Fortune Teller
by Stacy Austin Egan
Lily’s parked her mom’s Explorer on the train tracks; we do our best talking here, more if Lily’s in the mood. There are no protective gates, won’t be until someone gets killed. We’ll be grown-ups then, talk twice a year at best.
Lily leans over the center console, slips her tongue in my mouth, sure, exactly, of where it’s supposed to be. “You’re so vanilla,” she says. She doesn’t mean taste. I’m not opening my mouth enough. It’s not her, it’s because we’re parked on fucking train tracks.
I’d remind her this is illegal, but she’d say so what. I turn away, reach out the window, hope only the side mirror catches my eyes widen, my giveaway for lying, how my brother knew to call bullshit last weekend when I’d said I only used his laptop to look up something for school. “I haven’t started the Gatsby paper.”
Lily flicks on the console light, looks at me like fuck off. “In Defense of Daisy Buchanan: Performing the Beautiful Fool,” she says. I’d saved a draft on the computer in Ms. Moore’s room. Apparently, Lily didn’t skip second, so she’d seen.
“That title is rough.” I unhook my bra, pull it through the V of my tee; I’ve developed a shorthand for apologies, and Lily doesn’t ever give them.
“Okay,” she says, hand on the stick shift, though the ignition’s off.
“What?” I ask but I don’t have to; she’s wearing her fortune teller’s face.
“You’ll be a woman that always keeps a sweater in her car in case Pilates is cold,” she says. “The mom that brings snacks for everyone else’s kids.”
I have better grades, but something’s sharper in her. She does almost as well, tries half as hard. When I think back to sixteen, I’ll wonder (as if there could be more than one explanation for how Jif to-go made it into in my pantry, for who tucked a summer sweater in the passenger pocket between my atlas and umbrella): was she right or did I make it true?
She punches off the light. “It’s a waste.” She never says what would be better. She’s got a hand between my thighs. I lean towards her, and she rubs the seam of my jeans. “Are you?”
I’m not sure if she means wet or boring; it’s yes, either way, but I stay silent.
My parents moved us here halfway through freshman year, and Lily found me searching for Spanish in the science wing. Some senior in the office wrote an F in the corner of my nametag. That stands for fuckable, she’d said, ripping the whole thing off. I’d thought it meant freshman, but I didn’t admit it. She’d steered me to class; I watched while she texted herself from my phone. Two years later, she’s still telling me what things mean. Every hypothesis I had before Lily was wrong: Maybe is a maximum commitment. Boys go wild for indifference, think it’s a trick, expect a big reveal. They’re fine but not fascinating; anyway, they don’t see me: they see an illusion Lily made.
The seats recline, but my back is pushed against the door, and every time I’m close, I feel like if I finish, I’m not sure I’ll try very hard at college or whatever’s after or anything else again.
I turn to look out the window, squeeze my legs together. When it’s her, she shows me exactly how to touch; now, her look is an accusation. She assumes I’ve figured myself out, know but didn’t bother to tell.
“Let’s move,” I say. I mean the tracks, but she looks at me like go ahead. I’m pressing the red button of the seatbelt, even though it isn’t fastened.
“It’s easier without pants.” She smirks as if to say she’s seen anyway, which is true, and I want to memorize her mouth, but I’m wondering if the night is clear, if trains really are that loud.
I’m thinking of shattered glass, that story smell of newsprint, only we wouldn’t be around to read. If a train smashed us to shit, my brother might regret his mortifying lecture on browser history. “What if it came too fast?” I ask.
“For your sake, I hope it’s before college,” she says, but that’s almost two years away, and I meant the train. She brushes my hair with her fingers. “Hey, tonight, definitely.”
“No, I mean, does it have to be here?” I ask.
“Backseat’s fine,” she says, climbing over.
I wait, like for a punchline. Then I say, “It’s almost eleven.” Her curfew identical to mine.
“Should Siri set a timer?” she asks. I look at her like seriously, but she peels off her shirt. “You’ll own cashmere cardigans in every color,” she says. After a minute, she hurls, “Monogramed.”
I push myself into the backseat; predictions aren’t protective, but I doubt she’ll do it anywhere else, and I don’t have to be the girl that picks truth only after she’s heard the dare.
I let her deal with my button fly, swear she’s taking her sweet time. “If you weren’t pretty when you worried, it’d be a real problem for you,” she says, one hand up my shirt.
“We’d hear it miles away,” I say. I’ve looked it up. I know.
“If you say so,” she says, mouth near mine.
“The keys are in there, right?”
“You can look,” she says, but I’m not going to move. Maybe it’s psychological, but it’s what I wanted: for her to decide, so I didn’t have to. I think of my magic 8-ball. Yes—definitely, and she was right: nothing’s hurling towards us. In some future life, my cardigans are already stacked in a drawer, initials I wouldn’t yet recognize as my own.
Stacy Austin Egan was born and raised in Austin, TX. Her fiction chapbook, You Could Stop It Here, was published by PANK Books in 2018 and was an honorable mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and her short stories have appeared in The New Plains Review, Philadelphia Stories, december magazine, and others. In 2021, her work was nominated for best of net, and she was selected as a writer in residence for Tin House. She teaches writing and literature at Midland College. Find her online at www.stacyegan.com.
