Future Imperfect (28 page)

The tunnel doesn’t end, but I take a detour out.

And what I see is not the future. I see Jimi.

Jimi talking to Grandpa Razor and they’re sitting at a White Spot diner on Colfax sharing a plate of pancakes and talking amiably. I can’t hear really what they’re saying, but it’s a heated conversation. Some snippets sneak through. Jimi, wearing sunglasses and a beanie, is forking pancake into his face and asking, “But does he really need to die?” And Grandpa Razor, his beard all slathered in syrup, saying, “Of course, that’s essential. You’ve done so well this far. Don’t let everything fall apart. Keep it hidden, keep it safe.” Things go quiet again, the dialogue getting all fuzzy, until Jimi stands up and storms out. Grandpa Razor, that fat man, just sits there laughing to himself.

And the vision ends.

Back in the tunnel. The walls collapse in. The stars zip back into place.

Then it’s just me breathing heavy in Vauxhall’s arms. My muscles are slick and electric. I sigh so hard that my body racks.

Vaux asks, her voice barely a whisper, “Did you see what I saw?”

“What?” My throat is so dry, it’s cracking my voice. “What did you see?”

“Jimi. Jimi and some guy with a beard.”

I’m surprised enough that most of my skin jumps.

“I saw the same thing,” I say. “Them eating and talking.”

“Oh, my God,” Vauxhall says. “This is so crazy. What just happened?”

I fall back on the blanket and let all the air out of my lungs and push it up at the sky and the stars and the moon hiding somewhere on the far side of the universe. Vaux lies down beside me and covers herself with my shirt. She says, “The high, it’s like…”

And I feel it too.

It’s not the numbing, scattershot thrill of the Buzz. This is something new, something entirely different. This high feels, if anything, organic. It feels like it was made for me. Like stepping into a perfectly tailored suit. I can see my skin glowing. Vauxhall’s too.

She says, “Maybe we cancelled each other out? Me seeing the past, you seeing the future. The two of us together, maybe what happened was we both saw the present. You know, it like evened things out. Just minutes ago, Jimi and that guy were eating and we just kind of eavesdropped in on them.”

And it kind of makes sense. Yin and yang.

“But why Jimi? I’ve never seen anything but myself.”

Vauxhall says, “I don’t know. I’ve seen so much of Jimi’s past. Maybe I kind of directed it. You know, moved the frame over. Kind of a beautiful thing, don’t you think?” And when she gives me a kiss, there’s a spark like when you get static buildup from walking crazy in socks on a carpet.

I go back over the vision in my head. “What was Jimi saying?”

“I only heard part of it,” Vauxhall says. “They were arguing.”

I sit up and tell Vauxhall that I know the guy Jimi was eating pancakes with. I tell her that he’s at the heart of this whole thing and that he knows how to find Poppa Ministry. I say, “Jimi being with Grandpa Razor, that’s not a good thing at all. I think it’s a setup is what it is. They’re planning something.”

“You think this will happen every time, we, you know?”

“God, I hope not,” I say.

Silence follows. Both of us chewing it over.

Then Vauxhall says, sitting up, “Tell me everything about the weekend.”

I do. I tell her about Belle and the Diviners and how we went to the park and met up with the Metal Sisters. I leave out the Janice stuff, but I tell her about Slow Bob and Grandpa Razor. “With all the names and everything,” I say, “it sounds like something from a cartoon, but these people, I’ve seen them, Vaux. They know what they’re doing. I just don’t want to walk in there blind.”

Vauxhall says, “Then you don’t.”

I tell her I have an idea. I tell her it’s one that I hate but the only I think will work. But knowing what we know, I say, “It’s probably not safe. It’s certainly not safe.”

And after I explain my idea, Vauxhall says, “I’m only doing this for you.”

“Tell me it’s a terrible idea. What about what he did?”

“But it’ll work.”

“No. I know. But still, he’s—”

“I’m not a wuss, Ade. I’ve known him long enough.”

She kisses me so hard I fall over. On top of me, her elbows digging into my chest, she says, “Only for you, and only this once. I love you.”

FOUR

I’m at the Tattered Cover bookstore, trying to drink a coffee, trying to read through a copy of
Juxtapoz,
but mostly just driving everyone else in the place crazy.

It’s because I’m shaking.

The place only just opened ten minutes ago.

My feet are kicking. My fingers tapping. I keep cracking my knuckles. I keep sighing a little too loudly. It’s like I’m sitting on the bench ready for my turn at bat and I’m always the next one, I’m stuck in this jittery limbo. Also I keep checking my cell.

Vauxhall is with Jimi.

She’s at his place. Doing things.

My hand shaking as it stirs my cup of mint mocha for the eightieth time, I’m reminding myself why I set this up. I’m convincing myself, this for the ninetieth time, that Vauxhall going over there is worth it. That this needs to happen.

Fact is: I’ve whored my girlfriend out.

The love of my life, I’ve sent her over to Jimi’s so she can jump his bones and read his memory. I’ve sent her over there so she can dig into his head and find out what he knows about Grandpa Razor.

My stomach, it’s like someone else’s fist is in there going nuts.

The reason I keep checking my cell is because Vauxhall told me it’d only be an hour. Just one hour and she can get the information and get out of Jimi’s house. Hopefully, get out of Jimi’s life.

It’s only been twenty minutes.

I’m sweating like it’s raining on me.

My heart, it’s doing things it shouldn’t be able to.

And worst of all, sitting here pouring more sugar into my already too sweet coffee, my anger is starting to surge again. My ears getting hot. My skin almost blistering. But then my cell rings and the anger, the stress, it’s almost instantly relieved.

Almost.

It’s Paige. I answer, voice strained, and she says, “I thought fall break was all about sleeping in. What the hell are you doing sipping coffee and reading, wait, is that a graffiti art magazine?”

I’m confused only for a flash before Paige sits down across from me and winks. She makes a big dramatic show of flipping her cell off and then says, “I think you need to catch me up.”

“What are you doing here?”

Paige says, “You know what’s really funny? I like to come here second Monday of the month, bright and early before Mrs. Schmidt’s class, and just flip through a few magazines and sip some coffee. Mostly I read the politics, though.”

“You don’t ever come here, Paige.”

She claps. “You’re right. I had a doctor’s appointment and was taking the scenic route, you know, Colfax, home and saw your car parked out front. What exactly are you doing here and why haven’t you called me about anything?”

I tell Paige first and foremost that it’s been a crazy ride. I tell her, in no particular order, that Vauxhall and I had sex, that I’ve been hanging out with Belle, meeting a whole tribe of people with crazy abilities like mine, that I’m going to confront Jimi’s dad, and that there’s a really good chance something gnarly will go down. I say, “And it’s going to happen soon. Really, something super gnarly is about to happen in the next thirty minutes.”

“Like what?” Paige asks, looking around the store. She’s panicked. I’ve seen it before. She looks the same way she did when her parents walked in on us smoking pot the first time. Her face is registering that level of high-grade nervous tension.

“Like I think I might explode. That’s the other thing I didn’t mention. Me, I’ve kind of started changing. You know how a guy slowly realizes he’s becoming a werewolf. Yeah. Like that.”

Paige leans in, softly she asks, “You’re turning into a werewolf?”

“Pretty much,” I say. “I’ve got this anger management problem that’s just come up out of nowhere. Before, when I had the vision of me killing Jimi—”

“Wait? What?”

“I didn’t tell you that?”

“Uh, no.” Paige cocks her head to one side and looks at me with one eye the way a parrot would. “I think I’d remember you telling me about killing someone.”

“I haven’t, though. That’s the thing. I’m trying to stop myself.”

Paige grabs my mocha and takes a long, hearty swig of it. Then she wipes her upper lip with the little napkin my drink was sitting on and says, “Okay, you’re going to have to explain all that stuff at a later date. You know, like a time when I’m more awake and didn’t just have a really awkward conversation with the pediatrician I’ve seen since I was five about why I don’t have a boyfriend at the moment. But for right now, tell me again what you’re doing sitting here looking all stressed out?”

“I sent Vauxhall over to Jimi’s house so she’ll have sex with him and read his memories.”

“What? No you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t.”

I nod. “She went like twenty three minutes ago.” Then I check my watch, “Actually, twenty-six minutes ago.”

Paige grabs my face, both her hands biting into my cheeks, and she stares me down and says, “That is one of the worst things I think you’ve ever said. You need to leave. You need to find her. This is the most retarded thing you’ve done yet.”

I say, through smushed-up lips, “You’re right. I should leave.”

“I’ll keep your drink,” Paige says, letting me go. “Call me.”

And I go running out, knocking over chairs, knocking down tables.

FIVE

Jimi’s house is maybe seven minutes away by car.

I make it in three.

I’m pretty sure I was going fifty-three on Colfax and weaving like a drunk. I do know that I went through six red lights. I’m worried I might have caused one accident, but it looked like a fender bender and both of the cars were SUVs, so I’m not that concerned.

Maybe this is just the new me, but it was kind of, sort of, fun.

Thing is, I’m here walking up to Jimi’s front door, my head pounding with my pulse, and I’m running through all the different scenarios, all the different positions I might find these two in. Inside my head I’m kicking myself for letting this go down. For setting this up. Me the prognostication pimp.

I don’t pound on the door, it’s open.

I barge in and don’t see Jimi but I do see Vauxhall lying on the couch. She’s there like she was tossed aside. All laid out like a car accident. Hair in her face.

My chest lurches seeing her.

It’s like seeing my own face hit with a sledgehammer.

I run to Vauxhall. Grab her up off the couch and push the hair away. She’s okay. Makeup is smudged and her eyes are watery, but she’s okay. When she sees me, like really sees me, she smiles. Such a sweet smile. Her voice broken down, she says, “Nothing happened.”

I just hold her to me tight. Collapse her to me.

She says, over my shoulder, “I tried. It was horrible.”

My throat all lumped up, I say, “You’re okay now.”

She says, and I can feel my shoulder getting wet from her tears, “I tried and we kissed, he kissed me hard like he knew what might happen, and then I just got pulled into his past. It was like I lived it too. All the … all the horrible things, Ade.”

And Vaux picks her head up, takes my head in her hands and, through smeared eyes, says, her voice jumping, “How can people be so cruel? What sort of world is this?”

I tell her I don’t know. I tell her that whatever she saw happened a long time ago and that she’s okay now, that Jimi’s okay now. I say, “I’m so sorry I put you through that.”

Vauxhall kisses me.

“Where is Jimi?”

I look around the house, my eyes darting. I want so badly to kick Jimi’s ass right now. I want so badly to just smash him into a thousand tiny specks. Just mash him down into the ground, where he’ll never touch Vauxhall again. Where he’ll never even see her again. My temples are pounding with adrenaline.

“He left,” she says.

“Where?”

“I don’t know.” Then she says, “Nothing happened.”

“What do you mean nothing happened?”

Vaux, through these tear garden eyes, says, “After you and I were together. You know, after what happened last night, it all changed. Have you had a concussion yet today?”

“No,” I say. “How come no one remembers I quit?”

Vauxhall says, “The two of us coming together was like what happens when an unmovable object meets an irresistible force. Both get changed, though not on the outside. I didn’t need to sleep with Jimi to see his memories. No high.”

“What?”

“No high. No Buzz. Whole time I was there I was thinking about you. Needing you. And as soon as I was leaving, as soon as I said good-bye, I felt so free. I felt so unburdened, so light. Like what you feel after a massage. It was just being totally relaxed.” Then her face changes, her expression dips, and Vauxhall says, “Don’t go back to Grandpa Razor. You don’t need to go to him, you can change things without him.”