Read Online Future Imperfect by K. Ryer Breese - Free Book Online Page B

even sat down at the lab bench, scalpel in hand, I accidentally stepped on Kevin Harris’s new shoes and he caught me with a fist on the right side of my face, just below the orbital socket of my eye. I say, “I went spinning into Vanessa Katz and then tumbled over a lab stool and wound up on the linoleum. My forehead hit first and my skull bounced. Went black for only heartbeats, but in that darkness I saw something. Like a short film or a trailer for a movie. A young woman and an older man meeting. It’s hard to recall the details now but what I overheard was that he’d been lost after an accident. Something with amnesia. Or maybe he was in hiding. It was on the news. Anyway, they ran into each other at a food court and hugged and sobbed and sputtered in front of the Chick-fil-A.”
    Vaux says, “Classy.”
    I tell Vaux about the Buzz. I tell her how, for me, at first, it was like being over-caffeinated but in the best way imaginable. I say, “It was a breaking-the-laws-of-physics high. That first time I was sure I was beaming light. Everyone could see it. Kids in the halls stopping to look at me. Pointing me out across the basketball courts. I was radiating some heavenly light or something. The Buzz lasted until the next morning and then melted away, like how your body melts back into itself after a hard workout.”
    Vaux nods, staring off into the non-view. She says, “I know that feeling.”
    “You do?”
    “Yeah, that so strange?”
    “Uh, no. I’m just surprised is—”
    Vauxhall does this finger-twirl thing, says, “Come on, don’t leave me in suspense. Tell me the rest of your story.”
    “Okay. So, two days after the knockout I was at the mall with my friends and I saw the girl from the vision. I sat down in the middle of a record store and watched the dream come real and the players took the stage and it was acted out exactly as I’d seen it. Every detail. The tears. The intense smiles. I couldn’t breathe. I hurled when I got home.”
    “Must have been amazing,” Vauxhall says. “The power of that.”
    “After that it was just me chasing the Buzz around. It’s harder to start a fight than you’d imagine. I said some of the worst things I could think of to the worst people I knew and still came up empty. What it came down to was me going bat-shit crazy just for the thrill of a ten-second ride into the future. Something I shouldn’t be able to do. Something that no one should be able to do. It felt wrong but so right.”
    Vauxhall puts her hand on my shoulder. Squeezes it. This is the first time she’s intentionally touched me, and there’s an electric current. All the hairs on my arms stand up. I can feel each and every one of them.
    What’s really funny is how open I am about my ability. How I’m just letting it all spill out. Then again, I’m talking to the only person I’ve ever really loved.
    Vaux asks, “What do you see when you knock yourself out now?”
    “Decades out. I need to push it to get the Buzz stronger.”
    “What’s it like, your future?”
    “Clean, fun. I don’t have any lasting head injuries or any brain problems. At least not that I can tell. It’s what’s been keeping me doing it, really. Knowing that I end up fine. It’s funny, but in the future, I’m like this daredevil. Kind of a Jackass sort of dude.”
    “Like what?”
    “Jumping off buildings. Stunts. I have no idea why.”
    “And you’re not like that now?”
    Up on the rooftop with an invisible city spilling out in front and all our peers asleep or rocking drunkenly beneath, I sigh and say, “I’m looking forward to it but, sometimes, I worry I’m out of control. Even now. I mean I know that last summer I was out of control, but I’m not sure when, if, I’ll ever really get under control. Some of the stuff I’ve done, I’m not really proud of. Most of it, thankfully, I don’t remember.”
    This is a lie. I remember a lot of it but I don’t want her see me that way, to think of me that