Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: Short, random, fluff-ish.

XXX

When Zack Martin was almost twelve, he went to a fortune teller, and she mapped out his future.

He had really, really wanted to go to the fair being held in the park. It was only going to be in Boston for a week, and it was already the second-to-last day of it before everyone packed up and left. He had memories from a long, long time ago of his parents bringing he and his twin brother to a fair, and he remembered having fun and enjoying the day and smiling a lot with his mom and dad and Cody. Even though his parents had now been divorced for a number of years, he still secretly wished for a real family where he had both a mother and a father present in his everyday life.

After a full summer day spent begging his mother to take he and Cody to the fair, she finally relented, partly to quiet him down and partly because she was in a very good mood. She had just gotten a call from some hotel in the middle of the city, The Tipton, and apparently they wanted her to audition to be a singer there.

Zack wasn't very superstitious. He thought that people who believed that there were such things as ghosts and goblins and monsters were crazy, and he believed that anyone who would waste money to hear an old kook attempt to spell out their destiny for them was off their rocker. And he would never, ever, admit this aloud, but a tiny part of him also wondered if sometimes there was truth to the supernatural and seers and gypsies, too.

So when he, Cody and their mother wandered by a fortune teller's dark and misty tent and Carey wickedly suggested they each get their fortunes told, he felt a shiver run down his spine. Zack felt his brother tense up beside him and Cody quickly stuttered out a no-thanks. Cody was a scaredy-cat and Zack teased him about that fact constantly, but as Carey pushed him into the musky and incense-filled tent, saying that the sign said one-at-a-time, he felt some trepidation.

The woman sitting behind the circular table was older, wrinkly, and covered head to toe in a purple fabric with beads everywhere and multiple rings on each finger. Her glasses were humongous, making her eyes look much bigger than an eye should be. She was the exact stereotypical summer-fair fortune teller, right down to the crystal ball and tarot cards on the table.

Zack sat uneasily in the uncomfortable overstuffed chair across from her as she introduced herself, and then greeted him, using his name that he'd yet to give her. He swallowed, hard, as she stared at him, analyzed him. She asked to see his palm, and he willingly shoved his hand in her face, wanting to get this over with and get back to eating cotton candy and throwing darts at a dartboard and going on rides. She flipped some of her tarot cards over and studied them, and then questioned in a mysterious voice if he'd like for her to tell him his future, and he agreed, because he didn't know what else to say.

It was then that she began speaking of what was to come for him.

He couldn't help but listen with rapt attention as she told him he would be moving soon, and it would be a very, very good move for everyone involved. He was transfixed as she told him he would make great friends, be very loyal to those he cared about, but he would be a bit of a troublemaker, and not do too well in school, though he'd still get into a perfectly good college and eventually be successful enough to satisfy himself. He was dumbstruck as she told him he'd be popular with women, though he'd always have a soft spot for one girl, and by the time he was forty he was going to have three children and live in the suburbs of Boston.

She was writing all of this down on a note card as she foretold it, but when she spoke the last part, about the girl and the children, he interrupted her, wondering who the girl was. The fortune teller stared at him for quite a while again, scrutinizing, but she had a small smile on her aging face that said she knew more than she wanted to share. The look made Zack nearly totally convinced she was the real deal, even though the logical side of him screamed that there was no such thing as a psychic.

Finally, after he held her gaze for at least a minute (which was a great deal of time for a kid of eleven), she told him that the girl would have light hair, light eyes; a beautiful girl who would grow into a beautiful woman, and he would watch the transformation from the sidelines for a long, long time. She would be unattainable, out of reach, for years and years.

Zack pressed, asking if he would ever get her, ever attain her, ever reach her, after years and years of waiting. Would he have those children with the girl he'd always have the soft spot for, or would he be secretly pining away as they married other people and had children and grandchildren and grew old?

(Zack would never admit this aloud either, but he was a romantic, even at almost-twelve, and he wanted a happy ending with the girl of his dreams.)

He never got a reply as the fortune teller shrugged, her too-large and too-round eyes almost glinting. She put the tarot cards back into the pile and told him that was all she could say as she handed him the note card.

As Zack exited the tent and took a deep breath of fresh air, his mother and brother asked him how it went, if all of his questions were answered. He just waved them off and said he didn't believe any of what she said anyway, so how about they go get some hot dogs? He pocketed the note card surreptitiously and when they got home he stuck it in a shoebox full of things he wanted to keep all to himself forever.

Two weeks later the twins turned twelve, the following week Carey got the job at The Tipton, a few days after that the family moved into a suite in the hotel, and the next day Zack Martin met the light-haired, light-eyed, beautiful-but-unattainable Madeline Fitzpatrick.

XXX

End.