The Best Day of My Life by Deborah Ellis Read Free Book Online Page A

would get him all excited again, and so we passed a pleasant hour.
    â€˜Why don’t you give me a demonstration,’ I suggested. ‘Tell me how my life will go, and I’ll come back and let you know if you were right.’
    â€˜Do you have any money? You don’t. This is how I earn my dal.’
    â€˜If you’re right, I’ll tell everyone,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell the tourists down on Sudder Street. They will all come to you.’
    The fortune teller twirled his long hair through his fingers and thought.
    â€˜I’ll tell you a short fortune,’ he said. ‘Do you know your birthday?’
    â€˜No.’
    He sighed and squirmed. Then he did what I knew he would do all along. He brought the parrot down from its little perch. The parrot pecked among some fortune cards spread out on the blanket. It picked one up in its beak.
    I reached for it, but the fortune teller beat me to it. He stared at the writing on the little card. He frowned, stared at me, then frowned again.
    He started to make me nervous.
    â€˜Does it say I will be a big Bollywood star?’ I joked.
    â€˜Excuse my bird. He is not yet awake,’ he said. ‘The card says you will soon have many friends.’
    â€˜You don’t think I can have many friends?’
    â€˜I don’t think you have any friends,’ he said. ‘You spent the night in the English cemetery. If you had friends, would they let you do that?’
    He was looking a little too pleased with himself.
    I couldn’t think of anything to say. And I didn’t like the way he was smirking.
    When I feel mean I want to act mean.
    I swooped down at the parrot and yelled a big ‘Kaaa!’ close to its head. It almost jumped out of its feathers.
    The fortune teller reached out to soothe his bird, and when he did, his cloak rose away from his body.
    That’s when I saw his feet.
    He had no toes, and his feet were curled in on each other like claws.
    He was one of those monsters.
    I jumped up. And I ran. Hard.
    I ran to make the panic fall away. I ran so fast that my feet did not feel the pavement. They did not feel the stones or the broken glass or the dog droppings or the cow dung.
    They did not feel anything.

6
    Talking with the Gods
    I ran as far as I could, leaving the monster behind me, until I couldn’t run anymore.
    I Kolkata had woken up.
    I could run two steps, then I had to stop and wait as a bicycle loaded with coconuts crossed in front of me. I ran a few more steps, then had to stop again and go around men and boys from the auto-repair shops who had moved their repair work out into Lower Circular Road. I crawled along with the stream of people until I got past the car repairs and into the next block. I ran again, right into a rickshaw that had stopped to pick up passengers – two large men with formal suit vests over their salwar kameez.
    â€˜Give some warning before you stop,’ I said to the rickshaw puller as I moved past him.
    â€˜I’ll have the customers wave a big flag just for you,’ he replied. He groaned as he got the rickshaw moving. His passengers were a lot fatter than he was.
    I kept going.
    The streets were full of people going to work. And with people already at work, pushing handcarts, pumping pedals on bicycles loaded down with big reed baskets and walking with huge bales of cotton on their heads.
    My hunger had woken up just like the city. A cup of morning tea would be a good start. I knew a tea seller on Vivekananda Road who was sometimes friendly. It was a bit of a walk, but I always had time.
    The day was warming up quickly. The Metropole Hotel blanket was getting heavy on my shoulders. It was easy to find a family of pavement dwellers who needed a good blanket. Behind a dumpster, next to the wall outside St. James’ Church, a woman was trying to keep her toddlers close by. She was nursing a baby and only had one free arm to keep her other kids in line. I