My stomach clenched as I heard footfalls redirect towards the front door. I remained motionless, sucking in my breath, too gripped in anxiety to exhale. I was a rabbit trapped in a snare, unable to move, unable to even blink.
The door handle jiggled without resistance and suddenly the auburn haired boy, along with a dark haired beauty, stepped into the cabin, their presence overwhelming. I clutched my book to my chest, ready to tell them to get out - to leave. I'd had enough taunts for one day.
"I'm Charl," the auburn haired boy grinned, "I don't belong here, but here I am."
He gave a self deprecating twirl and for a moment, I was unsure if he meant here as in my cabin or here as in this camp.
"I have a dodgy uncle that works the kitchens in this place. He did my mom a solid by getting me in here, but I don't really fit in."
His words weighed the room down, and I had never been more aware of someone watching my facial expressions, categorising each shift, as I was right then.
"But then," he continued, "neither do you."
The spell was broken as his words settled within me.
"Excuse me?" I spluttered, sounding indignant.
"Don't sound so haughty, love," Charl continued as he moved through the room categorizing every item within this place.
"I mean, you don't even want to fit in with those people - who would?"
The girl behind him huffed, "Way to sell it, Charl."
His fingertips fluttered along the wooden windowsill, and for one utterly insane moment, I wondered if the wood was talking to him, passing its secrets through the tips of his fingers.
"He means," the dark haired girl sighed, "that only the odd ones - the people like us who don't fit in - can learn Magick or cards."
I wished I had the ability to school my features like my father, to show indifference to the point where those around me were unable to determine whether I was satisfied or dissatisfied with a specific outcome. But I didn't, and I felt the heaviness of my forehead as a frown crested my brow.
"I don't do Magick," I retorted, lifting my chin slightly higher.
"In fact," I lobbied my voice in the same condescending tone my mother used daily, "the last time I experienced a Magick show of any kind, I think it was at my fifth birthday."
Charl's smile was utterly disarming as he turned to me and said, "I'm going to teach you to read cards and determine different threads of the future."
Those were the words that would ultimately change the course of my life - our lives. Because I should have said no. I should have kicked him out and called him insane. Instead, I asked him why there were multiple threads. It had been the right answer - at least for Charl anyway. His face lit up and it became so easy to fall into the tale he wove about how Magick and energy worked.
The summer I met Charlain, I began categorising everything I wanted in a boy - and what I wanted was nothing in line with the private school prep boys my mother made me associate with. Despite my naive advances, Charl put me firmly in the friendzone category, content on playing the role of older brother and friend, and we had never strayed from those roles.
My feet traipse afterhim and Zoey - because that was the brunette's name - as I followed them into a small patch of woods. My stomach tightened in dread as I briefly wondered if they were taking me somewhere private to kill me - clearly I had been watching too many crime documentaries. But even my wariness couldn't stop me from following them into the woods.
The smell of cedar was almost overwhelming and I couldn't help the gasp that escaped my lips as Charlain produced a small box of cards and sat cross legged on the ground.
"You want to play Go Fish?" I teased.
But even I knew what he held. Those were Tarot cards, I'd seen them on one of the crime documentaries I had become so fond of. Some girl had been murdered and the murder had been linked to the Occult, and - naturally, the members of the Occult had a deck of Tarot cards.
“This is a rider waite deck,” Charl tossed the words over his shoulder as if I were a mere distraction from the deck of cards itself.
Sensing my brewing anger, he tacked on, “But you already knew that.”
I shrugged, content to watch rather than talk.
Charl’s hands flipped through the deck, shuffling with expert precision. It was hypnotising, the act of watching him shuffle the deck. His fingers were long and calloused and I knew that Mr. Roberts would have labelled them a piano man’s fingers.
Fingers were something that were overlooked, they bled into the very shape of your hand. It came down to the basic way in which we interacted with the world - and, possibly the most sensual, for we didn’t always own what we put our prints on, but that didn’t make you want it any less.
For a minute, I had been lost in thought, so lost in the merits of Charl’s hands that I almost missed his cheshire grin as he sat on the earthen floor of the woods, holding up one card from the deck. The Empress.