I went slow. I swerved in and out of traffic. When she pulled into a parking garage on Welton, I paused behind a Dumpster and watched her go into an apartment building. Then I ditched my ride and ran in after her, saw her duck into an elevator and took the stairs pausing at each floor to see—cautiously as ever—just where she was getting off. And, of course, she saw me.
Belle reeked of pot and her eyes were watering fierce but she stayed staring at me. Me, hiding behind an ornamental plant, and looking so guilty. There was no hiding it. I just stood up, waved, said, “Hey, Belle. Yeah, I was following you.”
She made this snicker sound and actually put a hand on her hip like this was a scene in a sitcom. “Ade, how embarrassing is this for you?”
“Pretty embarrassing.”
“Why are you following me?”
“Just wanted to see what you’ve been up to. I saw you at the pizza place, noticed how different you’re looking, and figured it might be an interesting mystery to try and solve. You know, Junior Detective style. So what are you up to?”
“If you had any real abilities, Ade, you’d already know.”
And with that she flicked me off and marched down a hallway.
Flash forward to now, my body swimming with good vibrations, and only girl ever to call me a failure for not delivering a future where I leave her for someone else. Belle is, sitting here with the thick eyeliner and the drop-dead body, the one girlfriend I’ve had who left me for not being me enough.
As she gets out of the car, Belle winks at me and asks, “You okay to drive, Ade?”
“Sure,” I say. “Professional, remember?”
Belle blows me a kiss and walks back to her car and peels out.
Woozy, I nod.
Slowly. Drunkenly.
The Buzz pummeling me into bliss.
NINE
I get home in a record forty-five minutes.
Normally it takes me ten but I’m delirious enough from the knockout that I have to pull over every few blocks and close my eyes to stop from seeing double. Most of the way I go ten miles an hour.
Thankfully, I can use the front door. Too early for the freaks.
At home I doze off in front of the TV for the whole day. Eat nothing. Drink a soda. Mom’s at All Souls and doesn’t get home until night. She wakes me up off the couch, turns off the tube, and sits down on the rug and sobs at the sight of me.
“Bad this time?” I ask.
Mom nods.
I try and stand, but just fall over. Pass out. When I wake up again Mom’s putting a cold compress on my head and holding a mirror to my mouth. “To make sure you’re still breathing,” she says. “Your left pupil, it’s almost totally blown out.”
“Greater than six?”
“It’s like ten millimeters, Ade.”
“Damn.”
Mom makes beef with snow peas and sesame cauliflower and I eat dinner lying down but puke up most of it. Mom, with a bucket at the ready, says, “I don’t even know why you bother eating in the first place.”
“I saw her again last night, Mom.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“It was. But complicated.”
“Ummm, women are always complicated.”
I move the conversation forward to avoid hearing more biblical passages.
“Mom, you ever worry about the fact that I failed most of my classes last year?”
She pats my head. “No, baby. This, this is just a stepping-stone to the better you.”
“Better?”
“The you with Christ.”
On the back of the pantry door Mom’s got this black velvet painting of Jesus she picked up at a flea market in Pueblo. In this painting, J.C. is young and vibrant and he’s got a halo of sunbeams around his head. He’s sitting on a lawn and kids are sitting in his lap. Kids of every color and creed. All of them total stereotypes. The Native American kid, he’s got a feather in his long black hair. The white girl, she’s blond with blue eyes and rosy cheeks. The black kid, he’s got an Afro and a multicolored African robe on. Mom’s always loved looking at this painting. She says that the one white boy, the kid with brown eyes and sneakers, is me. The one white boy, he’s closest to Christ, sitting right in the middle of his lap. Sitting with his head right at Our Lord’s heart. Even if I get old and frail and miserable or if I’m strung out on drugs and wasted away with my teeth gone or a drooling vegetable from all the concussions, Mom’ll still see me as this one kid. To her, I’ll always be right there with Jesus.
Tonight I don’t try to say anything about Mom’s obsession. I don’t make a crack or sigh like I usually do. Just try to clear the puke taste from my mouth by swallowing so many times that I’m all out of spit and my mouth is dry. Mom, hands on my head again, fingers in my hair, says, “You never talk to your dad about this, do you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Dad isn’t alive anymore, Mom.”
“When was the last time you went to the hospital to see him? You remember, used to be that you’d go every day after school. Pedal your bike all the way, cheeks all flushed, huffing and puffing. Your shirt so sweaty I’d have to wash it twice to get the—”
“I was in middle school, Mom. That was years ago.”
Mom puts on a frown. It’s disappointment more than anything.
“What if I told you that he needs you? Right now more than ever, Ade. He cares about you. It’s just that he … he’s kind of lost out there. He’s in limbo and needs a voice to guide him back.”
I give in. Sigh loud. “I went to see him four months ago. And it wasn’t Dad. Not the dad I grew up with. Not the one who taught me how to ride a bike or do a flip turn. Not him, Mom. Not that guy. That guy is like this emaciated thing. You know, like when the mad townspeople crack open the crypt to stake the vampire and they find … well, they find something like what’s lying in that hospital bed.”
Mom has tears forming but wipes them away before they can run. “Ade, you’re being very cruel…”
I lean in, give my mom a hug. Hold her tight and in my arms she shakes. Then I say, “It’s hard for me. I don’t like being reminded of who he used to be. I’m not sure what to believe, either. I’m not sure that he’s there. I know you think he is. That maybe talking to him will help him, but I’m not so convinced. You know what Dr. Ruby says. She says that Dad’s not actually—”
“I know,” Mom sobs. “I know.” And then, pulling herself away, straightening herself out, pushing back her hair and her glasses, she says, “We can go visit him together sometime. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? If we go as a family?”
I nod and then notice a text on my phone. It’s from Jimi.
It says:
Meet me at 9. Ellis
.
It’s already half past eight.
“I need to go. Can you drive me?”
My mom gives me a frown
Then she produces the Revelation Book from under the Coffee table and flicks a pen out from behind her hair. I fill her in on the vision and, just to get her jazzed, I add a detail about some random surfer dude being pulled out of the ocean by the lifeguard in Christ pose. It works. Mom’s hands are shaking as she writes it all down. I do not mention the guy in the mask. I know that will just send her into a fit. When I’m done, and when Mom stops scribbling, I ask her if she’ll take me to Ellis Elementary, explain it’s for a school project. She laughs. “Don’t try and trick me, Ade,” she says. “You have a date or something?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
Mom asks, “How do you plan on getting back?”
“I’ll get a ride. Don’t stress.”
“You’re in no shape to be going anywhere, Ade. No shape at all.”
“Mom … come on. Scout’s honor I’ll be careful. Just a school project.”
She gets up, gets the car keys, and then throws me a sweater. Says, “Proverbs 21:31: ‘The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the Lord.’ You keep that in mind, okay?”
“Sure, Mom. Always.”
TEN
Mom drops me a block away, near the playground at Ellis Elementary School.
Jimi wants to meet up here ’cause he can skateboard and do rail slides without being hassled by the cops. This is a typical evening for Jimi. Skating and smoking and sipping from this silver flask he claims he stole from his mother. What’s inside is rum, he claims, but I’m sure it’s vodka.
When I see him he’s tying to jump a two-foot wall that rings the playground but he keeps missing, his deck smashing, him falling. Him cursing and spitting and stomping on it. I yell out, “Hey!”
He asks, “Been here long?”
“Minutes.”
“But long enough to see me jack up that jump, right?”
“Yeah.”
Jimi takes a swig from his flask. He’s wearing flannel even though it’s sweaty hot. He looks me over, says, “I like the headband. The gore really adds something to it. Honestly, I wouldn’t recognize you without a shiner.”
“So, what’s up, Jimi?”
Taking another sip and wiping his upper lip with his sleeve, Jimi says, “I just wanted to tell you that Vauxhall, well, she’s mine.”
“—”
“I know you, Ade. You’re a screwup. How are you even still in school?”
“’Cause I’m special.”
Jimi chuckles. “Yeah, helmet special. More like you’ve got some connections or everyone just feels that sorry for you. Good karma is all.”
I sit down on the wall Jimi’s been trying to jump. “That’s the only reason you asked me to come over here?”
Jimi sits down next to me. Hands me his flask. I take a swig. It’s vodka.
He says, “Just because she sang to you, just because the two of you spent a romantic evening together, it doesn’t mean you’re suddenly in like Flynn. Get it? She’s fragile. Doesn’t have friends outside of a few guys and even them, she’s not someone a lot of people—”
“I get it, Jimi.”
He takes another gulp of alcohol and leans in close. It is overdramatic the way he does it. It’s Theater 101 and the way he narrows his eyes has got me irritated. He says, “You can’t get so uptight about it.”
“I’m not uptight about anything, Jimi. I don’t even—”
“We’re living in the future, buddy. People want what they want. They go out and get it. Love something and you set it free, you know? That’s what you do. But when people hear about her with guys at parties. Sometimes girls. Her just, well … it freaks people out. The whole slut thing starts up. The whole—”
“What exactly are you trying to tell me?”
Jimi takes another swig, makes another cough. He shakes his head. “She’s a drama kid. She’s loud and in your face and at the same time she’s secretive. She’s trying to change. She’s looking for something new.”
“You love her or something?”
“No. No. But I respect her. I want her to do what she wants. Truth is, the girl has been all over me for the past year. She just can’t get enough. Does that make you mad?”
“Mad?”
“Yeah. Sick to your stomach? Queasy? I know you like her, Ade. I can tell.”
Part of me, it wants to run screaming and tearing my hair out.
Jimi picks up his board, messes with the wheels. Says, “If you haven’t already, you’ll fall in love with her. Despite yourself you will.”
“You didn’t.”
Jimi’s like, “Maybe I did, for a while. But I can tell she’s into you.”
“Into me?”
“Intrigued by you.”
I try not to smile, but it’s hard.
Jimi slaps me on the back, slams down another swig of vodka, and says, “You want to hang out with her? Be close to her? Well, you and me are going to have to become close buds. That okay with you, Ade?”
Of course it’s okay with me, but I don’t answer right away. I mull it over. Actually, I make it look like I’m mulling it over, but really my mouth wants to scream out yes a thousand times. In my mind hanging out with Jimi is only hanging out with Vauxhall. In my mind he will just slowly fade away. Overzealous actor that he is, he will be on the cutting room floor in no time. To Jimi I say: “Of course.”
Jimi gets this big shit-eating grin and says, “How messed up you are is funny. You remember when you and me and Paige and that guy Larry went to see that one movie, the one that was kind of like a Western but was all sorts of mystical and crazy? You remember that night?”
I don’t. “What movie?”
“You don’t actually remember going? This was only like in July or something.”
“—”
“Well, Vauxhall was there. She was sitting two rows behind us.”
“What?”
“Yeah. I don’t think you guys met then, but she’s been around for a while. Just new to you I guess. Don’t know how you could forget that movie, it was fucking nuts.”
I try not to let my face show just how crazy that makes me feel. I’m sure if someone else were listening right now, someone like Paige or maybe my mom, they’d say I’d missed the forest for the trees. Or something. They’d say that all my knocking myself out, all my diving for the Buzz, has gotten me so messed up that I missed meeting Vauxhall by months. Months. Being who I am, being aware of myself, I know that’s a lie. I’d never miss her. Not in a million years would I miss her.