Vauxhall asks, so quiet, “What?”
“Us in the future,” I say. “What happens next.”
I can feel Vaux’s body breathing in deep and I tell her that it’s time. I tell her that we need to go to the reservoir now. I say, “Wait’s over. Time to break the rules and see if I’m right.”
“You’re not in any condition-”
“If I can walk, then I’m fine. I’ve had worse hits than that.”
“Still, I’ll drive.”
On our way out to the car, Paige lets me know that Garrett is locked in an upstairs bathroom and that Rose is still passed out but okay. “The cops are on their way. They’re gonna want to speak to you.” She says, “By the way, you’re incredible.”
I can hear the cat scream of the sirens.
Before closing the door, Paige leans in and kisses me on the cheek. She says, “I know it’s not like you’re trying to save the future president or the guy who will cure cancer, but I really hope you don’t kill Jimi. And if you do, I’ll go on the lam with you.”
THREE
And then, I’m there.
Vaux parks and lets me out and the moon is hanging in the sky just like I imagine it’s supposed to be. She asks me why I want to go alone. Why she can’t come.
I say, “You weren’t in the vision.”
“But I’m here right now.”
“Please, Vaux. I don’t know what to tell you. Just let me do this on my own. I mean, this might be totally obsessive-compulsive of me, but what if the reason you’re here now, but not in the original vision, is because the minute you step out of the car you’re hit by a stray bullet. Or an asteroid. Or something. I mean, that’s a bit-”
“Ridiculous. You said this is about breaking the rules. Why’re you freaking out?”
“Just want to take it one step at a time. If it doesn’t work-”
“You’re being silly.”
“Look, please, just let me do this my way.”
“Fine.” And she pecks me on the cheek and turns up the radio.
“Don’t leave me like that.”
“Okay.” Vaux turns the radio off and tells me that she trusts me and that she knows this will work. She tells me that she can feel energy in the air tonight. She says, “Being with you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Come back soon.”
That’s better.
I walk to the beach, slip off my shoes, and then wade into the water. I’m standing there and the sky is just crazily spitting out stars above me. The night is warm and the crickets are going apeshit in the elm trees.
The sand, it’s not sandy the way tropical beaches are but rocky with these little perfectly oval brown stones mixed in with what looks like the kind of gravel you find on playgrounds. And under that, my toes find mud. Thick, black mud.
Facing out, over the water, there is just the twinkling of distant cars crossing over the dam and beyond them the hulking outline of the mountains, all crouched like hounds. And behind me, only the sodium glare of the tennis court. The emptiness of the beach.
I’m in the water long enough to have memorized the timing of the crickets’ response to the cicadas’ drilling noises when Jimi shows up.
How I know he’s in the shadows is funny.
I feel it.
I say, calmly, “I’m ready.”
The night answers back in Jimi’s distinctive voice, “Good.”
And then he walks down to the beach. He is wearing what I knew he would, what I saw he would. It’s funny seeing this vision happen. I’ve replayed it so many times in the back of my head that to have it happening now, coming real, it’s almost prosaic. “Bland” is a better word for it. That and just looking at Jimi, seeing the snappy grin spreading out across his face, the anger is starting to bum rush my veins. My face is getting hot.
Jimi gets closer, looks me over, then he puts on this very self-satisfied look.
He says, “You’re very, very mad. Mad enough to kill me, right?”
“I’m not going to kill you,” I say.
“But you’re angry. Ferociously mad,” Jimi says. “Have a look at this.”
And he pulls his sleeves back and shows me his arms and the tattoos covering them. I look; it’s dark but I can make out faces, swirls of color, motion.
Jimi says, “Look closer.”
He takes a cell out of his back pocket and flips it open and positions it so the light cascades down his right forearm.
I step closer, see better.
Jimi’s arm, the whole tattoo sleeve, is images from my life. There is my mom teaching me how to ride a bike on the driveway. There is my bedroom set up just the way I had it when I was in second grade. There’s me in the surf on our trip to San Diego to see Aunt Miriam. And in a swirl of crimson and orange is my father’s car accident. He even has the license plate number down perfect. Jimi shifts the light and on his left arm I see more. There is my first dog, Grover. There is my favorite Transformers toy. There’s me and my father watching fireworks from the roof of the parking structure at the Cherry Creek Mall. And I even see myself lying in my crib, a pacifier in my mouth, swaddled in the green blanket Grandma Josephine knit for me.
Jimi says, “It’s all there, in my skin.”
“Why?” I ask.
A car sounds on the dam road behind us, its honk reverberating out across the reservoir in time with the lapping of tiny waves. The night is so very still in response.
Jimi, my brother, says, “That anger in you, I used to have it too. It drove me almost crazy, how short a fuse I had. Used to blow up at the slightest thing. And I saw everyone, almost every single person, as an enemy. All of them fake, all of them lying to me. You know that feeling, bro?”
I nod. “This whole time, you knew?”
“No,” Jimi says. “Only the past year or so. I tracked down Dad last summer. Figured it all out and then decided to get to know you. Everything I told you was true, Ade. You have a great life because you didn’t have to go through the hell that I did. What you never counted your lucky stars for was a great childhood. Just came natural to you, right? Never had to think much about it. Not me.”
“You killed your mother.”
Jimi pauses. Stares me down. Says, “I saved myself.”
“This same water, you drowned her.”
Jimi nods slowly. The night turns so slowly around us. And it’s as biblical as anything, what’s happening. I half-expect a spotlight from the moon to flick on.
“Not anymore,” Jimi says. “Now, that’s your baggage. You see, Ade, we switched childhoods. What’s on my arms, it’s my history now. And you, you’ve got mine. That’s why the anger boiling in you. With my past, it’s hard not to feel nearly out of control all the time. We both have abilities, bro. You can see into the future, and me, well, my power’s a bit less well defined. What I do is sneak into your home, talk with your mom, wear your clothes, and basically act like you. And if I throw a little pain into the mix, you know, a few tattoos here and there, I can absorb your past. Just soak it up like ink. Voilà, your history becomes mine and I can think back on a happy childhood. The brother who didn’t deserve it forfeits it.”
Really, I can’t think straight. “What?” I ask.
Jimi puts his hand on my shoulder, the first time we’ve touched sharing a father, and he says, “Close your eyes and think back, look back to when you were a kid and see.”
I’m hesitant, but do it. I close my eyes tight and hold them shut while I ransack my brain looking for childhood memories. They are there-me at the beach, me playing with the dog, me at my dad’s bedside-but the images I see are faint. They are ghosts of memories and I can’t get into them, I can’t feel the emotions associated with them. Laid on top of these memories, like a sick film, are new ones.
On top, there are bad ones.
These new memories, they’re things Vauxhall told me about Jimi. I see myself being whacked on the hands with a wooden ruler, my fingers numb and the knuckles cracking. I see a woman that�
�s not my mother calling me her useless child and locking me in the garage in the middle of winter. I see myself alone at home, having been there for days, eating cat food I’m so hungry. This is my new past, my new where-I-came-from. This is why I’m so angry, so abrasive.
Jimi says, “The whole thing, it was never about Vauxhall. It wasn’t a love triangle. It was just me getting my due. It was just me reclaiming my own history. Something admirable in that, right? Dad tried to warn you, didn’t work. He tried to warn me, to stop me via Vauxhall, but it was all garbled. That’s what happens when you’re a screwup. Besides, I consider Grandpa Razor to be more of a father to me. He took me under his wing and when I met you, when I found you and the plan started to come together, well, he was there to guide me.”
Jimi squeezes my shoulder, the muscles in his arm, my family, tensing, and he says, “When you talked with Dad over at Grandpa’s place, Razor was trying to stick you with some of my blood. Not sure where he got the idea that it would work, probably online, but basically that a syringe was going to make this process faster. He was helping me get what I deserved sooner. Really, this world is mine now, Ade. You got my past and now you got my future too.”
And of course that makes sense.
All the visions, all the menace so far out. The reason I’m seeing the edges all frayed and darkness creeping in is because I’m seeing some strange combination of mine and Jimi’s future.
Jimi says, “I’ve imagined that future. You should see what I imagine now.”
I’m ready to kill him.
It happens almost instantaneously, I jump forward, my body arcing like lightning, and I push him down into the water, my hands around his throat. What it feels like, what it looks like, is exactly like the first time I lived it. Call it déjà vu. Call it instant replay.
Jimi’s 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.
And I close my eyes.
I know already how this ends.
I know already how Jimi’s body goes slack.
I know already how Jimi’s past pushes me to do this.
I know his eyes are bugged out because for whatever reason, he never really believed I’d do this. He was laughing so hard. He was so sure of himself.
And with his throat getting smaller and smaller in my hands.
And with my hands getting number and number around his neck.
I see the vision of me and Vaux, the two of us ancient, overlooking a city, and there is a release.
FOUR
His arms don’t go slack, mine do.
I open my eyes and see, in slow motion, with the moonlight breaking all over the surface of the water, Jimi’s face, eyes wide open, break the surface.
I fall back, not even feeling the water.
The future has changed, it’s settled down onto a certain track. I’m just not sure which track it’ll be. Right now, I know why there have been so many futures. The futures of me crippled. The ones with me and Vauxhall old. They’re all intertwined because Jimi and I are intertwined now. What happens next, no one can see. Now, nothing is certain but uncertainty.
Jimi retches. He sways, standing there with half the reservoir coming out of his lungs. He puts his hands on his knees and looks up at me, his eyes red with burst blood vessels. Right now, it’s like looking at myself in a mirror after a concussion.
We’re brothers in damage.
Jimi, he wipes his mouth and sighs, says, “The transfer… So freaking close, you don’t even… You can’t even get… If you’d killed me, I would be where you’re sitting right now. You’ve fucked this whole thing up, Ade. Unbelievable. Me, I’m supposed to be you.”
“But you’ll never be, Jimi. Never. There was enough,” I tell him, my voice coming out in gasps, “there was enough of my past still left. You lose.”
Jimi coughs. Swaying uneasily, he says, “There’s no going back now, Ade. I might be alive, but you and I, we’re wrapped up in this thing now. Like half-completed people. I’m looking forward to seeing how you work with what I gave you. The new you, I’m excited to see you struggle.”
I grab Jimi, my hands wrapped around the back of his head, my face right there in his, and I say, “No, I’m not going to struggle with this, Jimi. I’ll work it out. I’ll get over it. I’ve got a good shrink and good friends. And you, I can’t imagine you’ll be the same asshole with my childhood behind you. Storm’s over, brother. Time to pick up the pieces.”
And I let him go.
And I leave him standing there in the water, his head hanging, spitting out dark water into the shaky reflection of the sky.
FIVE
I don’t go home.
Vauxhall takes me to Village Inn in Cherry Creek and buys me a slice of pie and gets me two cups of coffee. Still shivering, I sit there and eat the pie quietly while Vauxhall stirs her coffee and watches me. Every now and then she reaches across the table, squeezes my hand.
I’m having trouble focusing, her face blending in with the emptiness of the lights.
Vauxhall tells me that this moment is like something from a movie. She tells me that there will be people talking about this forever, that the whole scene will be different now. She says, “Maybe, us teamed up, we can even change the past.”
I’m dreading that future and praying that I can change the rest of it too.
Vaux asks, “What do you want to do next?”
I don’t have a response, but that’s when the divination community shows up.
All of them. The Diviners, Grandpa Razor, the Metal Sisters. And every two-bit psychic with a shingle downtown. Every ghost hunter and palm reader. At least sixty people come filing into the restaurant near three thirty in the morning, all of them nodding and clapping as they form a circle around our table. Vauxhall, like she doesn’t even notice them, keeps her eyes on me.
They lift me up out of my seat and parade me around the restaurant, some of them shouting things like “Hail to the King!” and “Welcome to the New Age!” Katrina and Janice, smaller and younger than ever, stand before me, their eyes lowered. They apologize. Ask forgiveness. Paige and Celeste appear. Clyde and Ambrosia too. And then my mom shows up with the All Souls congregation and they’ve got a crown, this gold, sparkling crown. And they lay it on my head. And my dad shows up too, he’s the last one in, and he’s got the letter I sent him. He sits down, watches the crowd surge around me, and mouths, Thank you.
And then Vauxhall shakes me awake.
We’re still in Village Inn, the place empty besides us.
Vauxhall asks, “You okay to talk?”
I nod and wipe my eyes.
“How did you do it?”
I say, “It was like when it was seen, once it was seen, the future got stuck. That’s just how it’s always been. Grandpa Razor, the Metal Sisters, none of them could change it. Once you see it, the future is made.”
“But you did change it, Ade.”
“See, that’s the trick. I didn’t really change the future. I got changed.”
“-”
“Jimi changing me, that changed the future.”
Vauxhall gets up, sits next to me. Kisses me.
I say, “It’s what none of them got. You can’t force yourself on the world, get your hands wet with time and space. That’s fighting uphill, trying to move a mountain with a spoon. You turn the equation around and that’s when anything is possible.”
Vauxhall says, “Sounds like my parents talking.”
I laugh and it hurts. “Maybe the hippies were onto something.”
“You think I’ll change too?”
“I do.”
“Tell me how?”
“Well, the obvious way, for starters. Parties won’t be the same, people won’t be worried about me busting my head on th
eir sinks or toilets or starting fights. And I don’t think you’ll be running away from Mantlo. You’re not going to be chasing the high anymore. No more intimate mysteries. Instead, something stable. More rewarding. Let’s hope.”
“I love you,” Vauxhall says.
I blow her a kiss.
Fall asleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ONE
Heinz-
I appreciated your card and I’ve been meaning to write you for a few months now, but things have been nuts. Summer already, school almost out, and, to tell you the truth, I’m a changed person.
It might come as a surprise, maybe you’ll be bummed, but I haven’t had a vision in over six months. You know how they say that when you stop smoking, your body almost immediately starts to recover. How after just fifteen minutes your lungs are cleaning out the gunk and loading up on new cells. How after just a few weeks you’re breathing like a nonsmoker. Me, with my brain, it’s the same way. The docs might not agree (they’re all “damage is done, dude”), but I honestly feel better than I have in years. Straight up.
That doesn’t leave me with a lot of insight regarding your recent situation. Sorry to say, but I’m not too surprised nothing happened with the whole chicken pentagram deal. (Isn’t that way too old-school anyway? That’s like your grandfather’s Satanism.)
Oh, and I’ve given up trying to figure out how it works. I’ve got a few ideas, and oddly enough my girlfriend actually knows, but I just don’t really care as much now that I’m not using it. The why, it’s overrated.
Late,
Ade
TWO
My first official competitive swim meet and it’s a big one.
Mantlo v. George Washington.
Bitter rivals.
Dark outside, the windows of Celebrity are all fogged up and the fans are turning in the rafters something furious. The place is so quiet, everyone so focused on the meet that the sound of the fake waterfalls spilling their guts onto fake rocks is deafening. It’s us against George Washington and Coach has me swimming in the first lane, the outside one, where the slowpokes loiter. There are no carrots here, no fine Beverly Morrison asses to follow.
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