After Roger’s place, things got weird fast. We didn’t go back to Denver until Sunday night. We were camped out in a field, some random, desolate place that was beautiful the way only empty sky and empty land can come together and be beautiful, and sitting on the hood of Jimi’s car. I was bumming about how Vauxhall and I still hadn’t found the time to talk. Mostly it was Jimi doing the talking and the two of us listening.
And whatever had developed between the two of them, it was obviously deep. Deep enough that often times they’d just give each other sideways glances and then nod knowingly. They had whole conversations, long detailed discussions, with just a few looks. A shake of the head. An eyebrow raised.
I felt like a ghost.
THREE
It all ended last night around two in the morning when I found myself back home, sitting on my lawn, Jimi behind me, his head on my shoulders, and Vauxhall in front of me, sitting between my knees.
The three of us a totem pole to the over-partied.
Jimi fell asleep. Was doing that little stop-start, head-jerking thing that people who are way overtired do when they first drift off. I didn’t bother moving him because I didn’t want Vauxhall to move. Even though I was losing feeling in my feet, I didn’t ever want to move.
Sitting there, the night chirping around us, cars throwing occasional light, Vauxhall, not turning around to look at me, said, “So, what did you see this time?”
“Nothing. I didn’t go under.”
The beautiful creature between my legs laughed. “You missed?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.”
Vaux asked, “You choose what you see? Like if I were to ask you what will happen to me in five years? Or will I win the lottery?”
“I don’t really have much control over it.”
Vaux turned to look back at me. “Prove it.”
I said, “You’d need to knock me out.”
Vaux turned away, shook her head, and even though her shirt was buttoned up high I caught a glimpse of cleavage. Part of me suddenly got very warm.
“I hate to say this,” I said. “But I’ve actually had a vision about you.”
Vaux sighed long and loud. “Is that so? Sounds like a pick-up line. Or are you just really trying to make me knock you out?”
“I’ve seen you before. Two years ago. I had this vision of you coming into the lunchroom and singing. Just the same as you did the other week. And-”
“What?”
“I don’t…”
Vaux looked back at me again and asked, “What else did you see?”
“Us in love. Riding off into the sunset.”
Vaux said nothing.
“Yeah. A little weird, right?” I felt really stupid.
Then Vauxhall got up, pushed Jimi off my shoulder, and he slid down to the grass in slow motion but didn’t wake up. With him there snoring in blades of wet grass, Vauxhall stretched and looked up at the stars for a few heartbeats before looking down at me, me looking up at her beautiful face, and the world just paused there. The moonlight, the stars, even the passing headlights of the cars all focused in on Vauxhall and illuminated her exquisiteness.
I asked her, “Why are you with him? He’s such an-”
“Asshole?”
“Yeah. Did I mention this before?”
“You did. Maybe I chalk it up to bad-boy attraction. Us girls are kind of hardwired for it. Lame, I know. But with him there’s something more. It’s not love. For me it’s really not. We just have this thing that-”
I interrupted, “He also said something about you trying to change.”
Vaux shook her head. Sighed. “What if I told you that I was like you?”
“I-”
“Like you, Ade, only I don’t see the future. And I don’t need to knock myself out. What if I told you that for me it happens with intimacy? With sexuality?”
“Okay.”
“You don’t buy it?”
“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?”