Ignite Me (The Annihilate Me Series) (3 page)

CHAPTER
THREE

Later that day,
when I arrived at my shoddy two-bedroom walkup on Manhattan’s lower east side,
I stepped out of the cab and into the unusually searing, early summer
heat.
 
I paid the driver, thanked him,
and then looked up at the decrepit building before me with a sense of
despair—but also with a sense of hope that my days here might be numbered.
 

With its broken
brick facade, its cracked granite steps, and the dangerously sketchy
neighborhood in which it was located, the building represented the totality of
just how far I’d come since moving from Cambridge to Manhattan in search of a
job that would help me realize my dreams.
 

In other words,
I’d failed and gotten nowhere.
 

The building
itself stood as a towering testament to that.
 
I saw it as a symbol of every job I’d
taken since I’d first arrived in the city, and every promotion I’d been denied as
well.
 

But today had
been different, hadn’t it?
 
Today,
I’d actually secured a well-paying job that might just change my
life—provided I could meet Blackwell’s expectations, as high as I knew
those were going to be.

And I
will.
 
In fact, I must.
 

With a sense of
purpose in my step, I got my keys from my purse, unlocked the front door, felt
a suppressive wave of heat overcome me, and started to climb the four floors
that led to the apartment I shared with my best friend and roommate Rhoda
Burns.

Rhoda was one
of the first people I’d met when I came to the city, and the way we’d met had
been unconventional, to say the least.
 
I’d been searching for a place to rent while couch-surfing with two
former college friends when I came upon Rhoda’s ad in the
Village Voice
:

New York Psychic Seeks
a Madison . . . or Maybe It’s an Addison . . . (It’s Something Like That) to
Share a Two-Bedroom Apartment and to Eventually Become Best Friends.
 
Madison or Addison Will See that I’m
Never Wrong About These Sort of Things.
 
Rent:
 
I Already Know that
You Can Afford It, So Don’t Worry About it, Darling. Give Me a Ring at 555-0667
When You Read This on Tuesday.
 
Talk
Soon!

For a long
moment, I’d just stared at the ad, not knowing what to think before I came to
the conclusion that one of the girlfriends I was staying with had played a
little prank on me—and since it
had
caused me to pause, I had to
give it to either Diane or Melissa.
 
It was a pretty good one.
 

I’d been
reading the
Voice
and the
Times
daily in an effort to find an
affordable place to live, which Diane and Melissa knew.
 
Since I thought that the telephone number
likely belonged to a cheap TracFone one of them had purchased because they
hoped that I’d take the bait, I decided to call the number so I could give one
of them hell.

And when I did,
my world changed.

“Madison?” a
woman said when the line was answered.
 
“Or is it Addison?
 
I’ve been
going out of my mind with which one it is, but the cards won’t tell me.
 
So spill it.
 
Madison or Addison?
 
I’ve got to know.”

“Who is this?”
I said, not recognizing the hearty voice.
 
“Is this one of Diane’s friends?
 
Or one of Melissa’s?”

“It’s neither
of them, though I can tell you that those two are getting close to nudging your
ass off that couch you’ve been using for the past two weeks, so you need to
listen to me now before you become a homeless wanderer left to the city’s
streets.
 
My name is Rhoda
Burns.
 
I’m a psychic.
 
It’s my job.
 
It’s what I do.
 
And this is real.”

“You’re a
what?” I asked.

“A
psychic.
 
I have a storefront on
Christopher Street in the Village.
 
Psychic Readings by Rhoda—you can look it up on the Internet if
you want.
 
I’m very popular with the
locals, and especially with the tourists because I have been given a rare
gift.
 
Or a curse—you’ll see
what I mean by that when we discuss it later today.
 
Anyway, when I was born, I was endowed
with the power to tap into the otherworldly.”

Seriously?
I
thought.
 
Really?
 
Diane or Melissa or both of them are
going this far?
 
Please.
 
“Who is this?” I asked again.

“Rhoda Burns,”
she said.
 
“And while I know that
all of this seems unreal to you right now, you need to trust me because
apparently this was meant to be.
 
From the age of six, I’ve known that this day would come.”

“How old are
you now?” I asked.

“Thirty-one.”

“Why do I feel
as if I’m being fooled?”

“Because you
have every reason to.
 
I know all of
this sounds insane, but trust me on this—it isn’t.
 
It’s all out there in the universe.
 
It’s already been determined.
 
I’m here to tell you that it’s true.”

“I think I
should just hang up,” I said.
 

“That’s OK,”
she said.
 
“I already know that
you’re about to.
 
But after an hour
or so, you’re going to call me back again, ask me some personal questions, hang
up on me again, and then you’ll call back to set up a time for us to meet.”

Who was this
woman?
 
Whoever she was—and
even if this was a joke—she was creeping me out.

“Goodbye, Ms.
Burns.”

“Talk to you
soon, toots!”

An hour later,
just as she’d predicted, the forces of nature—fueled by my own
curiosity—pressed me into calling her back.

“Who are you?”
I asked when she answered.
 
“If this
is a joke set up by my girlfriends, it’s gone far enough.
 
Will you please just tell me now if
that’s the case?
 
Because I’m
feeling very uneasy about this right now, and even if it is a joke, it’s
starting to freak me out.”

“It’s not a
joke,” she said quietly.
 
“And I understand
your concerns.
 
Of course I do.
 
Who wouldn’t question something like
this?”

“Tell me
something about myself that no one knows?”

She paused when
I said that.

“Come on,” I
said.
 
“If you can. . . .”

“How deep do
you want me to go?”

“As deep as you
want.”

“Are you sure
about that?” she asked.
 
“It’s only
going to upset you if I do.”

What could this
woman possibly know about me?
 
Nothing.
 
So, it’s time to
call her out.
 
“Yes,” I
said.
 
“Go there.”

“All right, but
I think you’re making a mistake.”

“Tell me.”

“When you were
at Harvard, you had your heart broken by a man you were very close to falling
in love with.
 
I have problems when
it comes to recalling names, but generally I come pretty close, as I did with
your name.
 
His name was either Bill
or Will.
 
I’m not sure which, but I
know that it’s one or the other, and I am sorry for how he cheated on you,
Madison, and especially for how you found out.
 
I’m also sorry that for the past three
years, you’ve been reluctant to trust another man since the night you found him
in bed with your best friend.”

My face had
already gone pale before I severed the connection.

Later, for
reasons that came straight down to how this woman could possibly know something
so utterly personal about me, I picked up the phone again and called her
back.
 
“All right,” I said.
 
“How could you have known that?
 
I don’t get it.”

“It’s just who
I am,” she said.
 
“As I said
earlier, I knew at a very young age that one day we’d meet, become roommates,
and close friends.
 
I know this
sounds bizarre, but it is what it is, and I am who I am.
 
I’ve been saddled with this since I was
a child.
 
I have zero control over
what pops into my head—it just does.”
 

I heard her
sigh into the phone.
 
“Like I said
earlier, whatever gift I’ve been given has also been a curse.
 
I see too many things.
 
Sometimes what I see is as vivid as
looking at myself in the mirror.
 
Other times, it’s just a jumble that creates a puzzle I don’t quite
understand—though I still feel something, and it affects me.
 
Every day I walk past people on the
sidewalk on my way to work, and there’s nothing I can do but to absorb what
they’re feeling at that moment—their happiness, their betrayals, their
enthusiasm, their anger, their greed, their loves, and their losses.
 
Sometimes I can sense life growing
inside a woman who doesn’t even know that she’s pregnant.
 
Worse, sometimes I can sense someone’s
impending death, which is devastating to me.
 
Or there are times when I’ll come upon
someone who has a horrible disease that they know nothing about.
 
And then there’s everything else,
everything that slips between me and the in-between—because that’s where
I exist, Madison.
 
In the
in-between.
 
I can’t explain it, but
long ago, I knew I had no choice but to accept it.
 
Look, why don’t we just end with
this?
 
You need a place to
live.
 
My roommate recently moved
out and I have a spare bedroom to rent.
 
At the very least, why not come and have a look at the space for
yourself—though don’t expect much because the building is a shithole if I
do say so myself.
 
Still, the rent
is cheap.
 
And I’m a good
person.
 
And if nothing else, I’ll
make life interesting for you.
 
So,
come and meet me.
 
How about
that?
 
Then you can decide for
yourself if I’m crazy, or whether I was just born with something that no one
can explain.
 
After a face-to-face
talk, you’ll know whether you’d like to rent here.”

“I’m assuming
you already know the answer?”

“I do.”

It was around
five in the afternoon when I met Rhoda Burns in person in what had to be one of
the worst-looking buildings New York had to offer.
 
When she answered the door, I was
greeted by a big, brassy woman with bright red hair tied back in a yellow
kerchief, zero makeup on her otherwise full and pretty face, and a smile that
was so wide and warm and filled with excitement—apparently to finally see
me in the flesh after all of these years—that she just reached out and
held me in her heavy arms.

“Finally,” she
said.
 
“After a twenty-five-year
wait, you’re here!”

Where it went
from there turned out to be one of the strangest days of my life—but one
in which I now considered to be one of my luckiest, because Rhoda was
right.
 
Over the past two years, we
had indeed become best friends.
 
As
different as we were—Rhoda was an eccentric, full-on, sage-burning,
pot-smoking psychic hippie, and I was a driven Harvard grad with plans of one
day hitting it big—when we first sat down to talk, the chemistry between
us was palpable, and it had only deepened since.

“I’m home!” I
said when I walked into our apartment.
 
“And thank God it’s cool inside because it’s all kinds of hellish
outside.”
 
I looked over at the the
air conditioner we’d purchased at a secondhand shop last year and watched it
tremble and shake in our living-room window.
 
“Thank God Bessie still has life in her
yet.”

“Come into the
kitchen,” Rhoda said.
 
“I have a
surprise for you.”

What is she up
to now?
I wondered with a smile.

Between us,
Rhoda and I had several rules when it came to her clairvoyance.
 
Since I meant it when I said that I wanted
to make it on my own, she was never to tell me which job was the right job, and
which job I’d just be wasting my time at.
 
I wanted to find all of that out for myself—otherwise, I’d just be
cheating, which wasn’t the reason I’d spent a fortune on a Harvard
education.