“Want to know what I dream about?”
I nod and can only imagine that my eyes are reflecting in the green glow the way dogs’ or tigers’ do in those nature shows. The feral me sitting on the floor, ready to pounce.
Vaux says, “Lights.”
She says, “I keep dreaming about stars that are really high above me that drop lower and lower and then become the lights around the edge of a stage. I’m in the middle, standing there in all sorts of outfits, and the lights are creating the space I’m in. Outside of it, I know there’s an audience and I know I’m supposed to act, but I’m purposely not doing it. I’m purposely restraining myself from giving them the show they want. There’s this tension.”
I say, “You could read a lot into that.”
I can’t see her, but I imagine she raises her eyebrows.
Uncrossing my legs and leaning back on my hands, I say, “It’s like the universe has just come into focus. Like all the pieces are snapped together and everything’s quiet.”
Vauxhall turns the camera off.
She whispers, “Come here. I want to feel beautiful with you.”
I climb up onto her bed, the weight of me making it groan, and then I put my mouth on hers and my hands on hers and we just sink into each other and let our bodies do what they want.
Afterward, Vauxhall’s body shivers while she plays with the sparse hair on my chest and says, “It was really strange. Well, I didn’t see into the present like last time. Did you?”
“No,” I say, my voice crackling. “That’s odd, right?”
“I saw your past,” Vauxhall says. “But still no high.”
“Good,” I say, smiling, “Sorry.”
“Ade, your past. Your childhood. Everything before meeting me was like static.”
I take a deep breath and just let it sit inside me. I can make out the edges of the furniture in the room and the slope of her shoulders and the dune of blankets that her hips make. I realize I wasn’t really hearing what she was saying.
“What about my past?” I ask.
Vauxhall says, “It’s gone.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
ONE
Dear Mom—
Why I put this behind the crucifix on the back porch is because I knew you’d find it when you were gathering stuff for your Sunday Midnight Bible Class. You’ve never told me why you take this particular crucifix, but I figure we’ll have time to discuss it later.
First of all, sorry about the other night.
I’ve been going through a lot of changes recently and I’m guessing that most of them, probably 90 percent, can be chalked up to your average teen anxieties, but there’s a decent 10 percent that’s totally unaccountable.
I remember you telling me about how dragonflies change from nymphs. How when they’re young, they’re these underwater monsters with crazy snap-out jaws. Those nymphs, you said, are insatiable. They terrorize ponds and creeks. But then, for whatever biological reason, those monsters climb up out of the water and transform into dragonflies. Their skin cracks open and the wings pop out and then they fly off into the sunlight as some of the most beautiful things on Earth.
Lately, it seems like I’ve been doing something similar. Only it’s in the reverse. I’m a dragonfly that used to be all caught up in the clouds and the sky and whatever was blooming in the next valley and the next lawn but decided for whatever reason to climb back into the skin of nymph and go terrorize the depths again.
What’s really weird is that I’m content with it. It feels natural to me.
Is that a bad thing?
I’m not so sure. Sometimes, and I think this was another thing you said when you were telling me about dragonfly nymphs, the worst things that happen, the worst urges we have, are really just blessings in deep cover. I’m thinking, right now, that’s probably true.
Anyway, in case you were wondering, here’s what I’m doing: I’ll spend the morning with my girlfriend, probably have breakfast at Pete’s on Colfax, and we’ll go for one of those holding-hands walks in the park. Lunch will be with Paige, and then we’re going to the Mantlo football game. I know, what? Well, it just felt right to do something totally out of the ordinary on such a strangely momentous day. After the game it’s to the reservoir, actually the beach at the north end, and I will see if I can’t stop what I saw when we had that car accident a few weeks back. That’s it. If I’m not in bed in the morning, chances are good I’m in jail. So look for me there.
I wanted to end this letter with a quote I found that I thought you’d appreciate. Love you, Mom. “Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” And that’s from Matthew 6:34.
Ade
TWO
The football game happens, but Vaux and I notice maybe 10 percent of it.
Mantlo wins, apparently.
Vauxhall spends the game just people-watching and she’s convinced by halftime that there is no better place to people-watch. The mall has nothing on the football game. Here, the whole of the human race is represented. The good. The bad. The weird. The ugly. All of Mantlo’s various tribes and subcultures are on display.
Me, I try and remember my growing up. But oddly enough, I can’t seem to nail down anything clearly. Not school. Not my dad. Not even a single birthday party. I chalk it up to nervousness. I tell Vauxhall that maybe the first time we were together did something funky. I tell her that maybe memories and such got scrambled. I say, “I’m not worried.”
Vauxhall is quiet. There’s just the feedback of the crowd. She kisses me lightly and says, “If you’re not worried, I’m not worried.”
I say, “I’m not worried.”
And really, I’m not.
After the game we go to a party at Oscar’s. Again.
It’s funny being back, passing the bathroom where I concussed myself, walking past the stairs where Vauxhall led Ryan Mar and seeing the bedroom door, open now, and imagining what took place behind it only a month back. Vauxhall thinks it’s funny too, and when she sees me looking around, my eyes unfocused, she takes my head and turns it to her and kisses me and says, “Let’s not think about anything but right now.”
“That sounds great.”
The Vauxhall of now, she’s everything I imagined she would be. Back when I was just a freshman and scribbling down notes about her I saw her the way she is here, so light on her feet and so much the center of everything. The way the lights play around her movements, the way the ground just swells to her feet, it’s as if I’m in one of her dreams. As if all of us, this whole world, is merely a figment of her stunning imagination.
We find a seat in the backyard on the deck and talk to random people but mostly to each other. I’m very conscious of the time, checking my phone constantly, and watching the moon slide up and over the trees. Vaux pats my knee. She squeezes my hand. It’s like I’m waiting for a flight or I’m about to go into surgery, this level of reassurance is almost stifling.
“Everything’s going to be fine.” Vaux says.
She says, “Jimi’s probably at home sleeping safe and sound.”
“And me?”
“Just be cool, right?”
I find myself starting to panic a bit, my heart jumping irregularly, but then I’m distracted by what’s going on over at the side of the pool. What distracts me is Paige.
She’s wearing a sundress and sitting by the pool with her feet in it. And she’s laughing and making goo-goo eyes at the girl next to her. This girl with short blond hair and eyelashes as long as her arms and boobs that sit upright. I wave from my perch under the tree and Paige yells for me to come over. She says, “Bring Vaux.”
We go.
“This is Celeste. Sophomore at DU. Majoring in art.” Paige is grinning ear to ear.
Celeste extends her hand. It looks like she’s wearing fifteen rings.
We shake hands and Vauxhall introduces herself and we sit and talk for a few minutes. Vaux and Celeste have this detailed discussion about how brilliant some French sci-fi cartoonist really is while Paige and I whisper to each other about how amazing it is that we got these two hot chicks. This could go on all night, Vaux and Celeste immediate best friends and bonding over obscurity and Paige and I snickering like ten-year-old boys, but I need to piss and head inside to find an empty bathroom.
The one I knocked myself out in last time, it’s being used by more than one person. So I head upstairs to where I suspect the master bedroom and hopefully master bath will be.
I haven’t been drinking but I’m hopped up enough on adrenaline that I don’t bother knocking on the door at the end of the hallway and just bust in. Bad idea. Garrett Shepard, the guy whose teeth I knocked out, is in there date-raping a girl. She’s passed out, hair in her face and makeup smeared, and limbs limp, dress pulled up and legs spread. Garrett, eyes almost busting loose from his head, stands and walks over to me and puts a hand on my shoulder and the veins in his forehead are throbbing as he says, “She’s just had too much to drink.”
His shirt off and his boxers at his knees, Garrett says, “There’s a toilet downstairs. You go ahead and knock yourself out down there. Let us have some privacy?”
I look over Garrett’s shoulder. I recognize this girl. I think her name is Rose and she was in my history class freshman year. She has red hair and a soft laugh and knows a lot about Scandinavia.
I ask, “What’s going on in here, Garrett?”
He shakes his head frantic, pushes me toward the door.
Still looking at Rose lying there, I say, “You’re a sick fucker, Garrett.”
I push him out of my way and he starts up burbling behind me, his voice higher, panicked. He says, “No. No. No. She’s fine. She led me up here. Wanted it and been asking for months. Months now. Just had a bit too much to drink.”
He closes the door and the room gets dark just as I’m leaning down next to Rose and wiping the hair out her face. Grinding my teeth, my fists opening and closing and opening and closing like heartbeats, breathing shallow, I say, “You’re not getting away with this. This is … this is inexcusable.”
And that’s when he hits me.
The way it feels, I’m guessing it’s either a vase or a lamp. It doesn’t shatter the way props do in the movies. If anything, it bounces up off the back of my head. It’s not the hardest hit I’ve ever taken. Honestly, I stand there thinking Garrett is totally weak.
But my eyes don’t shut off.
There is no vision. Only the darkness of the room and the wet feeling at the back of my head and there is no Buzz, just rage. Uncontrollable rage. I’m not sure how it happens, but just like in the car after Janice told me about the vision, after she tried to break my heart, I go nuts and my arms and legs move on their own. My hands move before I can even will them into motion.
Fact is: I don’t even feel my knuckles on Garrett’s nose.
Fact is: I barely feel them on his metal teeth.
This isn’t me being a rock star. This is me being an animal.
When my body’s settled back into its frame, Garrett is lying on the floor beside the bed moaning or crying or both and someone’s opening the door to the room and light is slipping back in, steadily climbing the length of the bed, and that’s when I pass out, my focus just spiraling into infinity.
This time, I’m back in the future.
The vision I have, it’s way off the charts. My mom’s setup, her year-by-year accounting of the next me, doesn’t even come close to reaching the age I’m at. My eyes open to sun and then zoom out to city. I’m standing at a window, looking out over a city I’ve only seen in movies. A city like Tokyo or Hong Kong. Even though it’s day, the streets below me are burning with neon. Cars are honking. The city buzzing like a hive of wasps.
I am old.
Really really old.
I can just feel the strain of it on my spine. My hands are shaking. Nothing major, just tremors like you feel when you have your hands on the wheel and the car’s going over seventy. I can see a ghost of myself in the window. My bald head. My thick glasses. And behind me, sitting in a white leather chair, is a woman. She’s old like me. Her hair gray and pulled up, and her legs crossed. She looks like Vauxhall now, only she’s also wearing glasses. She’s regal and beautiful and I want so desperately to kiss her.
Vision ends.
Wake up and I’m on a couch downstairs. First thing I hear is someone talking about me being up to my old tricks. There’s someone saying, “At least he took a few weeks off. What a loser.” I’m lying across Paige and Celeste and Vauxhall. My head in Vaux’s lap. She’s stroking me and doesn’t ask anything. What’s amazing, other than looking up at Vaux who’s looking down at me, is that there is no Buzz rampaging beautifully through my body. There is no high. Just a kind of warmth. A peace, like all my cells are aligned. Like a full-body cosmology.
I say, voice trembling, “It’s amazing.”
Vauxhall asks, so quiet, “What?”
“Us in the future,” I say. “What happens next.”