December 23, 1993

“I’m better nowhere bound than drowning on your solid ground.”

First for the bad news. Mom is going away for the weekend and leaving us with dad. Everyone says we’re so lucky becuase our dad is in the film business, but I don’t think so. We practically don’t have a family anymore. Dad is too busy getting high to notice us, and mom is too busy trying to ignore him to pay us any attention. She does her best though. If I didn’t have Kim I don’t know what would happen to me. Now for the interesting news.

Kim gave me my Christmas present early today. I don’t know how to decribe it. I was expected something like a new CD or guitar strings, but instead she blindfolded me and drove us out of town. I could tell we were on the old highway because of the sound the tires made when they hit the pot holes. Still I had no idea where we were going. We drove forever and then finally stopped.

When she came around the side of the car and opened the door. I could hear her breathing fast in anticipation. It excited me and frightening me. When she touched me static electricity shot through both of us. We both jumped back. I touched the metal seat belt buckle to get rid of the charge, but when I touched her again the same thing happened. Finally I stood up stumbling on the open door and falling into Kim. She wrapped her arms around me and laughed in my hear then said, “You’re wonderfully magnificent and lovely in every way”. I heard the song I wrote her playing somewhere in the back of my head, “The Ballad of Alice and Kim”.

She tured me to the right and walked me into the darkness. “Alice, my gift to you is the wisdom of my great aunt. She was the healer in our tribe until she moved here to be close to her family.”

 She walked me into my future that day, though she did not tell me that there was a possibility that it didn’t contain her. When I stumbled over a rock and fell, busting my knee open in the process Kim picked me up. I felt blood flow down my leg, but I didn’t care. We stopped and she pulled the blind fold off to reveal where we were, but I didn’t open my eyes. Even when she told me to I kept them shut tight. Somehow the mystery of this gift was the best part. I didn’t want to give that up. The need to see her face was what made me open my eyes.

I saw a house over her shoulder in the barren landscape. A sign on the porch declared it a place to delve into one’s future. A house of knowledge maybe? All the sign said was, “Psychic”. That gave me no clues though. I didnt’ know why Kim had chosen to give me this gift. I had never expressed the desire to see a psychic. In fact I was so firmly planted in the present that I didn’t think it was a worthwhile thing to do. She took my hand and led me up the steps, smiling at me all the way with that green glint to her eyes. We stood at the door and she knocked twice and then entered.

What we entered seemed like a world of calm or a portal to something rarely seen by normal people. I looked at all the baubles set around here and there. When I touched a crystal it lit up and blinded me. I picked it up and found the opening where the batteries went. Not magic, just a toy. The next thing that happened is beyond explanation. The crystal turned ice cold, so cold that I dropped it. It had burnt my hand. Kim frowned at me and picked the crystal up. It didn’t light up this time. She looked at my hand and blew on it. When she did it was if she had blown fire out of her mouth and onto my palm. Heat meeting extreme cold can feel that way, but all the pain in my hand went away afterwards.

Then the woman came through the curtian. Her smile reminded me of flowers for some reason. She took the sight of us in and walked foreward to embrace Kim. She mumbled some words in a language that I could hardly reconize and enquired after my name. When Kim introduced us she hugged me. Her name was Teah. I felt a bit akward but once I let her warmth seep into me. I felt free. She seemed to have some sort of healing power. It made me feel more peaceful than I had since I was tiny. Memories started to flood back to me. Fragements here and there of an infancy long forgotten. I felt the warmth and safeness of simplicity.

We sat at her tiny table in the next room and she and Kim talked for a moment in that strange language they shared before she turned to me and asked, “Why are you here?” I told her what Kim had said about this being my Christmas gift. She smiled back at me and repeated her question. ”Why are you here?” I was confused. What did she want me to say? Kim kissed my hand and explained. “She needs you to aknowledge that you are here to see your future.” Kim leaned into my ear and said, “Just say, I am here to see where my past and present will lead me.”

I said the words she had whispered to me. My ear still tingled where her breath had hit it.Teah grinned at me with a youthful zeal that defied her age. She looked older than any person I had ever met, but she gave the impression that she felt younger than we were through her voice and mannerisms. She reached out and asked for my hand. I gave it to her and she began to look into my palm.  Her brow furrowed and she traced the lines with her aged fingers.

“I see many things here. I cannot tell you all. You have a choice of three things for each type of reading I give you. For the palm what do you choose; love, life or health? Each type of reading will focus on one of these aspects.”

I hardly knew what to say. I always liked to start from the last and work my way to the first so I chose health. I think she liked my choice because she grinned at me.

“Not many choose health first. They are eager to see what love will bring them”

I shrugged and she ran her finger up and down one line on my hand.

“You will enjoy good health very far into the future.”

It sounded like something out of a fortune cookie. Any hope that I had for whole thing being on the level vanished. She sensed it and looked at me.

“You will pay for your lifestyle late in your life though. I suggest you eat better.”

I raised my eyebrow. Did Kim inform her of my junk food habits? I looked at Kim who simply shrugged.

“Now for the next,” Teah said.

She pulled out worn Tarot cards from a drawer in the table and shuffled them.

“What do you choose for this reading, love or life.

I chose life. She dealt the cards in an intricate pattern and passed her hand over them when she was finished. Murmuring to herself she pointed at various cards. When she had reached her conclusion she placed her hands on the middle card in the pattern.

“Like all, you will have sucess and failure in your life. You will move in fast circles, but tire of this and make for yourself a life of great worth.”

I stopped her to ask what kind of failure.

“A failure that will leave you at your lowest point. You must pick yourself up and move on.”

I shook my head and grinned. This was all impossibly vague and general. She put away the cards and pulled out a bowl. Then reached behind her and grasped a very old looking wood vessel. I heard liquid slosh. She poured the liquid into the bowl that looked to be made of some kind of bone. I sniffed the air to try to get an idea of the identity of the liquid. Water, I finally decided. Just plain old water.

“Your last reading will be of love. Please clear your mind. Think of blankness. Imagine a blank piece of paper in your mind and concentrate on slowing your breathing. Keep the image of that blank paper always in your mind.”

When she deamed me ready she said, “Form any question of love on the paper in your mind and then look foreward into the bowl when you are ready.”

The questions I chose was, Who will be the greatest love in my life and will I be with them until I die?

“You are thinking of two questions. I will let it pass this time. Both will be answered,” Teah said

I almsot opened my eyes in shock when she said this but I felt Kim’s hand on my back. I kept my eyes closed. When I looked in the bowl I expected to see Kim’s face. I leaned foreward and opened my eyes to peer into the water. What I saw there convinced me that there really was soemthing to this psychic thing.