The Leaf Reader - Hardcover

Emily Arsenault is the author of several literary mysteries, including In Search of the Rose Notes, a Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year; The Broken Teaglass, a New York Times Notable Crime Book; and The Evening Spider. She lives in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, with her husband and daughter. The Leaf Reader is her first young adult novel.

Chapter 1
 
Back when Andrea Quinley went missing, I never thought it would have much to do with me. Sure, it affected everyone in Colesbury in a things-like-that-don’t-happen-here sort of way. Andrea was a year ahead of me in school and friendly with me—as she was with just about everyone. And I was, of course, as sorry as anyone else that something terrible might’ve happened to her.
     They feared the worst about the river, but they didn’t find her. Andrea’s story went national on the sleazy Martin Report—not surprising since Mitzie Martin is partial to stories about pretty, missing teenage girls. Then spring came. Mitzie’s camera crews left. And then summer stretched and simmered along and no one found anything. The Have you seen Andrea? signs on all of the shop doors faded and curled at their corners. There were no more vigils or fundraisers. The newspaper articles about her became infrequent, then stopped altogether.
     School started again. My junior year. Andrea would’ve been a senior. But everyone started to think of Andrea Quinley as old news. Sad and disturbing old news, yes—but still old news.
     Surely those people who had been close to her still thought about her every hour of every day.
     But the rest of us—reluctantly, guiltily—settled into the idea that she was gone.
     I know I did.
     And I know I never thought she’d appear in my tea leaves.
 

Chapter 2
 
“If you can’t get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
     Ms. Platt read this quote to us in English class sometime in the fall of last year, back when I was a sophomore. It’s from George Bernard Shaw.
     I loved it. I can relate to the whole skeleton thing.
     I don’t have just one skeleton—a single, secret thing I’m ashamed of. I have more like a chorus line of skeletons rattling casually around me, always: Creepy house. Foul-mouthed grandmother/guardian. Absentee mother. My brother’s reputation for “drug issues,” whether that’s deserved or not.
     I’m so painfully, obviously not your typical Colesbury material, it’s almost laughable I’d ever tried. I’d learned by sophomore year that I was never going to be embraced as a soccer girl or a student leader. I’d spent most of middle school and ninth grade trying to pretend it was possible—joining clubs I didn’t like and babysitting like a madwoman to try to afford the kind of clothes most of the Colesbury golden children wore. By tenth grade, I was ready to try something new.
     I couldn’t pretend anymore. I had to make my skeletons dance. If I was going to have to be creepy, I figured I may as well find a way to make it interesting.
     It was around then that I found the book about tea-leaf reading in my grandmother’s dusty shelves. It was a stinking, yellowing thing from the sixties: Cosmos in a Cup: A Guide to Tea-Leaf Reading. On the cover was a girl with hippie hair staring googly-eyed into a teacup while tiny stars swirled above her head. G. Clara claimed it was never hers. She said it came in a box of books she got for a dollar at a tag sale. G. Clara never cops to anything hippie.
     Tea-leaf reading is a kind of fortune-telling, I learned from the book’s introduction:
 
The art of tea-leaf reading—or tasseomancy—is an ancient one. The practice spread from the Orient to Europe with the trade and consumption of tea.
     Of course, it borrows much from other ancient forms of divination. Throughout human history, people have sought out patterns or signs to help them forecast the future: in sand, bird formations, stars, entrails.
     Tea-leaf reading has become less commonplace since the invention of the teabag. Still, it is one of the easiest and most accessible forms of prophecy. All that is required is a teacup, water, loose tea, and an open mind.
 
     After you drink a cup of tea—with loose tea, not a teabag—you leave the last bit of liquid and tea leaves at the bottom of the cup. Then you flip the cup over on its saucer and turn it around three times counterclockwise, concentrating your thoughts on the cup. When you turn the cup right-side up again, you look at the images formed by the clumps of tea leaves. It’s a little like spotting pictures in the clouds. Someone might see a penguin where someone else might see an ironing board.
     Cosmos in a Cup had a long “Symbol Key” toward the end, arranged alphabetically:
 
-Wagon: A positive change is coming.
-Wall: Resistance or misunderstanding. Also: a physical or mental barrier.
-Wheel: A journey with a positive outcome. Often a metaphorical journey of discovery.
-Window: Consider looking at things from a different perspective. Also: psychic ability.
-Wolf: Envy, within oneself or from one’s associates. Can also signify a greedy or vicious adversary.
-Wreath: Sometimes signifies a ceremony to come—a wedding, a graduation, a funeral. Also: a symbol of loss, grief, or death.
 
I started studying the symbols sometimes before bed. I found it weirdly relaxing. And it seemed related to another interest I’d had for a long time: dream interpretation. I’d always liked the idea that your brain—or maybe the universe—could be trying to tell you secrets with little signs or symbols here and there. Tea-leaf reading allowed for that possibility when you were awake, too. Why not give it a shot?
     Then I started to try some readings on my friend Carson at the Clover Café, the downtown coffee shop.
 
“I think I see a goat, Carson. A goat can mean you’ve got hidden guilt about something.”
     Carson didn’t look up from his homework. “If you think I’m going to bite that easily, you’re wrong.”
     I squinted at a blob of tea leaves at the very bottom of his cup. A few larger leaves had clumped into a lopsided sort of U-shape, with a few smaller leaves poking out of one end (feathers?) and a single pointy one sticking out the other (a beak?). “But I also see a rooster. A rooster means arrogance.”
      “Wow, Marnie. Tell me how you really feel. You know, it sounds like I’ve got a barnyard sort of cup this time. Do you also see a pitchfork? A manure pile?”
      “No.” I tried not to sound exasperated. “I see an archway. I don’t remember ever seeing that in my book, but if I had to guess, I’d say it means a new beginning.”
     Carson tried to meet my gaze over his laptop, but I couldn’t quite see his eyes through his overgrown black bangs. Lately he’d been experimenting with hair growth—on both his head and his face.
      “Unfortunately, I don’t believe in new beginnings,” he said.
     I rolled my eyes. “Okay. How about it’s the entranceway to the campus of an Ivy League university?”
      “Perfect.” Carson began to type again. “The tea leaves are probably telling me to get back to work. Maybe they’re trying to tell you the same thing?”
      “I don’t have much homework today,” I grumbled. “I’m going to do it after dinner.”
     I was about to get my jacket on and abandon Carson then and there, but Leah Perry and Morgan Gorse came up to our table. They were two drama nerds who hung out at the Clover Café sometimes.
      “What’re you guys doing?” Morgan wanted to know.
      “I was reading Carson’s tea leaves,” I admitted.
     Carson blushed, but Morgan and Leah wanted their own readings.
 
 
It probably would’ve ended there if I hadn’t seen an image of a boat in Leah Perry’s teacup. A boat usually symbolizes a big windfall, and I’d told her so. Three days later, she won a huge scholarship from a national essay contest. I was as surprised as Leah was. Had I gotten lucky, or had I sensed a real sign in her cup? I wasn’t sure. Meanwhile, Leah told everybody I’d made a spookily accurate prediction, and then all of her drama friends wanted a reading.
     And it went from there. They even paid me . . . Well, sort of. A latte or a cocoa for a reading. I don’t actually like tea that much. Besides, if I’m drinking something else, it keeps people from asking me to read my own cup in front of them. Ever since Leah and her friends graduated, though, I’d had only a few regular “clients.”
 
 
“Don’t you feel like a little bit of a fraud?” Carson once sniffed at me. “I mean, don’t you feel like you’re pretending?”
     I did feel like I was pretending, at least at the start. I admit that. But whenever you start on something, it always feels a little like pretending, right? If you let that stop you, you might never try anything new.
     And maybe Carson could stand to loosen up and try something new himself. From the time I met him, when he moved to my neighborhood in the seventh grade, all he’s ever cared about is getting into Yale. Most of the time he talks and acts like he’s already there. Twice a week he drives down to New Haven and does his homework in one of the coffee shops there. Now that we’re juniors—now that his grades are more important than ever and he has to start thinking about his application next year—he’s becoming a monster.
     I don’t see him as much as I used to, but that’s okay. I’m happy with my decent-enough grades and my tea readings and my pretending.