K Breese - Future Imperfect

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.”

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.”