“A fire sign! You must be out looking for adventure.”
“Always,” Finn answered with a confident smirk.
Zadie handed the woman her credit card, who waved it at her like a wand. “And what about you?” she asked. “What’s your sign?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What’s your birthday?”
“September tenth.”
“Then you’re a Virgo. That’s an earth sign.”
“What does that mean?”
“In many ways, you’re the opposite of fire. You like to feel grounded, stable. You don’t like taking big risks.”
“Yep. That’s Zadie, all right.” Finn clapped her sister on the back. Zadie shot her a playful glare.
The woman handed back her card along with a map of the camp. “The Leo and Virgo sites are already booked, so you’ll park at site 23, Perseus. Please don’t leave any food out and throw away your trash in the proper bin. We’ve had some bear sightings recently. Oh! I almost forgot…” She opened a rusty recipe tin sitting on the counter, pulled out two slips of paper, and handed one to each of the girls. “Here are your horoscopes.”
Finn read hers aloud. “You will face tough challenges ahead, but you have the determination to face them.” It wasn’t a legitimate premonition like Zadie’s were, but it was a nice little pep talk all the same. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank the stars,” the woman answered earnestly, her eyes slowly drifting skyward.
Finn glanced over at Zadie, who was biting her lip to prevent herself from laughing. Finn was about to laugh, too, when she cleared her throat. “Have a nice day.”
The girls left the office and walked back out onto the porch. Finn whispered, “That lady was a trip.”
Zadie nodded. “I don’t understand how anyone believes in that stuff.”
“Says the psychic. What’s your horoscope say?” Finn asked, peering down at the paper in her sister’s hand. Zadie passed it to her. It read:
Don’t try to make predictions about the future. Live in the present.
“The stars have spoken,” Zadie said with a smirk, then trotted down the porch steps.
“Don’t think this lets you off the hook,” Finn called after her. She still didn’t fully understand why Zadie had denounced her premonitions after their mom’s disappearance. It was like a switch had been flipped. One day they were playing Psychic Karaoke, and the next, Zadie had sworn off her psychic gift altogether. The best explanation Finn could come up with was that her premonitions reminded her of their mom, and Zadie had made it painfully clear that she did not like being reminded.
While Finn mulled this over, the wind chimes played a discordant melody. There was something about them, something about this place that gave her a good feeling. She felt it in the music, as if she’d heard it before, as if her mother had heard it before. She could feel the line between present and past getting blurry, like crossing her eyes, and she felt what she thought was an echo coming on.Could it be…
Then it was gone.
“Live in the present,” Zadie’s horoscope had read.How do you live in the present if your present is someone else’s past?That was a question for another day. Today she had more pressing questions she needed answers to.
A short drive later, the sisters arrived at their campsite, a spacious patch of rusty earth shaded by grizzled junipers and cottonwoods whose heart-shaped leaves fluttered like confetti in the breeze. In the center was a stone fire ring circled by benches made from logs that had been sawn in half lengthwise and flipped on their curved backs like turtles. On top of the pit sat a grate, presumably for cooking, although Zadie hadn’t the first idea how to use it. There was also a rickety picnic table that, from the looks of what remained of the peeling paint, had once been red.
And then there was the view: extravagant sandstone formations layered like pastry and carved by time into rococo columns, spires,and buttes. The rolling clouds above cast dramatic shadows that crept across the landscape like molasses, plunging the valley into darkness one minute and drenching it in golden light the next. It was both exactly how Zadie remembered it and nothing like it all at the same time.
Finn offered to pitch the tent while Zadie got cleaned up. “Are you sure you don’t need help?” Zadie offered, although she wasn’t sure how much help she could possibly be when it came to camping-related tasks.
“Nah. I’m good. Remember I was a Girl Scout back in the day.”
“Back in the day? Wasn’t that, like, three years ago?”
Finn waved her off. “Go take your shower. I’ll set up the tent, then build a fire so we can eat.”
Zadie slung a towel over her shoulder, slipped on her flip-flops, and started down the dirt path toward the women’s locker room. Inside, there were two shower stalls with hospital room–style curtains pulled across them. One had a sign taped to it that read:OUT OF ORDER.Zadie pulled back the curtain of the presumably in-order shower to find a bagel-sized spider splayed out on the tile. After flinging several choice expletives at the intruder, Zadie removed one of her flip-flops and hurled that, too. By some stroke of luck, the shoe hit the spider dead-on and it crumpled to the floor.This is why I hate camping,she thought miserably as she picked up her sandal and slipped it back on her foot.