Page 155 of Scrimmage

He snorts. “You aren’t getting dick until you’re my girlfriend."

“That’s manipulative.”

“That’s not news to you.”

I clear my throat. “Not to change the subject from this super fantastic date you keep droning on about, but why did you take my sketch book?”

“Don’t know. I guess because it was yours.”

“And you looked through it?”

“Yeah, I did.” He takes the tray when it’s empty, and I follow him out of the room.

“And?”

“And what?”

I fall into the couch while he washes dishes. “You didn’t say anything about it.”

He sits next to me on the couch. “You’re not going to answer any questions I ask anyways, so what’s the point?”

“Right. Give me your hand.” I hold mine out expectantly.

He unwillingly obliges. “What are you doing?”

“Reading your palm.”

I flip his hand over and start tracing the lines. Penny and I got a book from a thrift store once, and we decided to try our hand at readings. If anything will annoy Koda, it should be spirituality that he will consider ridiculous.

I run my finger along his palm and he twitches. “This is your head line."

“You’re going to tell me about myself based on my hand?”

“Yup.” I study him, waiting for the next comment, but one doesn’t come.

“Do you know how to actually read my palm?”

I close my eyes and pretend I’m being filled the the Holy Spirit. “Ah, yes, I see it now. You’re a controlling jackass.”

He smirks. “So that’s a no?”

I drop his hand, but he reaches back over and holds onto mine. My heart flutters or something akin to it.

“We read a book once, but I don’t remember any of it. Why? Did you really wanna know?”

“Fuck it. Why not?”

“Really?”

“Yeah." He runs his thumb over the top of my hand. “My mom is a psychic.”

I’ve met one before. A real one. You know they are when they don’t want to be. She didn’t say anything I expected. Didn’t tell me my mother was watching over me or that my father was sorry. Instead, she told me that the moment that my life changed was when I went to a Thanksgiving dinner at a homeless shelter and spoke to the man with the book. I was eight when that happened.

I still think about when she said that. It was the only thing I was able to recover from our trailer, only because I'd hidden it under the dirty carpet in the corner. It has traveled with me all of this time and sits on my bookshelf. When I’m having a bad day, I read it.

The man was poor, like us, in donated church clothes and sneakers. I was never a shy kid. When you’re clawing tooth and nail to survive, you can’t be. We'd set our trays down next to him, and I asked him what he was reading. I was a drawer, not a reader, but I had the best reading comprehension out of everyone in my family, which wasn’t saying much.

He was surprised at first. His food was sitting in front of him, uneaten. The man stuttered, and it didn’t take more than two sentences for me to figure out he had a speech impediment.

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