It was, in fact, not at a carnival, as her senile Aunt Marge would recount at her funeral reception, but in a rundown shop in a side alley of downtown that Diana’s death was foretold. That day began as any second Sunday which happened to be the 10th of April might have, with the grumble of lawnmowers and screeching sound effects of morning cartoons blaring their way through her bedroom walls as audibly as if they were made of rice paper. She lay for many moments, eyes closed, working up the energy to unkink her neck from its twisted position. Wiping her eyes, she rolled from her fetal hibernation position onto her back, staring up at the shadows that the midmorning sunlight cast across her ceiling through her blinds.
Through the piles of clothing and papers littering her floor she could see the glow of her alarm clock dimly, sitting just beyond her bed. Without getting up, she reached her arm out, leaning off the bed in order to uncover it. Her half awake swipes left her only with handfuls dirty socks, but she refused to move any more than necessary. She reached farther, half her body hanging off the tiny twin bed. She managed to uncover the clock, but she had hardly seen the green numbers shining 11:00 before she lost her balance, tumbling out of bed with a dull thunk.
She groaned through her laughter, attempting to untangle her legs from the twisted sheets.
Her roommate Todd pushed open the cracked door as far as it could go before getting stuck on one of the piles of laundry. He popped his head in, trying to repress a chuckle as he took in the sight of Diana lying on the messy floor.
“Don’t even.” She glared at him, reaching her arm out for him to help her up. “Forgot to set the…ugh…alarm. I’m supposed to meet Alison and Greg in like 20 minutes downtown.”
Todd grimaced. “So not going to happen,” he warned her.
She massaged the back of her neck with her hand, beginning to sift through her closet. “Yeah, I know.” She grabbed the first shirt that her hands ran across, an oversized black Led Zeppelin tee, and wondered for a minute if she even had any clean pants before resigning herself to pulling on yesterday’s jeans. Grabbing her cell phone from where it had fallen under the bed and her red plastic sunglasses from the dresser top, she shoved past Todd and grabbed her keys from the kitchen counter.
“Gross, at least brush your teeth!” he called after her. She rolled her eyes, and he pulled out a slightly squished package of Wintergreen Orbit from his back pocket and tossed it her way. It fell near her ankles, and she hastily scooped it up, tossing a “Thanks!” over her shoulder as she stumbled out the door into the concrete stairwell.
She yanked her dilapidated bike up from where it lay sprawled on the grass outside her apartment building. She didn’t bother to avoid letting her oiled chain brush against her jeans. She ran a few steps down the sidewalk before swinging her leg over the bike with a little hop. Wobbling slightly, she sped downtown. She sighed in relief as she hit every green light between Pike and Main Street.
Her friends were already standing outside the café when she sailed her bike into the bike rack, bracing herself for the collision. She half fell, half stepped off the bike.
“Aren’t you gonna lock that up?” Alison asked as Diana walked up, still catching her breath.
“You kidding me?” she exhaled. “Who’d take the time to steal that thing?”
Greg interjected. “Whatever, I’m starving. Let’s get this show moving.”
Aside from Diana’s inner conflict over sending a mayonnaise drenched sandwich back to the kitchen, lunch was uneventful. But going home for Diana meant sitting around the house with Todd watching Oprah, so she suggested that they wander around downtown for a while.
They were window shopping along Main street when Greg noticed his latest breakup strolling down the street with her new boyfriend—the bassist in a pseudo popular local band. They both wore the same disdainful expression and the same clothing that was clearly not made for a warm spring day—studded jean jackets and skintight dark pants sagging low on their hips. It seemed difficult for them to walk with their hands shoved in each other’s ripped back pockets, but they managed it in a listing, rocking sort of way.
“Gotta quarter?” An ambiguously gendered hobo resting up under the windowsill of the used bookstore asked, reaching a dirty fingernailed hand up towards Alison.
Greg groaned. “I can’t do this right now.” Looking furtively around, he grabbed the girls’ arms. “Oh hey look, um, a fortune teller! You know I always wanted to get my fortune told,” he said hurriedly, pulling them into the alley under the sign for Madame Zorario’s Shoppe of Psychic Readings, which boasted the reading of palms and tea leaves, as well as crystal ball gazing and tarot readings.
“Greg! You’ll have to see her sometime,” Alison warned.
“Are you kidding me? This soon after omelets?” he fired back.
The store was small and cramped, but empty of any other customers. In typical “mystic” fashion, the smell of incense was overbearing on the stuffy summer day. It was exactly what Diana expected it to be: dimly lit, dusty, disorganized. The chimes hanging in the windows jingled as the door shut behind them. The windows hardly lived up to their name, barely letting light in through the layer of dust and what seemed to be decades of grime. The gray dust of the sill was a graveyard of flies.
“Mm, tasty,” Diana said, wrinkling her nose.
They had to squeeze between the display racks of tarot cards and Ouija boards and long sticks of incense in order to reach the back of the store. “10 bucks and she’ll tell your fortune. Where else are you gonna get a deal like that? Want to?” Greg gestured toward the back room, separated from the store by a beaded doorway.
“Yeah, totally!” Alison laughed.
Diana rang the call bell near the cash register. They stood peering through the beaded curtain, trying to catch a glimpse of someone who might work there. It was a few moments before it parted, clanking—pulled aside by a long hand brandishing purple hooks for fingernails.
“Welcome, welcome,” Madame Zorario called in her best “mysterious and all knowing” voice—a breathy drawl with a Caribbean lilt. “You want your fortune told…yes?”
“Okay, okay. But one at a time. And first…” Madame Zorario pointed to the chalkboard of prices pinned to the wall above the register, tapping the green chalk letters spelling “Fortunes $10” with one long nail.
“Who wants to go first?” Alison asked.
The fortune teller cut in. “You child. I can sense your aura.” She beckoned Diana, raising her tattooed eyebrows. Diana didn’t know quite what to respond to that statement, so she merely fished a folded bill out of the back pocket of her jeans, which Madame Zorario promptly plucked from her fingertips.
“Follow Madame Zorario,” she continued, relishing in the opportunity to speak of herself in the third person as she swept through the curtain into her domain—a glorified storage closet hung with dark purple drapes containing a small round table scattered with tarot cards.
“Come, come, sit down and look into my crystal ball,” she beckoned, waving her hands toward the chair across the table from her own throne. As Diana sat down the fortune teller grabbed her hands across the table, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply. (She had been a drama major in college—her grandmother still insisted that her role in Bye Bye Birdie was Broadway worthy. )
“Let us look into your future.”
Diana rolled her eyes. Rubbing a smudge of dirt off the crystal ball, she stared deeply in it. Diana stared too, waiting for a fog machine to start filling the room with smoke or something equally dramatic.
“Hmm…let’s see. I am seeing a butterfly…a golden spoon…”
“Is that a KFC drumstick?!” Diana joked.
“It is possible,” Madame Zorario sighed, closing her eyes. “The spirits will make all clear in a moment.” She paused. “Aha, the orange hedgehog,” she whispered.
“Wow.” The fortune teller accidentally dropped her vocal facade to reveal a pronounced New Jersey accent. She ceased to wave her hands around the crystal ball madly. “I don’t see this too often.” She paused for a moment. Diana expected her to say something like “You’re going to lose your job” or maybe “You won’t be lucky in love.” She was not prepared for what came next.
Madame Zorario began again, in her most fortune-teller-tastic voice. “You will die tomorrow.”
Diana snorted. “Are you kidding me? Ten bucks and that’s all I get?”
“My condolences,” she went on. “But no, my child, it’s all here. I’m sorry, but you cannot escape your destiny. Tomorrow at 6 pm, your time will come.”
“I don’t know! Who do you think I am, the author of your life story? I just read what’s in the ball, okay?”
Diana arched one eyebrow. “Is that it?”
“Unless you wish to spend your last day in a converted janitor’s closet, that is all I can tell you.”
Diana frowned. “Thanks loads.” As she got up from the table, she knocked her chair back accidentally, and it leaned against the wall. She tripped over the legs upended in the air, stumbling out the door and nearly jerking the velvety tablecloth off the table. Madame Zorario lunged across the table to grab the fragile crystal ball before it rolled to the floor.
Madame Zorario had to catch herself from calling out her normal customer send off of “Have a nice day, come again!” She felt it might not be all that well received.
Diana blinked in the brighter light of the shop. Greg and Alison were sifting through the box of various good luck charms and talismans on the front counter. The cardboard box loudly proclaimed “Last Chance $5.” At the sound of Diana crashing through the curtain, they looked up, awaiting their own turns at the crystal ball.
“So, I’m…” she began, still finding her balance. “I think I’m going to, you know, just…get out of here.”
“No way, we waited for you!” Greg whined.
“Yeah, sorry, but…” she stopped. “I’ll talk to you guys later.” She made her way out of the shop, this time avoiding any potential roadblocks. She didn’t really feel like talking at the moment, nor did she feel like waiting around for them to get their own mystical death warrant.
Please. I don’t believe that half cracked mumbo jumbo anyway. I’m not some blithering superstitious idiot. I’m young, I’m healthy, I’m smart—what’s going to happen to me between now and tomorrow to force me to kick the bucket, she wondered. Nothing—that’s what.
Her mind whirled with logical dismissals of the premonition, but none could adequately banish the clenching feeling in her chest, the feeling of rapidly approaching doom. But…what if she’s right? She thought. What if, by some miracle, tomorrow is it? I mean, am I just going to show up to work and spend all of my last day scooping Chocolate Chunky Chip Crunch ice cream for screaming toddlers? Eminent death does make a great sick excuse, right? It’s just a day of cliché life fulfillment; it’s not like I believe in it or anything.
Outside, she plopped down upon the nearest bench, sighing. There wasn’t time to see the world or plan a bank heist, so really she was limited in her epic last day activity choices. She could go visit her parents. Big whoop there. She could hang around her friends all day, but they were pretty boring anyway. Maybe she should hold up a liquor store—just for the adrenaline rush. No, no, she’d have to get creative with that one. And what would she do with the money, buy a sweet coffin? She needed to tie up loose ends; she needed to do what she’d never have the courage to do otherwise; she needed to dig deep into her soul and do something daring.
Two words sprang to mind. Spencer Kloepe. The love of her 14 year old life. Being 14 at the time, he had absolutely no inkling that the weird girl who lived down the street and once threw a baseball at his head had also deemed him her crush to end all crushes, the love of her tiny and insignificant life. He didn’t realize that when their history teacher turned on the powerpoint and started pontificating about the rise of Russian Tsars her wandering mind was fixated almost exclusively on his stuttering and freckled self. She pined after him as only a teenage girl can; she had not been gripped by that kind of obsession anytime before or since. Not only would she drive 3 times around the block on her way home in the hopes of seeing him for a fleeting moment, but she still could remember the exact details of his schedule, from his 3rd period teacher to the water fountain he stopped by between his last two classes to the bathroom he usually used to the fact that on Mondays and Thursdays he would not sit in his normal 3rd table from the southwest corner of the cafeteria lunch location since he would be at a chess club meeting in room B114.
That would be what she would do on her last day: she would proclaim her one time undying love for Spencer Kloepe, Marimonte High school soprano saxophone soloist extraordinaire. She knew he was going to school at the state college a few hours down the road. Not that she was keeping tabs on him or anything—these things were common knowledge!
That night she spent the night watching Saturday Night Live reruns with Todd, who agreed that dying made an excellent reason to call in sick. The next morning she awoke, resolved to make that day an epic, boombox under the window sort of day. Granted, that kind of thing is easier said than done. It’s one thing to talk about living life to the fullest; it’s another thing entirely to try to make eating a bowl of Lucky Charms grandiose.
But by 11 am she was clunking down the road in Todd’s dull brown Honda Accord. It smelled like feet and Mexican food, but she wanted to get there before she keeled over, so she couldn’t very well ride her bike. The air conditioning was broken, so she rolled down all the windows and tried to enjoy the hot wind blowing her hair in front of her face. She was 30 miles down the highway when traffic clogged up the road like oil in a 13 year old’s pore. The stench from the nearby cattle farms was powerful enough to eradicate any of Diana’s thoughts about the car’s smell. She sat in the still July heat, sun baking her left arm as it hung out the window. The radio drifted in and out from what was sometimes an indie rock station and occasionally a Catholic prayer broadcast. Impatient, Diana bumped along the road, alternately flooring it and slamming on the breaks in an unsuccessful attempt to actually get to her destination. As the car behind her honked, she gestured rudely out the window.
“Aren’t we all?” the driver yelled through the prominent gap in his teeth.
She still was only going 3 miles an hour when suddenly the ever reliable Accord gave a half hearted sputter in the left lane and rattled to a silent stop, nearly stopping Diana’s heart with it.
“No! Not now, not this, no!” she smacked her hand against the dash. “Gah!” Letting her head fall against the steering wheel, she accidentally set off the horn. “Now what?” she moaned. As traffic piled up behind her, she threw the car in neutral and leaped out.
“Frick, frick, frick,” she muttered as she strained to push the hunk of metal forward, over to the shoulder. The cars swerved around her, honking as if it were her fault that her car had decided life wasn’t worth living anymore. Eventually, she and the useless hunk of metal formerly known as Todd’s car ended up on the shoulder. Diana bit her lip, frowning at the car. Obviously it wasn’t going anywhere soon. She debated calling a tow truck for a few moments, but the search through each of her jean pockets for her cell phone was a fruitless one. It was lying on her bathroom counter, where she had set it down in her quest for the lip gloss that was now seeming much less important. With a mental shoulder shrug, she consigned herself to abandoning the faithless Accord to the open road. After all, she’d be dead before she had to break the news to Todd.
She trudged down the highway. The shoulder was sloped and dusty, yellow weeds cracking under each heavy step. Her mother’s mantra on the dangers of hitchhiking looped through her thoughts, mocking her with each woosh of a passing air conditioned car. Tiny tendrils of hair blew in the hot breeze, tickling her forehead annoyingly. Sweat trickled down her back as she carefully navigated the uneven ground.
Under the confused glances of passing motorists she walked down the first off-ramp she came to, miles earlier than the one she had intended to zoom down effortlessly in the car, but miles beyond the length of a comfortable afternoon stroll. Her shoulders slumped; so much for an amazing day. There was a bus stop nearby, though it was sketchy even in the light of day. It took 35 minutes of waiting on a pee stained bench before the bus arrived, ready to bear her off towards sanity, though as usual she seemed to be the only normal, non homeless person with full use of all limbs and reasoning capacity on said bus. She stood against the railing on near the backdoor, unwilling to take the last free seat beside the doo-ragged kid glaring up at her with a twisted facial expression.
By the time she arrived at the campus she was no longer focused so much on her declaration of past love as she was on finding somewhere to just sit down for a while. She stepped off the bus, the momentum of coming down the steps carrying her forward. SHe pushed her hair off her forehead with the palm of her hand, looking around her. She’d never been there before. Somehow that hadn’t seemed like an important detail when she was planning her adventure. Her stomach dropped as she realized she had absolutely no clue as to what dorm Spencer lived in, much less how to get there. She wandered aimlessly, trying to look casual, until she found a campus map. She surveyed their 4 dorms: which could he be in? She picked the closest one out of sheer hope. There was no use in giving up now, not after coming the hours she’d invested in getting there.
She slid past the locked doors with a gaggle of girls in paper thin flipflops and tiny shorts. They scanned their ID cards at the security desk, trickling away until Diana was left face to face with a large middle aged man who was clearly on the tail end of his shift.
“Hi.” She started, nervous. “So, I was looking for Spencer Kloepe, and I was wondering, well, I, could you tell me, does he live here?” she spit out, words blurring together.
“Are you a friend of his?” he drawled.
“Uh, yeah.” she answered, unsure whether or not it was a lie.
“Well, you’re just going to have to call him and ask him yerself then, cause I can’t tell ya that.”
“Oh.” she pretended to find something enrapturing about her faded black Converse. “Well then, thanks anyway.” She always felt the need to be polite when she got rejected.
More frustrated than ever, she wandered into the quad, where hundreds of backpack clad students milled about. Perhaps, maybe, if she was lucky, she could see him there. She sat down on one of the benches, scanning the crowds. Unfamiliar faces flowed around her in a blur. The crowd began to thin eventually, and Diana’s head began to pound. She crossed the grassy quad to the coffee cart, briefly perked up by the thought of caffeine. As she collected her change, over the clinking of pennies and nickels she heard a familiar tone from behind her. Her heart skipped a beat. Slowly, nonchalantly, she turned around to come face to face with her former classmate, the one time constant companion of a certain Marimonte High saxophonist.
The blood rushed to her face as she realized the ridiculous nature of her journey, but she forced out her words. “Kyle!”
His eyebrows raised. “Diana? Hey! What are you…”
“So I, well, I was looking for Spencer. It’s sort of a long story, but I need to talk to him. I don’t suppose you know where he lives?” she offered a pleading smile.
Kyle cocked his head to the side. “I do, but, didn’t he tell you? He’s gone home for the week. His grandmother died.”
Diana winced. “Oh.” Unsure of how to continue, she took a hasty sip of her coffee, thoroughly burning her tongue. She scraped her burnt tastebuds against her teeth. “I guess I don’t know what I’m doing here then. Could I borrow your cell phone?”
“Sure.” Kyle passed it over, still puzzled but silent.
Diana called a cab, realizing that her tiny bank account wouldn’t be worth much when she was gone anyway and she might as well use it while she could. They were both relieved when Kyle had to run off to class. No doubt Spencer would be getting an earful about this when he got back. She had never been so happy to see a bright yellow cab pull up to the sidewalk. She climbed in, giving the driver her address before drifting off to sleep twisted up against the armrest. She was dazed when the cab finally dropped her off at her apartment, barely blinking at the price as she handed over her credit card. She stumbled up the stairs. Todd was at work. She scribbled a note of the days events to relieve her of the duty of explaining to him the story of how his car ended up on the highway, leaving it on the counter as a nice little surprise for him when he got home, like the kind of dead rat surprises cats leave for their owners. Diana crawled into bed, jerking the alarm out of the power socket and locking the door.
At 8 am she awoke to the thunking sound of Todd trying to pound a hole through her door. “Where the hell is my car?! You’d better be dead in there!!”
“Well if you hadn’t sent me off with that clunker maybe we wouldn’t have this problem, now would we?” Diana replied from under her blankets. Staring at the ceiling, she realized that she was in fact not dead, despite any predictions of that sort. She felt royally gypped out of her ten dollars, but at least she hadn’t bared her soul or anything dramatic. Except wiping out virtually a good chunk of her starving student’s bank account getting home. She glanced at her watch. She had enough time to make it to her German class if she didn’t shower, and now that she was apparently not going to die perhaps German would one day come in handy. She dressed and made it out the door with toast in hand a few minutes later. As she unchained her bike, she suppressed the guilty feeling in the bottom of her stomach she felt thinking about the Accord. She shoved the remainder of the toast in her mouth and swung her leg over the seat.
Diana rode her bike across town, getting stopped at nearly every stoplight. Her mind was occupied in thoughts of $400 tow truck bills and car repairs and lost opportunities. The minutes raced by, counting down to 9 am. She would be late, yet again—it was just one of those days, she guessed.
She wasn’t the only one thinking such thoughts. George drove the blue route of the city’s bus system most mornings. It was his first day on his new route, the orange line, and already it was going downhill. Exactly 1 month before that day, his wife decided he was no longer worth her effort and ran off with the tiny man who ran the dry cleaners down the street. To top it off, this morning he had tripped over his cat will trying to see himself better in the bathroom mirror, adding the humiliating pain sitting on a bruised tailbone to his list of complaints. He hadn’t even had time to get his coffee this morning. All in all, it was shaping up to be a pretty awful day all ready—so who could blame him for driving a little faster than normal? That gas pedal was his anger outlet, and there was a lot of anger to get out that morning.
In the midst of this, George noticed a scuffle erupting in the back of the bus. He glanced at the rear view mirror, watching two scruffy homeless men argue back and forth. One of them was hanging his hand out the window so that the wind could blow across his oozing sore, but he used his free hand to swat at the other, a toothless man sitting in the seat in front of him. “Hey!” George yelled back at them, to no effect. Annoyed, he ceased for a few moments to pay attention to traffic.
As the white signal turned, Diana walked her bike out into the street, looking down at the garage sale flayers which were blowing across the street. You would think after an entire childhood of being reminded to look both ways she would have worked on that whole peripheral vision thing. Alas, the bus rushed onward without her taking any notice, looking like a monster with its giant headlights, until it was nearly upon her. Finally she turned her head, registering the oncoming bus barreling forward towards her. Her life didn’t flash before her eyes—that would have been a waste of seconds. Now if she had gone to church instead of haring off on an adventure yesterday, she thought, she would be in a better position. Instead, an expletive tumbled out of her mouth, and she thought with slight satisfaction that at least the fortune teller had been wrong too.
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