Love Fortunes and Other Disasters by Kimberly Karalius

trim.
    She’d never been dissatisfied with her haircut, but something about his sincerity made her pause. Sebastian had offered to cut her hair.
    Then something worse replaced the dissatisfaction: an epiphany. “Sebastian Barringer is real,” she whispered. He was human. He had feelings behind those cold, liberally given kisses and barbed jokes. Before he became “Bastion,” he had a life.
    Last night she had dreamed of his grandmother’s clinic. The ocean roared in her ears as she walked twelve dogs through the grass. Sebastian waved at her with a pair of silver scissors. When she woke up, thinking one of the dogs was licking her cheek, she found a puddle of drool on her pillow.
    Saturday morning greeted her with watery sunlight and the hum of her heater. The complex was quiet, as it usually was on weekend mornings. Only the joggers and the ambitious woke up before noon. Fallon rubbed her eyes and climbed out of bed. She took a shower, standing under the water longer than necessary, and emerged from the steamy bathroom with her hair in a towel. She brushed her teeth before breakfast. The last of her eggs bubbled in the pan. She ate slowly at the kitchen table, never spilling a crumb.
    Her teachers hadn’t yet assigned anything bigger than a one-page essay on how she spent her summer vacation. Fallon’s essay had taken her only an hour to write since she hadn’t done much over the summer. I visited my brother and his wife, she wrote. I shadowed my parents on a few restaurant inspections out of town.
    Again, she thought of the clinic and Sebastian’s dog-grooming lessons. How did his grandmother know that he would like cutting dogs’ hair? Her parents just assumed, as they usually did, that she would follow in the family’s footsteps and become a quality-control manager of some sort. They actually hoped she would become a house inspector, since that was the last chunk of uncharted territory left.
    Fallon gathered the eight magazines containing charms. She needed to tear the charms out and put them in a binder for when Femke and Mirthe asked for them. The outdoors called to her, so she put on a thick cashmere sweater and walked down to the patio. The angle of the building blocked most of the wind, so she comfortably settled in a wire chair and smoothed the bent cover of the first magazine in her lap. The first charm she tore out was the one she had tried at the student government meeting. Touching the paper gave her the shivers, knowing how close she had come to being discovered by Camille. After using a hole puncher and slipping the page through the rings, Fallon moved on to the next one.
    A rustling drew her attention. She leaned to the right in her chair and saw Hijiri kneeling in front of the potted ferns in the corner. She cut the leaves off the ferns and put them in a plastic bag.
    â€œAre you working for Mrs. Smedt now?” Fallon asked. The caretaker sometimes hired a student or two to help her do the chores.
    Hijiri flinched and dropped her bag.
    â€œSorry,” Fallon said, standing. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s only me, Fallon.”
    Hijiri’s shoulders slumped, but she still wouldn’t look up. The girl was dressed in baggy clothes and stained sneakers. Her long, oily black hair fell into her eyes and hid her face. “I didn’t know anyone else was here.”
    â€œThen you better watch out for me. I’m an early riser,” Fallon joked. She wanted to put the girl at ease.
    Hijiri cracked a smile.
    â€œWhy don’t you sit over here, next to me? I’m doing some work for the club.”
    At that, the girl perked up. “I am too.”
    After Hijiri pulled up another wire chair, Fallon explained what she was doing with the magazines. “I didn’t try the others, but I’m sure they’re all love charms.”
    â€œLet me see, please.”
    She handed Hijiri the magazines. “I bookmarked