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Authors: K. Ryer Breese
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anything.
Of course, I’m thinking maybe she’s going to do with me what she did with Ryan Mar. Whatever exactly that was. Part of me, the lower part, is excited at the thought, has been sleepily dreaming of this. The other part, upper, doesn’t want it to go down like this. Really doesn’t want this.
But just being in Vauxhall’s presence I’m getting goose bumps again.
It’s like she’s radioactive. Like there’s a Geiger counter in my chest that’s pinging violently the closer I am to her. This girl is not only beautiful and deeply funny and clever and complicated and so freaking flawed and hooking up with random assholes, but something tells me she’s also like me. It’s the same thing that tells me that we will be together. It is inevitability. Going upstairs I’m giddy with expectation, the same way I felt when I went into Black Bart’s haunted cave at Casa Bonita for the first time. Scared. Jazzed.
Up the stairs she’s in front and I can’t peel my eyes away. Despite the boxy suit, I catch glimpses of feminine shapes beneath. A calf. Thigh. Ass cheek. It’s intoxicating but over so quickly.
Now the party is just ten loud people. They’re falling over each other. Lying in sleepy piles. Guys are copping feels. Girls are crying and talking too close to each other, face-to-face, like they might kiss or they’re sharing each other’s breath.
“Good view on the roof?” I ask.
“Sure,” Vaux says. “Mountains sometimes.”
“You come up on Oscar’s roof often?”
“—”
Vaux and I make our way to a porch on the second floor and from there to a ladder that rocks back and forth when she climbs up.
“Not sure I’m in the best state to be climbing ladders,” I say, trying to hold the ladder steady as I climb.
Over the roof, Vaux looks down at me and smiles, says, “I’m completely wasted and I made it. You worried you’ll fall? Maybe hit your head?”
SIX
On the roof we can’t see shit.
Just trees and the Christmas lights of distance houses and the haziness of stars. The roof slopes hard and the tiles are loose, but Vaux leads me over to a spot where the roof isn’t nearly as angled and I sit down next to her and lean back on my hands.
She lights a cigarette and offers me a drag.
I take it even though I don’t smoke.
Vaux starts with a story about how when she was little, her father bought her a jumbo-sized copy of Winsor McCay’s comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland. She tells me all about how the drawings just sucked her in, how even then it looked like cinema to her. Forgotten and neglected cinema. She tells me she identified with the princess who was always lonely. “As a kid,” she says, “I’d think of my dad as King Morpheus. Only he was really sweet but just as magical. He’d made this whole thrilling world for me to play in.”
“Sounds nice. That’s a lot like my dad.”
“A dreamer, huh?”
“You could say that.”
Vaux switches gears, asks, “How’d you get it? Your ability?”
I laugh, nervous. Ask, “What are you talking about?”
Vauxhall says, “You know.”
Still being coy I ask, “Did someone tell you some—”
“Hitting your head and walking away from it the way you do. The way your eyes are rolling around in your skull like you’re high as a kite. I can see there’s something more going on with you, Ade,” Vauxhall says. “Besides, your friend Paige told me that you can see the future. And even if you don’t believe me that I believe that, I do. I can see it. I can read it on you. So, please, tell me how it happened.”
This girl, I want to explain everything. I want so much to laugh and cry right now. But I relax and just start talking. “An accident,” I say. “Just a fluke.”
“Typical origin story, huh? Radioactive spider bite, gamma rays, the usual.”
“Not that spectacular.”
I tell Vaux it went back to dissecting toads in eighth grade. I tell her that before we could even get started, before I’d
Of course, I’m thinking maybe she’s going to do with me what she did with Ryan Mar. Whatever exactly that was. Part of me, the lower part, is excited at the thought, has been sleepily dreaming of this. The other part, upper, doesn’t want it to go down like this. Really doesn’t want this.
But just being in Vauxhall’s presence I’m getting goose bumps again.
It’s like she’s radioactive. Like there’s a Geiger counter in my chest that’s pinging violently the closer I am to her. This girl is not only beautiful and deeply funny and clever and complicated and so freaking flawed and hooking up with random assholes, but something tells me she’s also like me. It’s the same thing that tells me that we will be together. It is inevitability. Going upstairs I’m giddy with expectation, the same way I felt when I went into Black Bart’s haunted cave at Casa Bonita for the first time. Scared. Jazzed.
Up the stairs she’s in front and I can’t peel my eyes away. Despite the boxy suit, I catch glimpses of feminine shapes beneath. A calf. Thigh. Ass cheek. It’s intoxicating but over so quickly.
Now the party is just ten loud people. They’re falling over each other. Lying in sleepy piles. Guys are copping feels. Girls are crying and talking too close to each other, face-to-face, like they might kiss or they’re sharing each other’s breath.
“Good view on the roof?” I ask.
“Sure,” Vaux says. “Mountains sometimes.”
“You come up on Oscar’s roof often?”
“—”
Vaux and I make our way to a porch on the second floor and from there to a ladder that rocks back and forth when she climbs up.
“Not sure I’m in the best state to be climbing ladders,” I say, trying to hold the ladder steady as I climb.
Over the roof, Vaux looks down at me and smiles, says, “I’m completely wasted and I made it. You worried you’ll fall? Maybe hit your head?”
SIX
On the roof we can’t see shit.
Just trees and the Christmas lights of distance houses and the haziness of stars. The roof slopes hard and the tiles are loose, but Vaux leads me over to a spot where the roof isn’t nearly as angled and I sit down next to her and lean back on my hands.
She lights a cigarette and offers me a drag.
I take it even though I don’t smoke.
Vaux starts with a story about how when she was little, her father bought her a jumbo-sized copy of Winsor McCay’s comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland. She tells me all about how the drawings just sucked her in, how even then it looked like cinema to her. Forgotten and neglected cinema. She tells me she identified with the princess who was always lonely. “As a kid,” she says, “I’d think of my dad as King Morpheus. Only he was really sweet but just as magical. He’d made this whole thrilling world for me to play in.”
“Sounds nice. That’s a lot like my dad.”
“A dreamer, huh?”
“You could say that.”
Vaux switches gears, asks, “How’d you get it? Your ability?”
I laugh, nervous. Ask, “What are you talking about?”
Vauxhall says, “You know.”
Still being coy I ask, “Did someone tell you some—”
“Hitting your head and walking away from it the way you do. The way your eyes are rolling around in your skull like you’re high as a kite. I can see there’s something more going on with you, Ade,” Vauxhall says. “Besides, your friend Paige told me that you can see the future. And even if you don’t believe me that I believe that, I do. I can see it. I can read it on you. So, please, tell me how it happened.”
This girl, I want to explain everything. I want so much to laugh and cry right now. But I relax and just start talking. “An accident,” I say. “Just a fluke.”
“Typical origin story, huh? Radioactive spider bite, gamma rays, the usual.”
“Not that spectacular.”
I tell Vaux it went back to dissecting toads in eighth grade. I tell her that before we could even get started, before I’d
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