I was no stranger to having to make everything up as I went. It was how I operated my whole life, but up until now, I felt like there was always some way that someone else would fix the mess that I had made. That certainly wasn't the case anymore.
Of course, I had Dominic in my corner (and he didn't have much of a choice but to stick with me since we were connected cosmically), but he couldn't fix our Rainier problem. Only I had the talisman in my hand, and only I could get us out of our final exam.
I put my hand over the talisman in my back pocket. My secret was out, and I really didn't think closing Pandora's box was a possibility. I also didn't pay much attention the day we learned that reference in school, though, so maybe I had it all wrong.
With the sunshine back out again, the silence outside was replaced with the confused voices of everyone who wanted a valid excuse to get out of their final, and even though I still had a few hours before my ASL one was set to begin, I was going to get that exam rescheduled or canceled for the class. Even though I was pretty sure everyone found me annoying, it was the least I could do for them.
Merry Nightmare Before Christmas or whatever.
Everything was fine. Everything was in my control. And I hadn't killed anyone yet, had I?
I nodded in agreement with my own thought.
"Lindsay, would you please just tell me that you're thinking of a course of action right now?" Dominic whispered from beside me.
"I am, I am. Calm down," I said. "This is definitely the highest stakes I've ever had to deal with, since I'm about to get kicked out of school, so I'm really doing my be—"
"I thought your best friend getting kidnapped would rank higher on the pressing situations list."
I shook my head. "I knew he was gonna be fine. This time, I'm slightly less sure that everyone is gonna be okay."
"That's reassuring."
I knew it wasn't at all, but what did he expect from me?
As the voices from outside migrated back into the building—Dr. Rainier's most certainly among them—I wasn't sure why I didn't take the opportunity to run away from the situation. Getting out and pretending I was never there in the first place would have been a great plan, but it was too late for that now.
Instead, I had to face the music, the consequences of my own actions.
Gross.
I wasn't sure how many times I could count on the talisman's magic to help me out, but one last time before the semester ended and final grades were in sounded really great.
I shut my eyes. Hey Talisman, it's your girl again. This time, I'm thinking that maybe an earthquake or avalanche or even a small gas leak, if you're feeling generous.
"I know that look on your face, Lindsay. We can't pick the path of greatest destruction again—"
I opened my eyes and shot Dominic a glare. "I can pick whichever path I want."
"Well, I sure as hell know that, but that's not the point. Would you just focus on—"
This time, Dr. Rainier entering the room was the interruption to Dominic's admonishment of me.
"Shit," he muttered, and I tightened my grip on the talisman.
Okay, it's probably for the best if you don't do anything I suggested before since I'm pretty sure Dominic is your way of talking back to me. It really makes sense, especially if Dr. Reed's idea was right that it belonged to his ancestors once upon a time—
"Lindsay Hughes, I know you're in here," Dr. Rainier said as he shut the door behind him. "All this crazy nonsense has been following two people around this semester, and I have my sources to tell me that you're the one at fault."
Sure, his student assistant Harvey was partly responsible, but it had to really have been Dr. Reed. I shook my head. She was just trying to use whatever resources she had to get the information I needed, but who would have thought that the head of the language department would try to steal a powerful magic tool from a twenty-year-old kid who was struggling academically?
Now that I thought about it, it seemed pretty reasonable on his part.
"I know you found some sort of artifact that's caught the attention of someone in the anthropology department. And I'm on your side, too. You certainly can't have anyone else knowing about this little trinket you've got on your hands," he continued.
What didn't this man know? Of course, it didn't help me at all that I was a messy bitch, but he certainly wasn't lying about having sources. He didn't even need to cite them because I knew it was all facts from him.
"And I know my best student is also involved with this." Rainier cleared his throat. "Of course, I'm talking about Dominic Bachmann."
I shut my eyes and bit my lip. He certainly knew how to play with Dominic's ice-cold heart.
"Best?" Dominic whispered to himself.
And now Rainier knew how to turn Dominic on faster than I could. Wonderful.
"So, Lindsay, if you want to make this as easy as possible, I'd strongly suggest that you let me see what kind of artifact you're dealing with, and once we figure out the writing on it, then we can figure out where to go from there," Dr. Rainier said.
He certainly knew how to speak my language too, but after twenty years of taking the easy way out, I couldn't afford it this time around.
I took in a breath. "I'm actually good, Dr. Rainier. I think I've figured out what I need to know."
"What are you doing? Use the talisman," Dominic whispered like Dr. Rainier didn't know he was also there. We weren't exactly the right size to hide under a desk in the back of the classroom and go unnoticed.
"Are you sure about that? If there's still so much that I don't know about it, I know that you don't know a thing," Dr. Rainier said to me.
A quick breath left my nose. I didn't know a thing? I could guarantee that my experiences meant that I knew much more than anything he could make up in a classroom.
"He's just trying to piss you off. Don't let him," Dominic whispered, even more quietly than he did before. I didn't know he had it in him.
How was I not supposed to let that piss me off? It certainly wasn't like I had spent the past few months piecing together what little information I had to try to figure out why the talisman was connected to Dominic and me. And from what I had gathered, it sure seemed to me that it was just meant to be and that was that. Not everything had a story that could be understood. It certainly was a different perspective than what I had in mind when I picked an anthropology major just to irritate my parents.
Before I could figure out some way to reply to Dr. Rainier that showed that I was most definitely not irritated and knew literally everything there was to know about the talisman, the door to the classroom opened up.
Just what I needed. Another witness for me about to screw up my entire life. Perfect.
"Cora," Dr. Rainier said. Dr. Reed? "What can I help you with?"
I peered through the empty space underneath the desk, and there she stood in leggings, bright pink socks and Birkenstocks, and a Tillamook College hoodie. Perfect finals week attire.
"I—" Dr. Reed began with squinted, confused eyes, but she didn't finish that thought before she met my gaze from under the desk. She waved her fingers at her side, just enough of a sign for me to know that she definitely was there for me.
"What's she doing here?" Dominic asked.
She did cross my mind for a moment, but there was no way she could have gotten there so quickly if it was the work of the talisman unless she overcame the hindrance of the sandals and sprinted like Usain Bolt.
No matter how it happened, it was weird having her there for me. A nice kind of weird. But even with her there, it wasn't going to get me out of the mess that we were all in now.
"Well, given that you've wandered quite far from your home in anthropology, I'm sure you can imagine my curiosity," Dr. Rainier kind of asked once again.
"We're all curious, James," Dr. Reed replied, and I was fairly certain that she was just talking about the talisman. I was just as curious as they were, but with every moment that slowly ticked away, the more it made sense that the talisman knew much more than I ever would, and it had some kind of future in store for me. It didn't make sense at times, but it certainly had become clearer with every day that passed.
Dominic wasn't out to get me. If I asked him what he hated about me now, it wasn't going to be that I was an insensitive bitch about circumstances I didn't care to know about. This time, it would be that I kept getting into mess after mess, and he'd tell me that he loved to hate it.
I smiled in my head. Of course, he probably would have to be dying to say all of that, but somehow I knew it anyway.
And with that thought, a warmth glowed in my hand—not burning hot, but comfortable. The talisman had burned and froze before, but it had never gone out of its way to give me a soothing sign if I was reading into it correctly.
"Does this mean I've got it all figured out?" I asked out loud, and when the temperature didn't change, I assumed the talisman had no protest to that sentiment. I had done a lot of anthropomorphizing to make sense of the talisman, but maybe it was all for a good reason. It seemed to understand me before I ever did.
What the hell was it that I thought or did to get this kind of reaction from the talisman? There were a million options, or maybe it was a little bit of all of them. Whatever it was, it felt like I imagined the blue sky felt after I accidentally turned it into a swirling latte of death and despair.
I had spent months trying to figure out how to control it, and maybe I had finally done just that. But much more likely, I decided to let it guide me. I certainly needed someone to help me get through life, after all.
It took me from not going to Jack's rich people show at Trailfest to saving his kidnapped ass. I went from trying to avoid Sierra as much as possible to possibly being friends with her. And I had changed from accidentally belittling Dominic and avoiding him like the plague to not leaving him behind when he had an asthma attack at the worst possible time, and, more importantly, to really, really liking him.
The talisman won, but the only way we were both going to win again was if I could get away from Dr. Rainier, away from Harvey. This kind of academia was never going to help me, and it wasn't meant to.
My job was with Butterfly in Sherwood, but I could never afford to live somewhere like that without my parents' money, and that was the whole reason I was in this mess in the first place. But I couldn't stay where I had caused chaos for a few months and pretend like it never happened.
Tillamook College was always going to be the place I found the rest of my life, but it wasn't the academics that got me there. Rather, the academics were making my life more miserable than it needed to be. And maybe that made me a bad person and the failure that everyone thought I was, but it was all going to be okay. I had a plan.
Some people just weren't made for college, I supposed. And even though I proved that I could earn good grades (and finesse my way into others) with a little help from my friends, it wasn't what was best for me.
I took in a breath. Talisman, I know you've been listening to my thoughts, so if that's the right answer, please let me know. Thanks.
But before the talisman could burn down the building, Dominic put his hand on my forearm. "It's gonna be okay."
Yes, Dominic and talisman, it would be eventually, after I somehow fixed all of the debt I had worked myself into.
With that weight lifted off of my shoulders, I grabbed Dominic's hand and climbed out from underneath the desk, where everyone already knew I was.
This time, I didn't want the talisman to get me out of the situation I had gotten into. It already shut down my natural disaster ideas, and I wasn't really feeling like hurting another person just because they were in my way.
"I got what I needed from this place. I think it's best if I just take it and go. Thanks for everything. I mean it," I said.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Dr. Reed asked.
"Thanks for believing in me when my own mother didn't. Maybe she was right, but I don't think this is where I'm going to prove her wrong. And Dr. Rainier," I said as I turned to him, "thanks for teaching this class. I'll use it eventually."
"Eventually?" he said.
Dominic nodded slowly beside me. "I got you, Lindsay. I get it."
And that was all I needed.
"I don't really need the drama of this stupid old coin anymore. But it's cool and, using Dr. Reed's logic, finders keepers," I said.
"It's not just an old coin—" Dr. Rainier began, but I cut him off.
"It is now. There's not much else it can do for me."
Talisman, I'm sure you can't actually turn yourself into an inanimate, insentient object, but just pretend you can. For me.
Dr. Reed looked around the room for something to go wrong, and when I led Dominic out of the classroom without anything bursting into flames or the sky falling, I heard her say, "Oh my god. That's exactly where everything would have gone wrong if it was going to."
I nodded as I kept walking.
And when no one stopped me, it was clear that the talisman listened to me.
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Hi everyone! Thank you so much for reading! I appreciate all of your support over the years, including the past couple that I have been working on this book!
Now that we're super close to the end, I think I'm gonna share a fun story from my own life about how this book came to be. First of all, this book is definitely a step outside of my comfort zone in terms of a storyline, since I usually like to stick what feels like real life, but who's to say that paranormal stuff isn't real?
As you may know from my other works, I love to get inspiration for setting from what I know. Fluke's Paradise City is actually inspired by a place called Mount Desert Island where I took a class over the summer of 2018 (time flies, doesn't it?), One for the Road's protagonist Katie Moore is from my hometown of Akron, Ohio, and for this book, I actually have family from Oregon and have visited once. That's why I picked Tillamook as the setting.
Tillamook is actually pretty famous for a dairy company, where they make cheese and really good ice cream. It's sold all around the US, so if you haven't tried it and you have the opportunity, I would totally recommend it. But what I did not know was that I have been to the house where that company got started, which is super cool. And it all came full circle as I was writing this book. Life is funny like that I guess.
So for my question today, do you have any crazy coincidences like that in your life?
And I guess that brings another question for my fellow writers. Where do you find inspiration for your stories?