“Pretend, my ass,” Avery laughs. “I’m never without something to burn.” She takes a mint tin out of her cavernous purse and opens it up for us all to see. “I present to you…my travel altar.”
Inside the tin are several crystals, a mini statue—of Buddha? Venus of Willendorf? It’s too far away and too small for me to tell—alittle pill baggie of herbs and, as promised, matches and three white birthday candles.
“Genius,” Leo murmurs.
I agree. “I’ll have to make myself one of those.” If only those kinds of mints didn’t make my eyes water.
Avery manages to spear the cookie with a candle, not quite in the center.
I bite my lip. “You all aren’t gonna sing, are you?”
“Of course we are,” Avery quips as she lights the candle. The cookie is too soft to hold it well, and it’s already tilting like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I glance around the crowded lounge and wince.
“We’ll whisper-sing,” Aaron proposes.
“Okay, but you’d better hurry up. The candle’s not going to make it much longer.” It’s at a thirty-degree angle and dripping wax on my beautiful cookie.
Their whispered rendition of “Happy Birthday” is only marginally less embarrassing than a fully belted one. Everyone close by turns to see where all the hissing is coming from. Mostly they just smile and carry on with their business, but one cute guy mouths “Happy Birthday” as he passes by.
Leo asks me, “Are you twenty?” and when I nod, Avery says, “Oh well, no tequila shots until next year.”
I snort. “How about no tequila shots ever?” My one experience with them at an O-Chi party last year was enough for a lifetime.
I insist we split the cookie four ways, and as each of us enjoys our two bites, Avery enlightens us about some research she’s been doing. “Did you know they think psychic abilities run in families?”
“Who’s they?” Aaron asks.
“Jungians, psychologists, metaphysical experts.”
I’m skeptical, not about the science behind the theory, but about my family. I can’t think of a single soul in my bloodline who has even a drop of mystical power.
“It may not necessarily be one of your parents,” Avery admits. “Itcould be someone generations back, a great-grandparent or a great-great-aunt or something like that. Most psychics find out they have at least one ancestor who was a little…” she wiggles her fingers as she tries to think of the word.
“Freakish?” I suggest. Touchy, sensitive, fearful, solitary?
“Freakishin their day,” Avery agrees.
I suppose if you go back far enough, the townspeople would say your great-great-great-great-whatever was possessed by the devil. History is full of misunderstood people who make sense to us now. Look at Einstein. As a kid, his teachers thought he was unruly and uneducable. Nowadays, we know he was a neurodivergent genius.
Aaron tips his head and adjusts his glasses. “I don’t think my ancestors left a bunch of journals or records or anything. So how do we find out if any of them were psychic?”
Avery shrugs. “We ask them.”
Beside me on the couch, Leo leans back and smiles. “Can’t get more straightforward than that.”
For the umpteenth time, Aaron and I are left to blink at one another, utterly lost.
“We do an ancestor ritual,” Avery says, as if it’s explanation enough.
Aside from Christianized westerners, I know pretty much every other culture in the world and throughout all time, has practiced ancestor worship; whether that’s building them a shrine and giving them offerings, or seeking their guidance and protection. Actually, it’s kind of sad that we westerners don’t.
Despite my doubts about my lineage, I’m intrigued. “I’m in,” I say.
The guys both throw in a “me too.”
So we make plans, not for this weekend, but the next, to get together at Avery’s and contact our dearly departed. As we part ways for our three o’clock classes, I ask Leo, “Are you going to do the ritual, too?”
