The fog rolling off the San Francisco Bay was thick enough to chew, wrapping Grant Avenue in a damp, suffocating silence. Sixteen-year-old Alex clutched her jacket tightly around her, her breath pluming in the chill night air as she hurried away from the Jade Dragon restaurant. In her pocket, her hand was clamped around a greasy paper bag containing three fortune cookies—parting gifts pressed into her palm by an unnervingly intense elderly woman at the takeout counter.
The streetlights flickered, casting long, wavering shadows across the wet pavement. To calm her racing heart, Alex reached into the bag, pulled out a cookie, and snapped it in half. The sharp crack echoed loudly against the brick walls, the noise uncharacteristically loud for something so small and brittle. She slipped out the tiny slip of paper and held it up to the pale glow of a neon sign.
He who rushes forward blindly loses ground.
Alex scoffed softly, shaking her head at the generic platitude. She took a step forward, ready to break into a jog to reach her bus stop, but her foot hovered in the air. A sudden, deep rumble vibrated through the soles of her sneakers. Inches from her toe, a massive section of the rusted sidewalk grating groaned and then gave way completely, crashing into the subterranean darkness of the storm drain below.
Alex stumbled backward, her heart hammering violently against her ribs. If she hadn’t paused to read that slip of paper, she would have plummeted into the black abyss.
She stared at the fortune in her trembling hand. It was just a coincidence. It had to be.
But then, she heard the footsteps.
Heavy, deliberate, and wet—splashing rhythmically through the puddles behind her. She spun around, squinting through the dense, gray mist. A tall silhouette, broad-shouldered and entirely still, stood at the corner of the block. The moment she stopped, the figure moved, closing the distance between them with terrifying speed. The glint of something long and metallic—a pipe or a blade—flashed in the figure’s hand under the streetlamp.
Panic seized Alex’s throat. She abandoned the sidewalk and bolted blindly into Rawls Alley, a narrow, claustrophobic corridor that smelled of old garbage and damp brick. She pressed herself behind a row of overflowing commercial dumpsters, her lungs burning, trying to muffle her gasps.
The heavy footsteps turned into the alley. They were slow now. Hunting. The scrape of metal against brick sent ice through her veins.
With shaking, sweat-slicked fingers, Alex reached into her pocket and pulled out the second cookie. If the first one had saved her, maybe this one would tell her what to do. She bit her lip to stifle the sound, slowly and carefully crushed the hard shell in her palm, hoping this one wouldn’t be so loud like the last. This time, the fortune cookie crumbled without a sound… uncharacteristically without a sound. She unrolled the paper.
Silence is a virtue, but the loudest voice commands the room.
The figure was ten feet away, pausing right next to the dumpsters. Alex could hear his raspy breathing. She was trapped. The alley was a dead end behind her.
Every instinct screamed at her to hold her breath, to press herself deeper into the shadows and pray he walked past. If she made a sound, she would give away her exact position to an armed attacker. But the paper in her hand—the paper that had just saved her from falling into the earth—told her the opposite. It told her to be loud.
Could she trust her life to a baked confection?
The shadow loomed over the edge of the dumpster. She had a split second.
Choosing to trust the fortune over her own terrified instincts, Alex grabbed a heavy, empty glass bottle from a discarded crate beside her. With a scream that tore her throat raw, she hurled it with all her might over the dumpster and straight into the rusted, metal service door of the adjacent bakery.
The glass shattered with a deafening, explosive crash.
Immediately, the heavy metal door swung open, setting off a blaring security alarm. A cook in a greasy apron peered out the door, saw the shadowy man in the alleyway, and shouted something in Cantonese before stepping back into the door. Startled, the dark figure hesitated, dropped an iron pipe to the ground with a clatter, and sprinted back out into the foggy street, disappearing into the night.
Alex collapsed against the damp brick wall, sliding down to the pavement, shaking uncontrollably as the cooks rushed over to help her.
She was safe. The cookies had been right.
As a police cruiser pulled into the mouth of the alley, its red and blue lights cutting through the fog, Alex dug into her pocket one last time. Her fingers brushed against the smooth surface of the third and final cookie. She pulled it out, staring at the crescent shape in her palm. It held the key to her next move. All she had to do was break it.
Slowly, Alex let her hand drop. She looked at the shattered glass, the broken grating down the street, and the frantic, vibrant life of the city around her. A random, irrational thought flashed in her mind. What if the fortune cookies were causing bad things to happen?
But then again, that scary guy started chasing her before she opened the second one. Alex felt as though she had lost some aspect of free will to these fortune cookies. The fortunes provided useful advice, but with dire consequences for not heeding them.
There was only one magical fortune cookie left. There must be one more danger to face today, and the last fortune would tell her what to do to avoid it. Looking at the final fortune cookie in her hand, she took a deep breath, then carefully unwrapped it and snapped it open.
Trust your instincts for every challenge you face in life.
Alex smiled at the helpful advice and return of her free will and walked back toward the main road with a renewed confidence. A pair of police officers rounded the corner into the alley, and when they saw her, motioned for Alex to come talk to them. Everything was going to be all right. She just knew it.
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