Smack.
Crunch.
Going unconscious, it’s like standing in an explosion.
Most times, like this time, I find myself in a tunnel. I go down the tunnel and the lights whiz by me and then, where it ends, the light parts and I dive into the darkness between.
It’s dizziness and sleep and then only pure, beautiful, matte black.
And I open my eyes to the future.
Today, what I see is me ten years in the future. How I know it’s the future is because things look plastic. Not twisted or distorted the way they do it up in the movies. No CGI, no carnival colors. Just plastic like you’re in the suburbs. Plastic the way the waxed-up leaves are on the zebra bushes in the planters by the play space at the Cherry Creek Mall. My skin is shiny. My body feels so much more malleable.
And in this plastic future I seem happy.
Really happy.
I’m walking downtown, still Denver. This time I’m wearing a suit and it’s very sunny and I can feel the first pinpricks of sweat popping up in the small of my back. I think about taking off my coat but don’t because I’m turning the corner and now I’m on the shady side of another street. Downtown is busy. Cars pulling people places. Buses heaving back and forth on the mall. This must be spring because the sun is small and tight in the sky and the air smells like rain though there are no clouds anywhere. I walk into an office building and wave to someone, a woman with brown hair and thick-framed glasses sitting at a small desk, and then take an elevator to the fiftieth floor. When I get out, I stand at a bank of windows and admire the hustle and bustle of downtown, the mountains where there is snow.
In this vision I’ve got a backpack on but it’s not heavy. No one mentions it.
I take a flight of stairs to fifty-one and walk through a maze of offices where people wave at me. Then I walk out onto a balcony. I’m sweating more, but it’s not from the heat.
What I do next is I climb up onto the railing.
I stand there for a few seconds, swaying gently, my arms outstretched, just balancing on this two-inch-wide tube of metal. I’m thinking I’m glad it’s not a windy day.
And then I jump.
I fall face-first.
Arms at my side the way soldiers drop out of planes in the movies. The wind’s rushing up into my eyes and ears, grabbing at my hair and making my cheeks float open like the cheeks of astronauts do when they’re in simulation machines.
The backpack, it’s a parachute.
I don’t pull the cord until I’m fifty seconds from hitting pavement; I time it on my wristwatch. And when I do pull the cord, and the chute explodes behind me, I’m smiling so wide that I can see the white of my teeth reflected into the dark windows of the office buildings as I rush past them.
The way the chute’s set up, my fall won’t be totally broken.
I’m going to hit the ground and hit it hard.
My future: It’s just me getting crazier and crazier.
I’m guessing I have the ultimate concussion from the fall. How crazy is it that I see myself in the future jumping off a roof just to see the future? I assume that I don’t actually die. Maybe I do. Can you imagine the future I’ll see in those few split seconds before my soul jets skyward? Must be like a thousand years in the future.
I don’t see the landing.
Instead of being there and finding out, I’m here with someone calling my name and I rocket back through the tunnel, the lights spastic. When the tunnel vanishes is when I open my eyes.
My left eye, actually. The right one is swelled shut already.
Everything’s blurry, but I’m on the ground at Mantlo High and there are people standing over me. I can see two of them shaking their heads.
Already they’re shaking their heads.
Me, back in the present, I’m on my back lying on some tossed cigarettes and wilted grass just after lunch has ended and everyone else at my high school is getting ready to go back to class. All of them have to walk past me as they go to physics and gym and whatever it is that Mr. O’Connor feels like teaching today in American history. Right now, they just think I’m a few concussions away from full vegetable. A few knockouts from the way my dad is.
Someone, a girl, maybe Kristen LaFontaine, judging by the voice, says, “It’s only Tuesday and he’s already at it.”
And someone else, someone gay, most likely Eric Hovda, says, “At least he waited until the second week of school. Don’t even know why they keep letting him come back.”
I just close my eyes and try and let the vision drift back in.
I wonder: What do I see next? Is She there too? Waiting for me in a getaway car?
What happens
FIVE
I’m woozy walking into school.
I’m also bleeding from my head.
This long stretch of crimson just shattering the nice white of my shirt.
The way I’m walking, I look like a zombie.
I barely notice because my body’s still jittery from the Buzz.
The Buzz is what happens when I break the laws of physics, what happens when I see into the future. It’s getting a massive jolt of energy. Every nerve, every muscle fiber is jittery and on fire in the most beautiful way imaginable. It’s the equivalent of smoking a blunt, of downing some beers, of popping X, and then kissing.
The Buzz is my high of choice.
This is the second time this week I’ve gotten high via concussion.
Right now, I’m trying to drink from the water fountain just outside Mr. Eveready’s office, and “trying” is the key word here as really all I’m doing is dribbling blood all over the hallway and trying to focus on working the fountain. Of course a hall monitor, David “Suck Up” Lopez, notices me.
“Dude, seriously?” he asks. This is what he usually asks when he see me.
Then he just points down the hall.
“Before I need to call an ambulance,” he says.
Second time this week I’ve been sent to see the school nurse, Mrs. Caronna.
As expected, she’s totally not happy to see me.
Sitting here, the cotton balls getting heavy with blood, my skin is still vibrating. My head, whether it’s from the concussion or the high, is heavy and light at the same time, the way a really big pillow can be super heavy and yet perfectly light. I nod off every few minutes, eyes just dim like a computer when it’s not been touched for a while.
Caronna shakes me awake in her unloving way. “You think you can fly, Ade?”
I shake my head.
“Why did you jump off the roof?”
Again, I shake my head. “Hard to explain.”
“Try me.”
I shrug. “An experiment?”
The look on her face is pure disgust. Then she hands me her cell phone. “Dr. Borgo,” she says, and her lips are all puckered.
I ask Mrs. Caronna for some privacy before I talk to my shrink and she gets up slowly, eyeballing me the whole while, before walking out and slamming the door.
“Hey, Doc,” I say into the phone.
“Ade? Jesus, are you okay?”
