pink streak of hair.

"Nah," I said. "No use. I have more wishes than stars."

Leaning against the pa.s.senger side window of Brennan"s pickup, I tugged and pulled at the chain binding The Keypers of the Zodiack. It was no use; the chain would not budge, and I didn"t want to damage the book. I examined the lock: bra.s.s, very intricate. The lock itself was shaped like a heart, with two snakes twined together around it. The scaly snakes looped above the heart, bodies coiling, forming the handle of the lock. Their eyes, narrowed at each another in strike mode, were emerald-green jewels. Their tongues, quick and wispy. The whole thing would make a really incredible tattoo-maybe someday. Something about the lock-the snakes, the heart-seemed eerily familiar to me. Deja vu. I shivered.

"Is this the right way?" Ellie bent down and peered under the rearview mirror, looking up at the pa.s.sing street sign. As if her navigation skills would get us home. Ellie was many wonderful things, but a reliable navigator? No.

Brennan half smiled. "Ellie. You always know where you are in New Orleans-"

"-if you just know were the river is." All three of us repeated this. It was Brennan"s driving mantra. It was true, though. I loved that about New Orleans. The river was a comforting compa.s.s.

"Just don"t forget to take the bridge, Brennan. No ferries."

Brennan huffed, and my face grew hot. They were avoiding the ferry because of me, because of my fear of boats. I hated that. But I wasn"t about to ride that ferry.

Ellie"s phone rang, some cheesy folk song blasting from her pocket. Brennan snorted. She looked at the screen, then pa.s.sed the phone to me. "It"s the drill sergeant."

My mom. I wished Ellie wouldn"t use that nickname for her in front of Brennan. My mom called me on Ellie"s phone all the time. It was her way of working around getting me a phone of my own.

"h.e.l.lo?" I whispered.

"I hadn"t heard from you yet. Are you home?" I could hear the click of my mom"s heels echoing in the tile halls of the hospital.

"Mom, it"s 8:03."

"Are you home?"

I sighed. "Almost."

I could practically hear my mom"s shoulders drop a notch or two. "Good. Did you have fun?"

"Yeah." I wanted so badly to add, "I wish Nina could"ve come," but I didn"t dare say something like that in the cab of Brennan"s truck.

Mom paused, like she knew what I wanted to say. "Want to talk to her?"

"Sure."

Heels clicked, the phone shuffled, and then that Southern accent slow as honey poured through Ellie"s phone. "Jalen," Nina"s voice sang.

I smiled.

"Jalen, love, thank heavens you went to Beausoleil/Fachenuit without me! Did you get your horoscope read?"

"Yes, ma"am."

"Well, thank heavens. Can"t catch your dreams if you don"t know what the path ahead looks like. What a brave girl you are to go to that scary voodoo shop all by your lonesome."

I giggled and so did Nina. She loved that scary voodoo shop.

Nina coughed, and it was like an alarm, reminding me where she was. "You feeling okay?" I asked.

"Sure, love. Sure. Hospital food tastes just like birthday cake, don"t you know?"

We said our good-byes, and Mom made me promise to call every hour until we went to sleep. I pa.s.sed the phone back to Ellie. "Thank heavens," Nina"s voice sang in my head. "Can"t catch your dreams if you don"t know what the path ahead looks like." If only she knew what a con artist her friend Madame Beausoleil was. According to her, my path ahead required a tiara.

Brennan approached my house. I was always a little embarra.s.sed about the outside of my home-the peeling paint, the sagging gutters-and anytime I saw it through someone else"s eyes, I felt defensive. And inside? Our furniture was old and dusty, our high-ceiling corners filled with cobwebs. Deteriorating, like everything eventually did. It was hard, me and Mom and Nina keeping up an old house like ours. When Daddy was here, this place had been a showstopper. Now it was just filled with ghosts and memories. Which are really the same thing, when you think about it.

"This is fine." I bolted upright and leaned across Ellie to speak to Brennan. He huffed and slammed to a stop at the corner of my yard. He"d had that temper since we were kids. I used to find it amusing. Now I found it annoying.

Ellie plucked the book off my lap. "Maybe I could pick the lock. You know, all spy-like?" She jimmied the keyhole with her electric-green pinkie fingernail. We hopped out of Brennan"s truck, and he peeled away, wheels squealing. Show-off.

Ellie handed me The Keypers of the Zodiack, and we went inside, straight to the pottery wheel. Mom had converted an old sunroom on the side of our house into a small pottery studio. Throwing pots is messy business, and this sunroom was constantly covered in a film of mud.

"These tools." I pointed to a row of picks and brushes used to make designs in the clay. "Let"s try them." But after a good ten minutes of unsuccessfully trying to pick the lock, I gave up.

I tossed the book on a rickety wicker chair, picked up a hunk of clay covered in plastic wrap, opened it, and pounded it. I prepared my slip and turned the wheel on. When my foot pressed the pedal, spatters of gray muck fanned everywhere.

"Hey!" Ellie hopped backward. "You did that on purpose!" She laughed, swiping at the drops of mud on her peace-sign sweatshirt.

I smiled. "You know not to stand that close."

My hands sank into the cool, slick mud, and I felt all my anger at Madame Beausoleil, at Brennan, at cancer ooze between my fingers and spin into that pot. I centered the clay first, sculpting a small tower in the middle of the wheel, on the spinning wooden bat. Once the column was right, I pushed my thumbs into the top. The lump of clay rounded, then hollowed out, turning from something useless into something practical. Spinning chaos into order.

All my pots look the same. Some are a little taller, some a little wider, but they"re all basically bowls. Every once in a while my mom tries to get me to try a new shape, like a vase or something. When she does, I end up pressing the spinning wheel too hard with my foot, pinching the clay too thin with my fingers, and then I lose the bowl altogether.

"Bolt cutters," Ellie was saying when I turned the wheel off. She flicked the snake lock on The Keypers of the Zodiack.

"What"s that?" I took the bat off the wheel. I put it and the bowl on the drying rack next to a half dozen other pots.

"You never fire them," Ellie said, looking up from the book at the filled drying rack. Many of the pots were bone dry, ready for the kiln.

I shrugged. "Throwing them is the best part."

Ellie"s nose wrinkled. "Too messy. And you can"t really use them till you fire them, right? Otherwise they"ll just break." Mr. Bingle, my cat, weaved between Ellie"s legs. She lifted him with the toe of her tennis shoe and scooted him aside.

Ellie sounded a lot like my mom. Mom was always after me to finish what I started. I wiped my muddy hands on my ap.r.o.n and tossed it aside. "What about bolt cutters?"

"Oh!" she said, her eyes lighting up as she jumped back with that thought. "We have bolt cutters at home. I"m going to text Brennan right now and tell him to bring them over."

Ugh. I"d already sunk to asking Brennan for a ride today. No way was I asking him for another favor. And this lock was special somehow. I shook my head. "I don"t know about cutting it-"

But Ellie was already punching her thumbs on her phone. "You have a better idea how to sneak into that lock?"

The snakes! I grinned. "In fact, I do."

Before we even reached the top of the stairs, Ellie"s phoned binged with a text back from Brennan: "No way," it read. Ellie shrugged at me, and I pulled the string that opened the hatch to our attic. A wooden ladder tumbled down, barreling out like a captive set free. Dust flew everywhere. Ellie sneezed, a honking blast of a sneeze.

"Bless you," I said to Ellie"s back. She was already plowing into the dark abyss of our attic. I peered into the black hole gaping above me. Cool air whooshed out of it like a sigh, an icy yawn from our tired, old home.

I heard Ellie yank the lightbulb chain. "Light"s burned out," she yelled down to me. Slivers of insulation twinkled down in tiny shards, coating me like a sprinkling of magic dust.

Something about this gave me a chill, and I didn"t think it was the cool air. I knew what my Nina would say: "Climb on up, Jalen! Sometimes you gotta leap before you look." My fingers flew to the pink streak of hair and started twirling.

"Jalen, I can"t see a thing," Ellie shouted down. "Come up and show me where this jewelry box is."

I stepped onto the ladder, then climbed the creaky steps and poked my head into the darkness. "Forget it, Ellie. Bad idea. Let"s just-"

"Here!" Ellie kicked aside a musty pile of clothes. Sometimes she had the subtlety of a bulldozer. "This looks like a jewelry box."