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 of the house would be a blessing. It would mean Bob and Linda care enough. Just enough to reject her. They don’t, though. Paige is merely a teen going through a phase. In her parents’ minds she’ll be a punk rocker next and pierce her nipples. Then she’ll go to college and become a hippie kid. Maybe hang out naked with dreadlocked black guys. This is all a phase. After school she’ll straighten out completely. She’ll follow Linda’s footsteps and get a career in advertising. Marry young. Marry wealthy. Have kids. Raise dogs. It makes Paige sick and I can’t count the number of times when we’re just hanging out that she’ll stop mid-sentence and look like she’s either going to scream or punch a hole in a wall. When that happens I just hug her or punch her shoulder.
Grabbing a handful of cheese popcorn, I say, “I’m really quitting, Paige. Really. There’s going to be a new me. You’re totally going to be surprised.”
“I believe you.”
“I’m serious. Really, it’s a new day for me.”
“I believe you, Ade.”
I ask, “Just like that?”
Paige mutes the TV, says, “You’ve never wanted to quit before. I’ve begged you for years. Since we first met. You never once said you would. Never once made a false promise. Ade, you love trashing yourself, but if you love this girl more, well, I believe you. But… how much of this is because you don’t want her with Jimi?”
I hold up my thumb and index finger about an inch apart.
Paige shakes her head.
“Fact is,” I say, “if the guy died, I don’t think I’d go to the funeral.”
THREE
Because Mantlo doesn’t have a pool, we swim at Celebrity Sports Center.
It’s the perfect place to make a change. To get away. Celebrity has a massive pool, three water slides, twelve bowling lanes, an arcade and even bumper cars. They say it was originally built as a training center for employees on their way to Disneyland. Once you’re inside, it’s like being in another world. Something vaguely Caribbean without the poor people and the trashed-out beaches. Around the pool and water slides are fake rocks that bristle with fake plants. It’s hot and steamy and the water is suspiciously bright blue.
We’ve been here for like two hours. Everyone swimming lesuirely before things technically get started. I’ve just been doing my thing. Swimming fast and then slowing down and blowing bubbles, kicking too high, kicking too loud. I’m like a kid in here.
And then Coach Ellis blows his whistle and ushers us to the food court.
“We’re gonna reflect,” he says.
Technically it’s meditation. We find a spot between two fake rock ledges and lay our towels down on the Astroturf. Then we stretch. After stretching we lie down, close our eyes, focus on our breathing and imagine we’re not lying on ketchup-stained Astroturf. At first I imagine the Great Barrier Reef from pictures I’ve seen. Bright blue-green water, shot from above, and in it undulate these ribbons of coral and color. I imagine flying over the reef, dipping down every now and then to skim my feet along the warm water. Meditating this way, my mind feels clear for the first time in God knows how long. Here on the Astroturf I’m not anxious or itching to knock myself out at the bottom of the pool or against a telephone pole on the way home. It’s glorious.