Outside, a balloon popped, making me jump so high I hit the cobwebbed chandelier above us. A child’s cries echoed in the background as I stared at the name on the page until my vision blurred.

Of course. Of course.

It was like the vital missing puzzle piece, and as soon as I fit it in, everything else became clear. I wondered why I didn’t think of it before. It seemed so like her. Always wanting to know her future, always being tied up in superstitions. I’d bet before this, she’d visited every fortune-teller in the Heights.

“So you’re saying …,” I sputtered, collapsing in a black pleather armchair and ignoring the farting noise it let out. I knew what she was saying. I just couldn’t form the right words.

Taryn crouched beside me. “This book has been in my family for hundreds of years. There aren’t very many Touches left.”

“Wait. She let your grandmother …” I tried to say more, moved my mouth in a thousand different ways, but the words didn’t come out.

“She paid to do it. Probably a thousand dollars or more.”

“Paid? Your grandmother ruined her life, my life, and charged her for it?” When Taryn nodded, I realized I couldn’t breathe anymore. I doubled over, feeling like I had been kicked in the gut.

Taryn pointed to the date, which was in July, eighteen years ago, a month after my mom’s graduation and a few months before I was born. Eighteen years ago. I stared at that date until my eyes burned. The exact date our nightmares began.

“And it transferred to me, because my mother was pregnant with me,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes.

“That’s where the ‘No Reversals’ comes in.”

I dropped my hands. “You mean, she could reverse a Touch if she wanted to?”

Taryn shook her head. “No. I just told you, that’s not possible.”

“You didn’t say it wasn’t possible. You just said she wouldn’t do it.”

“It’s not possible,” she said firmly. She took the book and closed it, then locked it with the key. “But Grandma warns people. She doesn’t just take all their money and give them a Touch. She has seen that, while some of these Touches perform miracles, some of them destroy people’s lives. She tells them that sometimes a person’s greatest desire can be the most terrible curse.”

Of course we would have the luck to fall into the “curse” category. “So let me get this straight. My mother paid so that she could be this way?”

She nodded. “Every one of these Touches is something really cool. Something people would kill for. And long ago my ancestors realized that certain people would not only risk their lives to be Touched but they’d also fork over huge sums of money. Charging a lot also helps to ensure a person is serious about it. Grandma doesn’t want just anyone waltzing in and getting a Touch. When people put together that much money, they’re usually serious. Plus it pays her bills.”

I leaned my head against the table and muttered my mom’s name. “Why?” I whispered, and no sooner had I done that then I saw the answer. I saw my mom, explaining, tears running down her face. I was so scared when I found out I was pregnant. And there was so much uncertainty with your father. He said he loved me, but I couldn’t be sure. When he asked me to marry him, I was so afraid that one day he would leave me, like my father left your grandmother. So I pulled together my life’s savings—a thousand dollars—and went to her. The first thing I saw when I got the Touch was me, alone. Your father was gone. And then the worst thing—I saw I’d given this curse to you. I destroyed every chance of us having a normal—

At that point I started to green-elephant. I didn’t want to hear her whining anymore. She knew. All this time I was searching for answers, and she already knew. It was her fault. At that moment, I didn’t want to see her again.

“What is that?” Taryn asked. “The green elephant?”

I groaned through the pain, through the memory that came up at that moment. Really, anything would work, but I started saying that because when I was seven or eight, I bought my mom this necklace for Christmas that had a jade elephant pendant. I bought it for a buck at school, so it wasn’t real jade, but she wore it every day. On bad days, when my head really hurt, I’d sit with her and she’d hold me to her and I would see nothing but that green elephant, with its trunk in the air. It meant good fortune. Good fortune.

She didn’t wear it anymore. It was probably in a landfill somewhere. That was one of the few times I’d experienced cycling because of something she did. One day the cable had gone out, so she reached behind the set to jiggle the wires, and the necklace’s black cord, which had been fraying a bit, got caught on a screw and snapped. The jade elephant fell to the ground and the trunk broke off in a pile of green chalk dust. That day, it was as if every future memory I’d have of my mom changed just a bit and felt slightly strange, like new shoes that needed breaking in. In each of those visions, the elephant was gone from her neck.

I leaned back in the chair, feeling something close to the numbness I’d get after a night of bad cycling, when my head had been thrashed so much it couldn’t feel anything anymore. “It’s just a nonsense phrase. It doesn’t mean anything. I say it to keep the future memories from invading. To calm my mind. If my brain is concentrating on something else, it doesn’t have time to dwell on the future.”

Taryn nodded as if it wasn’t the stupidest thing in the world, and I loved her for that.

The picture of my mom sobbing kept invading, and I pushed it away. She was lucky we could carry on conversations in our minds, because if I’d been in the same room together, I didn’t know what I might have done or said. “So, what other Touches are in there? What else can this book do?”

She flipped through the pages. “Like I said, there’s only a handful of them left. Um, this one is Poison Arrow. Architect of Time. Small Army …” She kept flipping pages.

“Any Touches that will undo previous Touches?” I asked, hopeful.

She shook her head. “No such luck.”

“Well, can you, like, say the curse backward and—”

“Uh-uh. Absolutely no reversals.”

“But is that because it can’t be done, or because your grandmother doesn’t know how to do it?” I asked, getting desperate.

“It can’t be done. Touches are permanent,” she said, making my heart, which was suddenly twittering with all these new, thrilling sensations, turn to lead. She looked at her watch. “We’d better get out of here. Grandma will be here any minute and she does not want me talking to you about the Book of Touch.”

“Why not? Isn’t it good business for her?”

“Sure it is. Like I said, it pays her rent. But I don’t think local law enforcement would be too happy about it, so it’s very hush-hush.” She walked to the opening of the booth and stopped short. I didn’t have to look out; I immediately saw what was coming. Her grandmother plodding up the ramp, her thick sausage cankles visible under that same shapeless dress of dead brown flowers. I grabbed Taryn by the wrist and the vision dissolved in my head. We needed to hide. But when I turned, there was nothing, just mounds of red velvet on the walls. Sure, there was the little table, but it was too little to hide both of us, and did I really want to spend any length of time with Taryn’s grandmother’s cankles in my face?

Taryn led the way, pulling back one of the curtains. “In here,” she said. I climbed in. There was a cinder-block wall about three feet behind the curtains, but it was a good hiding spot.

“How’d you know this was here?” I whispered.

“I used to spend a lot of time back here when I was a kid,” she answered. “Grandma thought it would be good for me.”

“Good for you? You mean, she wanted you to see people get this … Touch?”