Future Imperfect (9 page)

“Must have been amazing,” Vauxhall says. “The power of that.”

“After that it was just me chasing the Buzz around. It’s harder to start a fight than you’d imagine. I said some of the worst things I could think of to the worst people I knew and still came up empty. What it came down to was me going bat-shit crazy just for the thrill of a ten-second ride into the future. Something I shouldn’t be able to do. Something that no one should be able to do. It felt wrong but so right.”

Vauxhall puts her hand on my shoulder. Squeezes it. This is the first time she’s intentionally touched me, and there’s an electric current. All the hairs on my arms stand up. I can feel each and every one of them.

What’s really funny is how open I am about my ability. How I’m just letting it all spill out. Then again, I’m talking to the only person I’ve ever really loved.

Vaux asks, “What do you see when you knock yourself out now?”

“Decades out. I need to push it to get the Buzz stronger.”

“What’s it like, your future?”

“Clean, fun. I don’t have any lasting head injuries or any brain problems. At least not that I can tell. It’s what’s been keeping me doing it, really. Knowing that I end up fine. It’s funny, but in the future, I’m like this daredevil. Kind of a
Jackass
sort of dude.”

“Like what?”

“Jumping off buildings. Stunts. I have no idea why.”

“And you’re not like that now?”

Up on the rooftop with an invisible city spilling out in front and all our peers asleep or rocking drunkenly beneath, I sigh and say, “I’m looking forward to it but, sometimes, I worry I’m out of control. Even now. I mean I know that last summer I was out of control, but I’m not sure when, if, I’ll ever really get under control. Some of the stuff I’ve done, I’m not really proud of. Most of it, thankfully, I don’t remember.”

This is a lie. I remember a lot of it but I don’t want her see me that way, to think of me that way. Not now.

Vaux can see I’m holding back. She says, “I was out of control for a while too.”

That thought, her kind of out of control, it has my stomach sinking.

She says, “I did some really … regrettable things.”

“I’m sorry.”

Vaux reaches into her purse and pulls out this tiny digital video camera and then flicks it on and says, “I think we’ll start here.”

“Start what?”

Her face half hidden by the camera, its lone little red eye now her right eye, she says, “This is the first take, the first fourteen minutes, of my new film. Not sure of the title yet, but we’ll get this. Free-form at the moment.”

Awkward under the camera’s stare, I ask, “What’s it about?”

“About when the past meets the future. I’ve always said that by the time I was seventeen I’d have made a feature-length documentary film.”

“So, do I—”

“Just act natural,” Vaux interrupts. “Tell me about your family. About your childhood. What you liked to do as a kid. Your best friends. Your first kiss. Tell me about who you used to be.”

I ask, “Used to be?”

Vaux nods. “Don’t you find that who you used to be is always more interesting than who you are?”

“Not really.”

The camera says, “Then you just haven’t thought about it enough. Tell me something weird. Something that will give me some glimpse into you. More about your mom.”

I say, “Dragonflies.”

“Huh?”

“My mom, when I was six, just after my dad started drinking, before she found All Souls Chapel and was still working at the bakery, she got totally obsessed with them. The Green Darners. The Mosquito Hawks. Darning Needles. Dragonflies. Russian folklore has it that dragonflies are devil’s knitting needles. Romania they’re horses possessed by Satan. Sweden they weigh the souls of the damned.”

“Spooky.”

“Mom dragged me all over the foothills looking for them. We had this Corvair. Blue and dented everywhere by some cataclysmic hailstorm in eighty-nine. We called it Pineapple Face on account of the dings. The way my mom drove it was like one of those centrifugal force rides at the state fair. The kind you stand up in and it spins around and plasters you back against the walls. I always loved those rides. Love how it takes a few seconds longer than you expect for the force, or whatever, to hit, just a few seconds longer of stillness before your stomach catches up. Those seconds are magic. Mom driving the car was the same way. She’d turn lanes so fast, without signaling, that I’d see it before I felt it. My stomach was still in the other lane for a few seconds and then whoosh, it’d come sliding back smooth as silk.”

“Sounds fun in a really stupid sort of way.”

I laugh. “Only times she’d slow down was when she saw a dragonfly. She’d pull the emergency brake right there, right in the middle of the highway sometimes, and jump out and chase after them with the nets she had in the trunk. Then she’d hold what she caught in front of me and say, ‘Aeronautic marvels. It’s the wings. Two pairs. Two pairs and they can coordinate those and move them so fast that’s it almost against the laws of physics. Almost.’ I always tested her. ‘Which one is that, Mom?’ ‘Shadow Darner.
Aeshna umbrosa
. Like ambrosia. The foodstuff of the gods.’ It was fun back then but now, now it’s pretty obvious how crazy she was. Is.”

Vaux, taking her eye from out behind the camera, says, “You’re a dream. Go on.”

And she films and I talk. I talk until nearly dawn, when the lights of the city that we can’t see are fading out, blending in with the light of the sun. I talk through my childhood, but it’s like it was a movie I saw. Not something I really experienced. I keep coming back to me now.

Then I take the camera and put the questions to her.

Watching Vaux in flickering green light, her face glowing, she tells me stories about her father, how he would get her stoned and take her to rock concerts (“Summer I turned fourteen we hit five shows, even traveled as far as Topeka to see Bowie.”) and how they used to see
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
every Friday night for like two years. Said that she was practically raised in that movie theater by squadrons of drag queens and Monty Python–quoting geeks.

She’s tells me stories about her mother. About her cousins. Extended family. What foods she most likes. Which ones she hates. Her favorite colors and what they mean to her. Her favorite clothes. Why she loves movies. What music she despises. She goes ballistic with politics. Cries about chimpanzees and Amazon destruction. She laughs about her period. Recites Baudelaire. And she sings a number from
Grease 2
, something about reproduction.

Vauxhall makes it clear that this theatrical thing, it isn’t just an act. It isn’t like the way Jimi does his show for attention. The real Vauxhall is on the outside. Her heart right there for anyone to see it, to touch it. Any emotion crossing her, it’s suddenly out in the open. I’ve never met anyone so unafraid of talking. She’ll mix it up with everyone.

Vaux also tells me that she has only a handful of friends.

She tells me that a lot of people, well, they hate her.

Girls in particular.

Mothers, teachers, coaches, authority figures. All of them give her bad looks.

She says she’s not lonely. That she’s fine not having tons of friends. She says she doesn’t give a shit. She’s tough that way. Vaux tells me her dad trained her. She says, “That’s exactly the word for it, too.”

“How’s that?”

She says, “My dad was just so antiauthority. He was always giving the finger to the man. Calling out the establishment. Hippie stuff. At the dinner table, he’d go on these long-winded rants. Wind up hoarse from shouting. He told me to never shut up. To never stifle myself. Always express and never regret.”

“Cool.”

“Yeah. Only he was just outspoken. Didn’t ever act on any of it.”

I say, “Not like you.”

“That’s sweet.”

Vauxhall is silent for a minute and for that minute it’s just us and the whirl of the satellites above us. And then Vauxhall takes my hand and holds it in hers and she looks at me with eyes as wide as I’ve seen them and says, “The reason I hang out with Jimi is because he’s one of the most beautifully fucked-up people I’ve ever met.”

“And that’s attractive to you?”

“The things his mother did to him,” Vaux says. “She made him run for miles until his feet were blistered, she made him swim in an ice-cold lake until he was blue and shaking uncontrollably. I can’t let him deal with that alone. He needs me. Right now, he really, really needs me.”

“And what do you need, Vaux?”

She’s quiet. Breathes in, breathes out. “I just need someone to let me be myself.”

Vaux sighs, puts her head on my shoulder, and just keeps it there. The way I’m sitting, the weight of her head is pushing me back. Slow-motion toppling me over. But I stay, even with my head still kind of whirling from the hit I took in the bathroom, I stay. Eventually, my shoulder is numb. My hands are numb. Hell, even my back is numb. But I don’t dare move. I want her here.

The sun’s long been up when Paige yells up at us.

She tells us she’s been sleeping for like two hours and it’d be nice if we could leave. She tells us the house is just filled with passed-out people and she’s missing her bed. Paige says, “Doesn’t your ass hurt being up on that roof all night?”

Vaux and I clamber down from the roof and my ass does hurt.

Before I walk Paige back to the car, I tell Vauxhall I had a wonderful time talking to her only I whisper it because I’m hoarse from talking. I tell her that I’m anxious to see her documentary. Vauxhall smiles and waves good-bye, says, “When it’s done, I’ll be sure to show you first.”

We don’t kiss. We don’t even hug.

The most intimate relationship I’ve been in and we don’t even touch each other.

SEVEN

Just as we’re pulling out onto Grape, I see Vauxhall catch a ride home from Chris Hirata.

In the car, as they’re driving off, Chris has his arm around her shoulders. I can only imagine what they’ll be doing next. I do. And then I’m sick because I do. I’m so ready to go home.

Whole drive to Paige’s the both of us are super quiet. Almost comatose. At one point Paige asks me if I had a nice time up on the roof.

I say, “Yeah. Incredible.”

“And the Jimi thing?” she asks.

“True. Maybe a problem for the time being, but I’m not too stressed.”

“You look stressed.”

“Just tired. I’ve seen it all, remember. All good.”

When I drop her off, before she steps out of my car, Paige gives me a kiss on the cheek and tells me to take it easy. She tells me not to think too hard about it. She says, “You took a nasty hit tonight, Ade. If I were you, I’d just rest. Take tomorrow off, okay, champ?”

I shrug. “Okay, babe.”

A few blocks from my house, at a red light, I pull down the mirror on the sun visor and take a look at my jacked-up face. All the usual bruising is there. The usual cuts and scrapes. I’ve got a nasty welt on my forehead and it’s swollen out like a gourd.

I’m not ready to go home, so I just drive. The sun is blinding as it balloons up over the apartment buildings and McMansions near Wash Park. I drive past school and realize the reason I’m not ready to go home is because I’m thinking too much about Vauxhall. I’m jealous of Chris and Ryan. I want so badly to rewind time and kiss her on that roof. To convey that I can’t wait for it to just happen in its time. That she can be herself with me and me only. That Jimi isn’t special. That Jimi is just sick.

I need the Buzz again. I need it terrible.

Fact is: The future is just so damned addictive.

And cars are so easy to crash.

Used to be, only two years back, before I could drive, that skateboarding or biking or even just walking into things was the easiest way to propel myself into the future. But the collateral damage was heavy. Mostly broken bones and busted-out teeth. Looks seriously suffered. I wore helmets and even padding but still I’d come away with way more bruises and cuts than I’d hoped. Got so that sometimes, bad times, the high would be hardly worth it. And then came the car. Give me an empty street and a wall or a telephone pole or even a tree and I’m on my way to not-yet land. I’m very careful. Cars are big. Fast. What I do, it takes practice. To not really really wreck the car takes serious skill.

And this morning, at five to six, that’s just what I do.

There’s this spot just off Hale Parkway, back in a neighborhood, with a low wall and a telephone pole. I angle my car just right, just so, and I’m able to hit it going twenty. I’m adept at this, making it so I do minimal damage to my ’96 Honda Accord but ensuring that my head rebounds off the steering wheel like a basketball.

Only it doesn’t just rebound but it snaps back and in the hollow part of my skull, my brain goes bouncing and the blood starts flowing. I see the tunnel again. It looks the way Vegas would if it were rolled up into a tube. Walls of light, flashing and glowing. And in the walls are shapes and figures but nothing exact, nothing definite. The edges here are all worn down, the colors reduced to static.