"You know. Kiefer Sutherland." She took a long pull of beer and slammed the bottle down hard on the table. "The Lost Boys," she said, triumphantly. "Eighties movie; there's like a hot biker vampire gang and a giant fairground on the boardwalk." She sighed hard enough to ruffle the pages on the table. "I was so born in the wrong decade."
"That was San Diego? I thought it was Santa Barbara?"
"Nah. SD, I'm sure of it. We should go. Check it out."
"All I know about San Diego is the zoo."
"Babycakes, that's not a zoo. That's what they call the University." She grinned like an alley cat. "All the more reason to take a look, wouldn't you say?"
The next weekend we packed our bags and headed down the coast. A quick internet search revealed that Santa Cruz was the place where they'd filmed the movie, but I'd seen a psych program I wanted to check out and Everglade grudgingly agreed the San Diego boardwalk was probably 'okay', even if it wasn't the glorious, vampire-ridden funfair of Santa Cruz.
It was better than okay; it was awesome. We got henna tattoos and ate cotton candy. At one point the tattoo artist looked at Everglade and said "Don't I know you from somewhere?" but it turned out he was only harmlessly hitting on her and not about to start yelling that she was Kiersten Rowe's daughter.
As we were walking back along the boardwalk, in search of one the bars we'd read that were popular with USD students, we passed a stall selling biker scarves and goth jewelry. "Wait," said Everglade, and dragged me over to look at these pewter dragon pendants - kind of tacky actually, but that was what she liked. The woman behind the stall was a ruined beauty - you could see it in the streaked curls of her thick hair and the dark depths of her large eyes, but life had dragged down the corners of her lips and scratched worry into her wide brow. Her figure was impressive - a wasp waist in a leather bustier, long legs, torn jeans and a tan, rose tattooed cleavage that jiggled when she moved.
"You ever think of selling that hair?" she said to me, while I tried on a bandana.
I laughed and she looked at me like I had no idea, which to be fair, I didn't. I'd never heard of such a thing outside of a novel and never imagined real people could be so desperate as to sell parts of their body. Maybe that was why - when I saw the cardboard sign that said TAROT in magic marker letters - that I asked her about the readings.
"Sure," she said. "Let me get someone to mind the stall. You sure you wanna know your future?"
"Why not?" I said, half amused. I didn't believe in any of that stuff anyway. I'd been through the occult phase and out the other side - spooky stories, sleepovers, and seeing how many times you dared say Bloody Mary in front of the mirror.
"Cut the pack," said Rose-Tattoo. "Tap it three times."
She drew the first card. "This is you," she said. "Queen of Pentacles. Rich kid - but you knew that, right?"
"Right," I said, biting my lower lip to hide my smile. This was hardly hardcore voodoo. Anyone could look once at my expensively straightened teeth and my good shoes and know I wasn't exactly trailer park material.
"Your past," she said. "The Empress. Older woman. Mother?"
I nodded. She arched an eyebrow. "Dead?" she said.
"Yes."
"Just like I thought. Your future..." She drew another card. I knew what that meant. The Reaper. Death.
It was so much like a bad horror movie that I laughed. "You've got to be kidding me."
She looked up from under her long black eyelashes and I saw once again the beauty she must once have been. "It's all our futures, sugar," she said, in a smoker's rasp. "Man that is born of woman hath but a short time. In itself this isn't a bad card. People think it's the worst, but it's not. Sometimes it just means change. End of one era, beginning of a new one. You got any big changes coming up in your life?"
"College," I said. "I want to move out of home."
"There you go, sweetheart. Death of your childhood. Happens to us all."
I nodded and gave her some more money, even though it hadn't been much of a fortune telling. I don't think I would have even remembered it if it hadn't been for what happened next.
We found the bar Everglade saw in the student guide. It was packed to the rafters and I knew right away it would make me nervous - I've never been great at crowds. But we looked through the window and saw some girls drinking pink cocktails with dumb little pipe cleaner flamingos perched on the end of the swizzle sticks; "Self conscious kitsch," said Everglade. "My favorite," and so we went in. Funny to think of life's big decisions riding on something as small as that. I wonder about it sometimes - in another universe is there another me who's doing fine, solely because she didn't go into that bar?