Josie had tried to unsubscribe from the emails, but they just kept coming. She didn’t even know when she had signed up for the newsletter, to be honest. It must have been during her first breakup, the one with the woman who now lived on an artists’ compound in Texas, along with two girlfriends and a dog. Josie’s dog, to be clear. Josie had looked up pictures of the compound once.
“It looks like a fucking cult!” she had cried to her best friend, Kim, on the phone as she sat on her bed, cradling a large bowl of spaghetti. She didn’t even care that she was wearing outside clothes on the bed right now. No one would ever sleep in bed with her or see her ever again anyway. “A fucking cult!”
“What do you mean?” Kim said. “I think you may be overthinking things a bit.”
“No, there’s like, so many trees. And people smiling really big and looking disheveled and stuff. Oh my God, I bet she’s dating the cult leader. The one with the ugly, beady eyes is definitely the leader. I’m sending you a pic.”
“Okay.” There was a small pause as Kim looked at her phone. “Yeah. Wow. Could be.”
“And the other one! The one with the huge tits. I can’t even think about it. Is that why she left? Because my tits weren’t big enough? Even though they’re already pretty big?”
“No. It wasn’t the tits. Also, she wasn’t really nice to you anyway. You were always complaining about her. How she didn’t really talk to you, or told you you weren’t dating for the first nine months of your relationship. Also, when she said it was your fault for being upset when she started dating someone and didn’t tell you. While you were still together, by the way. Do you remember any of that?”
“I loved her,” Josie sobbed. “Looooooved herrrrrrr.”
“And I’m saying you’re better off. Also, please take a shower. Eric told me you said you hadn’t showered in two weeks.”
“Eric told you that?”
“Yes. Also, sorry, Mae is home so I have to go now. I’ll text you later. Love you.”
“Okay. Okay. I love you too.”
“Please bathe.”
Then the phone had gone silent, and Josie had gone silent for three months after that, avoiding Kim, Mae, Eric, her parents, her landlord, the delivery man, her boss at the photo retouching studio. She almost lost her job for that last one. Or did lose it. But she made her way back into her boss’s good graces by not sleeping for two weeks to take on more projects, her eyes shot from staring at a screen for hours on end—fixing blemishes, restructuring cheekbones, lengthening and shortening chins, smoothing out the crinkly lines underneath eyes so that these people could go onto covers of magazines and albums and billboards. When she was finally able to sleep again after those two weeks were over, she had passed out for forty-eight hours, her dreams rotating images of body parts being rearranged to form perfect bodies, perfect people.
When she got home after work, though, that was when things could get bad.
She had a lot of tarot decks. Around fifty or so. Maybe even more. At first it had been innocent—just something that she liked to collect. She had always loved how different artists drew the cards, their personal interpretations of Strength or Temperance or The Tower, loved that the cards would give you advice that you most likely already knew and could use for personal betterment. Friends gifted them to her on birthdays or even just as a “thinking of you” sort of gift, and if she was wandering through a thrift shop or used bookstore, she would quickly rummage through the spirituality section in search of a deck she didn’t own.
But she would never let something like what happened with The Ex happen again. Next time, she would be able to anticipate something horrible like this happening, right? And if she could see something coming in the future that she didn’t like, she could change it. Easy. Every decision was one the cards could answer. To get Cheerios or not get Cheerios? To wear this sweater or that one? Should she bring an umbrella to work in case it rained? Would this date be a good or a bad one? Should she go with the nicer mattress that would last around ten years or the cheaper one that would last around three? Should she go outside or not? Any wrong decision could lead to something bad happening, which is why this practice sometimes took up whole nights, Josie staying awake from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., flipping, shuffling, trying different spreads—Celtic Crosses; Past, Present, Future; The Year-Long Tree. Ten of Swords. Two of Swords reversed. Ten of Cups. Six of Wands reversed. Five of Swords reversed. Each of them compelling her to keep asking, to not stop until she had arrived at a firm answer. One that she wanted to hear.
It got to a point where she was even reading during dinners, at parties, shuffling through things underneath tables or excusing herself to go into the bathroom. Josie could tell that everyone was worried about her, but she just couldn’t stop herself. And it wasn’t like she wasn’t ashamed of it either. If she wasn’t, why would she go to the bathroom?
Finally Kim had intervened.
“I’m coming over.”
“Right now?”
“Yes,” Kim said, and hung up the phone.
After that Kim had taken all the decks, all the runes, the crystals and books and everything, and loaded them into her trunk while Josie cried and tried to grab at things. Kim just kept shaking her off as she shoved the Aleister Crowley deck, the Druid Animal Oracle deck, the Romance Angel deck (the last of the haul) into a trash bag.
“I’ll keep them somewhere. I won’t throw them away. Okay?”
“Okay. Okay. Thank you, Kim. I love you so much.”
Kim didn’t say anything. Then she brought Josie’s form toward her and put her forehead to Josie’s for a short minute. It was very warm.
They stood in the driveway, breathing. Then Kim moved away, giving Josie’s hand one last squeeze before driving away.
That moment had given her the strength to call a therapist, who helped her work through control issues, letting go, blah blah blah. Every time she wanted to read she would write down her worries, a list starting with the very worst thing that could happen and ending with the least catastrophic option. That way she could see if she was being realistic or not.
“Just remember that your mind can lie to you sometimes,” Tina would say, as Josie picked at the raw skin on her thumb with her teeth or looked at the floor after revealing something embarrassing or sad about her life. “You don’t have to believe everything that it says.”
She didn’t see Tina as often anymore—maybe once or twice a month. Because now Josie could say she was functioning. If nothing else, she was functioning. She had her apartment that she shared with the roommate whom she wasn’t really close with but had known in college, and from whose room she could hear sounds of a controller being mashed late into the night. Sometimes they would see each other in the mornings and ask polite questions about each other’s lives before they headed off to work.
She had her neurotic, lanky cat, Terry, whom she loved. She had Kim and Eric and some of their other friends, whom she also loved. Sometimes on her days off, she would walk to the café down the street to order a slice of coconut cake as a treat, eating it by herself as she read through books or flipped through her phone or journaled things like “Today I feel a little bad,” or “I passed by a stream today. Azalea bushes growing by it. Very beautiful. I want a better dildo,” before going back home.
So yeah, it had all been very dramatic and tiring, for Kim especially. It had taken a lot of work to get this far, to being a semi-stable person with a job and a cat and friends.
But now there were the emails.
The sender was Divine Tarot Guidance. All the subject lines were different iterations of the same thing, more or less.
Don’t underestimate this person.
Josie, your true love is waiting for you.
Been thinking about that person from your past again? They’re thinking about you too . . .
Who is this new moon bringing toward you?
And when you opened an email, there was a small, glittering wheel you could spin to get a look into what might happen. After that, you had to pay two dollars to get the full reading.
There it was. That itch. Why not, for old times’ sake? Tina had even told her it wasn’t something that would just disappear overnight, right? It’s a constant process, she had said in her calm, measured voice as they sat in her office, Josie crossing and uncrossing her leg on the green velvet couch, Tina passing her some eucalyptus lotion to calm her nerves. It’s hard, but I know you can do it.
So this meant that it was okay. Just this once.
Josie didn’t have a specific question in mind, but she held her breath and pressed the wheel.
It spun for about ten seconds before slowing to a stop.
CLICK TO SEE! appeared in blue cursive, an arrow pointing toward one blurred-out part of the wheel.
And so she clicked.
The wheel spun and spun, a whir of pink as Josie held her breath. The arrow slowed until it landed on a card. HERE’S WHAT THE STARS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT YOU. She turned it over, trying not to think.
Six of Cups. On the card was a scene of two children dancing in front of an idyllic garden, a brown fence decorated with weaving white flowers. One of the children was passing a cup to the other, who reached for it with trusting, chubby hands.
Of course Josie knew the meaning of it instantly. Memories, revisiting the past. Something returning. Most people thought of it as being a sweet card, a good card, but Josie had never had a good experience with any of the cards people thought of as good. And this one terrified her. Who was coming back? What did they want from her?
She hit unsubscribe again and waited until she got to the confirmation screen before she slammed her computer shut, trying to take deep breaths and failing as she paced around her apartment. She tried not to think about any people from the past or any people in the future at all. She wanted to never see anyone again, in fact. Okay, this wasn’t true, this wasn’t true . . . Tina had told her to not do this. The self-isolating.
She picked up her phone and called Kim.
“Hey, what’s up,” Kim said. She sounded high, her voice deep and apathetic. But then again, that was always Kim’s voice, and Kim was usually high.
“Hey. Um. The stuff is happening again.”
“What stuff? Did you get a yeast infection again?”
“No, Kim. I take those boric acid supplements you gave me after my period now.”
“Oh, okay. Well, then, what is it?”
“It’s actually serious okay it’s like I’m seriously freaking out can you at least pretend that you care.” Josie spat it out without breathing. She could feel the anxiety screaming inside of her, trying to claw its way out of her throat.
“You don’t have to be mean about it. I was just asking.” Kim didn’t sound high anymore. She sounded hurt.
“Oh. Kim, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Kimmy.”
“You know I don’t like—okay, whatever.”
There was a brief, hesitant pause. Josie could hear The Sopranos, Kim’s favorite show, in the background.
“Sometimes . . . sometimes I wonder if you just don’t care about me anymore, and it’s just nice to have me around, or something.”
“No, Kim, I really do love you. I really do. I know I haven’t been talking to you as much recently, but it’s just because I’ve been really busy and stressed. You have been and always will be my best friend. I mean it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
There was a brief pause. Suddenly they were eighteen again, at art school, and Josie was forcing her fingers down Kim’s throat to make her throw up all the pills she had swallowed after her dad had died, Kim saying Why won’t you just let me fucking die, why doesn’t anyone just let me fucking die, and Josie had sat there with the wet puke on her fingers until their friend Eric had come running into the painting studio where they were sitting on the tile with a jar of activated charcoal. I have never seen Kim like that, Eric said later on, after Josie had put Kim in bed at their house and as the two of them smoked cigarettes on the porch. Weak, I mean.
“Thanks,” Kim said. “So are you.”
“Of course.”
“So what is it?” Kim asked. In the background, Tony Soprano was saying, They think you’re weak. They see an opportunity, to his therapist. The scene following this one featured Tony fucking up one of his crew members on “Bada Bing.” She had watched this episode with Kim before—a lot. What would Tony do in this situation? Kim was usually the one who got in fights, but should Josie also beat someone up?
“There’s been emails,” Josie said ominously.
“O . . . kay . . .” Kim said. “That’s normal, yeah? Just put them in your spam folder.”
“No, but it’s weird. I keep unsubscribing and putting them in spam and all of that and they won’t stop.”
“Okay. Well, then try to call HQ or something on the website, if you can find it.”
“Oh, duh. I’m so stupid. Thanks. Do you want to get Sichuan this week?”
“Yeah, I’m down. Also, wait, what are the emails?”
“It’s, like, you know.”
“Josie,” Kim started to say, before Josie interrupted her.
“Okay! I’m gonna go take care of it, so I’ll text you later. And we’ll go to HuPo. Bye,” Josie said, and pressed the end button as if her phone were on fire.
There was no number to get to HQ. Well, there was, but she couldn’t get through to a real person. When Josie tried calling, the automated message on the other side of the line said, “Thank you for calling Divine Tarot Guidance. We’re currently busy assisting other light-seekers at this moment. Want to know if this connection is worth it? Then stay on the line and someone will be with you shortly.”
“No!” Josie shouted. Oh my God, she was going crazy. She was yelling at the automated voice on the other end of the line. She needed to do something to calm down. Her cat wasn’t doing anything. It sat licking droplets of water out of the kitchen sink. Her fern was dying again—it was past the point of salvaging, its brown limbs reminding her of just how embarrassing it all was. How much of a failure her life had become.
I’ll prove it wrong, she thought to herself, grabbing a cup of water and filling it up. I’m in control of my life, just like Tina said. She splashed water onto the fern. It looked at her like it didn’t care. She was the one who had killed it, after all.
It was too sad to keep staring at it, so instead she tried to make some lunch. Inside her fridge was a pack of Velveeta cheese, a bag of wrinkled grapes, a half-eaten Pop-Tart, and kefir. Maybe she could make some rice and put the cheese on top of that.
Closing the fridge again, she looked at the pictures held on by magnets. There was one of her and Kim from grad school, their faces thin and pale from hours spent in the photo labs or studios. Another was of her and her mother on the Golden Gate Bridge, Josie leaning into her mom’s stomach as they held each other close.
She didn’t know why she kept that second one there. All it did was make her feel sad. Her mom’s smiling face, her long, curly hair; the orange blush she always wore. The way her skin looked, so soft and clear and sweet, before the heroin and the meth.
But on the other hand, if she looked at the picture, she could sometimes feel happy. She could forget about the time when she was eighteen and walked in on her mom fucking someone that wasn’t Dad, and her mom saying, “Close the door, Josie. Please close the door, I’m sorry,” in a voice that wasn’t hers, and for a second she looked into her mom’s eyes and she saw a glimpse of the person who used to be there.
Maybe I should give Mom a call, she thought as she pulled out the rice from the pantry and washed it, feeling the cool water rush over her hands as she scrubbed the rice clean. She could put some money in her mom’s commissary, but Josie knew that the more she thought about doing it, the more she would be scared to do so, because she didn’t want to hear her mom’s voice on the other end of the line telling her how much she missed her, and asking her about her life, and saying how she wished Josie would come visit more often because while she had the letters and the pictures, she sometimes forgot what Josie looked like, and that terrified her. Most of all, Josie didn’t want to call one day and hear that inmate #2194 had died.
She put the rice in the pot and covered it. Why hadn’t the cards told her that her life would become this? Maybe if she had gotten into tarot sooner, all this could have been avoided. She could have stopped her mom from hanging out with the guy she knew from her job working in Home Depot’s floral department, and she wouldn’t have started using, and then her dad wouldn’t have beat the shit out of her mom when he found out what had happened, and then . . . she didn’t want to talk about what had happened that got her mom locked up, not really. She didn’t feel like sharing that right now, okay?
Her phone rang and she jumped. It wasn’t a number she knew, but she decided to pick up anyway. Josie coughed before doing so, because Eric had told her once that if you coughed and said hello in a voice that wasn’t yours, then you would know if it was a phishing scam because no one would say anything back.
“Hello,” she said, in a voice she imagined was dark/deep/threatening.
“Josie?” said the voice on the other end. “Is that you?”
And suddenly Josie felt very dizzy. She saw the rice boiling over and she slammed her hip against the counter to turn the knob. Her cat wasn’t drinking from the sink anymore. She was all alone.
“Josie? I . . . I know it’s been a while. But it was just . . . I wanted to see if maybe we could catch up.”
Josie didn’t say anything, but she didn’t hang up either.
The person was silent for a second.
“All I mean is that four years is a long time. And if you can forgive me . . . I just want to be friends again. I’ll always forgive you, okay? It’ll always be okay.”
“I have to go,” Josie said suddenly. “I have to go right now.”
“No, no Josie, please,” they said, sobbing. “Please just talk for two minutes, that’s all I ask.”
“I loved you so much and I still love you so much and because of that I fucking hate you and wish you were dead so stop just stop don’t ever call.” Josie was screaming, she realized, screaming so loudly that she couldn’t hear herself even though the words were coming out. She could still hear the other person crying when she hung up.
It must have been fifteen minutes that Josie stood there unmoving after the ex had hung up. She left the rice in the rice cooker. She walked to her bedroom and sat on her bed. Her roommate was still awake, playing games. Maybe this could be the time to ask for a friend, but on second thought, she knew it wasn’t possible.
The Six of Cups. The Six of Cups had cursed her. If she hadn’t started reading again, then this wouldn’t have happened and everything could have been avoided. The memories wouldn’t have come back.
After Josie lay in bed for a while, she got up and walked to her car. She hadn’t bothered changing out of her biking shorts or her dad’s old T-shirt that she had been wearing for the past three days now. The sun felt so hot on her hair. Her lips were chapped. It was all so tiring. Still, she managed to pull the door of her piece-of-shit Honda open and back out of the gravel driveway. She went to the bookstore she used to work at two years ago, the place she had bought her first pack of tarot cards from. The owner, Petra, was one of the kindest people she had ever met—one summer, when the fig trees in the backyard bore fruit, Petra had made tarts for Josie to take home. For you and Kimmy, Petra had said, patting her hand, because she knew that this week was her mom’s birthday, and that Josie had gone to see her the day before and called out of work crying because she wasn’t able to handle it. They had been delicious, those tarts, and she loved Petra for making them for her.
The bookstore was a bright blue building that had originally been a house, and its sign hung a little sideways. A small wheelbarrow with hens on the outside of it stood in the front yard. As she walked up the steps, Josie thought again about how this was a mistake. This was most definitely a mistake, but this was just something she had to do. There would always be relapses. That’s what Tina had said, after all, right? And if it was her first relapse in a year, then, well, it was okay.
The wind chimes rang as she opened the door. The store smelled of clove and cinnamon, and for a moment she stood there, thinking about the person she had been when she was still working there. And was she even any different now? Maybe nothing at all had changed.
Petra was restocking cards. “Hi, hi, just a second,” she said, pulling back her gray hair into a ponytail. Then she looked back and clapped her hands together.
“Oh, Josie! It’s Josie!” Petra exclaimed, putting the cards on the floor before running up to hug her. Her hair smelled like chamomile. “Oh, Josie. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. How are you doing these days?” Behind the counter, Josie saw books that a customer had dropped off: Ferrante, Allende, Bolaño. The name taped to the bag said Sally, a regular who often called in to order Christian CDs and Biblical storybooks. She wondered if Sally ever asked about her.
“I’m doing fine. I missed you, Petra. I . . . I was wondering, um, if anyone had dropped off any tarot cards recently. Maybe a deck we hadn’t seen before.”
Petra hesitated. Suddenly, Josie remembered the obsessive way she had stared at the computer at work, constantly refreshing different websites where she could get free rune and tarot readings. Petra didn’t say anything, and that was part of what made her so ashamed—that Petra pitied her.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Petra asked, gently.
“Oh, you know. I was just feeling nostalgic. How are the grandkids?” Josie suddenly felt the need to change the conversation, and quickly. She looked at the table with the new books on it and picked up a small paperback with a black cover. “I’ll take this one.”
“They’re fine,” Petra said as she rang her up, gently placing the book in a brown bag. “Lia asks about you sometimes. She said she liked it when you two read books together.”
“Tell her I say hi.”
“I will. This is a good one, by the way. You’ll like it.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“Come by some time, all right?”
“Yes, of course. I promise. I do need to go now, though, I’m sorry.”
“Oh, no worries, no worries,” Petra said as she ran Josie’s card through the POS system. “I understand. Busy life, doing all that design work that you do.”
“Thanks for everything, Petra,” Josie said, and she meant it.
“Of course, Josie. Anytime.”
It was only after waving to Petra a couple of times and getting to her car that she saw that Petra had still given her the thirty percent employee discount, with a small pressed flower tucked inside. She didn’t even know what book she had picked up, but when she turned it over, she saw that the title was Signs Preceding the End of the World.
How fitting, Josie thought. Then she drove to the grocery store.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. Josie shook a pack of Marlboro Reds out of her pocket and lit one in the parking lot before she went in, stamping it out with a wet boot as a slow drizzle started forming around her. Once inside, she bought cloves and cinnamon, a pig’s tongue, a yard of black twine, some paper, black pepper, rosemary, and red chili powder. She kept her head low at the self-checkout line, feeling as if somehow the people around her would be able to read her thoughts. She pulled her hood over her head and ran through the rain.
Once back at her house, she did what she remembered how to do. First, she made the salt circle in the correct way—clockwise, three times. She got up from the floor for a minute to get a candle from the kitchen, then anointed it with olive oil, slowly massaging it from the bottom to the top. After that, she rolled it around in the rosemary and some calendula that she had found sitting at the top of the pantry. She carved all the runes she could think of onto it—Thuriaz, Sowilo, Isa, Nathuriz—with her old dagger, which she had retrieved from its spot beneath her record cabinet.
She carefully wrapped the pig’s tongue with black twine. Then she filled a jar full of oil mixed with the black pepper, the red chili, the cloves, and the cinnamon. Josie didn’t care if someone passed by the window and saw her right now. “You can’t speak to me, you can’t speak to me,” Josie whispered as she held the flaccid weight in her hand, wet and heavy with blood. “Shut the fuck up. Shut up. You can’t call me again.” She kept repeating these words as she dunked the tongue inside the jar and quickly thrust it underneath the kitchen sink.
She could hear her roommate singing in his room, some pop song from the early aughts that she recognized but couldn’t put a name to. Suddenly, she felt terribly lonely.
Josie picked up a bag of cat treats and shook them. Terry came galloping toward her, and as he lapped the surface of her palm, she stroked his glossy black fur. “What would I do without you, Terry?” she whispered. Because the fact of the matter was that if Josie were to let Terry out now, release him into the wild, he would be fine. He would learn how to survive and maybe even forget about her after a while, settling into his new home somewhere among the trees.
She wanted to punch something like she had when she was younger, but this wasn’t what Tina would have wanted her to do. She found a pen and stabbed it into her thigh. Blood leaked out of the small hole.
She sat at her desk, Terry purring on her lap. As the blood soaked through her bike shorts, she started thinking again. What exactly was it that she wanted so badly to avoid?
She couldn’t help it anymore. She found some images of decks online and printed them out on construction paper. This was more accurate than any other system, to do it physically. After they were done printing, Josie cut them out and quickly shuffled them, her heart beating fast.
What do I need to know, she asked the cards. That’s all. I just want to know what’s going on. What do I need to know. Please.
She laid each one down, and with each overturned card came a sense of horror. She looked at her spread laid out on the floor.
It made sense to her now. Unfortunately, it all made perfect sense.
“I didn’t mean to,” Kim sobbed. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
“You did. You never cared. You didn’t care about Mae’s feelings, or mine. Jesus fucking Christ, Kim, does Mae even know?”
High Priestess. Seven of Swords. What was going on? What had really happened between the two of them? That was the first thing she had asked when Kim had picked up.
“You know I wouldn’t do something like that to you, Josie. You know I wouldn’t, you know I wouldn’t—”
“Stop. Just stop,” Josie said. At this point, she couldn’t feel anything: not rage, not sadness. Just numbness. “You fucked her, didn’t you? I knew it. I knew you did, and I pretended you didn’t. You acted like a fucking stupid slut who doesn’t care about anyone but yourself. You’ve only ever cared about yourself. You’re just a burden, to everyone. Remember that time when me and Eric had to stop you from offing yourself? And you act like I’m the one who needs help? Ha ha. Everyone’s so tired of you. I’m tired of you. You were right. Oh, also, did you help upload my pictures onto that site too?”
“Josie,” Kim said, sobbing, but Josie didn’t care anymore.
“Put Mae on the phone,” Josie said. It felt so good to be angry. It felt so good to finally not be weak. Blood was rushing to her head and she realized she could barely see. “I know they’re probably right there. I want to tell them just exactly what kind of slut they’re with. You probably haven’t even told them.”
Josie smiled to herself, her entire body pulsing. Kim’s sobs faded as Kim passed the phone to Mae.
“Josie,” Mae said calmly. “There’s something you should know.”
What had it been that she so desperately wanted to avoid again?
“Sure, whatever,” said Josie. “Let’s hear it.”
Josie was sitting at the dam that crossed the river. As a kid, she and her mom would sometimes come here and search for crawfish, though they never found any. There had been some boys catching them, and Josie had wanted to do it too. Do you think you could help us? her mom had asked, but Josie tugged at her hand and forced them to leave. As they walked across the grass, she told her mom that she didn’t care anymore about any damn crawfish. All her mom ever did was embarrass her.
She would never forget the look on her mom’s face when she said that, her curls falling over her face as she glanced downward like a chastised puppy. Why had her mom been ashamed? It was Josie who was the asshole. Her mom had tried her best. She always had.
Was this what the cards were trying to tell her all along? Look, she wanted to tell the universe. It isn’t my fault, okay? Can you get that through your fucking head?
She pulled up the HQ number for the tarot website again. She immediately got through to someone this time.
“Hello,” a voice said.
“Hello, yes. How are you?”
The woman laughed. Her voice was so soft and warm and lovely. Josie felt calm now, so calm that she felt as if the last forty-eight hours had never happened.
“Oh, I’m great, Josie. How are you doing today?”
“You know, I’m not doing so well. I found out that my ex had been cheating on me for three years. And Kim had walked in on her once at this guy Eric’s house. You know what’s fucked about that? Eric was Kim’s and my friend. And Eric made Kim promise not to tell me, because I would lose my mind. Because everyone knows I’m psycho. Ha ha.
“Mmm,” the woman said. “That is just so hard.”
“And you know the reason Kim tried to kill herself was because of what happened to her as a kid, right? Her dad doing that disgusting shit to her for years and years and years. She tried to kill herself a lot of times, actually. But I was horrible. I could’ve guessed it. I did guess it. Eric had tried to tell me something but I walked away in the middle of him talking to me. Ha ha. And years later I read these cards and I thought that what they were saying is that Kim had fucked my ex like a slut and was hiding it from me. So I was so angry. I called and I was so, so angry.”
“Right, of course. That’s very understandable, to be so angry,” the woman said.
“I’m going to kill myself. Not Kim. Kim is good. Kim has always been good to me. Just myself.”
“Mmm,” the woman crooned again, “that’s so awful to hear. Everyone knows how much you love Kim, Josie.”
“It’s just that she was my best friend, and I didn’t mean to say such awful things to her. I didn’t mean any of it. Doesn’t she know how much I love her?” Josie was crying now. She hated how much she was crying.
The woman started crying along with her.
“She knows. Of course she knows. You’re doing the right thing, Josie.”
“Thank you so much. I love you, too. Even if you’re just some person.”
“Thank you, Josie. When are you coming to visit?” Suddenly the voice turned into her mom’s.
“Mom? Mommy? Is that you?”
“Yes, it is. Oh, and your ex is here too. I always loved having her around the house. She was such a help, you know?”
“Yeah, she was. She really was. Maybe she wasn’t such a horrible person after all, right?”
“Kim wants to get on the phone now,” her mom said. Josie waited as she passed the phone to Kim.
“The right thing to do is not always the right thing. You’re listening to your mind right now, aren’t you?” Kim said, and for a moment Josie could see Kim in her mind’s eye—the freckles stamped across her nose like stars, her broad face and watery brown eyes.
Oh, Kim. You’ll never know how much I loved you.
Before Josie could say this, though, a car showed up nearby. Josie squinted away from the bright white headlights.
“It’s past curfew, young lady,” the man in the uniform said. “Isn’t it about time you went back home?”
“Who’s going to take care of Terry after I’m gone? Will you take care of him for me?”
“Excuse me?”
He glanced down at her hand and saw the dagger, the blood pooling from her arms and throat, her hair scraggly and wet, her clothes the same ones she’d been wearing all week as she crouched like a gargoyle near the water.
“Hey, are you all right? Are you all right? Why don’t you give me that, and we can get you to a safe place,” he said softly.
But she knew what safe places looked like, and she knew that him speaking into his radio wasn’t what he was saying to her. Everyone lied. Everyone left, or lied, or they were hurt by people she thought she could trust. Josie lied and left and hurt people, too.
“Alright, I’m going to ask you to drop that now, little lady,” he said.
A muffled voice came through the radio, staticky and small.
They were on their way, and they would do what they had to do.
Josie knew destiny when she saw it. She grabbed the dagger and, slowly, directed it in the cop’s direction.
“I loved those fig tarts,” she said, and ran toward him laughing, her teeth and the knife glinting in the dark, the river and the crawfish inside of it laughing alongside her. Destiny was beckoning and she followed it, her limbs becoming liquid, becoming water. 
Daisuke Shen is originally from Greenville, South Carolina, and Kitahiroshima, Japan. Their work has previously been published in The Asian American Literary Review, Maudlin House, The Nervous Breakdown, Autostraddle, Joyland, and more. They are currently working on a short story collection.
