See, me trying to stop it made it happen.
I’m haunted by it. And if I ever see something like that again, someone being hurt or worse, I’m not sure what I can do. But I want to do something. I need to do something.
Dr. Gore, you’re a medical physicist, an expert. I read your paper on “temporal disturbances” and chronic migraines and even though I didn’t really get anything beyond the first page ( just being honest), I figure if anyone can give me some good advice it’ll be you. Here’s to hoping!
Sincerely,
Ade (not Abe) Patience
TWO
Vauxhall’s sitting a few rows over.
She is stunning in the dry fluorescence of McKellar’s Art Room. I’m staring at her so hard that I’m worried I’m drooling on my shirt. I’m worried that if she turns around and sees me, she’ll just freak out. God, she is so incredibly beautiful!
Mr. McKellar is going on about the history of perspective.
It’s the driest stuff I’ve heard in years and already half the class is nodding off. I can’t imagine why Vauxhall would want to transfer to this class, this teacher.
Vauxhall does not appear bored by the perspective talk.
Head on her hands, she looks enraptured.
I decide to give it a go and actually pay attention. Mostly this is an act for Vauxhall. But I can feel my brain rotting away and only five minutes in I’m eyeing the edges of a stool in the corner of the room.
I’m thinking: If I take a running leap from here, I can nail my forehead on that stool and be out in seconds.
Buzz.
I’m actually tensing up, getting ready to leap, when something spins onto my desk. White cray paper, folded over four times.
It’s from Vauxhall.
Try not to fall asleep,
the note says.
I look at her and smile. I write back,
Gonna be hard.
My heart is exploding. Her handwriting is exquisite.
Vauxhall writes back, her head close to the paper, hands tight on her pen. She writes,
He’s actually pretty famous.
The way she writes her
a
’s—this dollop of ink—is so freaking sexy.
I respond,
For boring students to death? Where’s the art?
She writes,
Ha Ha.
Have I seen anything he’s done?
Vauxhall writes,
Probably not. His stuff is pretty arty.
I write her that I dig arty. I’m really into arty.
Like what?
I list the films Paige and I have seen at the Esquire. Mostly they’re midnight movies. Stuff like
El Topo
and
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
and
Showgirls
. I write Vauxhall that I realize it might not be as arty as I thought at the time.
In her note back she laughs. No, really. It’s a drawing of her, a little kind of thumbnail sketch of her face with her hair and eyes, and she’s laughing her head off. That’s her response. The drawing, it’s honestly pretty good. Actually, I want to frame it on my wall.
Mr. McKellar decides its time for questions and he looks over at me, so I fold the note up and put it in my pocket.
McKellar asks, “What would art without perspective look like? Would it be primitive or would it be abstract? Has art improved with its invention?”
I stare back blank, my mind not even turning.
Vauxhall answers for me. She tells McKellar, this apparently brilliant instructor worth transferring for, that the answer depends on where you’re coming from and what you’re looking for. She tells him it’s all in the eye of the beholder. She says, “Perspective is just another tool. If you’re making something realistic or that’s supposed to seem realistic, then it’s a great tool. If not, then you can freely leave it behind. It’s a relatively new thing, perspective. Medieval times it wasn’t distance that was important but weight. The bigger something was, the more central it was, the bigger it was on canvas. They say it revolutionized art when perspective appeared, sometime in Italy, but really, I don’t think it was such a great thing. Art might look more realistic, it’s certainly easier to get, but it’s lost that imaginative view. That childlike view of things that just opens everything all up. There’s real beauty in seeing something the way it isn’t meant to be seen.”
The way Vauxhall speaks is jaw-dropping.
When we’re packing up before the bell, and Mr. McKellar has drifted off to his desk, I turn to the brilliant and beautiful mind next to me and I say, “That was amazing.”
My veins are drumming overtime as I’m speaking.
Vauxhall stands and bows. She says, “
That
was bullshit.”
Before she leaves she asks me if I’m going to Oscar’s party tonight.
“Sure,” I say. I’m hoping it’s not apparent I wasn’t invited. Oscar’s this really loud almost–frat guy who seems to have a party every other weekend. Both his parents travel, he drinks Red Bull and Jägermeister, and his liver is probably the size of Montana.
“Great.” And she smiles.
That smile has me floating all the way to Paige’s locker. And Paige can read it on me the way a dog can read the cheeseburger off your lips. She says, “You know, I’ve been meaning to mention that I don’t think … Look, call it woman’s intuition, but I think she’s got something going on with Jimi.”
“What? That’s ridiculous. Since when do you have woman’s intuition?”
“Eat a dick, Ade. I’m being serious.”
“Nah, I’ve seen this.”
I don’t let on that I’ve got stress about Jimi.
I say, “We, you and me, are going to Oscar’s party tonight. Vauxhall’s hoping I’ll be there.”
Paige crosses herself. She says, “You been on airplane mode this whole time?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Paige?”
Hands on her hips, Paige says, “Just think it’s funny how much you miss. It’s like you’re only half awake most of the time.”
“No idea what you’re talking about.”
“I think they’re together.”
“Well, if they are,” I say, winking, “it won’t be for long, buzz kill.”
Paige kisses me on the cheek. The peck, it isn’t sweet. She smiles, says, “Not as though you’d remember anyhow.”
THREE
The song has been sung in the lunchroom.
We’ve talked. We’ve laughed together. Flirted even, maybe.
This party is surely where we kiss.
Tonight, this party is the moment I have waited so many seasons for.
The frost is over and the summer has come. I spend an hour in the bathroom and I look over every inch of my face. This is prom and my wedding and my first real job all wrapped up in one. I make myself look and smell and feel as good as I can. I use the gel, I use the lotions, I use the aftershave, I iron my clothes, and shine my shoes. My stomach is an impossible knot.
First thing Paige and I notice when we hit Oscar’s is that it’s a costume party.
We decide to hang around outside Oscar’s place and wait for more partygoers.
Maybe find some other idiots without costumes.
* * *
Everyone who walks in I scan like I’m an MRI. Trying to make out the shapes of the beneath the costumes. ’Course I’m not looking for tumors.
I’m looking for Vauxhall.
Paige has smuggled a half bottle of whiskey from her dad’s liquor cabinet and we sip that while we wait, out throats getting chapped. Paige is chatty, but I’m too nervous to speak. When I do, it’s just me saying stupid things and stuttering about how anxious I am. Paige finds me ridiculous.
When this guy named Jethro that Paige’s friends with shows up, we walk in with him and his date. Jethro’s a Mormon and is dressed like a nun and his date is some Filipino girl with braces dressed like a witch. Walking in, the two of them describe their newfound love of chicken tinola. We have no idea what that is but imagine it’s something like what Oscar’s place smells like. It must be pot and coconut milk.
Inside, I see Vauxhall first.
Of course I do.
This is exactly how fate and destiny and providence works.
She’s wearing dark slacks. Innocuous footwear. A blue button-up shirt. Electric blue, no less. She’s also wearing gloves. Black leather. And her face is entirely swathed in bandages. Bowler hat on. Shades on. Vaux’s speaking damaged French to someone I think is named Bethany.
Vaux has a name tag that says,
VAUXHALL
,
NEW GIRL
.
A little light on the top of the tag, like an Xmas tree light, flashes on and off and on and off. This is Vauxhall as the cool mummy.
She’s so relaxed. And it makes me feel uptight.
I can’t keep my eyes off where her face should be.
So I push my way into the kitchen for a drink. I need something to loosen up before I talk to Vauxhall. Unfortunately, Heather Albine, Chris Lavoire, Liz Chin, and Gina Foley are standing around the cooler. These are bitches I hate being trapped in kitchens with.
I push in between them, reach into the cooler, and pull out a cider. Not my favorite, but I want something sweet because I’m sure I’ll be swilling bitter wine later. I look around for a bottle opener.
“What do you think of her?” Heather asks me.
“Who?” I play it dumb.
“Who?” Liz laughs. “Who else?”
“Uh, yeah, she’s interesting,” I say, reaching around each of them, hands scouring the countertops looking for the bottle opener, desperate for the bottle opener. Gina has it. Has been holding it the whole time. She hands it to me and asks, “Ade, how did you get into the party, anyway?”
“I was invited. Me and Paige.”
They laugh like jackals.
Gina says, “You three—you, lesbo, and the new bitch—are like a perfect team.”
“How’s that?” I ask, eyes narrowing.
Chris, she says, “You’re all mutants.”
“Why’re you lumping Vauxhall in with…”
“Are you serious? Have you even seen her?” Chris snickers. “That crazy bitch is like the biggest—”
“Opposed to who?” I interrupt. “You ugly skanks’re just jealous. Maybe she wasn’t raised in Crestmoor. Maybe her dad’s not a doctor. Doesn’t make her any less—”
I stop when I realize they’ve all gone quiet.
Standing behind me, Vauxhall says, “My dad’s dead.”
Liz and Gina cringe, make sympathetic faces. Heather laughs uncomfortably. And then all four of them, moving like some trained acrobatic team, squeeze out of the kitchen in seconds. There was a magic trick and the bitches have evaporated.
“Friends of yours?” the mummy asks.
“Not at all.”
I’m thinking right here is the real beginning.
The way this story really truly starts.
Standing here, looking at Vauxhall in her getup, I’m imagining how we’ll reenact this story for friends years from now. In my mind I see us older and sophisticated, maybe at a restaurant sipping wine and eating strange cheese, and Vauxhall’s covering her mouth and laughing and telling our friends, also mature wine drinkers, that we met for real, really met, at a costume party at some dude’s house, some dude neither of us can recall. We’ll laugh about that. I’m sure of it.
Right now, me getting all dreamy leaves a wedge of uncomfortable silence between us. Vaux breaks it by leaning in and saying, “It’s not what you think it is.”
What a great opening line.
“What’s not?”
“My costume. It’s more complicated than it looks.”
I take a sip of cider, say casually, “Okay. Let me guess. Uh, a mummy?”
“Didn’t see that coming.” Vauxhall laughs.
“I got nothing.”
She looks disappointed. “Why are you drinking that bitch fizz, anyway?”
The cider in my hand, I shrug. “Tasty?”
I’m leaning against the stove and put my right hand down on the range and while it’s there, just fleetingly, Vauxhall puts hers on top. The touch is brief. I feel only the warm leather. The hand beneath is a mystery. I feel the shape, but without touching the skin, it’s like touching a picture.
This is our first official touch, as brief and unexpected as it is.
And this is exactly when some asshole barges in with a bottle of wine, splashing it everywhere. His eyes are bloodshot.
He sees Vauxhall, his face twists into a mischievous grin.
“Sorry.” He laughs. And turns and leaves.
“Know him?” I ask Vauxhall.
A silence follows. Both of us rocking in our shoes. I break the tension, ask, “Right, so, I think I should know, but what’s the costume?”