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on. Didn’t Pete see how it fit our situation, too—or
his
, anyway? Not mine. I wasn’t on that card.
    I looked up at Lala. She was watching me with those dark eyes. I was afraid of her for a second—afraid she would tell Pete that he and Hog Boy were the ones in the picture.
    She chose her words carefully. “This card is Ben’s situation … or perhaps more to the point, this card represents how Ben sees his situation, at this point in time. But it is complicated, you see, by this second card.…”
    She laid the Tower card back on the table and replaced the card that had covered it.
    “This is the Crossing Card. Here, Ben, is what is crossing you, what is holding you back, perhaps. The Five of Cups.”
    This card showed a hooded figure, with a face pale as death, staring down at the ground. Three gold cups lay spilled at his feet, a red liquid—wine or blood?—stainingthe ground. Behind him was a gray, cloudy sky, a cliff in the distance, a lone bird.
    “This figure has lost something,” Lala said. “Three cups are emptied into the earth.”
    My family. There were three of them—Pops, Mom, and James. And there I was, staring down at them, unable to pick them up, to siphon the liquid back into the cups. There was nothing I could do.
    “But notice,” said Lala, her long, slim finger caressing the card, “what he does not see.” She touched two more cups, still standing. “Look,” she said. “All is not lost, Ben Stanley. The danger in your situation is to focus too much on what you cannot repair without remembering to preserve that which you still have the power to save.”
    I hadn’t noticed the other two cups until she pointed them out. But their presence didn’t make me feel any better.… What about the three spilled cups? How could you be happy about what you still had when so much was lost?
    Then Lala touched a third card, one that lay directly above the other two. “This is the Crowning Card,” she said. “We can see this as an overview, the way your situation looks from a distance.”
    “Lucky dog,” laughed Hog Boy. I laughed, too, and so did Pete. Lala smiled, too. Her smile—the white flash of her teeth—seemed dangerously beautiful. I imagined her teeth on my lips, my neck.
    “The Three of Cups,” Lala said.
    The card showed three pretty girls—one blonde, one brunette, and one redhead—dancing in a meadow, each holdinga cup. The sky was blue, and fruit trees bloomed in the background. At their feet were baskets of grapes and apples and plums.
    “UCSD,” said Pete.
    “This is the atmosphere of your situation,” said Lala. “Bountiful and joyous. On the surface it seems that you are heading to the land of milk and honey—see, the grass is soft and green, the maidens are happy. It appears that you are going where there is no pain, only good fortune and beauty.”
    The guys didn’t say anything. All three of us were uncomfortable, I guess. We hadn’t talked too much about the inequality of our situations, but this was pretty much how I figured they imagined my life in San Diego.
    But the card didn’t show the early-morning runs, the late nights of studying I knew would make up my life if I intended to earn that scholarship for another year. And it didn’t show all the work I’d done to earn it for
this
year, either.
    “But it won’t be like that,” I said, almost apologizing. “It’s not going to be all sorority girls and partying.”
    “Are you telling
me
this, or your friends?”
    “Fuck you, Stanley,” said Hog Boy. “Poor little scholarship boy’s gonna have to work so hard. Not that hard, if you ask me, compared to what’s in store for me and Petey.”
    A hot wave of shame washed over me, knocking the fight clear out of me. Hog Boy was right. I wouldn’t trade places with them, not for a million dollars.
    “It won’t change anything.” I felt the sting of the lie I spoke.
    “Bullshit,” said Hog Boy. “It already has.” But there was no bitterness