Page 53 of Sort of Seeing Someone

Lily squeezes another pump of lotion. I hold out my left hand ready to pick up where I left off. As she grabs my hand, there’s a quick tingle as we touch and I close my eyes again.

To Lily, I look like I’m taking my relaxation to another level—zoning out and leaving all my worries aside. But to me, it’s quite the opposite. I’m using my full focus and the entirety of my brain power to concentrate. Hard.

“Zero in,” Liv coaches from the sideline.

I try to make sense of what I see now, which is an ecstatic Lily jumping up and down. She keeps looking at the letter in disbelief as happy tears stream down her face. Finally, she sets the letter down and picks up her cell phone.

“Mom? Good news,” I can hear her say into the phone.

But before I can find out what the scoop is, Lily moves on to my left arm, just below the elbow and the vision dissipates.

“It’s all good,” I say to Liv, resting back in my chair with a sense of relief.

She smiles and nods.

Confirming that I can see into the not-so-distant future when my palm touches another person’s palm (holy shit!), Liv excuses herself to take a call from Ted.

Lily eventually finishes up and moves me over to a UV drying station. As I wait for the polish to set, I hear the chime on the front door of the nail salon ding. For Lily’s sake, I hope it’s another customer—a more normal customer. But it’s just the mail carrier. He walks in and places a stack of letters on top of the drying table that I’m sitting at and tells us to have a nice day.

The letter that’s on the top of the stack is level to my eyes. I don’t mean to spy, but I can see it’s from the University of Illinois Admissions Department. I marry the vision I had of her with the letter on the table.

Lily is sitting back in a chair looking bored and scrolling through her phone. She lifts her head up and catches me staring at her.

“You’re dry,” she says, eager to dismiss me.

I pull my hands out from under the UV light and take my time walking to the door, hoping Lily gets up to ravish the mail pile behind me but she doesn’t.

The suspense gets to me. I double back to the dryer, grab the letters myself, and march them over to Lily who can’t be bothered to look up from watching TikTok dances made from sound bites of presidential candidate gaffes.

“I think you should open the one on top,” I say, handing her the mail.

Lily looks down at the return address, then up at me. I smile at her and leave, allowing the moment I saw coming to play out.

“That. Was. Exhilarating,” I exclaim to Liv as I shut the passenger side door behind me.

“It’s kind of fun, isn’t it? What did you see?”

“It’s a letter from U of I. She got into college. That’s her mom she’s on the phone with now. See?”

We both peep through the windshield into the storefront and see an elated Lily jumping up and down with her cell phone pressed against her ear.

“Good work, Moonie,” Liv tells me as she puts a hand on my shoulder. It feels nice to have my perfectionist sister’sExexveei approval.

“But also, a little constructive feedback.”

I sigh. I guess it is Liv, after all.

“Next time, resist the urge to squeeze the other person’s hand back once you start to see the future. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t make the vision come in any clearer. It just makes the other person think you’re having trouble passing a fart.”

“Noted,” I say before asking: “Liv, is there really notonesmall part of you that wants to see if you still got it?”

She shrugs and says nothing.

“I have a question,” I say, picking back up the conversation. “What about us?”

“What do you mean?” Liv asks.

“Do we ever see ourselves as the star of the show? For instance, I touch Lily’s palm, and I see her open the envelope-of-her-dreams. How come when I rub my palms together, I don’t see shit?”

---