you still don’t know what’s really happening. You’re still just as clueless, and what Janice told you, it’ll happen, and I’ll be there just cheering them on-”
He stops right there.
He stops because my rage boils over and I kick him full in the jaw. He goes back fast and he falls down hard, crushing a chair. There are teeth on the table and I see blood, but it doesn’t stop me. I jump on top of Grandpa Razor and just start whaling. After a while my knuckles hurt and they look ugly and I take a breather, but then I just go back to it.
At least until Dr. Borgo stops me.
I’m about to bring both my hands down together, my fingers all intertwined, down on Grandpa Razor’s mess of a face, when Borgo grabs my hands and tells me to stop. He tells me that if I don’t, I’ll kill this guy. He says, “Already, he won’t look the same for a few months at least.”
I stop. I fall back on the floor, my legs crossed, and look down at my hands.
They’re shaking from my rage. They are all ballooned up and red. My hands, they look like the hands of a boxer’s after a night of cheap rounds and hard faces. I look up at Borgo and say, “You don’t look very good, Doc.”
Borgo’s lump on his head is bigger than I thought at first. A classic egg.
Borgo says, “It’ll heal.”
“You see anything?” I ask.
My shrink tries to laugh but he says it hurts his ribs. He says, “If I didn’t stop you, what do you think you would have done to him?”
“Pounded him into a deep retardation.”
“Where do you think that’s coming from, Ade? You were never this way before.”
I shake my head, look at my hands again. “That’s because I think I’m someone else now, Doc.”
SIX
The two girls in my life, both of them are sitting on Paige’s bed, staring at me.
One of them, Paige, has her mouth dropped open. I’ve seen this look from her before, it’s the same expression she had when she saw Vanessa Pallor, who she was sure was a lesbo and had a major crush on, making out with Carlos “Mad Bull” Lopez.
The other, Vaux, is closing her eyes and, I think, holding back tears.
I’ve just finished telling them that this guy I’ve been battling, the same guy Vaux’s been sleeping with, is my kin. I’ve just described, in almost excruciating detail, how I tried to turn Grandpa Razor into a pile of something he’d probably eat. And I said, “Basically, it comes down to something entirely biblical here. It comes down to brother versus brother and even though I’m still going into this with a plan of stopping it, of changing it, only now I think I might actually for real have the capacity of doing it. I mean, I didn’t before, but now I could totally see myself killing him.”
It’s been pretty much silent since then.
Paige’s never liked anything too quiet for too long and so she’s the first one to talk. She says, “That’s not good.”
Vauxhall starts to talk but stops herself. She looks way vulnerable.
“I was thinking at first that this is kind of the way the Incredible Hulk was, you know? The smart guy, the weak guy, Bruce Banner, trying to stop himself from raging into this monster of destruction. But it’s not really the same because it’s still me. It’s just like me amplified. And really, what I’m most worried about is that I won’t go back. If I kill Jimi, then this is it. This is me forever. The future Janice showed me, it’s pretty much for sure.”
Paige asks, “What do you think’s happened to you? This change?”
I take a deep breath, hold it in a while. “I don’t know, but it’s something severe. And what’s funny is that I’m not sure which I like better, you know? Me being messed up and concussed and high and not remembering most of my life, or the clean me who has some serious anger issues and is dealing with this familial insanity? Honestly, ignorance truly is bliss, I think.”
Another spell of silence and then Vauxhall asks, “Have you tried to see?”
“See what?”
“The future. Have you tried knocking yourself out after we were together?”
“No. What are you thinking?”
Vauxhall looks to Paige, gives a half-smile. I’m not sure Paige knows, but now she has a pretty good idea something went down. Vauxhall says, “I think that maybe your abilities changed. Mine did, they got heightened, so maybe yours did too. You think it’s worth trying?”
“Maybe. But I don’t know if I want to try now. I don’t want to see something that will just crush me. I think it’s best to stay right here, in the now,” I say.
Vauxhall asks, “What’s next then?”
“It’s about time I went home,” I say.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ONE