Free Sometimes Never, Sometimes Always by Elissa Janine Hoole Page A

mind wanders as the cards slide past my fingers.
    Okay, so: Am I more interesting with this secret? The cards in my hands are entirely mine—Kayla doesn’t know about them, my brother doesn’t trust them, and the rest of my family would believe it’s a sin for me to sit here on my pink carpeting with these bits of plasticized paper running through my fingers. I spread them out on the floor, pushing them in circles. I remember my earlier glimmer of an idea—the tarot reading column in the newspaper. I sit up straight, my fingers tingling. I actually want this. Like, I want this, for me .
    I wonder if the church would care, if they would protest a tarot column like they’re protesting the Winter Carnival, like they protested the Gay-Straight Alliance or when Ms. Ross wanted to teach an elective class about Gothic literature. Would it get the newspaper in trouble if they did? Would they find out it’s me?
    Okay, so maybe I could make it a step or two removed from the school. Like, a secret message in the newspaper that would lead people to me. Lead them to me, but anonymously. What about the stupid side column ads I spent my whole lunch period perfecting? There are spaces left over where Annika instructed me to stick in snowflake clip art and hearts for Valentine’s Day, stuff like that. I could put something into one of those squares, some way for people to get their questions to me. I could make an email address, maybe, and then they could send their questions, and I could write up a weekly column in the paper based on certain questions. Except … that’s still leaving the newspaper open to criticism from the church for using the occult. Plus, at the newspaper, there would have to be at least one person who knew who I was, and assuming that at least one of those people would be Annika or Britney, it wouldn’t stay a secret for long, even if I used a fake name. I let my fingers trace the path of the long river of blue starry-backed cards as I think.
    My brain runs through possibilities of tarot reader names as I gather the cards into piles on the pink carpet. Esmeralda. Zenubia. Clairvoyant Clarissa. Okay, so the names need some work, clearly. Oh, shit . I was supposed to be channeling Eric!
    I close my eyes again, centering myself on his plight rather than my advice column idea, and then I pull the cards together, slowly stacking them in my hands, mixing them up more and more until it feels like enough. I hear a footstep in the hall and freeze, my pulse quickening and my nerves on edge. I listen intently, but it’s only Dicey passing by on her way to the bathroom. No big deal, but I wait, my hand holding the deck inside the garbage can, until I hear the flush and the footsteps retreating back into her bedroom at the end of the hall. I wonder if she saw the light shining underneath my door.
    Pressing my ear against the door one more time, I make sure the hall is empty, then I quietly unfold the reading map that came in the guidebook and follow the diagram for a ten-card spread. The first card I turn over, what my book calls the querent’s “present position,” is called the Queen of Wands. I study the card: a woman in a yellow gown with a wand and a sunflower scepter. At her feet is a lovely black cat. The card is pretty, but I have no idea what it could mean in relation to Eric’s present position.
    The card crossing her is all full of wreaths and a guy riding a horse. Looks happy, sort of. Maybe that’s Gavin? Or Eric himself? I flip the next card, the one that will go at the top of the reading and represent the “goal or destiny.”
    Whoa. In some ways, there couldn’t be a happier, more perfect card—a beautiful couple and their dancing children. A rainbow of wealth above them. A home and land ahead of them. Does this destiny include Gavin? I mean, I know plenty of gay men have children, but what if this card means the opposite—that Eric will change or deny himself, like the church would want him to do,