Page 41 of The Sun and the Moon
Or maybe I’m just in the eye of the hurricane.
“When the Sun and the Moon are together in a tarot reading, they are a powerful combination,” she says, and my adrenaline shoots into action. There’s that whirling, swirling, dragging meoff the ground to toss me around in the sky. “The cards are transformation with balance. They are light burning away confusion. They are hope”—she touches the Sun card—“and intuition”—she touches the Moon—“working together for the hand of fate.”
Fate.
Almost every decision I’ve made about my life since entering high school has been planned to the letter, no room for magic or fate. I became an overachiever with very little space in her life for deep feelings and even less space for divergent paths. Partying and dating casually have been my vices of choice to deal with it, and I’m just not sure why I can’t sit still, can’t commit, can’t be grounded for long.
But maybe I’m ready to find out.
Chapter Seventeen
Cadence
My only visit to the Universal Studios theme park was with the one friend from my adolescence who Moira never managed to get her hooks into. Hannah Zhou. She was the new student at school, and she mistook my loner status for approachability when she befriended me the first day of eighth grade. From Singapore originally, her family immigrated to the States when she was two, first to New York City, then Washington, DC, for her dad’s work. Their move to LA was supposed to be temporary, which made me feel less terrified about being her friend. She and her mom had committed to seeing all the theme parks, big and small, that SoCal had to offer.
Disney, Knott’s Berry Farm, Legoland, and, of course, the Los Angeles mainstay, Universal Studios. They went over Thanksgiving break and invited me along. All my memories of it—and my brief but potent friendship with Hannah—remain the only fond ones I’ve retained of the entirety of my eighth-grade experience.
“Take a seat right up front, Cadence,” Rick says, pointing to a spot up ahead inside the tour guide’s carriage. The emptywhite-roofed, navy-blue-sided open-air tram emits a low hum, ready to set off toward the throngs of guests waiting to board for the tour, one of the most popular “rides” in the park. There are sections to the vehicle, and Rick and I will sit in the second. The front is where the driver sits, a woman named Flo, who is communicating with Rick through a walkie, saying that we’re about to head toward the gate to pick up passengers.
Rick is giving me a free ride and an up-close view of his showmanship. I’m hoping we have some downtime to chat during the parts of the ride that don’t require he have his microphone on.
I drop into the seat, crossing my legs. He climbs in through the other side, swiveling his neck to look at me. “Don’t forget to keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle for the duration of the tour.”
“Noted,” I say, raising my hands dramatically before folding them in my lap. Someone calls over his walkie-talkie, giving him a green light to proceed.
“Thanks for letting me tag along,” I say. “I haven’t been here since I was a teenager.”
“Can’t abide that,” he says, cheery but affronted at the same time. “How old were you?”
“Fourteen. Fall of eighth grade,” I recite, thinking about the awkward long-legged girl desperate to win a toy from theSimpsonscarnival.
“They’ve added a lot to the tour since then. You’re going to love it,” he says with pride.
“Can’t wait,” I reply. His smile is broad and comes easily. Like resting bitch face but a whole lot happier. “When I rode it back then, I loved the part where Norman Bates follows us onto the road. And seeing all the bungalows and the active soundstages.”
“You’re an LA kid,” he says a little dreamily. “Makes sense thatyou love movie sets.” Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how much of an LA kid I really am. Having left it behind a long time ago for college, and then having stayed away as I worked up to a full-time position with the National Park Service, I don’t feel as connected to the place where I was born as I used to. I like to keep my origin story—and not just the psychic-mom part of it—a secret at work. Which means I don’t often chat about how firmly my roots lead back to LA.
We are now in line, queuing toward the stalls that hold the waiting customers. Rick takes a gulp from his giant water bottle—a Stanley, as if he were a millennial mom.
“How long have you been doing this job?” I ask. I know he left piloting full-time when Sydney was in high school, but I’m not sure what the trajectory was that took him from commercial airline pilot to tour guide at Universal Studios. It can’t have been a straight line. It’s a fun gig for someone with a performer’s itch who doesn’t want to act, sure, but more aretired guy looking to stay sharpjob than a career path.
“I was a consultant for a while on sets,” he says, adjusting his aviators on the bridge of his nose. There’s a smidge of white lotion staining the corner, and I bite back the urge to chuckle. He’s such a buttoned-up guy in appearance, and then he’ll have these chaotic elements that feel totally incongruent to the image he projects. The poorly applied sunscreen being one of them.
The car eases forward until we’re one away from loading up.
“That’s so cool,” I blurt. He chuckles, not surprised by my reaction. There I am being an LA kid again. “What did that entail?”
“They’d hire me to read scripts, give notes on aviation-related elements. Sometimes I’d come out to live sets and give feedback. I never flew for a film or anything, but I did explain how to looklike you know what you’re doing in a cockpit to Ryan Gosling one time.” He lowers his aviators and turns to look at me, making sure I can see his brows waggle. I snort. Ryan Gosling is quite the charmer, I have to give him that.
“Very cool guy,” he adds brightly.
“Glad to hear it,” I say, smiling.
Flo eases the truck forward before putting it firmly in park to let the families, solo travelers, groups, and couples file on board safely. I feel eyes on me, knowing my presence at the front of the car is an anomaly. Even if it’s their first time on the tram ride, even if it’s their twentieth.
A little girl wearing a Rosalina t-shirt and carrying a star purse climbs on and takes the seat closest to the front, forcing what I assume is the rest of her family—a grumpy-looking dad in socks and sandals, a younger sibling inexplicably wearing goggles, and a mom with a visor on to block the sun—to sit there as well. The little girl is the only one who looks properly excited for this ride.
I turn my attention back to Rick, since the rest of the loading process will take a few minutes and I don’t want to drop the thread of his tour guide origin story.
