Today will pass in an overwhelming blur. Give yourself time to breathe.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Cherise practically skids into the booth. She’s out of breath. “I ran the whole way here.” Looking around, she asks, “Where’s Tyler? Didn’t he come to tell you I was late? I’m going to kill him.…”
“Cherise,” I interrupt, “Tyler just left. I’m surprised you didn’t pass him on the street.”
“Oh,” Cherise says with a giggle. She pokes at the bread on her sandwich. “Thanks for ordering for me, but I’m stuffed. Couldn’t eat another bite.” Cherise, talking a million miles per second, explains that she was waylaid at the Feldmans’ by Nathan’s mother shoving an empty plate into her unsuspecting hands. Sunday is family brunch day at the Feldmans’.
“It’s no big deal,” I respond. “Tyler paid. I’ll take the sandwich home.” If Cherise isn’t going to eat it, my father will.
“You should have seen it, Sylvie.” Cherise pushes the plate with the cheese sandwich to the edge of the table. That’s our signal for Dotty to wrap it up to go. “There were twenty people crammed into a tiny living room. Grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. All related to Nathan. I swear there was enough food for a small nation. They even had fresh-squeezed orange juice,” Cherise tells me with complete awe.
Cherise’s family events consist of four people: her parents, her brother, and her. She has an aunt in Florida somewhere, but no one talks about her. I think she might be in rehab.
My family is two people: my father and me. My grandparents are all deceased. Both my parents were only children. In my house, it’s a family reunion whenever we’re both home.
I briefly wonder what it would be like at the Feldmans’ on a Sunday morning. Chaotic, I bet. A bit of a pain, too. Maybe annoying, irritating, and embarrassing, depending on what they talk about. I feel a pang of jealousy and sorrow that I’ll never know that kind of chaos and embarrassment. Maybe, if I ever get married, I’ll have five kids to build up the Townsend family tree.
But first I need a date to the prom. I start to tell Cherise about how the stars have failed her, when she interrupts. Clearly she isn’t ready to focus on me yet. Her head is still at the Feldmans’.
“Did you know Nathan’s involved in a Jewish social action group that’s working to end the genocide in Darfur?”
“Did Nathan tell you this?” I ask, struggling to recall if I’ve ever heard Nathan’s voice. All I can remember are muttered phrases, not actual words.
“Of course not! Nathan didn’t say anything,” she says, laughing. “His mom told me about it. Nathan goes to meetings twice a week after school at their temple. They write letters, send informative mailings, work with the press, and contact politicians.” She’s completely jazzed about Nathan’s life. I’m waiting, somewhat impatiently, for a break in her word flow, to tell her about mine.
“The best part is, the group was given permission to send one person to New York for the summer to work at the United Nations and lobby the Human Rights Council.” Cherise’s hands are fluttering, she’s so excited about her story. “Nathan was selected,” she says, voice rising. “Unanimously!”
Clearly, Nathan must be able to talk, and eloquently, too, when Cherise isn’t around.
I was right about that whole family thing. Imagine Nathan’s embarrassment as his mother brags on and on about his success to the one girl Nathan wishes he could speak with but can’t seem to. It’s heartwarming and humiliating at the same time.
I smile at the thought. I can’t wait to someday torture my own children in a similar fashion!
“Nathan’s going to make a difference in the world,” Cherise says firmly. “I can feel it in my bones.” Cherise punctuates her prophecy by pulling the straw out of her Coke and taking a long sip from the side of the glass.
This is my opening. Not only is her mouth busy doing something else, but she has just made a prediction, using bones instead of stars, but a prediction nonetheless.
“Cherise,” I say. “Can we back up one prediction?”
“What?” she asks, then grins as she gets it. “Oh yeah. I must have had carb overload on the bagels! I totally forgot to ask how your date went last night! Did he ask you to the dance?”
“The date was fine,” I say realistically. “But Adam asked me to a party, not the prom.”
“Very interesting.” Cherise downs the rest of her Coke, then calls for Marco, the busboy, politely asking him to remove our dirty dishes. Once the table is clear, Cherise reaches in her bag and … surprise (not!) … pulls out my astrological chart.
Since she returned the pointer to Nathan, Cherise is using her finger to indicate areas on the pizza drawing. “Here’s Jupiter,” she says, half to me, half to herself. “And my math is obviously accurate.”
“Obviously,” I echo.
She clicks her tongue as she considers what went awry.
“This indicates your love interest.” She nods and points at one section of her chart. “And here’s his question. Well.” She looks up at me. “I suppose the question could have been about the party and not the dance.”
“You said it was an important question.” I’m cautiously trying to point out that for the first time, she might be wrong.
Cherise isn’t biting.
“Well,” she says, “he did ask you a question and it was in a familiar place.” She waves her arms around the café, indicating not only the restaurant but also the booth. “So I wasn’t that far off.”
“But Cherise, the party’s at Gavin Masterson’s house,” I say with a sigh. “Look, I’ve upheld my part of the deal. I agreed to go out with Adam last night and I’m game on giving the relationship a chance, just like I promised I would, but do I really have to go to Gavin’s with him?” I drop my shoulders. “Let’s pretend for a second that I believed in true love. I can’t actually believe that my soul mate would take me to Gavin Masterson’s.”
Cherise thinks about this for a minute. “I think it makes sense that he asked you to Gavin’s.” She takes a long look at my chart before asking, “When’s Adam’s birthday?”
Strangely, I know. When he was escorting me to photography class on Thursday, he mentioned that he turned eighteen on Valentine’s Day. Cherise is going to love that, isn’t she?
I quickly mumble February 14th, hoping she doesn’t make the holiday connection. But she does, of course.
“Valentine’s Day!” she exclaims. “What an amazing coincidence! He’s an Aquarius and Aquarius is in your Fifth House.”
Cherise asks me for a pen. I wish I didn’t have one, but I do. I always do. In times like these, it can be a real nuisance to be as highly organized as I am.
Cherise jots down some notes on a napkin. She descends into silent thought for a few more minutes, then says, “I believe that the reason he asked you to Gavin’s party instead of the Spring Fling Prom is on account of synastry.”
“Is that a real word?” I ask with a half-snicker. “I had a perfect score on my SAT verbal and I’ve never heard of synastry.”
“Look it up, brainiac.” She smiles. “Synastry is the comparison of two people’s solar charts.”
Oh, please. Why can’t Cherise finally admit that astrology’s bunk and let us move on? I won’t rub it in. I swear. I’d just let the whole thing drop. I’d even continue to go out with Adam because he’s a good guy. If he asked me to the prom, great. If not, maybe I’d ask him.
“Hang on,” Cherise cuts into her synastry lesson. “Don’t you dare even consider asking Adam to the dance yourself.”
“What? Do you have ESP now, too? How’d you know what I was thinking?”
“I don’t.” She squints at me. “I know you, Sylvie.”
Well that explains it, I suppose. Tyler suggested that I don’t know me, so I’m glad someone does.
“You can’t ask Adam to the dance. It says right here that he has to ask you.” Cherise points at my astrological chart. “The stars are unfolding your destiny.”
I shake my head. “If the stars say I can’t ask Adam myself, then the stars are antifeminist.” Cherise, of all people, should get a rise out of the antifeminist line. As an astronomer, I know the stars honestly don’t prefer one gender over another. The stars don’t have favorites! Even making the statement of possibility aloud sounds insane.
“The stars adore women,” Cherise tells me adamantly. “Synastry allows us to see the impact men have on the female energy flow.”
Is that English? It sounds like English. The words are familiar, but I don’t really understand what Cherise is saying.
“Hmm.” Cherise makes a low humming noise as she considers the notes she’s written on her napkin. “Hmm,” she repeats. Then suddenly, without further discussion, Cherise folds up my chart and tucks it into her purse. She hands me my pen before reaching up to take off her necklace.
A strand of turquoise beads loops low around a second strand of clear crystals. In the center of the clear crystal chain, a large hunk of unpolished turquoise hangs from a silver filigree loop. The necklace is beautiful, and must be new, since I’ve never seen it before. I’m about to ask if it was designed by desolate pygmies in Guyana, when Cherise takes off the necklace and hands it to me.
“You need this more than I do.” She tells me to put it on. I protest, but quickly lose the argument. Admitting defeat, I slip the necklace around my neck, feeling its cool weight fall against my breastbone.
“Turquoise,” she explains, “is the stone of clarity. When you wear this necklace, your feelings about Adam will rise to the surface.” Cherise goes on, “Remember when I told you that the stars only set things in motion, they don’t determine action? I think that the reason Adam didn’t ask you to the prom is because he wasn’t sure you’d say yes.”
“I’ll go with him,” I tell Cherise. I mean she already committed me to making Jennifer’s and Tanisha’s costumes. No use in wasting a good Cinderella dress.
Okay, the real reason has less to do with the dresses and more with the truth that I kinda want to go with Adam. I like him. A lot. There! I admitted it. Boy, that turquoise sure works fast! (Ha, ha, ha.)
“So why can’t I simply ask him myself?” I inquire, rubbing the turquoise beads between my fingers. The stones have warmed substantially in the few minutes I’ve been wearing them. “If I make the first move, Adam would know, with no uncertainty, I want to go.”
“Don’t! By the mere act of asking, you will throw off the balance of the whole universe.” There’s a wild glint in Cherise’s eye. A warning. She seems nervous that I might really go out there and sabotage the whole universe on purpose, just for a prom date. I snort as I consider the awesome power and responsibility that I have in maintaining the flow of nature.
“All right,” I reluctantly agree. “I’ll wait for him to ask me to the prom.” Then, as a jab at her initial mistake, I question, “Do you have a new idea of exactly when that might happen?”
“I’ll check the Mercury table when I get home and get back to you,” she says confidently, not even acknowledging my sarcasm.
It’s time to go. We use Tyler’s money to pay the bill and after stuffing my father’s takeout into my purse, I maneuver my crutches out of the café. I’m headed over to the tuxedo shop.
Jennifer and Tanisha should be back in town by now and are supposed to meet me at the shop at two. In an afternoon replete with strangeness, I’ll admit one more oddity: I’m actually excited to see the fabrics Jennifer and Tanisha chose. I can’t wait to start sewing.