The Read, fiction by Preston Lang
I t was a party trick. Lila would lay out the Ruffles Barbecue chips with deliberation and speak in a perilous purr, a hypnotic cadence. Her soothsaying came without a hint of parody: an old acquaintance will transform your intellectual outlook; a chance encounter will lead to atypical sensual pleasure. She first did it at a cookout after Rebecca’s ex-boyfriend boasted that he could eat an entire family-sized bag in under two minutes. When he failed, Lila gathered the remains and began to divine the future in the contours and the grease of a chip. After that, Jordan insisted she do it at her keg parties. Jordan liked to get a half barrel of Coors Light, play music from when they were in school, and pretend to be nineteen. At university Lila had been odd and solitary. People found her witchy because she wore loose-fitting, black tops and made herbal tea in the common room microwave. She didn’t like parties or Katy Perry. Instead she listened to Stravinsky on headphones when she wal
