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PART ONE: KNOWING

YOU

You’ve chosen and chosen well Maybe this one will be the one who stops you Maybe she’ll be different Maybe she’ll be enough

The only thing that is certain is that she’s special

You think it’s her eyes—not the color: an icy, see-through blue Not the lashes, or the shape, or the way she doesn’t need eyeliner to give them the appearance of a cat’s

No, it’s what’s behind those icy blues that brings the audience out in droves You feel it, every ti That otherworldly glint she uses to convince people that she’s the real deal

Maybe she is

Maybe she really can see things Maybe she knows things

Maybe she’s everything she clai her breaths, you s to stop you

You don’t really want her to stop you

She’s fragile

Perfect

Marked

And the one thing this so-called psychic won’t see co is you

CHAPTER 1

The hours were bad The tips orse, and theto be desired, but c’est la vie, que sera sera, insert foreign language cliché of your choice here It was a summer job, and that kept Nonna off my back It also prevented my various aunts, uncles, and kitchen-sink cousins fro like they had to offer al practice/boutique Given the size of e, very extended (and very Italian) family, the possibilities were endless, but it was always a variation on the same theme

My dad lived half a world away My , presumed dead I was everyone’s problem and nobody’s

Teenager, presumed troubled

“Order up!”

With practiced ease, I grabbed a plate of pancakes (side of bacon) with my left hand and a two-handed breakfast burrito (jalapeños on the side) with o well in the fall, I had a real future ahead of me in the crappy diner industry

“Pancakes with a side of bacon Breakfast burrito, jalapeños on the side” I slid the plates onto the table “Anything else I can get for you gentlemen?”

Before either of theoing to say The guy on the left was going to ask for extra butter And the guy on the right? He was going to need another glass of water before he could even think about those jalapeños

Ten-to-one odds, he didn’t even like them

Guys who actually liked jalapeños didn’t order them on the side Mr Breakfast Burrito just didn’t want people to think he was a wuss—only the word he would have used wasn’t wuss