Water stood high in the streets.
Aunt Odie drove faster than a bat outta hell. Whatever Paulie had told her had scared her good.
Scared me, too, though I had no idea what I was afraid of. A fist beat at the inside of my throat.
Seeing the whole town of soothsayers, palm readers, and fortune-tellers is only a mile long, we were out of Cassadaga in less than forty seconds. Water sprayed from each side of the car like waves.
“Hope you don’t get us trapped here,” I said. “Hope you don’t stall out the motor.” The trees reached for the car. “This is one scary place. Especially when it’s storming.” I wanted to ask my own what? Say my own Tell me. But I didn’t. Instead I just warned her.
But Aunt Odie didn’t slow down.
“You could stall out the motor. You could hydroplane.”
There was a dead armadillo looking a lot like a half-inflated soccer ball floating on our side of the road.
Not a word.
Palm fronds edged closer to the asphalt.
At long last I sat back in my seat after mentioning every possible car problem—none of which Aunt Odie took to heart, and that made it seem maybe I didn’t have the gift of seeing car misfortunes—and held on for dear life.
“Not so sure”—Aunt Odie mumbled under her breath and gripped the steering wheel with one hand—“I have given you the best birthday present after all.”
Those words scared me even more.
She’s been waiting to give me this gift for 364 days. Since the day after I turned fourteen. (She got me three biddies last year. They lay eggs now that they’re grown, pale-pink eggs, every day for the last six months. They follow me around the yard when I go out back of my aunt’s house, where they have a miniature home that looks like Aunt Odie’s, including a long, screened-in porch area. We stir up the Aunt Carolina mixes with those eggs. And plain fry them too. I love all three of my chickens, though I must admit Nina is my favorite, with Santa Maria and Pinta both coming in a close second. Of course, I would never tell any of them how I feel.)
“Now what? Now what?”
“Now what what?” I said.
Then I knew. I saw it on her face.
“It was the storm,” I said. My words came out a whisper filled with gravel. “Wasn’t it? The storm had something to do with my birthday.”
Aunt Odie took in a breath.
“I never did tell you about my old auntie Doris, did I?”
I swallowed. Shook my head.
“Didn’t think so.” Aunt Odie took in another deep breath. “Sure wish I knew how to do the sign of the cross, but we Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t do that.”
Jehovah’s Witnesses also don’t celebrate birthdays, either, but I said nothing.
“Well?” I said after a couple of miles.
Aunt Odie looked over at me with one eye. “Well what?”
“You gonna tell me about her?”
“Who?”
“Auntie Doris?” Ahead of us the sky was as bright as a jewel. All the clouds, dark as a witch, traveled toward the gulf.
Aunt Odie sort of crossed herself in an odd diamond shape, adding in a few extra swipes at her chest. “To be safe,” she said.
Then she looked at me with both eyeballs.
“Not till tonight.”
“Of course.”
Aunt Odie pulled over on the side of the road, right close to a ditch where water ran fast toward the ocean.
“I am gonna tell you something, though.”
She shut the engine off.
“All right.”
“It is high time I told you,” Aunt Odie said, “what my Gift is.”