TWO
Not even Garrett can disrupt my good vibes.
Swim practice is like bathing in energy. The pool is warmer than it’s been in years. Decades maybe. I ignore Garrett’s stares. He even has the gall to point at me and then make that finger across the throat slashing gesture like he’ll really do it. The guy’s a shell of his former stud self. I’ve knocked him back to grade school.
Coach Ellis has pretty much given up on me.
Already. But still he lets me practice with the team because it gives him someone to hate. Someone to compare and contrast his best swimmers with. Me, I’m his foil. I’m his example of how not to be.
For me, swimming’s just a super-nice workout.
I get home and want to take a nap, my body aching from the tension of the past few weeks, but Mom’s beaming and tossing her car keys up in the air and catching them. Something I don’t think I’ve ever once seen her do.
“Want to go out to dinner?”
“I’d love to.”
On our way out, we pass four people walking up to our front door. They’ve got folding chairs and a cooler. These freaks are going to wait it out, it seems.
Mom, she sees them but says nothing.
“Where do you want to go?”
“I’m fine with anything.”
Mom shrugs. “A friend at church recommended a place on Colfax.”
We have dinner at Good Friends. I just talk. Words stumble out. Mom listens intently, bits of her salad falling off her fork as she leaves it shivering just below her chin.
At one point she’s nodding to herself not talking to me.
Not listening.
Eyes glossy and her head nodding rhythmically. It’s like she’s had a stroke. I ask her if she’s okay and she says, “Ade, I really do think it will happen soon. Can’t you just feel the energy in the air?”
“Yeah. No. What will happen soon?”
“The rising up. The end of our earthly bonds. I am so looking forward to seeing your grandmother again. I’m sure she’s excited as all get out to see you too.”
“Sure, Mom. It’ll be swell.”
By the end of the meal Mom’s eaten maybe a third of her salad. Most of the time she’s just spent mumbling to herself, pointing at my plate, telling me to eat up, and laughing at awkward moments in response to something funny only she can hear.
I haven’t seen my mom like this before.
I imagine Mom before the divorce, when Dad still loved her. When she still loved him. I remember her laughing and having fun, her not concerned about eternal salvation but about how I was doing in school and what movie I wanted to see on the weekend. This mom, the one rambling and lost in front of me, it’s clear why Dad vanished.
The ride home we’re going slow because I’m tired.
It’s raining hard. The road is a river and I can barely see.
But I’m so tired on top of it.
I want to pull over. I want just take a break.
I think about asking Mom to drive, but figure we’re close. We must be only a few blocks from home. That’s when it happens, my eyes close down. We’re somewhere just past Eighth Avenue and I stop seeing.
I hear the crash before I wake up.
This, me crashing the car on accident, is completely new.
The sound is like a wave and I imagine it rampaging down Monaco and sweeping over cars and ripping hedges loose. The night sky sparking as the streetlamps topple over and split. Next comes the crunch. My head meets the wheel despite the seat belt, despite the fact I’m only going thirty. I can’t see her but I know Mom’s hands are clasped in prayer, her face as content as when she’s fast asleep. For her, this wreck could be a one-way ticket to salvation.
The tunnel.
The lights.
The swirl.
The darkness.
The exit.
My eyes open again to night and stars.
I know immediately it’s the future. Same waxy sheen. Black-light blues. I’m guessing it’s soon, though. Maybe weeks away. I’m not focused on anything, not expecting anything but darkness.
I’m on a beach. Maybe the north end of the Cherry Creek Reservoir.
I get the fact that it’s the same place the gruff old man on the phone mentioned.
The obscene phone caller, maybe he wasn’t just a nut.
I’m thinking now that maybe I should be worried.
Should have been stressing earlier.
Could it be he knew what would happen?
The smell is strong. Strong like a marsh. Still, I can smell the rubber on the tennis courts above the reek of water. And I home in on it like the million moths that crash through the night to the phosphorus light of the courts. I follow the rise and fall of the water. Just the sand. The soft collapse of the lake. The wind in the reeds. The buzz of insects. The moon is only a sliver, just a scythe.
What’s really weird is that I don’t feel like me.
I mean that my skin is mine. The muscles, the weight of me, it’s all the same. But inside, I’m angrier than I’ve ever been in my life. I’m seething. Furious.
My hands are fists. I’m walking to the tennis courts.
And then I’m not.
Like in a movie, there’s a jump cut. Like the reels got mixed up or the projector skipped. Suddenly I’m not walking to the tennis courts but kneeling in the sand, my knees in the cold water of the reservoir, and my hands, well, my hands are around Jimi’s neck. His face is under the water. His arms are thrashing. His legs kicking. But I’m bearing down hard. My arms out straight, locked. My fingers, they’re white from blood loss. Jimi’s face, it’s white too. His eyes are so bugged out.
There is surprisingly little noise. Just the kick of him in the sand.
Very little noise until he goes slack. His arms drop. His face stops contorting.
