Fact is: Jimi’s just a jealous prick.
He takes another swig from his bottomless flask and gets up and kicks his skateboard down, does a slow circle around the playground while I watch. He comes back and pulls out a cigarette. Him lighting the cigarette with a Zippo is the same as him doing everything, anything, else. It’s an act. A pose for a reaction. It’s as though Jimi can see photographers camped out in the trees around the schoolyard. This is for them as much as for me.
“I wonder what she’ll learn about you, Ade. What secrets she’ll uncover.”
I say, “There’s not much.”
Jimi gives a brash laugh. “Oh, I’m sure there’s plenty. How ’bout we find out?”
ELEVEN
First of all, I’m stressing about the car being stolen.
There is no way that Jimi can afford this vehicle.
“It’s a sixty-nine Dodge Dart Swinger,” he says, grinning in the rearview. “Been customed with a hopped-up 340 and a Pertronix Ignitor and a, uh…”
Jimi’s flailing. In the mirror, I can see the act fade.
“Anyway,” he says, staring me down, “it’s freaking fast.”
And then there’s the fact that Jimi is driving sixty down Monaco, weaving in and out of traffic, tossing cigarette butts out the windows, talking on his cell, making faces at me, and grabbing Vauxhall’s thigh so tight the marks of his fingers are still there in the skin of her.
Just past Eighth Avenue, Jimi tells me that where we’re going is secret. He tells me that a guy like me, a guy used to doing crazy things, should have no problem with. He says, “I think when you see it, you’re going to just drop a load in your pants.”
Vauxhall just turns to me and smiles. She asks, “Did you hit your head again? Looks fresh.”
I just shrug. “Force of habit.”
Sitting behind her in this speeding death trap, I can’t describe how good I feel. The air is warm and it’s rushing in the windows and it’s blowing Vauxhall’s long hair as though she were blow-drying it herself. The smell of her hair, something citrus and something almost chocolate, has me twitching like too much caffeine. The smell of berries in lemonade. Of freshly cut cucumber.
Her past is her past. Even if it was last night.
Right here, right now, she’s mine.
I’m in this car for three reasons. Number one is that Jimi is a maniac. This car, the way he’s driving it, this is all just a reminder that if I ever want to see Vauxhall the way she is right now, I need to be here. I need to be right beside her, otherwise the future I saw, of us together, it’ll be after she’s gotten out of the hospital or out of rehab or divorce court. Number two is the fact that the future is the future and forgetting what I just said about number one, I know we’ll be together. Consider me anxious enough for that future that I’m willing to spend time with Jimi regardless of the risks. That leads me to number three and that’s the easiest: Vauxhall is magnetic. She’s as magnificent as Jimi is dangerous. I’m basically a moth to her flame. Damn the consequences. Damn her hooking up with Ryan and Chris and God knows who else.
She will be mine.
Barreling through a yellow light on Seventeenth, Jimi says, “What you need to understand, Ade, is that we’re all products of our environment. The mark of a true genius, a true rebel, is someone able to not only overcome all the bullshit that’s been thrown at them, but to turn it around.”
And with that he spins the wheel, Vauxhall gasps, and the car careens across two lanes of traffic onto Twenty-third. Jimi slows up only a little, the trees are thicker here, branches dipping down low over the street, and I can feel the coolness of them breathing out their moisture as we sprint by.
Jimi says, “The secret of life is simple: Only you matter.”
We left the park only an hour ago.
Jimi handed me a beer when we got into his car and I pretended to drink it but really only sipped it. When we pulled up to Vauxhall’s house and Jimi jumped out, I got out to slide into the backseat and poured the rest of the beer out onto the lawn. Jimi was in her house long enough for me to have a good look at it.
The house, it was where the love of my life had been sleeping, eating, showering, dreaming, crying, laughing, singing, living. I didn’t want to think of the other things she might have been doing. The house was small. Nestled between two larger houses and hidden behind blobs of shrubbery. The walkway up to the front door was cracked, the cement coming loose in large chunks here and there. I could imagine Vauxhall, the child version of her, skipping there, playing jacks, jumping rope. There were two lights on inside the house. One was clearly the living room, though the shades were pulled shut. The other, maybe a bedroom or office. In my mind it was, of course, Vauxhall’s. A single window—I imagined it had one of those little knobs you turn to wheel it open—that looked out over a quiet, dark neighborhood. I could see Vauxhall sitting at that window, her chin in her hands, watching the sun set and the clouds move in. I could see her sitting there, sighing, and wondering what the rest of her life would be like. If she’d get married and have three kids. If she’d become a doctor or an artist. I could see her with her eyes closed, the rain on her face as it splashed through the screen, breathing in slowly, inhaling the ozone and the sweetness of the soil.
Right now, sitting behind Vauxhall, her feet up on the dashboard, toenails painted light blue and chipped, I only imagine she has her eyes closed and is breathing in the night the same way. I want so badly to put my hand on her shoulder.
My mission here is to make us happen. To make this work.
My mission here, and I’m totally seeing it like I’m an Army Ranger or something, is to make sure that whatever is going on between Vauxhall and Jimi and anyone else doesn’t go any further.
My mission, outside of the Buzz, is being Vauxhall’s right hand.
And right now, I even go to move, just a finger to touch her hair, to touch where her hair has been caught up in the seat, when she says, to me, “Jimi’s not a guru or anything. You have to take most of what he says, at least like ninety percent of it, with a truckload of salt.”
Shouting back, I say, “I’m guessing more like one hundred percent of it.”
Jimi, lighting a smoke, coughs. “That’s true.” He hits the brakes and brings the car to a sudden halt under a cypress tree and turns around and looks at me, narrows his eyes, “Maybe I dress it up too much. Like make it a bit too—”
“Forced?” Vauxhall laughs.
“I was going to say ‘intellectual.’ But anyway, definitely don’t take me too seriously, Ade. I’m bad for your health in large amounts.”
Jimi turns back to the road, slams down on the gas, and away we go again. Vauxhall, however, turns back to me and winks. She mouths: He’s. Full. Of. It.
I nod. I smile. I’m not sure what else I do.
“By the way,” Jimi says, staring straight into the soul of the night, “I borrowed this car from a friend of mine. I didn’t ask him, but so long as it gets back in one piece, should be fine. Actually, he’s just a neighbor. Not technically a friend.”
Where we stop the car is nowhere.
It’s at the end of a dead-end street. Houses on either side, a fence in front. And beyond the fence is pretty much nothing. Just darkness. Not even the flicker of lights. Jimi halts the car and jerks the keys loose and then jumps out and walks to the fence. He lights another smoke and turns around and motions for me and Vaux to get out.
Vaux gets out slow. I get out slower.
“So, what are we looking for?” I ask.
Jimi takes a long drag and then pulls out his cell phone. He says, “We have one minute and twenty-two seconds. I suggest we get over the fence.”
“’Til what?”
He doesn’t answer, just flicks his cig into the shadows and smooth as a spider climbs up and over the fence. He is engulfed in dark. Vauxhall takes my hand, my heart hiccups at the touch. Her skin so soft, so warm, and she holds my fingers tight. Right now, I’d jump into the Grand Canyon.
Vauxhall smiles, says, “Come on.” And she goes over the fence.
Jimi says, “You got fifty-seven seconds, Ade.”
I go over the fence. Not easy like Jimi. Not smooth or fast like Vaux, but I make it. On the other side, it’s just weeds and darkness. We walk. I follow the blue light of Jimi’s cell phone. I’m looking around but seeing nothing. Hearing nothing but the crunch of weeds under my shoes, the scatter of pebbles, and the rush of wind.
Only there isn’t wind.
Just sound.
Jimi says, “We got twenty-two seconds, kiddos.”
“What is that noise?” I ask.
Jimi laughs. “Noise. Just noise.”
And then he stops. I run into his back. He puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “Just sit still. Right there. Feel that?”
And I do. Vibrations. The earth moving beneath us like the thick bass from a lowrider. I can feel my intestines jumping. My heart fighting back with its own beat.
“What the hell is going on, Jimi?”
Vauxhall is not with us. She’s standing about ten feet away and I can just make her out by the faint light that at first I think’s coming from Jimi’s phone but it’s not. It’s white light and it’s getting brighter by the second. Bigger and brighter. It’s behind us. The rushing noise, it’s as loud as a building coming down.
Jimi grabs my shoulder, holds me tight. Says, “Fifteen seconds.”
Of course, it’s a train behind us. I hear the conductor pulling the horn down hard.
But there is no squeal of brakes. The conductor, he’s not trying to stop.
I’m shaking.
Breathing out fast.
Jimi can tell, he says, “Ten seconds, dude. Hang tight. This is going—”
But I can’t hear the rest of what he says. The noise of the train is the noise of a thousand trains. It is the buckling of the world. It is the ripping-open of the sky. And the light, it’s like we’re floating out into the sun. I remind myself that I will live. That I’ve seen myself in the future. That nothing can happen right now.
Jimi pushes on my shoulder.
The train horn is the yell of a dinosaur. It shakes the air.
There is dust in the light around us like bubbles deep underwater.
I tell myself that I will live. I tell myself not to think that maybe the visions have been wrong. That I saw Vauxhall and she’s here now, watching me. That she’s here now and any second Jimi and I will jump out of the way.
Only we don’t.
The train is on our heels.
The sound of it has turned me to jelly. I can’t feel my feet, the vibrations of it are that numbing. I’m standing on a jackhammer and Jimi, the suicidal nut job, is grinning.
Hand on my shoulder, he pushes me down hard.
I close my eyes ready for the impact. Ready to feel my bones shatter and ready to see myself spray off into mist. I grit my teeth. I tense up. And I count it down.
Four …
The light is blinding, even with my back turned. Even with my eyes closed.
Three …
The rumbling has me deaf.
Two …
The rails whip around like snakes.
One …
Nothing. I open to see the train just to my left on a second track. It’s passing maybe a foot from us, maybe a half-foot from Jimi. The train rattles by and Jimi lets me go. I stand there for a few seconds, my body twitching as it comes back to life, and then collapse on the rails.
It takes five full minutes for the train to pass. I know ’cause I time it on my cell phone. Jimi stands, looking over at me, smiling. Sometimes laughing. Sometimes shrugging. Saying things I can’t hear.
What has me worried, though, more than the thought that Jimi almost just got me killed, is that for a few flashing seconds I actually was kind of psyched at the thought of getting the World’s Greatest Concussion.
Me spinning off the front of that locomotive at a million miles an hour, can you imagine how many hundreds of years into the future I’d see?
How crazy the Buzz would be?
When the train finally passes, and my hearing returns, Vauxhall walks over and sits down next to me. She gives me a hug and having her close is like diving in a cool pool. And right there, my brain kind of has a freeze-frame moment. With Vauxhall’s arms around me I don’t care about the concussion that I missed. For the first time in a long, long time I actually want to be slowed down with all the other fossils around me. I want to be right here with Vauxhall in this instant.
Vauxhall, stepping back, smiling, says, “That was the nine-twenty Rio Grande on its way to Cheyenne.”
I ask, “Why did we just do that?”
Jimi walks over, sits next to us. He lights another smoke, the red of it casting demon light on his face, and asks, “You close to your family, Ade?”
“Yeah, I guess.… Seriously, though, Jimi. That was the most—”
He interrupts, “How close?”
“I don’t know. Close. You know, I love my mom and my dad and whatever. What are you trying to ask me? Would it be something worth almost dying for?”
Vauxhall whispers, her lips only an inch from my ear, “Just humor him.”
Jimi says, “I don’t think you’re that close. I can tell it.”