My dad, for his part, just stares into the silence between us.
This gap of nothing, it’s pretty much his whole life now.
“Anyway,” I say, “guy with rumors like that has to be trouble.”
I walk over to my dad’s bedside and look closely at his eyelids. The balls of his eyes move slowly under the thin skin the way sullen fish do under ice. “But I know the future always works itself out. It’s like karma. Can’t change what’s coming down the tracks.”
I have flashbacks to the times I tried to change what I saw.
I see a car accident with my friend in the middle.
I see a church burning to the ground.
I see nothing good.
I pat my dad on the shoulder, tell him that I’ll be back to update him on my situation in a few days. I tell him that he should not worry about me, that everything will end up just fine. “I’ve seen it already, Pops,” I say. “Down to the last second.”
And then, just as I turn to leave the room, I ask, “If there really is some meaning behind all this, some master plan, and you’re like a metaphor or some sort of sign for me, then wake up right now and shout, ‘Hallelujah!’”
My dad, he just farts in his sleep again.
THREE
Mantlo’s your typical high school.
We have our jocks, our wavers, our geeks, our punk rockers, our acidheads, our preps, goths, hipsters, stoners, nerds, bohemians, furries, mods, Teddy boys, metalheads, bodybuilders, otaku, gamers, soulboys, artists, glam rockers, skinheads, hackers, anarchists, cos-players, swing kids, bikers, grebos, scooters, psychobillies, gangsters, queers, freaks, outsiders, and dirties. Just all of them are limper. All of them are caricatures in reverse.
But not Jimi and I.
Fact is: It’s only at Mantlo that we can get away with what we do.
The place is so boring, so white-bread and predictable, that we, the unpredictable element, bring a whole uneasy new vibe to the place. What’s good about it is that our being so “badly behaved” lets everyone else go covert. All the kids on drugs, all the gay kids, all the gangsters, all of them rest easy knowing that no one is going to pick on them ’cause they’ve got us. Me with my ability, Jimi with his outrageousness, we’re the magnets.
Just having us around keeps everything else on the downlow.
The other students, none of them seems to appreciate it. The staff does, though. At least for me. Even though Mrs. Caronna is getting sick of seeing me, I give her something to do, someone to treat, to make her job meaningful. Same with Eveready. Can’t be an effective principal if you haven’t got a troublemaker keeping you on your toes. Fact is: There’re a whole slew of people whose jobs pretty much depend on me doing my damaged thing. I’m like an insurance policy.
And today, that policy is about to pay out.
Lunchtime.
Cafeteria is full and my heart is racing.
Paige, she takes her place beside me just like always and just like always she sings, all sarcastic, “This is the day your life will surely change.” But today, she adds, “Rumor has it there’s a new hottie at school. She and Jimi have been making the rounds.”
I just point at the calendar beneath the food pyramid.
The date there is so bold it’s painful.
Clockwork.
Jimi comes strutting into the cafeteria and Paige says, “And here we go.”
I’m trying to control my pulse.
Jimi, swinging his arms like he’s going to take flight in his leather coat and blood-ox Docs and eyeliner and mullet, he is just beaming. But already this moment is stale.
I know what comes next. I’ve known for so very long.
Love fever.
Epic bliss.
Me, right now I’m trying to figure out when I can hit my head again.
When I can see what happens after this.
After this, I’m drawing kind of a blank.
Jimi marches to the center of the lunchroom and then, like always, climbs up on an empty table and puts his hands to his mouth. He arches back, shouting up into the rafters. “Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, gather ’round. Have I got a spectacle for you!”
And then there she is.
The girl from my vision comes in behind Jimi all business. The way she walks in, it’s like one of those movies where the action blurs right before a musical number. And everyone notices right away she’s beautiful. Wearing all gray with her hair short and curling at the ends, my future girl has this small, perfectly fragile face at odds with the fully realized body in tow. Those overwhelming green eyes.
Paige elbows me. “I think I just swallowed my gum.”
I ignore her. This is my moment.
And Paige flicks me on the side of the head where a sprout of hair sticks out from the bandages that circle my forehead like a sweatband. “You so rock,” she says.
What this is, it’s exactly like watching someone film a movie. I’ve read the script a thousand times and now it’s happening.
Only there are no cameras.
Only it’s for real.
Jimi introduces her with a wild flourish, says, “This is Vauxhall!”
The name hits me like a hammer to the stomach and at the same time it’s like being kissed, just so, on the ear. Of course, I realize that it’s the best name ever. That all the names I came up with, all the ones I made ludicrous lists of, were totally off. Over the past six months alone I’d come up with Zoe, Seraphim, Giselle, and Ava, but seeing her now, none of those work.
Paige, her fingers cold on the back of my neck, says, “I’m already in love.”
Vauxhall gets up on the table next to Jimi.
She’s calm, standing there as though this whole thing has been rehearsed a thousand times. There is silence. The ones eating chew slowly, as quietly as possible.
Jimi steps off the table and starts beat-boxing.
Someone yells, “Faggot!”
And that’s when Vauxhall extends her arms out wide and sings. Bright as a burning building, she sings and her voice is low and smoky and starts almost like a whisper. She sings, “Your own personal Jesus… Someone to hear your prayers…”
Paige looks at me. “Did you think it’d be this good?”
“Never.”
Vauxhall lowers her arms and stares out. Her eyes pin us to our chairs. Pin us to the spot like the butterflies cottoned and pinned in Mr. Weber’s room.
And what happens happens, exactly the way I saw it.
Down to the very glance.
She moves over to me. Me sitting there enraptured.
“Your own personal Jesus…”
And just like the million times I’ve seen it in my head, I feel like I’m floating and I feel like the two of us, me and Vauxhall, are the only ones there and all the forces of nature swirl around us as time grinds down to nothing. To only a heartbeat. A blink.
The most beautiful déjà vu. And then it’s over.
Jimi stops. Vauxhall stops.
They step down from the table and the lunchroom is broken from its trance.
And the space where the music was, it’s overwhelmed with noise: the scuttle and squeak of sneakers on tile, laughter and cursing, sighs and shouts. Within minutes the lunchroom clears, only a scattering of students remain.
What’s ironic now that it’s happened, and what I never really noticed before in any of my mental replays, is that the whole thing, the whole scene, is really just your typical high school prank. This, Vauxhall singing with Jimi doing his lame beat-box shtick, is almost exactly what you’d expect to see in an ’80s movie. This is such a cheeseball Breakfast Club moment that everyone else but me and Paige is going to forget about it an hour from now.
My moment, it’s such a cliché.