there too. No, I’m the trap and Vauxhall is that… What the hell am I talking about?”
Pretty much, it’s been the Me, Vauxhall, and Jimi Show. The past three days have seen us doing just about everything together from eating to sleeping and I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was incredible. The parts I can remember, well, they were incredible for sure.
It began last Friday, after school, when Jimi ambushed me in the parking lot. He drove up beside me in his neighbor’s car, the way you see it happening in movies, me walking quickly, the wheels of his tires turning slowly, and he rolled his window down and waved me over. I went. Vauxhall was sitting in the backseat reading a paperback book. Jimi told me to get in. He told me to get in fast and not to think about it. He said, “Thinking about things kills them.”
I got in. He sped up and out of the lot and we were off.
Halfway to Boulder, on 36, I asked him where we were headed. I’m not sure why I waited so long to ask. He smiled and said, “We’ve got many things planned for you, grasshopper.”
We didn’t actually make it to Boulder but stopped in Louisville at a guy named Roger’s house. Really it was his parents’ house and it was massive. One of those McMansions that spring up outside of the city, the kind that look so new and sterile you can’t imagine anyone really living in them. They’re like big, empty waiting rooms. Waiting rooms in fields, in cul-de-sacs, below mountains. At Roger’s there was a party. Enough booze for a cruise ship full of people but less than a hundred of us there. We ate hot links and greasy chips. There was a keg. There was pot. I woke up on the couch in Roger’s basement to find the moon nearly down and stumbled upstairs to find the house empty. Everyone was on the lawn shooting off fireworks and I pulled myself over to a lawn chair, slumped down into it, and watched Vauxhall move, talk, laugh, drink, in the kaleidoscope carnival light. Someone walked over to me and punched me in the shoulder, said, “You dog, you. What’s her name?”
I said, “Vauxhall.”
This random guy, he said, “Yeah, right.”
Whole time Vaux and I didn’t really talk. Just a few words here and there. Really it was just me observing her, the way I had been for the past two years. Only this time up close. This time in person. At the party, she moved through the crowd the way a leaf moves down a stream. Caught up swirling in conversations here and there, spinning for a time, and then washing free and moving on. There were times she’d vanish for an hour or two. Sometimes with Jimi. Sometimes not. When she was gone the party would pretty much stop for me. It’d be like someone turned down the music or turned on the lights. The empty chatter would rush back in. I’d sit on the couch and pout. But then, Vauxhall would return, sweep me up, and introduce me to someone, laughing and nodding and splashing white wine on all the carpets.
Today, with the hallway empty, and me falling asleep between footsteps, Paige sweeps me up and walks me into the bathroom.
She sits me down on a toilet and says, “That’s all I’m helping. This is gross.”
“Do happen to have an energy drink or-”
“No.”
“Coffee?”
“No, Ade.”
“Okay.” And I close the door to the stall but open it up again quickly. “Hey, Paige,” I say. “You should probably not be in the men’s room.”
After Roger’s place, things got weird fast. We didn’t go back to Denver until Sunday night. We were camped out in a field, some random, desolate place that was beautiful the way only empty sky and empty land can come together and be beautiful, and sitting on the hood of Jimi’s car. I was bumming about how Vauxhall and I still hadn’t found the time to talk. Mostly it was Jimi doing the talking and the two of us listening.
And whatever had developed between the two of them, it was obviously deep. Deep enough that often times they’d just give each other sideways glances and then nod knowingly. They had whole conversations, long detailed discussions, with just a few looks. A shake of the head. An eyebrow raised.
I felt like a ghost.
THREE
It all ended last night around two in the morning when I found myself back home, sitting on my lawn, Jimi behind me, his head on my shoulders, and Vauxhall in front of me, sitting between my knees.
The three of us a totem pole to the over-partied.
Jimi fell asleep. Was doing that little stop-start, head-jerking thing that people who are way overtired do when they first drift off. I didn’t bother moving him because I didn’t want Vauxhall to move. Even though I was losing feeling in my feet, I didn’t ever want to move.
Sitting there, the night chirping around us, cars throwing occasional light, Vauxhall, not turning around to look at me, said, “So, what did you see this time?”
“Nothing. I didn’t go under.”
The beautiful creature between my legs laughed. “You missed?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.”
Vaux asked, “You choose what you see? Like if I were to ask you what will happen to me in five years? Or will I win the lottery?”
“I don’t really have much control over it.”
Vaux turned to look back at me. “Prove it.”
I said, “You’d need to knock me out.”
Vaux turned away, shook her head, and even though her shirt was buttoned up high I caught a glimpse of cleavage. Part of me suddenly got very warm.
“I hate to say this,” I said. “But I’ve actually had a vision about you.”
Vaux sighed long and loud. “Is that so? Sounds like a pick-up line. Or are you just really trying to make me knock you out?”
“I’ve seen you before. Two years ago. I had this vision of you coming into the lunchroom and singing. Just the same as you did the other week. And-”
“What?”
“I don’t…”
Vaux looked back at me again and asked, “What else did you see?”
“Us in love. Riding off into the sunset.”
Vaux said nothing.
“Yeah. A little weird, right?” I felt really stupid.
Then Vauxhall got up, pushed Jimi off my shoulder, and he slid down to the grass in slow motion but didn’t wake up. With him there snoring in blades of wet grass, Vauxhall stretched and looked up at the stars for a few heartbeats before looking down at me, me looking up at her beautiful face, and the world just paused there. The moonlight, the stars, even the passing headlights of the cars all focused in on Vauxhall and illuminated her exquisiteness.
I asked her, “Why are you with him? He’s such an-”
“Asshole?”
“Yeah. Did I mention this before?”
“You did. Maybe I chalk it up to bad-boy attraction. Us girls are kind of hardwired for it. Lame, I know. But with him there’s something more. It’s not love. For me it’s really not. We just have this thing that-”
I interrupted, “He also said something about you trying to change.”
Vaux shook her head. Sighed. “What if I told you that I was like you?”
“I-”
“Like you, Ade, only I don’t see the future. And I don’t need to knock myself out. What if I told you that for me it happens with intimacy? With sexuality?”
“Okay.”
“You don’t buy it?”
