The One That I Want Read Online Free

there was something special about you, Tilly Everett.” She reaches for a set of matches on the corner of the table and lights the tea candles.
    Farmer
, I want to correct her.
It’s Tilly Farmer now. Tyler and I got married and we’re having a baby, and that’s all I need in the word to make me happy!
    “Tell me the most important thing about yourself, something that I wouldn’t know, something that maybe no one knows,” she says, her tone guttural, ghostly almost, a shell of what it was before.
    “I don’t have any secrets,” I say without hesitation. “I said it before—I love my life. There’s nothing to hide.”
    “Everyone has something to hide,” she says, meeting my eyes roundly.
    “Well, I don’t. I’m happy. That’s all that matters,” I reply, half-wishing I’d never agreed to this in the first place.
Yes, why did you agree to this in the first place?
    She grunts in response, indicating absolutely nothing, and sprinkles the charcoal-like powder into my hands, tugging my arms closer, nearly pulling the elbows straight from the sockets and ignoring my protests of discomfort. She presses the vegetable root into my palms, inhaling and exhaling sharply. The scent of the incense mixes with her stale breath and the charred aroma from the powder, and I’m overcome with pulsing nausea, which windsits way up from the core of my stomach, and I swallow hard, certain I’m going to vomit. But then, just as I’m on the cusp of heaving, she pulls the root off my hands and dips the tips of my fingers in the bowl of cool water, and the sensation passes.
    “Oh!” she says again, her voice a mix of alarm and euphoria, her eyes fiery as she stares, bearing down, boring into me.
    “What?
Oh
, what?” I say, matching her panic because all at once, this seems a little too real, a little more creepy than I bargained for. I can feel the baby hairs on my arms prickling, at full attention. “Did you see my future?”
    Don’t be ridiculous, Tilly!
I think.
No one can actually see the future
. Blood rushes to my cheeks, a visual confession of embarrassment at the stupidity of my question.
    “It doesn’t work like that, Tilly.” She smiles, though it’s all teeth, the affection gone.
    “What do you mean? You said you could tell my fortune. So what is it?”
Leave! Just get up and leave. Ashley Simmons is a train wreck who can derail anyone who gets in her track
.
    “Sometimes I can see something, other times, something else presents itself,” she says, as if this is an answer to anything. “You might not understand.”
    “I don’t,” I say. “Honestly, Ashley, is this some sort of karmic payback because we weren’t friends in high school or something?” I stand to leave.
    “Sit down,” she commands. “I’m not done. And not everything is about high school, Tilly.”
    Her bark surprises me, and my knees buckle into the seat.
    “Close your eyes,” she says. I hear her scurry behind me and then feel her rubbing that root of God-knows-what over my temples, then into the base of my neck, where my blood palpably beats. Her hands form a web over my scalp, and her fingers press,like staples, into tiny points along my forehead. I hear a vertebra pop in my spine, and my equilibrium is disrupted, and even behind the veil of darkness in my eyes, I feel myself spinning, being pulled down by gravity to the straw-covered makeshift floor.
    But then she whips her hands off of me, and my vertigo is gone, whisked away, and when I open my eyes, the tent around me looks different, brighter, clearer in a way that I can’t define at all.
    “Now
, we’re done,” she says through a heavy, broken breath. Sweat stains splatter across the collar of her shirt. “I won’t charge you. Consider this a gift.”
    “A gift of what?” I ask. “You haven’t told me anything.”
    “A gift of clarity, Tilly. It’s what I always thought you needed.”
    “I don’t get this at all,” I say, rising to go, my legs unsteady