Bright Coin Moon by Kirsten Lopresti

Author:Kirsten Lopresti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sky Pony
Published: 2014-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

When Paco came over to meet me before school on Monday, he said, “I think your mom stole one of my grocery uniforms.”

“Did you get it back?”

He gave me an odd look. “Yes. It’s back on the balcony rail where it was drying yesterday, minding its own business, when she walked by it with her laundry basket.”

“So everything’s okay then,” I said.

“I guess so, but it’s still kind of strange. And so is your reaction. Most people would say, ‘No, my mother didn’t steal it.’ But you just asked if I got it back.”

“Well, I believed you,” I snapped. “You said she stole it, so I believed you.”

“Calm down,” he said. “Let’s not forget who the victim is here. I’m the one who suffered grocery uniform theft.”

He looked up at the ceiling, at the assortment of plaster angels hanging from the fan, then he bent down to pick up one of my mother’s books, Interviewing the Dead. “Speaking of the psychic business, I want to ask you something. A favor.”

He’s going to ask me to contact his brother again, I thought. I went over my options. I could tell him the truth, that I couldn’t, but he’d probably just think I wouldn’t. If he did believe it, he’d know I was a fraud. I was still pondering it when he said, “Would you be willing to do a fortune-teller booth at the school playground fundraiser?”

“You want me to do a fortune booth?” It seemed like I might have gotten off easy. I didn’t have to contact his brother, after all. Still, I wasn’t sure about this. “I don’t know,” I said.

“You know people don’t mean anything when they call you Fortune, right?”

“I know,” I said. “It’s not that.”

He waited for me to explain, but I couldn’t think of a reason other than that I didn’t like to tell fortunes to people. It seemed selfish to bring that up when it was for such a good cause, so I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

He left, then, to run back to his apartment and “get something.” When he returned, he was carrying a costume: a puffy white shirt and a long purple, glitter-trimmed skirt.

“My cousin wore it last year for Halloween,” he said.

I held it up and looked at it skeptically. It wasn’t going to be my best look, that I was certain, but if I added some of my mother’s dangly gold jewelry, I might be able to pull it off. I changed in the bathroom and walked out, cautiously.

“You look great,” he said. “Wait, stay there. I’ll take your picture.”

A flash went off, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror: A thin, dark-haired, gypsy girl in someone’s crazy idea of a carnival fortune outfit. I could have been a caricature—no one. I could have been anyone at all. I had the sudden, terrifying thought that I was looking not at myself in a costume, but at my own true, fraudulent heart.

I changed out of the costume, but just before we left for school, I put it in my backpack.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.