Green Fortune

The air conditioning at Cineplex Theater had been dead for three weeks, and Jace's palms were sweating through his polyester uniform. He swiped them on his pants—again—while Maya leaned across the armrest, her face illuminated by the phone light.

"So," she said, "are you gonna show me or what?"

Jace's throat clicked. He'd been reading palms since seventh grade, starting as a joke at lunch tables that somehow turned into his Thing. The Mystic Jace, people called him. Mostly, he was just good at cold reading desperate teenagers.

"Your lifeline's crazy long," he said, tracing a finger across her hand. "You're gonna live forever. Or at least until you're ninety."

Maya laughed, and Jace felt something unclench in his chest. She was the kind of pretty that made you forget your own name, all cascade curls and knowing eyes, and she'd somehow ended up at his post-shift hangout.

Behind them, the ancient cable connection sputtered. The horror movie marathon fuzzed into static, then snapped to a cooking show. A guy in a chef's hat was sautéing something green and wilted.

"Spinach," Maya said, wrinkling her nose. "Gross."

Jace paused. His cousin Lila had told him once that real palm readers saw the past, not the future. Saw the choices people made that etched themselves into their skin. He looked at Maya's hand again—at the faint callus on her middle finger from writing, at the tiny scar near her wrist, at how her lifeline broke and restarted, strong and stubborn.

"I don't see your future," Jace said, his voice barely audible over the cooking show host enthusing about nutrients. "I see you're left-handed but you taught yourself to write with your right because your elementary school teacher said it was proper. I see you play violin until your fingers bleed. I see you pretend to like things you hate just so people will—"

Maya pulled her hand back. The air between them went weirdly still.

"How did you know that?" she whispered.

"The Internet," Jace said. "And I saw you practicing violin behind the gym last Tuesday. You looked miserable."

Maya stared at him. Then she laughed—really laughed, head thrown back, like she'd been holding it in forever. The cable connection flickered back to the horror movie, but neither of them looked.

"I hate violin," she said. "I hate it so much."

"Your palms say otherwise," Jace grinned, feeling his own hands go dry. "But your face just totally gave you away."

"Shut up, Mystic Jace."

"Make me, Non-Violinist Maya."

She did. Later, they'd get ice cream. Later, she'd text him a terrible drawing of her breaking a violin over her knee. Later, he'd realize this was the first time in months his palms hadn't sweated through something that mattered.

But right now, the movie flashed, her hand was warm in his, and for once, the future felt like something they could actually see.