The Fortune Teller's Daughter Read Online Free Page B

remembered my mother dropped her grocery bag, knelt in front of
me and started shaking me, over and over, yelling, “ There’s no such thing!
What did you see? Tell me what you saw!”
    Reason
suggested I was looking for signs and therefore finding them. Rationally I
understood that. As much as I wanted to believe someone had sent me star chalk
drawings, ravens, and giants, it was madness to go wandering around in strange
neighborhoods in hopes of finding a piece of my mother.
    But…it could
be real, couldn’t it?
    Enough time
passed between one train and the next to convince myself the wild goose chase
I’d set out on was a figment of my imagination, so when the el arrived I stood
and headed back for the stairs.
    The train
pulled in to a stop. The noise of hydraulics and squealing gears muffled the
crowd and their cell phones.
    And yet,
over the din, the lilting notes of a harpsichord and violin played out a music
box melody that stopped me in my tracks.
    A circle of
onlookers stood before two street musicians banging out their song with no
particular finesse. The bow crashed across strings, boots stomping in time. All
they were missing was a monkey in a fez and they could have been straight from
a cartoon. Instead they had a mangled dog on a shoelace leash and a cardboard
box for tips.
    Despite the
song sounding strangely like a twisted carnival jig, a gnawing doubt told me I
was grasping at shadows.
    I suddenly
disgusted by Maurie and his slum lord apartments. I did not want to go back to
the market conning people into handing over $10 here, $5 there for little more
than fortune cookie hoodoo, just to make rent and eat. I was tired of Chicago.
    I was tired
of waiting.
    As the
subway doors began to close I squeezed inside, preferring to chase shadows than
go back. 
     
    *  *  *
     
    The subway
made its way along each stop without incident, or clue, or breadcrumb, but
somehow I knew I’d have to go all the way to the end, to the edge of
everything, in order to find Alistair Rook and his Carnival Imaginaire .
    Commuters
filed out. No one hey babied me this time. Afternoon crept towards
evening. The sun doused the rooftops in a golden glow that made the old
neighborhoods look dream-like. I slunk down in my seat and clutched my coat
tight around me even though the car was overwarm. My lime green peacoat was as
much armor tonight as it was anything else.
    The subway
pulled into its stop and sat delayed on the tracks while we waited for…who
knows what had stopped us this time.
    I lifted my
gaze from my feet and caught a reflection of a massive Ferris Wheel in the
distorted windows across from me.
    I twisted in
my seat to look outside, out over the trees and rooftops to the train yards,
dilapidated and long out of use.
    Just beyond
I could see the Ferris wheel arc over the houses, as big as the sun and almost
as bright. I leapt out of my seat and out onto the platform before the
mechanical voice came across the speakers announcing they’d be pulling out. I
took off down the stairs to the nearly empty parking lot below and did not
bother stopping to check my el stop or what street I was on before bursting into
an all-out run.
    For being a
little round and thick in all the spots girls weren’t supposed to be round and
thick, I cleared three blocks before I had to slow, adrenaline carrying me most
of the way. As I jogged to a walk to catch my breath, I noticed people staring
from their windows and back porches. It wasn’t every day people got to ogle a
pale white pudgy girl with copper red hair running like she’d stolen something.
    The old
neighborhood ended abruptly, the sidewalk and street lopped off by scraggly
burnt colored grass that extended to the train tracks. Trash littered my path,
and it wasn’t until I was walking along the elevated tracks that I really felt
for the first time that being out here alone was a bad idea. Late afternoon
crept along the edge of the train yard and I knew that I did not want to