balance in the universe. Apparently, there might not be a timeline where Rhodes doesn’t hate me.
She places the second card in my hand, my challenge card: the Four of Pentacles. In this illustration, a vine tightens around a young woman’s neck, and four flowers bloom with pentacles in the center.
“That looks … bleak.” Rhodes frowns into my hand.
“It means I feel like I’m being held down by my money—or lack thereof. It isn’t wrong.”
Rhodes nods, and places the third card in my hand. “The outcome card.”
A woman sits in a chair overcome with all manner of vegetation. Butterflies perch in her hair and on her shoulders, and cocoons hang over her head. Bones are scattered at her feet, and she holds a bull skull—complete with horns—in front of her face.
“Death,” I whisper.
“Why is this comforting to you, again?” Rhodes picks up the card and observes it closely. “This illustration makes no sense to me.”
“It means death in the sense that something has to die for something else to live. See the cocoons and the butterflies? The flowers in the background? Flowers come from seeds, which come from dead flowers. Caterpillars die to their identity as caterpillars to metamorphose into butterflies.”
“Rebirth,” Rhodes says. She says it again, for herself this time: “Rebirth.”
A beat of silence hangs between us. The wind rattles bare tree branches together like old bones, and police sirens wail past us on the street.
I have to tell her.
“I wonder if Kiersten is as scared as I am?” I ask instead.
“More,” Rhodes says after a moment of thought. “Confident people don’t cheat. Everything she’s done so far tells me she doesn’t think she has a chance.”
If only that were true.
“Every bit of this has been because Kiersten hates us,” I say. “Because Kiersten hates me.”
Rhodes makes a face. “Kiersten is a toad.”
“Yeah, but one of those dangerous ones people use to poison darts.” I can’t help but frown, and for some reason this makes Rhodes laugh.
I reach between us to take her hand, and she pulls me in for a swift kiss.
I don’t have a photographic memory, but God knows I try my damnedest to take a snapshot of this moment and keep it forever.
I want to remember how she feels, she smells, she tastes.
By this time tomorrow, I will want to come back to this and remember what it felt like to have everything I wanted.
* * *
Frist’s courtyard is a small, contained space that sits between the museum and a large parking lot. I’ve only seen it in daylight, with its wide swaths of manicured grass bordered by pergolas and seating areas, but night has transformed it into something different. The gossamer tent stands tall over our heads, thin enough to see silhouettes of the tree branches that arch toward the sky. It’s thirty-seven degrees out, but you’d never know it—tall, lantern-style heat lamps paired with other bodies in close proximity have prompted nearly all of the attendees to shed their coats by the entrance.
The tent is lit by large, white paper lanterns, and the table arrangements in the center of the space are comprised mostly of tea lights and mirrored objects, sleight of hand to project tiny sources of light into larger spaces. Everything is black, white, and cream, and over-the-top jewelry glitters in the muted light. The only splash of color are violently red roses in the table arrangements, on the buffet, and tucked into the waitstaff’s jacket coats.
“Do you think this will be a little bit of what heaven is like?” Rhodes glitters, too. Her knee-length, robin’s-egg blue dress is scattered with tiny iridescent beads that catch in the light. It hangs straight from her shoulders, obscuring her shape, and it’s accented with a white Peter Pan collar.
She reminds me of Alice, skirting the edge of the Queen of Heart’s croquet game.
“What do you mean?” I’m in red, of course—a red sweater, a black leather skirt, black tights, and flats.
There weren’t attire suggestions in the email from the Capstone committee, and I’m too short for anything Rhodes could have loaned me from her suitcase.
I cross my arms tighter over my chest. Maybe if I act like it doesn’t bother me, people will think I chose to underdress.
“Everything is, like, glowing and white. There are all these people we know, and everyone looks happy.” She smiles a little.
“Are there people we know?” All I see are people’s backs.
“Sure. Your parents are over”—she scans the space for a minute, then points over peoples’ heads to a