“I do.” I was being entirely honest. And right there, that moment, dawn was just around the corner and the both of us were so exhausted and hung over, suddenly everything made sense. The reason she and I were meant to be together wasn’t because I was obsessing over her for so long, it wasn’t that she found me irresistibly charming and funny, it was that we were cut from the same cloth. Whole time I’d been wondering about others like me, she was waiting only a few years away. It was so Hollywood it made me want to laugh.
I asked Vaux, “What do you see?”
“The past.” She closed her eyes. Her eyelids fluttered, delicate and soft as moths. She said, “Would you believe me if I told you that I can see the past, see deep inside someone’s history, when I’m with them? Would you believe that the thrill of it, of seeing their past, their hidden history, their stashed away ideas, I get this crazy high?”
I cleared my throat, nodded. “I would.”
“You have that high?”
“The Buzz, that’s what I call it. That’s why the bathroom at Oscar’s. That’s why the handful of concussions this year. Not so good for my memory, terrible for my future prospects. But… it’s miraculous.”
Vauxhall nodded. “It is. Anyway, that’s why I’m with him. Jimi’s past, his hidden history, is so crazy that it gives me the most unbelievable high every time I look into it. Each act of abuse I uncover, it helps him and it helps me. I’m like the shrink who can get inside his head and clear away the sins, pull down the cobwebs, and let in the light. He needs me, and I admit that I like the feeling I get from it. Is that wrong?”
“No, it’s not wrong. And the other guys?”
“It’s the same thing. I’m helping them, Ade.” Then she smiled at me and her teeth were so bright and wonderful and she said, “It’s good to know I’m not alone.”
God, how I wanted to kiss her right then.
“Me too. You’re the first person I’ve ever met who can-”
And that’s when the crack came.
I felt something hit my head, something super hard like a two-by-four or a tire iron. I’ve been hit with both of those before and this felt remarkably the same.
Anyway, it was concussion time again.
What’s funny is that I was shocked that I wasn’t on the beach with the masked dude again. Instead, after diving down the tunnel of swirling light, I wound up at home. At home with my mom and some of her All Souls Christ friends sitting across from me. Like grilling me or something. Also there was a projector and a slide show on.
Strange. And thankfully short.
And that only meant the Buzz would be really weak.
I woke up in the back of Jimi’s car with the Buzz already fading from my system.
I was in my boxers, a ratty blanket covering my legs. Vauxhall was in the front passenger seat looking down at me with worried eyes. Jimi was in the driver’s seat smoking.
Vauxhall asked, “Are you okay?” And then she punched Jimi in the arm and told him he was a dick for hitting me. She told him he could have killed me doing that. She said, “Sometimes I think you’ve completely lost your mind.”
Jimi said, “Isn’t it what he does?”
Turning to me again, Vauxhall asked, “Seriously, though, are you all right?”
I nodded, rubbed the back of my head, and felt a serious knot buried under the hair. “What the hell did you hit me with, Jimi?”
“A baseball bat,” Vauxhall said. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Ade.”
I told her I’d be fine. I’d hit myself with worse before.
She laughed uncomfortably.
“So, Jimi, why am I in my boxers?”
Jimi asked me, “What did you see?”
And that’s when I noticed he was wearing my clothes.
FOUR
“Why are you wearing my clothes?”
Jimi didn’t answer. He threw his cigarette out of the window and then scratched at his chin and pulled a notebook out from the glove box. He opened the notebook, took a pen from his pocket, turned to me, smacked his lips, and asked, again, slowly, “What did you see?”
“I saw the future. I saw myself at home. Boring, really.”
Jimi asked, “How far out?”
“I don’t know. Weeks, maybe. I wasn’t focused, I wasn’t trying, and when I’m not trying I only see a little ways out. Could have been months.”
He wrote that down. Then he asked, “Can you make it sooner?”
“Make what sooner?”
“The future you see, Ade. Can you see something in, like, days?”
“Maybe, but I can’t control it. Why, Jimi? What’s-”
He shushed me and held up the notebook. On the cover, it read THE BESTIARY. Jimi said, “It’s a catalog of the worst sorts of creatures: parents.” He wasn’t laughing when he said it. He added, “My whole childhood, right here. Everything I can remember. Everything I can’t. But what happens next, after today, after next week, that seems pretty important to know too. I’m hoping you’ll help me see it?”
“I can only see my own, Jimi. I don’t think I’ll-”
That’s when I threw up. All over the back of Jimi’s car.
And then, thankfully, I blacked out. Happens. When you’ve had as many concussions as I’ve had, blacking out is almost second nature. Throwing up too.
When I woke up I was inside my house, fully dressed, lying in bed with my mom hovering over me, dabbing my head with a wet towel and singing that one hymn about being in the garden with Him.
When she saw I was awake she stopped singing. Smiled.
“Was I dressed when I got in bed?” I asked.
Mom made a funny face. An uncomfortable face. She said, “Yes, dear. Of course you were. Just like you are now. Your friends just dropped you off, said you’d… well, they said you’d had an accident. But I know…”
And then she went off to get the Revelation Book. I stayed in bed totally confused, unsure of why I was so messed up and not really certain if what I remembered happening had really, actually happened. I decided, right before falling asleep, that I needed to see Dr. Borgo again. And, for the first time in a very long time, I wondered if my future, the one my mom was so eager to chart out, could somehow be wrong.
Be totally, absolutely wrong.
But right now, sitting on the toilet, my only thought is what I’m supposed to do next; I yell for Paige to come back into the men’s room. I yell for her to help me up again. I yell, “I’m not naked or anything, you can totally come in here.”
She opens the door to the stall and says, “I never left, dumbo.”
“Can you get me out of here? Was I going to puke or something?”
“I think you had to take a leak.”
I screw up my face. “I’m totally confused. By the way, you seen Jimi or Vaux today? Were they at school?”
“No,” Paige says.
She helps me up and on our way out of the bathroom she tells me that this is officially the last time she’s going to help me like this. She tells me that even if I got totally crippled and was in a wheelchair the rest of my life she wouldn’t ever help me to the bathroom again. She says, “But I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself.”
“You love me and you like cleaning up after me. If you didn’t, you would have nothing to bitch about. I add the spice to your life.”
Paige laughs. “Promise you won’t do your thing. At least a week off?”
Fingers crossed behind my back, I say, “Promise. By the way, did I tell you that Vauxhall is just like me? Isn’t
