Future Imperfect

Trying to remember every detail about you. I’m going clean for you. Stopping for you. Doc’s making me take the next week off from school to recover, but when I get back, I want… I want you to go clean with me.”

And that’s when the line goes dead.

CHAPTER SIX

ONE

Dr. David Gore -

I don’t know why you’re insisting on doubting what I’m telling you. And I find it really offensive that you’ve taken to calling Dr. Borgo a “quack.” What’s that about? What if I called into question the degrees you have listed on your business card? The FRCSC thingy after your MD, for example? Or how about your FACS? Whatever that means.

Fact is: You just don’t like the fact that you’re stumped by this.

I also take offense at your suggestion that I’m a paraphrenic. I had to look up what that actually meant though I was sure right off the bat that it wasn’t good. And it certainly isn’t. Couldn’t have you just called me a schizophrenic? Or said I was delusional? I think you need to take a moment and do some (what Dr. Borgo would call) old-fashioned self-exploration.

Anyway, your attempt at trying to ruin my day has failed.

Later.

Ade Patience

P.S. I’ve been considering keeping your name in my mind the next time that I happen to receive a concussion, just in case I can see something about your future. You know, something juicy.

TWO

Paige keeps her fourth-grade class photo on her dresser.

When you look at it you can’t believe it’s the same person. The Paige in the photo looks like someone who’d been kept locked away for years. Someone who never saw sunlight. Who was fed with a tray slid under the door. The Paige in the photo is blond to the point of hurting your eyes. She looks off to the side, her eyes so milky blue you’d swear she was albino.

The Paige I know today is nothing like this feral girl.

She is lively and popular and she’s dyed her hair black. Now when people take pictures of her she looks right in the camera and gives this big smile. Now it’s the smile that’s blinding and not her old weird ghost face.

I’m over at her place, it’s one in the morning, and I’ve spilled my guts, and I’ve informed her that I’m done. That I’m ready to stop the concussions and quit the Buzz and mostly it’s because I just want Vauxhall to myself. “I want her to go cold turkey with me. I mean, she can have sex with me and all, but not-”

“That wouldn’t be cold turkey for her, then.”

“All right. All right. You know what I’m saying though, right?”

“That you don’t like her being with Jimi?”

I nod.

“That you don’t want her to be a slut.”

I nod.

“That’s romantic,” Paige says. “In a junkie sort of way.”

“I’m ready for this. To stop. It’s the first time in a long, long time.”

“And you’ll stay clean how?”

I shrug. “I just won’t need it.”

“And Vaux?”

“We need to convince her.”

“We?” Paige sneers. “Actually, you need all the help you can get. You talked to her? It’s been almost a week?”

I say, “You know she avoided me all week. Said hi via text maybe twice. You know, the verbal equivalent of that little arm punch like you do. That let’s-be-friends-right-now arm punch. That I’m-totally-uncomfortable arm punch.”

Paige looks disgusted. “I don’t give you arm punches.”

“You do. But anyway, I think we’re still going out tomorrow.”

“Right, the date. What do you think Jimi will think?”

“He won’t know.”

“Hell he won’t.”

“He won’t care.”

“Hell he won’t.” Then Paige hugs me, tight. Says, “I just think it’s so freaking cool that both of you have powers. I mean how crazy is that? All this time you’ve never met anyone else and, wowsers, the girl you love is another genetic freak like you!”

“Like I was. I quit, remember? Haven’t had a concussion, not even a slight rap on the head, for over a week. For me, that’s monumental. Anyway, I’m also going to swim. Join the swim team. I don’t have to compete or anything, but my doc thinks it’ll be good for me. Used to be a pretty good swimmer. First practice is tomorrow afternoon.”

“On a Sunday?”

“It’s like tryouts.”

“Won’t your brains leak out?”

“Ha. It’s been over a week since the hospital, Paige. I think I’m safe to swim.”

“No, seriously, swim team is good. Good start.”

“That’s what I thought. Chicks dig swimmers, right?”

“Honestly, Ade, even if this whole true love thing doesn’t work and Vaux ends up turning tricks on Colfax, it would be nice to not be worrying about you every week. It’d be super nice not to have to patch you up.”

Then she turns on the TV and makes some cheddar popcorn. We watch this crazy Mexican soap opera that involves pirates and it takes my mind off things for about fifteen minutes. First commercial break and Paige just hugs me out of the blue.

This girl, damn she’s my Holmes.

Fact is: I knew Paige before I met her.

I could see in the Vauxhall vision that we were friends. I took things slowly. We sat next to each other last year in Mr. Paul’s social studies class. Really it was a front for long, dull lectures on economics. A lot of kids left the class within the first few days and Mr. Paul seemed totally unfazed, as if this happened all the time. Paige and I were two of the ten who stayed. Me mostly because I knew she was the first step toward meeting the girl from the vision. We bonded over our shared love of H. P. Lovecraft and comic books. Our shared fascination with water (being in it, watching tanks filled with it brimming with colorful fish, swimming across it, staring longingly into the depths of it). Our shared interest in Sylvia Lorne’s impossible cleavage (one warm day, when Sylvia was wearing this outrageous V-neck, we estimated the length of the crack to be an astounding ten inches).

Boobs and horror, pretty much the stuff friendships are made of.

And it goes without saying that her parents, Bob (collar up) and Linda (tattooed eyebrows), don’t accept her. That they don’t even try. Paige would love a shouting match. Screaming fits. Slammed doors. Even being kicked out