I don’t correct him.
Goatee guy gives me another beer and we stop talking after that and I just sit there, in a drunken daze, and people-watch. I think I see my ex, Belle, but maybe it isn’t her. Paige passes by and waves.
I’m not sure if it’s what I’ve been drinking, but I don’t want to get up. I want to stay right here and watch for my girl. I’m doing exactly what my mother always told me to do if I ever got lost in a department store. Just stay where you are. Just hang tight and wait. And again I’m playing through the rest of the night, planning my next moves, getting a bit sweaty thinking about when exactly we’ll hold hands, when exactly we’ll kiss, and what it will feel like to touch her.
To really touch her.
I’m daydreaming on the couch long enough to watch two people pass out and then, finally, I see Vauxhall again.
Thing is she’s stumbling upstairs with Ryan Mar.
FOUR
Ryan’s a guy I’ve seen in the halls maybe twice.
He plays basketball and wears red Converse shoes. They’re making their way upstairs, Ryan laughing with his hand on Vauxhall’s ass.
Her arm around his waist.
Her mouth whispering things into his ear.
And then they’re gone.
For two seconds I think maybe it’s just a prank. That or she’s giving Ryan a tour. That maybe they’re really just good friends from way back. But I’m not convincing myself.
I want to shout. To let her know that that’s not me.
That she’s got the wrong dude.
That, Wait, Hey! I’m over here.
What happens inside my stomach is something horrible.
Most of me screams out in tatters and my brain fizzles out into glitches.
I can’t breathe.
This is not supposed to happen.
I stumble out away from the couch and drop my beer on the carpet. The way I’m swaying, almost vomiting, everyone backing away from me must be thinking that I’m on something really gnarly. That maybe my drink was spiked.
This isn’t what I saw.
I find Paige in the garage talking on her cell. I tell her to hang up, that it’s urgent. I tell her that I need to her to take me home, that I need to crawl under my house. I say, “I just saw Vauxhall take Ryan Mar upstairs.”
When I say it I almost puke.
Paige frowns this sad frown and hugs me. “I was trying to tell you,” she says.
“You were telling me she was with Jimi,” I say. My voice all panic.
I’m getting angry. I’m burning up.
“I was trying to tell you that. And also-”
“That she’s a slut?”
I want to just fall down in a heap. Curl up. Die.
Paige just hugs me again. Says, “I don’t know, Ade. It doesn’t-”
I get a crazy feeling and storm out of the garage and push my way to the bathroom. And I do the only thing I can think of that will stop the pain raging in my gut: I smack my head hard as I can against the sink.
There is a crunch and it’s pretty deafening but nothing I haven’t heard before.
The feeling, it hurts. The pain is like a flash of rain that washes clear a street. It’s a shock of cold water and, honestly, it feels great.
Here is how it works, step-by-step: After my head hits, I fall back. I see the ceiling and the silly, ornate fan spinning lazy circles. I hit the floor, but it’s like falling into water. I just sink down into it and the light fades. There’s this cheesy-ass British TV show I saw once about some doctor dude who travels through time in like this blue telephone box and why it reminds me of what happens when I fall back into the floor is that the show opens with this pretty dope sequence of lights going down a tunnel to a sick synth riff. Leave out the synth riff, sadly, and keep the tunnel of psychedelic lights and you get a sense of what I’m seeing. And at the end of the tunnel? Well, it’s like a curtain going up. There’s like the swell of the symphony, only it’s totally a drug-induced sort of rush, and then I open up my eyes to some future scene.
Not too long ago it was me downtown base jumping.
Now, I see myself on a beach.
This is likely after college and it’s got that plastic sheen, that future fakiness.
I’m maybe in California, though I’ve only ever been there once when I was little, so it could be somewhere else. The sand is hot. My shoes are off. I’m in a wet suit. The ocean is wild, tossing up these enormous whitecaps. I can tell, just the way my chest is heaving and by tasting the salt water on my lips, that I’ve been in the water. I’m dry now, but judging by the fact that there’s a surfboard in the sand beside me I’m guessing I was in there getting crazy. The sun is so high, so distant, it’s like the earth has gone spinning off course.
This beach, it’s not Colorado but, of course, I think of the phone call from the phlegmy dude. In the future, I laugh to myself. Whatever happens that he was stressed about, it’s not that bad. If the dude’s really a seer he’s a super-sucky one.
Total crank.
Here, in the next decade, the warmth feels great. The sand too. But over the ocean there’s a storm. Really dark clouds and fingers of lightning. This is why the waves are so big, the surfing so good. And probably, just because I’m such a future badass extreme sportsman, I’ll bet I’m on this beach, at this very moment, just for these waves. Just for this storm.
These waves, my heart racing, I need to go back in.
I’m reaching over for my board when I notice the guy in the mask.
He’s tall, young. Wearing jeans and a green wifebeater. The mask, it’s one of those Mexican wrestler deals. Black with sequined flames around the eyes. Sequined white and red teeth around the mouth.
The guy says, “I thought I might see you here.”
“Why’s that?” I ask. My future voice is deeper. Raspy.
“The storm. The waves. This is totally your thing. Thirty-foot swells like this, you get guys from all over the country, hell, the world, descending on these beaches for a chance to ride one of those monsters. Go down in history.”
“That why you’re here?”
The masked man says, “Nah. I’m here to talk to you.”
“So why the getup? Do I know you?”
“Not really.”
“Well, if you don’t mind, I think I’m going back out there. Can this wait?”
And the dude in the Mexican wrestling mask starts to say something, but the vision starts shaking. The sand is shaking. The world is shaking.
I’m pulled back through the tunnel.
Back through the lights.
Then I realize it’s someone shaking me awake, shaking me out of my future stupor and back into the present. I’m not on the beach anymore, I’m on the floor of Oscar’s bathroom and there is a burly dude with a ball cap pulled low over his eyes standing over me. He says, “I gotta take a piss, freak. Fucking. Move. It.”
I can’t stand from the strength of the Buzz, so the guy with the baseball cap just drags me out of the bathroom and leaves me on a throw rug in the hallway. My bottom lip is busted open, but all I can taste is cider.
Liz Chin finds me and rolls me onto my back. My vision’s all distorted from the high rampaging through my veins
